Brought Together

Betty Kilby Fisher Baldwin

There I was, coming up on my sixtysecond birthday. God had helped bring me to a good stage in my life. I’d retired from my career as an executive. I had raised four children and was helping raise two of my nine grandchildren. And I thought I’d made peace with the past.

Then I received an e-mail from a stranger:

My name is Phoebe Kilby, and I am white. My father grew up in Rappahannock County, Virginia, near where your father grew up. I have been doing some research on my family. I suspect that our families had some kind of relationship in the past.

What did that mean?

There was a follow-up e-mail too. Phoebe—whose last name was the same as my maiden name—said she had been doing genealogical research and discovered that her ancestors might have enslaved my ancestors.

White slave owners often fathered children with the African-American women they owned. It was possible that Phoebe and I were not just connected but related.

“I feel shame that my family once owned slaves and