Agnes Jackson lives in Hagerstown, Maryland, close to her 4 daughters and about 20 miles from the Catoctin Furnace, a historic web site.
This long-ago shuttered iron smelter is likely one of the earliest industrial websites in the USA. The outdated iron furnace is on the sting of the Catoctin Mountain Nationwide Park, a verdant open area blanketed in forest and lined with mountaineering trails alongside the sting of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
An Iron Furnace
The fantastic thing about the place belies the brutal situations that when made up the day-to-day lives of the free and enslaved African People who lived and labored there.
![A photo of Agnes Jackson.](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Photo-of-Agnes-1024x576.jpg)
Till just lately, Agnes, who’s 86, knew little of that historical past or her deep connection to those that lived and labored there.
Regardless of dwelling so shut, Agnes and her daughters visited Catoctin for the primary time solely a couple of 12 months in the past, quickly after she discovered about her household’s hyperlink to the positioning.
“We by no means knew,” Agnes stated throughout a go to to the positioning final 12 months.
With the assistance of the native archaeologist and president of the Catoctin Furnace Historic Society, Elizabeth Comer, and groundbreaking research from scientists at Harvard, the Smithsonian, and 23andMe, Agnes and her household are seeing for the primary time all of the threads that join them to this place and the individuals who toiled right here.
Elizabeth, who maybe has spent extra time than anybody making an attempt to doc the legacy of the individuals who labored on the furnace, stated including the DNA element to this analysis connects this early American historical past to the dwelling.
“What DNA does for the primary time is join a dwelling, Twenty first-century household not simply to Catoctin however to the cemetery,” she just lately informed Science journal.
![Photo of Agnes and her daughters talking to Éadaoin Harney, and Elizabeth Comer.](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Photo-of-Elizabeth-Eadaoin-talking-to-Agnes-and-her-daughters-1024x576.jpg)
Groundbreaking Genetic Examine
Earlier this month, Elizabeth and 23andMe scientist Éadaoin Harney visited with Agnes and three of her daughters, Sharon Inexperienced, Vicki Winston, and Barbara Hart, at a museum commemorating the Catoctin Furnace and the enslaved and free individuals who labored there.
Éadaoin was the lead writer of a research revealed within the journal Science final 12 months. The opposite researchers within the research included senior authors David Reich at Harvard and Doug Owsley on the Smithsonian. The researchers sequenced and studied genetic information from the stays of 27 nameless enslaved and freed African People buried on the web site.
The stays have been uncovered many years in the past throughout a freeway development challenge and buried in an unmarked burial floor. Researchers famous that the genetically associated people have been clustered into 5 household teams: moms, youngsters, and siblings.
The research leveraged 23andMe’s in depth analysis database to search out genetic connections between these nameless people and greater than 41,000 kin, though most of whom are very distantly associated. The paper broke new floor by offering a technical and ethical benchmark for future studies of comparable, largely forgotten burial websites. Agnes and her household have been the primary of the dwelling shut kin to learn that they share a beforehand unknown genetic connection to a historic particular person utilizing the first-of-its-kind strategy developed by 23andMe researchers for this research.
When the paper was revealed in August 2023, Carter Clinton, an African American geneticist at North Carolina State College, stated the analysis was “vital for each African American within the nation.”
![A photo of the Catoctin Furnace](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/The-Catoctin-Furnace-1024x576.jpg)
The Human Connection
For Agnes, it was additionally private. A type of household teams that the research recognized on the Catoctin web site included the stays of a younger lady between the ages of two and three years outdated. There have been few artifacts with the physique, just a few pins, nails, and screws discovered together with her stays. The nails and screws have been probably the one surviving remnants of the coffin she was buried in, and one of many pins was maybe used to carry again the little lady’s hair, a number of the researchers suspect. The opposite pins have been probably used to lock a burial shroud.
Evaluating the genetic sequence of this little lady with Agnes, Éadaoin and the workforce of scientists noticed a considerable amount of shared DNA, indicating they have been comparatively carefully associated. The almost definitely connection is with Agnes’s great-great-grandfather, Hanson Summers. It’s attainable that Hanson and the lady have been half-siblings or cousins.
![A photo of Agnes, left, with her daughters, Vicki Winston, Sharon Green, and Barbara Hart.](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Agnes-and-three-of-her-daughters-1024x577.jpg)
Usually, there may be household lore, tales handed down from era to era, however it’s uncommon for African People to hint again their household historical past, usually hitting the brick wall of slavery. Usually, historic information for these enslaved ancestors are spotty. Names might by no means have been recorded or are solely partially recorded.
For Agnes’s household, it was no completely different. She knew nothing of her household’s connection to the iron furnace. That modified a number of years in the past throughout this research when researchers from the Catoctin Furnace Historic Society, who had been making an attempt for years to search out dwelling descendants, had their first success. Elizabeth helped join Agnes’s household to the furnace utilizing paper information and historic sleuthing. The connection was by way of her great-great-grandfather, Hanson “Henson” Summers, who’d been enslaved on the iron furnace web site within the early nineteenth century.
A Household’s Historical past and American Historical past
The household, after all, knew that their ancestors had been enslaved. They knew he’d labored on the Antietam Furnace that operated in Hagerstown, however they didn’t know they have been linked to the Catoctin Furnace till Elizabeth related them.
![Photo of cannon balls produced at the Catoctin Furnace.](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Canon-balls-manufactured-at-the-furnace-1024x577.jpg)
Hanson had been enslaved at Catoctin till he was in his 30s, at which level he and different members of his household have been offered to the operators of the Antietam Furnace, in accordance with the information.
After the top of slavery, Hanson labored at an iron forge. Identified for his power and ability, he died in Hagerstown at 82 in 1899. Elizabeth’s work first discovered point out of Hanson in Maryland archives from 1834. His identify was included on a listing from Catoctin Furnace that included the names of enslaved African People. On it was a 17-year-old boy named “Henson.”
The Catoctin Furnace has a major place in American historical past.
![A historic marker of the Catoctin Furnace](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Historic-Marker-for-the-Furnace-300x168.jpg)
The primary proprietor of the furnace was Thomas Johnson Jr. — a rich enslaver, the primary non-colonial governor of Maryland, and a signer of the Articles of Association, a precursor doc to the Declaration of Independence. Iron manufacturing started in earnest in 1776. It contributed to the arming of the fledgling Continental Military — supplying 100 tons of shells for the Siege of Yorktown. Whereas historians documented the economic significance of the positioning, the historical past of enslaved staff there was not.
We Constructed This
Agnes and her household didn’t know their household’s contribution to that historical past. Agnes stated that studying about her ancestors’ contributions was necessary.
“Simply to know that we really have been in historical past and that we made a distinction,” she stated. “We constructed this place.”
![A photo of one of Agnes's daughters's hands touching the burial ground at Catoctin Furnace.](https://blog-api.23andme.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Touching-the-burial-ground-1024x576.jpg)
That historical past might need remained misplaced had it not been a forgotten burial floor, which had been unearthed within the Seventies throughout a freeway development challenge. Archaeologists discovered the stays of greater than 30 people buried there. No information existed of who these people have been. Through the years, the Catoctin Furnace Historic Society has labored to protect the historical past of the positioning and the individuals who labored there. Solely with the arrival of historical DNA expertise did an effort to be taught extra in regards to the DNA of people start.
This research supplied the first genetic link between enslaved or freed African People working on the furnace and their dwelling kin, together with Agnes.
“It’s so thrilling to see my tree… to be taught extra about our ancestors,” Agnes stated. It’s at all times good to know the place we got here from.”