How an Air Force veteran discovered his new house was the seat of a plantation where his ancestors were enslaved
An Air Force veteran wanted a new house for large family gatherings; he ended up getting an incredible link to his family's past.
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Just off the side of the road sat a grand white house called Sharswood. Silently holding secrets from the past, waiting for a new owner to uncover them. Sounds like the opening line of a southern gothic novel, but this story is about a real family, and a real house, this country's history, and a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for.
The man is Fred Miller, a 56-year-old Air Force veteran who was looking to buy property in his Virginia hometown for his large extended family's frequent get-togethers. He had never heard the name Sharswood, and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery, with surprises and revelations that seem both impossible and inevitable all at once.
These are the gentle hills of Pittsylvania County, Virginia -- quiet, rural farm country near the North Carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state.
