Charles Holman grew up on bedtime stories of ancestors who
escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. But those stories were riddled
with gaps. Decades later, DNA testing yielded a match with a
descendant of his ancestor’s sister, a widow whose husband had served as a
Black Civil War soldier. Her widow’s pension records revealed an even greater
breakthrough—the names of the Kentuckians who had enslaved Charles’s
ancestors. Determined to uncover more, Charles dug through records at the
Filson Historical Society where an even greater breakthrough lay hidden. What
he discovered there was beyond anything his family had ever imagined, a
bombshell that would forever change their understanding of their past and
present.
Charles Holman is an East Coast civil rights attorney and a
genealogist with over 50 years of experience. Recognized by Chief Genetic
Genealogist CeCe Moore of “Finding Your Roots” as “a pioneer among Black
Americans researching their family ties to before the Civil War,” Charles is a
member of the National Genealogical Society, the Sons and Daughters of the
Middle Passage, and the Sons of the American Revolution. He is also a fellow of
the Michigan State Bar Foundation and a life member of the NAACP, where he
served on the National Board of Directors.