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A Rich Legacy

The progeny of Paul and Amelia Edmonson and their 14 children continue to leave their mark. Paul Johnson, a former senior executive federal worker under President Jimmy Carter, and his wife have been deeply involved in civic and civil rights issues all their lives. They recently retired to the small town of Blackstone in south central Virginia, where they became the first African Americans to join the town's Methodist church.

Diane Young, whose ancestor, Calvin Brent, was one of Washington's first African-American architects, is a media specialist in the public schools of Montgomery County, Md., the county where Paul Edmonson purchased his first land in 1835. She has developed a character initiative program for the students in her middle school.

In the photograph at left, the descendants are participating in a program organized by the Potomac Heritage Partnership, in which a group of students from the Washington area took a five-day trip down the river to retrace the journey of the Pearl. The students stopped along the way to share the story of the Pearl with other students. They were welcomed at the end by Edmonson family members, who christened one of the newly built boats destined to be used for educational purposes.

Other descendants, both in the Washington, D.C., area and spread out across the country, carry on the Edmonson family tradition. They are college administrators, physicians, teachers, public servants, and active community leaders, and a number of them have generously contributed materials to tell their family's story.

Imogene Gilbert, a direct descendant of Emily Edmonson, passed on a document that helped trace Emily's life after her marriage. Dyanna Tardd, a former employee of the D.C. public schools, provided a notebook written by an ancestor shortly after he served in the Civil War. That notebook contained the only record of the death of the family patriarch, Paul Edmonson. It also details the lineup for the baseball team formed by the family's Civil War veterans. Dr. Marion Holmes offered a family letter describing a reunion of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emily Edmonson.

The Edmonson family descendants today continue to contribute to the central story of American history — slavery.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mary Kay Ricks