Her ancestors were enslaved on his ancestor’s land. Here’s what happened when they met

As Jones reads, the phone rings. The caller is Katie Bennett, a retired marketing executive who is tracing her family tree. Her search has led back in time to the western Tennessee plantation owned by Jones' great-great grandfather. Two of Bennett's ancestors were enslaved there.

Their names, she says, were Penny and Grace.

"Hold on a second," Jones says, and the first of many conversations begins.

At that moment, in early 1995, two people - one black, one white - began stitching together a shared history that had unraveled like ends of a fraying scarf. In the years following that first phone call Bennett, who lives in Marietta, would travel to meet Jones and other descendants of slave-holding families whose ancestors once owned hers. Long-lost cousins who had scattered like leaves in the wind would come together for a reunion.

"There were a bunch of white folks, a bunch of black folks and some biracial," Bennett said. "We all wanted to know more, we all wanted to learn. The relationships that we established are friendships that will last the rest of our lives."

In a time when racial issues so often divide, when states struggle with how or even whether to apologize for slavery, Bennett has found that an open mind can bring people together. She has seen how knowledge can help salve the wounds history threatens to inflict on the present.

She reached into the past, and found the future.

Credit: Andy Sharp

Credit: Andy Sharp

Little to go on

Bennett's late parents never talked much about family.

After she retired in 1990, though, she decided to pry open doors to her past. A college math major who worked for years at IBM, Bennett, 67, scoured census data, birth, marriage and death records, historical archives at the University of North Carolina and Tennessee State Library and a massive trove of genealogical documents, available to the public, that is maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Her first hit was a record of her mother at age 3, living with her grandparents in Hardeman County, Tenn., about 70 miles east of Memphis.

"When I saw that record with my mom and her grandparents, who I had never heard of, I was intrigued," Bennett said.

Credit: Andy Sharp

Credit: Andy Sharp

She was able to trace her mother's family name, Cheshier, as far back as the 1870 census. She then switched to land and property deeds.

An 1843 record showed a man named Tennison Cheshier bought Bennett's great-great grandfather, Squire, for $525 - about $10,500 in today's dollars.

"When I saw that bill of sale, tears started flowing down my face," Bennett said.

But the harrowing document was a valuable key.

After that discovery, Bennett called the library in Bolivar, Tenn., the Hardeman County seat. The librarian was Ann Cheshier, whose husband, Danny, is a descendant of Tennison Cheshier.

"I never expected to hear from someone who was connected with slaves Danny's ancestors had owned," said Ann Cheshier. "It's been humbling."

She paused, and patted her chest.

"I'm sorry, I get emotional," said Cheshier. "I could see where this would have been so painful. [Bennett] could have said, 'I can't handle this.' Thankfully, she didn't. That's a part of history we can't change, as much as we would like to. We can do what Katie has done, and move on."

She talked as her husband clipped hair in the courthouse square barbershop he's run for nearly 50 years, the length of their marriage. The year their daughter started first grade, the schools integrated and some folks panicked.

"There were [white] people who pulled their kids out, started private schools," Ann Cheshier said. "We never considered it."

"We're all human beings," Danny Cheshier added, as he swept up after a trim. "A person makes his own way in life, regardless of what race you are."

They have enjoyed Bennett's visits to Bolivar and speak of her with a sort of awe, at both her tremendous research and her willingness to reach into difficult chapters of her family's history.

Ann Cheshier, who retired last year, noted that all of Bennett's self-published books about her family are in the Bolivar library's permanent reference collection.

"Any time someone would come in doing genealogical research, I would say, let me show you these books by Katie Bennett," she said. "If you're connected to any of the people she has researched, you have hit a gold mine."

Credit: copy

Credit: copy

Helpful to look back

While technology and science make it easier to piece together the past, the results are sometimes jarring - the recent revelation that relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond owned ancestors of the Rev. Al Sharpton, for example. But experts in race relations say confronting history is crucial to moving forward.

"One of the things that has retarded the progress of race relations is our extraordinary ability to forget," said Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of American studies at Temple University. "We go to extravagant lengths to forget aspects of the past. We need to acknowledge the past as it really was. We don't need to romanticize it."

Hill, who favors reparations as a means of long-term racial reconciliation, was fascinated to hear of Bennett's research.

"This woman's extraordinary journey speaks to black folks' fundamental need to know who they are and where they come from," he said.

Historian Laurie Green, author of "Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle," said Bennett's genealogical project reminded her of the African term sankofa. Symbolized by a bird looking backward, it means to gather from the past to move forward.

"This woman is remarkable," Green said. "To not end in bitterness but to actually create new relationships is so wonderful."

Bennett has felt the bite of injustice throughout her genealogical journey. Some of the old letters spell out with chilling precision how many lashes misbehaving slaves should receive, for example. But Bennett says the wrongs of yesterday do not taint her view of tomorrow.

"Anger and blame, those things don't have a place when you're trying to exchange information," she said. "If you're not talking, you're not learning how to understand each other."

Her research figured prominently in an essay penned this spring by 13-year-old Cailey Jones, a cousin of Jameson Jones. Titled "A real black history report," the essay tells the story of Grace and Penny, Bennett's enslaved ancestors. Grace's son married Penny's daughter; their granddaughter was Bennett's great-great grandmother.

"They had no choices. They had no control over their own children or their own lives. They were considered property," wrote Cailey, who says she considers both women to be her forebears. "They might not be in the school history books, but they are certainly a part of my family's history."

Penny and Grace were Bennett's great-great-great-great grandmothers. Old family letters reveal Grace’s courage. She ran away several times, once while pregnant.

"That tells me about a strength that she had that I hope I have inherited," Bennett said. "I want to see some of myself in Grace."

A treasure hunt, with DNA

Bennett capped her genealogical quest with DNA testing showing the regions in Africa from which her ancestors were taken. Her research fills several self-published books, illustrated by her daughter Rejena Bennett.

She talks about her research like a treasure hunt, each new discovery a gold coin of knowledge. It is a rich inheritance to pass to her grandchildren. Her next project may be a book for them, written from a child's perspective.

"It's amazing to me that she has been able to find out all that she has," said Bennett's other daughter, Gail Gentry. She and her husband married in Bolivar, Tenn., site of a Jones family gathering several years ago. Bennett's research brought together a diverse group of people who could all trace their lineage to Calvin Jones, the plantation owner, or to the enslaved people who worked on his land.

Jameson Jones, Calvin's great-great grandson, was there that day.

Now 91, he spends his days listening to classical music, and strolling in the park outside his apartment in a Memphis high-rise for seniors. The years have settled into his slight frame and he walks with a cane, but his mind remains sharp.

He tells about the trip he and a student and an African-American friend took through Kentucky in the 1940s, when they tried to register at hotels, shop in clothing stores, attend church or see movies together.

"We found out rapidly that Jim Crow was far from dead," said Jones, who taught religion and philosophy at Centre College in Danville, Ky.

After they got tossed from one hotel - the clerk had asked if they were musicians - a police car pulled up. Eyeing the group, the cop asked Jones where he was from.

"Mississippi," the young professor said.

"You ought to know better," the policeman growled.

Six decades later, Jones still gets angry enough to hurl what, for him, is an epithet: "That knothead!"

He was born about 51 years after the Civil War ended.

"I'm not convinced we've reached paradise of course, but I do think we've made a giant step forward in the South," he said.

He and Bennett talk on the phone and exchange letters, and each has helped with the other's genealogical research.

"I feel like I know my great-great grandparents a lot better than I knew my grandparents," he said. " A lot of that is because of chewing the fat with Katie."

His apartment is furnished with family pieces and period antiques he and his late wife collected, including a fine antebellum mahogany sugar chest that dates to the 1820s.

It sits in his living room, next to his favorite chair by the window. A picture of Bennett's grandchildren lay on top.

Credit: Greg Campbell

Credit: Greg Campbell