File:Reckoning with a painful history (63563826-516e-40ac-959a-bda92f8c49cf).jpg

An older man has his hand on the handle of a black carriage from the mid-1800s

Hampton National Historic Site: John Gross, whose ancestors were enslaved at Hampton, poses by the carriage that his ancestors used to drive. At 25,000 acres Hampton was one of the largest slave-owning estates in the antebellum United States. Now in its third year, a study team of social anthropologists, ethnographers, historians, interpreters, and genealogists, using the site's voluminous archival and photographic collections, has made major findings related to Hampton's enslaved workers and their post-freedom history. Initial findings of the Ethnographic Overview and Assessment (EOA) study were presented at a 2018 public symposium, "Tracing Lives from Slavery to Today: New Interpretations of Slavery and Freedom at Maryland’s Hampton Plantation." Several images of Hampton’s enslaved coachman Nathan Harris taken in the summer of 1864. Harris’ great grandson Mr. John Gross (seen here in August 2019) was one of several living descendants interviewed.

• Keywords: 2019 Region 1