Michelle Taylor didn’t know when she went to school in Virginia to study anthropology, that an

Michelle Taylor didn’t know when she went to school in Virginia to study anthropology, that an ancestor of hers who’d been enslaved by James Madison, George Gilmore, had built this cabin nearby after the Civil War. 

She also found a pension application of another ancestor, Harriet Bentley, at the National Archives. In it, “Bentley told her story of life as an enslaved woman and of her first husband being sold off. Taylor wept over those pages, excited about the discovery but deeply saddened by the woman’s tale of repeated heartbreak and trauma. ‘I couldn’t believe I was touching the original paper,’ Taylor said.”

(1920s photo of the cabin found at the Montpelier site. For a recent photo of the place, with Michelle Taylor out front, see the Washington Post article.)