Katie Brown Bennett was whirling through reel after reel of microfilm when she found her great-great-grandfather Squire Cheshier.

It was not a birth certificate that genealogists love to get their hands on.

It was an 1843 bill of sale.

Squire had been sold for $525 to Tennyson Cheshier.

“I will remember that moment forever. I knew about slavery conceptually, had studied it in school. But here he was 27, probably sold away from family. When I saw that, all I could do was cry.”

Since then, Bennett has found a wealth of information, including her father’s line of Joneses on a 1772 slave list.