Dr.Caroline Webster had been working as a curator at the National Museum of American History for 12 years, and she thought she had developed a certain emotional distance from the artifacts she handled.
It was a necessary survival mechanism.
You couldn’t break down every time you encountered evidence of historical injustice or you’d never get any work done.
But on a humid morning in June 2024, sitting in the museum’s climate controlled archive room, she encountered a photograph that shattered that carefully constructed distance.
The image had arrived as part of a larger donation from the estate of a prominent Virginia family.
The collection included furniture, correspondents, jewelry, and several dozen dgeray types in early paper photographs documenting the family’s history from the 1840s through the early 20th century.
Most were standard fair formal portraits, wedding photos, documentation of property and prosperity.
Then Caroline opened a protective case containing a dgeray type dated May 1857 and her breath caught in her throat.
At first glance, it looked like a celebration.
The photograph showed a family of six people posed in an elaborate garden setting.
A grand brick mansion with tall white columns formed the backdrop, its windows reflecting the afternoon sun.
Flowering bushes and carefully manicured hedges framed the scene.
Everything about the composition suggested wealth, permanence, and domestic happiness.
The family was dressed in their finest clothing.
The father stood in the center, a man in his 40s, wearing a dark suit with a silk vest and gold watch chain.
His expression was one of satisfaction and pride.
Beside him sat his wife, a woman of similar age, in an elaborate silk dress with layers of ruffles and lace, her hair arranged in the fashionable style of the 1850s.
She held a small smile, her hands folded deurly in her lap.
Their three children were arranged around them.
two boys who looked to be around 10 and 12, wearing miniature versions of their father’s suit, and a girl of perhaps 14 in a pale dress with ribbons in her hair.
All three children were smiling, the kind of stiff formal smiles that came from holding a pose for the long exposure times required by a dgero type photography.
Everything about the image suggested this was a family celebrating something, perhaps a birthday, a holiday, an anniversary, or simply their own prosperity and status.
the kind of photograph wealthy families commissioned to document their success and leave a legacy for future generations.
But there was a seventh person in the photograph.
Standing behind the family, partially in shadow, was a child, a black child, no more than eight or nine years old, wearing simple, unadorned clothing that contrasted sharply with the elaborate outfits of the white family.
The child’s face was visible but expressionless, carefully neutral in that way Caroline had learned to recognize from studying photographs of enslaved people.
a protective blankness designed to reveal nothing that might provoke punishment.
The child stood very still, hands held in front of their body, positioned slightly apart from the family group as though occupying a different space entirely despite being in the same frame.
Caroline had seen dozens of photographs like this, enslaved people included in family portraits as markers of wealth, as living proof of the family’s prosperity and social standing.
It was a common and deeply disturbing practice in antibbellum photography.
The enslaved were posed like furniture, like property to be displayed alongside the silver, the fine clothing, the grand houses.
But something about this particular image nagged at Caroline.
There was something about the child’s posture, about the way the hands were positioned that suggested the child was holding something.
Caroline reached for her magnifying loop and leaned closer, squinting at the small figure in the background.
Yes, the child was definitely holding something.
Something flat, rectangular.
Papers of some kind, perhaps? A tray? Caroline’s pulse quickened.
She needed better resolution to see clearly.
She carefully removed the dgeraypite from its case and carried it to the museum’s digital imaging station where a highresolution scanner could capture details invisible to the naked eye without damaging the fragile original.
As she positioned the dgeraype under the scanner, Caroline had no idea that what she was about to discover would haunt her for months, would spark national outrage, and would ultimately lead to the uncovering of a story of extraordinary courage and resilience.
She pressed the button to begin the scan and waited.
The highresolution scan took nearly 20 minutes to complete.
The machine capturing every microscopic detail of the 167y old dgeraype.
Caroline watched the progress bar slowly advance across her computer screen.
Her anticipation building with each percentage point.
When the scan finally finished, she opened the file and began to zoom in on the child’s figure.
The enhanced resolution revealed details that had been impossible to see with the naked eye.
The child, whose gender Caroline still couldn’t determine from the clothing and hairstyle alone, was indeed holding something.
It was a silver tray, ornate and expensive looking, the kind of serving piece that wealthy families used for formal occasions.
The tray caught and reflected light in the photograph.
Its polished surface bright even after all these years.
But it was what rested on the tray that made Caroline’s blood run cold.
Papers, legal documents of some kind.
She could see the formal layout, the dense text, the official seals.
Caroline zoomed in further, adjusting the contrast and brightness to make the text as legible as possible.
The dgeray types resolution was remarkable for its era and combined with modern digital enhancement.
She could actually read portions of the documents.
At the top of the first page, an ornate script were the words bill of sale.
Caroline’s hands began to shake.
She zoomed in more, reading fragments of text.
Know all men by these presents that I, Robert Ashford of Henriko County, Virginia, have bargained and sold and James Mitchell of Adams County, Mississippi.
One negro boy child named Nathan, aged approximately 8 years and for the sum of $650.
But Caroline sat back from the computer screen feeling physically ill.
The celebration in the photograph wasn’t a birthday or anniversary.
It was a sale.
The family had posed for this elaborate expensive photograph to commemorate the sale of this child.
And they had forced the child himself, Nathan, to hold the documents of his own sale on a silver tray as though he were presenting a gift at a celebration.
The cruelty of it was breathtaking.
Not only had they sold an 8-year-old child, separating him from whatever family he had known, sending him hundreds of miles away to the brutal conditions of a Mississippi cotton plantation, they had commemorated the transaction with a formal photograph and made the child participate in his own dehumanization.
Caroline thought of her own children safe at home, playing in their rooms, innocent and protected.
She thought of them at age 8, still so small, still needing comfort and reassurance, still afraid of the dark.
and she thought of Nathan, 8 years old, being forced to stand in the hot sun holding the papers that documented his sale as though he were livestock while his enslavers smiled for the camera.
She read the document more carefully, zooming in on different sections.
The sale was dated May 15th, 1857.
The seller was Robert Ashford, the man standing proudly in the center of the photograph.
The buyer was James Mitchell of Mississippi, who wasn’t present in the image, but whose signature appeared at the bottom of the bill of sale, $650.
That’s what they had valued Nathan’s entire life at, about $20,000 in modern currency, less than the cost of a used car.
Caroline printed out several highresolution images of the photograph, including close-ups of Nathan’s face and the documents he was holding.
Then she began the process of researching everyone involved in this transaction.
She needed to know who Nathan was, where he had come from, what had happened to his family.
She needed to know if he had survived, if he had ever escaped or been freed, if he had lived long enough to see emancipation.
and she needed to know about the Ashford family, their history, their wealth, how they had built their prosperity on the bodies of enslaved people like Nathan.
Caroline spent the rest of the day in the archives pulling records and making phone calls to historical societies in Virginia and Mississippi.
The National Museum had extensive resources and connections, and she used all of them.
By evening, she had assembled a preliminary timeline of the Asheford family’s operations.
Robert Ashford had owned a plantation called Riverside in Henrio County, Virginia, just outside Richmond.
In 1857, he had owned 43 enslaved people, ranging in age from infants to elderly adults.
The plantation grew tobacco primarily, though Ashford also hired out some of his enslaved workers to nearby factories and construction projects for additional income.
The 1850 slave schedule, a census document that listed enslaved people by age, gender, and color, but not by name, showed that Ashford had owned a male child listed as age one black in that year.
That child would have been 8 years old in 1857, almost certainly Nathan.
But that was all Caroline could find in the Virginia records.
Nathan’s trail went cold after the sale.
She would need to search Mississippi records to find out what had happened to him after he arrived at his new owner’s plantation.
And that search would take time, resources, and permission to access archives that weren’t digitized.
As Caroline prepared to leave the museum that evening, she looked one more time at the photograph on her computer screen.
Nathan’s face so carefully expressionless, his small hands holding that silver tray.
The smiling family arrayed around him, celebrating their transaction.
She saved the files, backed them up to multiple locations, and locked the original Dgeray type in the museum’s secure vault.
Tomorrow, she would begin the real work of uncovering Nathan’s story.
Tonight, she would go home to her own children and hold them close, grateful beyond words that they lived in a different world.
Caroline arrived at the museum early the next morning, coffee in hand, and a determination that bordered on obsession.
She had barely slept, her mind turnurning with questions about Nathan.
What had happened to him after he arrived in Mississippi? Had he survived the brutal conditions of cotton plantation labor? Had he ever been reunited with his family? Did he have descendants who might be alive today, unknowing of this photograph that documented such a traumatic moment in their ancestors life? She began by contacting Dr.
Marcus Johnson, a historian at the University of Mississippi, who specialized in slavery in the cotton economy of the antibbellum South.
Marcus had published extensively on plantation records and had access to archives throughout the state.
When Caroline explained what she had found, Marcus agreed immediately to help search for Nathan’s trail in Mississippi.
“Send me everything you have,” Marcus said over the phone.
“The buyer’s name, the date, the location.
I’ll start going through plantation records, sales documents, anything that might mention Nathan’s arrival or subsequent life there.” While Marcus worked on the Mississippi angle, Caroline focused on Virginia.
She needed to understand Nathan’s life before the sale, who his parents were, whether he had siblings, what his daily existence had been like on the Ashford plantation.
The slave schedules didn’t list names, but other documents sometimes did.
Plantation ledgers, estate inventories, court records involving enslaved people.
She spent days in the archives, working through boxes of documents related to the Asheford family.
Robert Ashford had been meticulous in his recordeping, maintaining detailed ledgers of his property, including birth records, work assignments, and valuations.
It was deeply disturbing reading.
human beings reduced to inventory items, their lives and bodies documented with the same clinical precision one might use for livestock or farm equipment.
Finally, on the third day of searching, Caroline found Nathan’s birth record in a plantation ledger from 1849.
Negro boy child born to Dina, house servant on February 12th.
Child healthy, named Nathan by Dina’s request.
Father unknown, child valued at $100.
Nathan’s mother was named Dina.
She had been a house servant, someone who worked inside the main house rather than in the fields.
and she had been allowed to name her own child, a small mercy that some enslavers granted.
The notation father unknown was heartbreaking.
Either Dina had been assaulted by a white man and refused to say, or the father was another enslaved person who had been sold away before Nathan’s birth, or Ashford simply hadn’t cared enough to record the information.
Caroline searched for more references to Dina in the ledgers.
She found work assignments showing that Dina had been a cook andress, that she had been considered valuable and reliable, that her monetary value had increased over the years as her skills developed.
There were notations about her health, about minor illnesses and recoveries, about her productivity.
And then in the ledger from 1857, Caroline found an entry that made her heart sink.
Negro woman Dina, age approximately 32, sold to a state of deceased Thomas Warren, Richmond, Virginia, for settlement of debts.
Sale date April 20th, 1857.
Price: $800.
Dina had been sold just three weeks before Nathan.
Mother and son separated within weeks of each other.
Sold to different owners in different locations.
Nathan hadn’t just lost his home and everything familiar.
He had lost his mother first and then been sent hundreds of miles away with no possibility of ever seeing her again.
The cruelty was systematic, calculated.
Robert Ashford had needed money.
The ledgers showed that he was deeply in debt, struggling to maintain his plantation in the face of economic pressures.
So, he had sold off his most valuable assets.
He had separated a mother and child, destroyed their family, and then commemorated one of those sales with an elaborate photograph, forcing the child to participate in documenting his own commodification.
Caroline’s phone rang.
It was Marcus calling from Mississippi.
“I found him,” Marcus said without preamble.
“Nathan arrived at the Mitchell plantation in Adams County in June 1857.
The plantation records show his arrival, his age, his name.
They put him to work immediately.
First as a water carrier for field hands, then in the cotton fields themselves once he was considered strong enough.
Did he survive? Caroline asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
That’s the remarkable part, Marcus replied.
Yes, he survived.
Not just survived, he lived until 1902.
I found multiple records documenting his life after emancipation.
Caroline, this story is extraordinary.
Nathan didn’t just survive, he did something incredible with his freedom.
Caroline’s grip tightened on her phone.
What did he do? He bought children, Marcus said.
After the war ended and he was freed, Nathan worked as a laborer and saved every penny he could.
And then he started using that money to purchase the freedom of enslaved children.
Even after slavery officially ended, there were still children held in various forms of bondage, apprenticeships that were slavery by another name, debt peenage, illegal captivity.
Nathan spent decades tracking down these children and buying their freedom.
His records show he freed at least 42 children between 1865 and 1895.
Caroline felt tears streaming down her face.
He remembered, she whispered.
He remembered being 8 years old and being sold and he spent his life making sure other children didn’t stay enslaved.
There’s more.
Marcus continued, “I found a memoir written by one of the children, Nathan Freed, published in 1920.
It describes meeting Nathan, describes his motivation.
According to this memoir, Nathan said he had been forced to hold the papers of his own sale while his enslavers celebrated.
He said that moment never left him, that for the rest of his life, he could feel the weight of those papers in his hands.
So he decided to collect different papers.
Freedom papers, documents that liberated children instead of enslaving them.
He said he wanted to feel the weight of freedom in his hands instead.
Caroline sat in silence, overwhelmed by the profound courage and transformation of Nathan’s life.
The child forced to hold his own bill of sale had grown into a man who held dozens of freedom papers.
The weight of shame had been transformed into the weight of liberation.
While Marcus continued researching Nathan’s post-emancipation life in Mississippi, Caroline became determined to find out what had happened to Dina, Nathan’s mother.
The ledger had said she was sold to the estate of Thomas Warren in Richmond for debt settlement.
That was a starting point, but Caroline needed to know more.
Had Dina survived? Had she ever learned what happened to her son? Had they ever been reunited? Richmond’s historical archives were extensive but disorganized, particularly records related to enslaved people.
Caroline contacted the Library of Virginia and the Valentine Richmond History Center, explaining what she was searching for.
Several archivists agreed to help.
Moved by the story and committed to recovering these lost histories.
It took nearly two weeks of searching through estate records, auction documents, and property transfers before they found the trail.
The Thomas Warren estate had been liquidated in 1857 to pay the deceased man’s substantial debts.
All property, including enslaved people, had been sold at public auction.
The auction records from May 1857 listed Dina, Negro Woman, age 32, skilled cook, and laress, as having been purchased by a Richmond businessman named Edward Morrison for $800.
Morrison owned several properties in Richmond, including a hotel, a tobacco warehouse, and a boarding house.
The state record showed that he used enslaved labor in all of his businesses.
An inventory from 1860 listed Dina as working at his hotel, the Richmond house, as head cook.
Caroline found scattered references to Dina over the next few years, notations in Morrison’s business ledgers, tax records listing his property, insurance policies covering his enslaved workers.
Dina appeared consistently, always described as a skilled and valuable worker.
But there was no mention of Nathan.
No indication that Dina had ever learned what happened to her son after he was sold away.
Then came the Civil War.
Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy, and the city was transformed by war.
Morrison’s business records became sparse and chaotic.
The hotel continued operating, serving Confederate officers and government officials, with Dina still working in the kitchen, according to fragmentaryary records.
In April 1865, Richmond fell to Union forces.
The city burned and chaos rained for weeks.
Many records from this period were destroyed or lost, but Caroline found a brief notation in a Union Army quartermasters report from May 1865.
The Richmond House had been commandeered for use as a temporary headquarters, and the formerly enslaved workers had been freed.
A list of names included Dina Cook, age approximately 40, employed by army as paid worker.
Dina had survived the war.
She had witnessed Richmond’s fall, had seen the end of slavery, had gained her freedom at age 40 after decades of bondage.
But what had she done with that freedom? Had she stayed in Richmond? Had she tried to find Nathan? Caroline searched Freriedman’s bureau records, which documented the lives of formerly enslaved people during reconstruction.
The bureau had offices throughout Virginia, helping freed people find work, negotiate labor contracts, search for separated family members, and navigate their new status as free citizens.
Finally, in a box of correspondents from the Richmond Freedman’s Bureau office, Caroline found a letter that made her hands shake.
It was dated July 1865, written in neat, practiced handwriting, clearly written by a bureau clerk on behalf of someone who could not write themselves.
To whom it may concern, I’m searching for information about my son, Nathan, who was sold away from me in May of 1857 when he was 8 years old.
He was sold to a man named James Mitchell, who I was told owned a plantation in Mississippi.
I do not know if my son is alive or dead.
I do not know if he remembers me, but I am free now, and I’m searching.
If anyone has information about a young man named Nathan, approximately 16 years old, who was brought to Mississippi from Virginia in 1857, please send word to the Richmond Freriedman’s Bureau office.
Attention, Dina.
I will not stop searching until I find him or until I know what happened to him.
A mother does not forget her child.
The letter was signed with an X, Dina’s mark, and counter signed by a bureau clerk named Samuel Peters.
Caroline sat back, tears streaming down her face.
8 years after losing Nathan, Dina was still searching.
She had survived slavery, survived the war, gained her freedom, and immediately began looking for her son.
Had she ever found him? Had Nathan, working in Mississippi to buy the freedom of enslaved children, ever learned that his mother was searching for him? Caroline needed to know.
She called Marcus again.
Marcus had been working through Nathan’s papers.
Documents preserved by the family of one of the children he had freed, donated to a small historical society in Nachez, Mississippi.
The collection included freedom papers, correspondents, financial records, and a journal Nathan had kept during the later years of his life.
I found something, Marcus told Caroline when she called.
A letter.
It’s from 1866, addressed to Nathan, forwarded through multiple Freriedman’s Bureau offices.
Caroline, it’s from Dina.
His mother found him.
Read it to me, Caroline said, her voice breaking.
Marcus began.
My dearest son, Nathan, I do not know if you will remember me.
You were 8 years old when they took you from me.
You are 17 now, almost a man.
I am writing this letter with the help of a kind teacher here in Richmond, who is teaching freed people to read and write.
I am learning too slowly but not fast enough to write this myself yet.
So I tell her what to say and she writes it down.
I have been searching for you since the day we became free.
I wrote to every Freriedman’s bureau office in Mississippi.
I asked every person I met if they knew of a young man named Nathan who came from Virginia.
And finally someone knew.
A man who had worked on the Mitchell plantation remembered you.
He told me you were alive, that you survived, that you’re free now.
My heart which has been broken for 9 years began to heal when I heard this news.
I do not know if you remember me.
I sang to you when you were small.
I taught you to count and to say your prayers.
I held you when you were afraid of storms.
The day they took you away, you cried and reached for me and I could not save you.
I have carried that moment with me every day since.
The weight of not being able to protect you, not being able to keep you safe has been almost too much to bear.
But you are alive.
You are free.
And I am coming to find you.
I am saving money from my work here.
And as soon as I have enough for the journey, I will come to Mississippi.
I will find you.
I will see your face again.
Please wait for me.
Please know that I never forgot you, that I never stopped loving you, that you were in my heart every single day.
Your mother, Dina, Marcus’ voice was thick with emotion when he finished reading.
There’s a notation in Nathan’s journal from December 1866.
It just says, “My mother lives.
She’s coming.
God has answered my prayers.” “Did she make it?” Caroline asked.
“Did Dina get to Mississippi? Did they reunite?” “Yes,” Marcus said.
“I found passenger records showing Dina traveling by steamboat from Richmond to Nachez in March 1867.
And there’s an entry in Nathan’s journal from March 15th, 1867.
He writes, “Today I saw my mother’s face for the first time in 10 years.
I’m 18 years old, nearly a man.
But when I saw her, I became a child again.
We held each other and cried.
She’s older.
Her hair is gray, but her eyes are the same.” She knew me immediately.
She said, “I have grown tall, but my eyes have not changed.
We have so much time to make up for.
She will live with me here.
We will not be separated again.” Caroline was crying openly now after everything.
After the forced separation, after Dina being sold away, after Nathan being photographed holding his own bill of sale, after nine years of not knowing if the other was alive or dead, they had found each other.
Dina had crossed hundreds of miles to be reunited with her son.
Nathan had waited, had survived, had become free, and had been there when his mother finally arrived.
There’s more, Marcus continued.
Dina lived with Nathan for the rest of her life.
She helped him with his work buying freedom for enslaved children.
The memoir I mentioned earlier, written by one of the children Nathan Freed, describes meeting both Nathan and Dina.
The author writes that Dina treated every child Nathan brought home like her own grandchild.
That she cooked for them and mended their clothes and made sure they knew they were valued and loved.
She died in 1878 at about 53 years old.
Nathan buried her in Nachez and had a headstone made that says, “Dina, beloved mother.” She never stopped searching.
She never stopped loving.
Caroline sat in silence, processing everything Marcus had told her.
The story that had begun with such cruelty, an 8-year-old child forced to hold the documents of his own sale while his enslavers celebrated, had transformed into something profoundly beautiful.
Nathan and Dina had both refused to let slavery have the final word.
They had searched for each other, found each other, and spent the rest of Dina’s life together, healing and helping others heal from the wounds slavery had inflicted.
“We need to tell this story,” Caroline said finally.
The photograph is devastating, but the full story is about resilience and love and refusing to be broken.
People need to know what Nathan and Dina did.
Agreed, Marcus replied.
I’m going to keep researching.
See if I can find records of all the children Nathan freed.
I want to identify as many of them as possible, tell their stories, too.
Over the next month, Caroline and Marcus worked together from different states, collaborating through emails, phone calls, and shared documents.
They build a comprehensive account of Nathan’s life.
From his birth in 1849 to his sale in 1857, from his years of enslavement in Mississippi through emancipation, from his reunion with Dina, through his decades of work buying freedom for enslaved children.
They identified records for 38 of the 42 children Nathan had freed.
Each one had a story, a name, a history, a life that Nathan had changed through his determination and sacrifice.
and they prepared to share the photograph with the world, not as an isolated image of cruelty, but as the beginning of a story about transformation, about a [clears throat] child who had been forced to hold the weight of his own enslavement, and who had grown into a man who held the weight of freedom instead.
As Marcus continued his research in Mississippi, he began to uncover the individual stories of the children Nathan had saved from various forms of post-war bondage.
Each story was a testament to Nathan’s dedication into the fact that emancipation had not immediately meant freedom for all enslaved people, especially children.
The first child Nathan had freed was a girl named Sarah, documented in records from 1865.
She had been 10 years old, held under a fraudulent apprenticeship contract by her former enslaver, who claimed her parents had abandoned her.
Though Marcus found evidence that her parents had simply been sold to different plantations before the war and hadn’t yet been able to locate her.
Nathan had paid $50, an enormous sum for a newly freed man, to buy out the apprenticeship contract, and had helped Sarah find her way to the Freedman’s Bureau office where her parents had registered their search for her.
Another child, a boy named Isaac, had been freed by Nathan in 1867.
Isaac had been only 6 years old, held by a white family who claimed he was an orphan they had charitably taken in, when in fact they had stolen him from his mother during the chaos of Richmond’s fall.
Nathan had somehow learned of Isaac’s situation, traveled to Virginia, and negotiated or perhaps purchased the boy’s release.
Nathan’s journal entry about Isaac was brief but powerful.
[clears throat] Brought Isaac home today.
He cried for his mother all night.
Tomorrow I will help him write a letter to the Freriedman’s Bureau in Richmond.
Every child deserves to be with their family.
Marcus found a particularly moving story about twins, a boy and girl named Jacob and Julia, whom Nathan had freed in 1870.
They had been 12 years old, held on a remote farm under a system that was slavery and everything but name.
The farmer claimed they were working off a debt their deceased parents had allegedly owed him, a common form of debt peenage used to keep black people enslaved after emancipation.
Nathan had paid the entirely fictitious debt and had brought the twins to live with him and Dina until they were old enough to work and support themselves.
Julia, one of those twins, turned out to be the author of the memoir Marcus had discovered.
She had written it in 1920 when she was 62 years old, and it provided extraordinary insight into Nathan’s character and motivation.
Caroline obtained a copy of the memoir from the historical society, and she and Marcus read it carefully, looking for details about Nathan’s life and work.
Julia wrote, “Mr.
Nathan was the kindest man I ever knew.
But there was a sadness in his eyes that never fully left him.
He told me once about being 8 years old and being sold away from his mother.
He said his enslaver had made him hold the papers of his own sale.
Made him stand there like he was presenting a gift at a celebration.
He said that moment marked him forever.
That he could never forget the weight of those papers in his hands or the feeling of being treated as a thing rather than a person.
But he said something else, too.
He said that when he finally held his first freedom paper, the document that freed Sarah in 1865, he felt that weight again, but different.
It was still heavy, still important.
But it was the weight of liberation instead of the weight of bondage.
He said every time he bought a child’s freedom, every time he held those papers, he was reclaiming something that had been taken from him.
He was transforming that 8-year-old boy’s shame into something powerful and good.
The memoir described Dina, too.
Miss Dina treated us like we were her own grandchildren, even though we had no blood relation to her.
She cooked the most wonderful meals and made sure we were clean and fed.
She taught us manners and how to present ourselves with dignity.
But most importantly, she taught us that what had been done to us did not define us, that we were worthy of love and respect, that we had value beyond anything anyone could put a price on.
Julia’s memoir also revealed that Nathan and Dina had been part of a larger network of formerly enslaved people who worked to rescue children still held in various forms of bondage throughout the South.
They coordinated with Freriedman’s bureau agents, with black churches, with sympathetic white allies.
They shared information about children in danger, pulled resources to buy freedom or mount legal challenges, and provided safe houses for children who managed to escape.
Nathan had been one of many heroes of this movement, but his personal connection to the work, his own experience of being sold as a child, his reunion with his mother had given him a particular determination and effectiveness.
Marcus found records showing that Nathan had traveled extensively throughout Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, always searching for children who needed help.
He had worked as a carpenter to fund his rescue efforts, taking on jobs and saving every possible penny.
Dina had worked too as a seamstress and cook, contributing her earnings to their shared mission.
By 1880, census records showed that Nathan owned a small house in Nachez.
Living with him were Dina, now about 55 years old, and three children listed as adopted.
Children Nathan had freed, but who had nowhere else to go, children who had become his family.
One of those children was a boy named Thomas, then age 14.
Marcus found Thomas’ death certificate from 1941.
He had lived to age 75.
Thomas had become a school teacher, had married and had children of his own, and had spent his career educating black children in Mississippi during the Jim Crow era.
On his death certificate, under father’s name, someone had written, “Nathan Freriedman, no surname known, adopted father, hero.
” Uh, Caroline and Marcus knew they had uncovered something extraordinary.
Not just a disturbing historical photograph, but a complete narrative of trauma, resilience, reunion, and transformation.
The image of 8-year-old Nathan holding his own bill of sale was devastating, but the story of who Nathan became and what he and Dina did with their freedom was inspiring and necessary.
They decided to present their findings publicly, starting with an article in the Journal of American History and followed by a press conference at the National Museum of American History.
Caroline arranged for the museum’s conservation team to create a high quality faximile of the Dgeray for display while keeping the original in secure storage.
The academic article was published in September 2024 titled the weight of freedom Nathan Dina and the transformation of trauma in post-emancipation America.
It detailed their research methodology, presented all the documentation they had found and argued that stories like Nathan’s were essential to understanding both the brutality of slavery and the extraordinary resilience of those who survived it.
The response from the academic community was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.
Historians praised the meticulous research.
Genealogologists reached out, offering to help trace the descendants of the children Nathan had freed.
Teachers requested permission to use the article and photographs in their classrooms.
But Caroline and Marcus knew that academic publication wasn’t enough.
This story needed to reach a broader audience.
They scheduled a press conference for October 15th, 2024 at the National Museum of American History.
On the morning of the press conference, Caroline stood in the museum’s auditorium, looking out at more than a hundred journalists, historians, educators, and members of the public who had come to hear about the discovery.
On a large screen behind her was the dgeray type, the smiling Asheford family, and Nathan in the background holding that silver tray with its burden of legal documents.
Caroline began by describing how she had found the photograph and what her initial analysis had revealed.
She walked the audience through the process of identifying Nathan and tracing his life.
She showed documents, the bills of sale, the plantation ledgers, Nathan’s journal entries, Julia’s memoir, Diana’s letter.
Then Marcus took over describing Nathan’s work buying freedom for enslaved children.
He showed the list of names, the freedom papers, the records of reunited families.
He read excerpts from Julia’s memoir, letting Nathan’s own words as preserved through Julia’s memory speak to the audience.
Nathan said that being forced to hold his own bill of sale marked him forever, Marcus explained.
But he transformed that mark.
He took the weight of his own commodification and turned it into the weight of liberation.
Every child he freed was an act of reclamation, an act of healing, an act of love.
Caroline then showed photographs of Nathan from later in his life.
Images from the 1880s and 1890s, showing him as a middle-aged and elderly man.
In each photograph, Nathan looked directly at the camera, his gaze steady and dignified.
The contrast with the 8-year-old child averting his eyes in the 1857 Dgera type was striking.
“This is the same person,” Caroline said, pointing between the images.
But look at the difference.
The child who couldn’t look at the camera, who was forced to present his own dehumanization, became a man who met the camera’s gaze without shame or fear.
That transformation is what this story is about.
The press conference made national news.
The image of Nathan holding his bill of sale appeared in newspapers, on news websites, on social media.
People were outraged by the cruelty of the original photograph, but inspired by Nathan’s story of resilience and purpose.
Several responses stood out to Caroline.
A teacher in Atlanta wrote to say she had shown the story to her high school history class.
And her students, many of them descendants of enslaved people, had been moved to tears, but also empowered by Nathan’s example.
They understood that their ancestors weren’t just victims.
The teacher wrote, “They were survivors who fought back in whatever ways they could.
” A genealogologist contacted Marcus to say that she believed she might be a descendant of one of the children Nathan had freed, a girl named Emma, who had been documented in Nathan’s records from 1873.
The genealogologist had been searching for information about Emma for years and was thrilled to finally find this piece of her family history.
Most movingly, Caroline received an email from a woman named Dorothy Hayes, who identified herself as Nathan’s great great great granddaughter.
Dorothy lived in Chicago and had been researching her family history for decades, but she had never found much information about her ancestors before the 1880s.
“I grew up hearing family stories about Grandpa Nathan, who saved children,” Dorothy wrote.
We knew he had been enslaved and we knew he had done important work after freedom, but we didn’t know the details.
Seeing that photograph of him as a child holding those papers, it broke my heart.
But then seeing what he became, what he accomplished filled me with so much pride.
Thank you for finding the story and telling it properly.
Caroline arranged to meet Dorothy the following month when Dorothy traveled to Washington to see the photograph in person and to meet with Caroline and Marcus.
Dorothy Hayes arrived at the National Museum of American History on a cold November morning, accompanied by three other family members.
her adult daughter Jasmine, her cousin Marcus, no relation to the historian, and her elderly aunt Gloria, who was 92 and the family’s keeper of oral history.
Caroline and Marcus met them in a private viewing room where the original dgeraype had been carefully displayed along with other documents from Nathan’s life, his journal, Freedom Papers he had signed, the letter from Dina, and photographs from his later years.
Aunt Gloria approached the dgeraype slowly using her walker, her eyes fixed on the image of 8-year-old Nathan.
When she reached the display case, she stood for a long moment in silence, then reached out.
not quite touching the glass as though trying to connect across the years with her ancestor.
That’s him, she said softly.
That’s Nathan.
I see him in my grandson’s face.
I see him in my great-granddaughter’s eyes.
She turned to Caroline and Marcus.
Thank you for finding him.
Thank you for telling his truth.
And Dorothy stood beside her aunt, tears streaming down her face.
I’ve looked at photographs of Nathan from when he was older, she said.
I have copies of some of them at home, but I’ve never seen this one.
Never knew it existed.
To see him as a child, to see what was done to him.
She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Caroline gave them space and time, letting them process their emotions and examine the documents at their own pace.
Eventually, Dorothy asked if they could hear more about Nathan’s life and work.
For the next 2 hours, Caroline and Marcus shared everything they had learned.
They showed Dorothy’s family the list of 42 children Nathan had freed, explained the network of rescuers he had worked with, read excerpts from Julia’s memoir, they described Nathan’s reunion with Dina and the years they had spent together.
Aunt Gloria listened intently, occasionally nodding or adding a detail from family oral history that confirmed or complimented what the researchers had found.
We always knew Nathan had done important work, she said.
My grandmother told me that Nathan said every child mattered, that every child deserved to be free and loved.
We passed that value down through our family.
We made sure our children knew they came from strength from people who survived terrible things and then turned their survival into service.
Jasmine, Dorothy’s daughter, was particularly interested in the children Nathan had saved.
Do you know what happened to them? She asked Marcus.
Did they have families? Are there descendants who might not know about Nathan’s role in their family history? That’s actually something we’re working on, Marcus replied.
We’ve identified most of the children and we’re trying to trace their descendants.
Some of them, like Julia, who wrote the memoir, we can trace easily.
Others are more difficult because records are incomplete or because families move frequently after emancipation.
But we’re building a database and we’re hoping to connect with as many descendant families as possible.
Dorothy’s cousin Marcus spoke up.
Our family should be part of that effort.
We should help find these families and tell them about Nathan.
It’s what he would have wanted for people to know their history, to understand where they came from.
Before the family left, Caroline gave them highquality reproductions of all the documents related to Nathan, copies they could share with other family members, use in family history projects, pass down to future generations.
She also gave them contact information for genealogologists who specialized in African-American family history and could help them trace other branches of their family tree.
There’s one more thing Caroline said.
The museum is planning an exhibition about slavery, family separation, and resilience.
We’d like to feature Nathan’s story prominently.
Would you be comfortable with that? We want to make sure we represent him and your family respectfully.
Dorothy nodded immediately.
Yes, absolutely.
Nathan’s story should be told.
The photograph is hard to look at, but people need to see it.
They need to understand what slavery really meant.
Not just in abstract terms, but in concrete human terms.
An 8-year-old boy forced to hold the documents of his own sale.
That’s what slavery was.
But they also need to see what Nathan became, what he chose to do with his freedom.
Both parts of the story matter.
The exhibition was scheduled to open in March 2025, time to coincide with the anniversary of Dina’s arrival in Mississippi to reunite with Nathan.
Dorothy and her family agreed to participate in the opening ceremony to speak about Nathan’s legacy and what his story meant to them.
As the family prepared to leave, Aunt Gloria turned back to the Dgeraype one more time.
She stood there for a long moment, then spoke quietly, as though addressing Nathan himself.
You did good, baby.
You turned your pain into purpose.
You saved those children.
You found your mama.
You built a good life.
We remember you.
We honor you.
We carry you forward.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
The exhibition titled Held: Slavery, Family Separation, and the Power of Resilience, opened at the National Museum of American History on March 15th, 2025, 158 years to the day after Nathan had been reunited with Dina.
The opening ceremony drew more than 500 people, including descendants of Nathan and of some of the children he had freed.
Historians, educators, and members of the public moved by his story.
The exhibition was designed to tell multiple stories, but Nathan’s was the centerpiece.
Visitors entered through a darkened hallway where the Dgera type was displayed on a large screen.
The image appeared gradually, allowing viewers to first see the smiling Ashford family before noticing Nathan in the background.
Then, as visitors moved closer, motion sensors triggered a zoom effect, bringing Nathan’s face and the documents he was holding into sharp focus.
Text panels explained what the photograph depicted and provided context about child slaves, family separation, and the practice of commemorating sales with formal photographs.
The next section of the exhibition documented Nathan’s life in slavery, his birth, his mother, Dina, his work on the Asheford plantation, and the sale that separated him from everything he knew.
Documents and images from the period helped visitors understand the systematic dehumanization of enslaved people, particularly children.
Then came the Civil War and Emancipation, shown through newspapers, photographs, and first-person accounts from formerly enslaved people.
This section included Dina’s letter searching for Nathan, Nathan’s journal entry about receiving that letter, and documentation of their reunion.
The heart of the exhibition was a large room dedicated to Nathan’s work rescuing children.
The walls were covered with the names of all 42 children Nathan had freed, along with brief biographies of each child when information was available.
In the center of the room stood a sculpture, a bronze casting of two hands holding a piece of paper.
One side of the paper was inscribed with bill of sale, the other with freedom paper.
The sculpture represented Nathan’s transformation, the way he had taken the weight of his own bondage and turned it into the weight of liberation.
Interactive displays allowed visitors to explore Nathan’s network of rescuers, to read excerpts from Julia’s memoir, and to see photographs of Nathan from later in his life.
Video interviews with Dorothy Hayes and other descendants provided contemporary perspectives on Nathan’s legacy.
The final section of the exhibition looked at the lasting impact of slavery on African-American families, the millions of people still searching for ancestors, the genealological work being done to reconnect family lines, and the ongoing process of historical recovery and healing.
It emphasized that Nathan’s story, while extraordinary, was one of thousands of similar stories waiting to be uncovered and told.
The opening ceremony began with a welcome from the museum director, who spoke about the importance of confronting difficult history and honoring the resilience of those who survived it.
Then Caroline and Marcus gave brief remarks about the research process and what they had learned.
Dorothy Hayes spoke next, standing at a podium with a dgeray type visible on a screen behind her.
When Dr.
Webster first contacted me about finding this photograph, I had mixed feelings, she began, part of me didn’t want to see my ancestor in such a humiliating position.
Part of me wanted to protect him, even though he’s been gone for more than a century.
But then I realized that Nathan wouldn’t want to be protected from truth.
He spent his life confronting truth, documenting truth, using truth to free children who were being hidden away and erased.
She paused, looking at the image of 8-year-old Nathan.
This photograph shows what was done to him.
But this exhibition shows what he did with his life despite that.
He was forced to hold the papers of his own sale, but he chose to hold dozens of freedom papers.
He was separated from his mother, but he was reunited with her, and they spent years together.
He was treated as property, but he spent his freedom buying other people’s freedom.
That transformation from victim to agent, from powerless child to powerful liberator.
That’s what I want people to remember about Nathan.
The ceremony concluded with a musical performance, a choir singing spirituals that enslaved people had sung, including some that Dina had taught Nathan according to his journal entries.
The music filled the museum, connecting past and present, honoring those who had suffered and those who had survived.
After the ceremony, visitors moved through the exhibition, many stopping for long periods in front of particular displays.
Caroline watched them, noting their reactions, the tears, the anger, the thoughtfulness, the inspiration.
Several visitors approached her to share their own family stories, to ask about genealological resources, to express gratitude for the exhibition.
A young black man, perhaps in his 20s, stood for nearly 30 minutes in front of the wall, listing the names of the children Nathan had freed.
Caroline noticed him taking photographs of the names, writing some down in a notebook.
Eventually, she approached him.
“Are you finding something meaningful here?” she asked gently.
He nodded.
My great great great-grandfather was named Isaac.
Family story says he was freed by a man who helped children after the war, but we never knew who or where.
When I saw the name Isaac on this wall with the date 1867 and the note that he was from Virginia and was 6 years old, I think that might be him.
I think Nathan might have saved my ancestor.
Caroline felt chills.
Would you like to see the records? We have more detailed documentation in our archives.
Yes, the young man said, I want to know everything.
I want to know who my people were, where we came from, who helped us survive.
This, Caroline thought, was why the work mattered.
Not just to document history, but to connect people to their past, to give them knowledge of where they came from and who had paved the way for their existence.
Nathan’s story was being heard, his work honored, his name remembered.
The photograph that had been meant to document his dehumanization had instead become the starting point for recovering his full humanity and celebrating the extraordinary life he had built.
