Crystal Emory never knew much about where she came from. Family members took her from her mother for being in an interracial marriage in 1960s and 1970s, leaving her floating between homes. She spent time in an orphanage in Pennsylvania. These experiences, she says, helped instill a need to find out more about her history.
“I just always wanted to know who my family was, and more about myself,” says Emory, 68, now retired from a career in IT. “I just started doing genealogy.”
She knew grandparents were Black, but not much else. She looked for names in newspaper articles, and collected what family lore she could.
“My father’s mother would tell me stories about the family, and I was writing these stories down as a young person,” she said.
It wasn’t until the Smithsonian Institution and a historical society in Frederick County, Md. came calling that Emory was able to trace her history to the Catoctin Furnace, a small ironworking village that made utensils and ammunition for the U.S. from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. With the help of diaries and other records, they connected her to a free, land-owning Black man named Robert Patterson who lived in the area through much of the 19th century. Thanks to that, Emory was able to learn a little about the life he led.
In 1979, a previously unknown cemetery at Catoctin Furnace was found and excavated as the state worked on a highway in the area. The unmarked bodies were put in the care of the Smithsonian. Now, with more advanced methods of collecting ancient DNA, the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society, the Smithsonian, Harvard University and the biotech company 23andMe have connected 27 of those bodies to nearly 42,000 people from the present-day who are related in some way to the people buried there – and to each other.
To read more of this article from Fishbowl content partner WYPR, click here.
