My direct line keeps moving and it seems the road to Culpeper is wide open.

We ran parallel lives, growing up in the same Maryland county of Prince George’s. It was a DNA test that ultimately connected us in the present, but a Rappahannock County story that is our origin.

To the mothers who give birth to freer. Following my family 9 generations from my daughter down the Rappahannock River to where my family’s freedom began.

I was looking all around the African Diaspora for home and home all the while was 90 miles away.

I think all the grandmothers before me would be proud. Perpetual Blackness on the road in Montreal, Canada.

My Aunt Rachel, is the daughter of Joseph Smoot and Rachel Bailey. She is at the heart of the community of Waterloo.

We meet here in the DMV and then go there. Living in DC, Maryland and Virginia means a constant trip around the African Diaspora whether at work, school or through love. We meet again here, and then we re-meet ourselves, there.

It started with a guided tour through Black DC with anthropologist Dr. Corrina Moebius. It became quickly apparent that Afro-Latino culture has shaped parts of the Washington DC, and Mr. Roland Roebuck, hailing from Loiza, Puerto Rico was at the center.

This blog post lays the foundation of my direct family’s line in Rappahannock County, Virginia.

My 3rd-great aunt, Mary Lawson and Elias Chappalear, a former slaveholder and man of aristocratic heritage would go on to have 15 children together. Their story highlights the complexity behind societal and familial reasons as to why fathers might go unknown.

I met Ms. Josephine Lawson rather serendipitously. Looking for a family cemetery identified on one of the Ancestry chats, I found family and her immediate family story through her eyes.