On a two-acre plot of land in Hampton, there is a vast place to do some soul searching. It is home to the Tucker Cemetery and a place of peace.

As you walk through the cemetery, there are over 100 plus markers and orange flags that denote the final resting place for many Tucker ancestors.

The Tucker family believes they can trace their roots to America back 400 years.

“They always talk about 1619, but there’s never been a family associated with it. Well, here we are,” Verrandall Tucker said.

We met some of the Tuckers over dinner. When they get together, food and fellowship is always on the table. As they introduced themselves, with cheers and laughter, it was easy to see how their family has stayed together for centuries.

After a prayer and toast to the matriarch of the family, the Tuckers talked to us about what it’s like to carry the legacy of some of the first Africans brought to these shores.

“We were determined that we wanted to keep our family intact. We just made it happen with the grace of God,” William Floyd Tucker said.

The family founded “The William Tucker 1624 Society” to educate the world about their roots. They are working to learn more about Antony, Isabella and William, people they believe are the first known branches of their tree.

As they do so, they are wrestling with some of the unknowns about the status of the loved ones who took their first steps on foreign land.

“We do know that they were servants for Capt. William Tucker, and it seems as if they had a very close relationship,” Carolita Jones Cope said. “He allowed them to marry. The child, William Tucker, was baptized in the church, so we think that they were very well received in the community.”

Carolita said they are still trying to uncover more about the status of their ancestors.

“We know there’s a lot of controversy around whether or not there was some form of indenture. We know they were bound. We know they were not free. We know that. That eventually everyone was enslaved, but maybe not,” she said. “Maybe they just had their time as servants, but we aren’t sure.”

Carolita said their cousin Thelma used to be the historian of the family. Thelma would sit with their elders and listen to stories. She would tell the rest of her family about their long lineage. The Tuckers believe that oral history connects them to some of the early Africans who were brought against their will to Virginia: Isabella, Antony and eventually their son, William.

Generations of Tuckers, including Thelma, along with other African Americans are buried at the Tucker Cemetery. It was once known as the Old Colored Burial Ground. Some suspect, but no one knows for sure, whether Antony, Isabella and William are joined with the ancestors on this land.

It’s nestled in the community of Aberdeen Gardens in Hampton, Virginia. You don’t see it from the road, but if you can walk up to it, surrounded by suburban homes.

“We’d always see out at a distance, indentations in the ground, that were about the size of a grave,” Walter Jones, a Tucker family member, said. “We went forward and had a ground penetrating x-ray done throughout the 2.2 acre cemetery and we discovered over 100 unmarked graves.”

Once a month, volunteers join with the Tucker family to help maintain this place of peace. They clear out brush and trash and tend to the land that holds their ancestors. It is a labor of love.

During this time of remembrance and reflection, the family gives thanks for the sacrifice.

“It gives us strength, and gives us a sense to persevere and so they can be proud of us and for us to pass it down to our children,” Verrandall Tucker said.

“They’ve shown us through the hardships that they’ve been through how to make it today,” another relative Julia Bradshaw said.

The Tucker ancestors endured unfathomable hardships, but had a great tenacity. They became a family of entrepreneurs, owning land and businesses. Many of them carry on that legacy today.

What is clear to this “first family” and to historians is that now is the time to tell a more complete story. And, that they say, is key to helping a nation begin to heal and move forward.

“This is a moment to really understand why 1619 is really part of a pattern, set the stage for what we are finding ourselves reasoning with today,” Dr. Colita Fairfax said, echoing the Tuckers' sentiments from her office.

“It wouldn’t have been a Jamestown, or a lot of these other places if it had not been for the Africans coming over, and our ancestors coming over,” Walter Jones explained.

“We did survive. And we are together as a family and we were able to offer a contribution to America – the colonies – because we helped develop it, build it,” Vincent Tucker said.

Love and a strong faith in God carried the Tucker Family, despite the horrors of enslavement.

The Tuckers who are here today want to know so much more about their ancestors: Where did they settle? What did the fathers pass down to their sons about how to survive and provide for their families? And, why was Thomas Tucker – whose name was on the deed to what would become the Tucker Cemetery – not buried there?

Finding those answers is still a work in progress. Antony and Isabella were on board the

but there was another ship – the

– that pulled into Virginia waters days later where, another woman, whose name you probably haven’t heard, disembarked into a foreign land.

THE ULTIMATE SURVIVOR

You could call “Angela” the ultimate survivor.

She lived through a war and a horrific transatlantic passage before reaching Virginia. But that’s not all. Haven’t heard her story?

Well, it’s been there the whole time on Jamestown Island – history in plain sight. Now, archaeologists are trying to raise her humanity. They are unearthing a painful narrative to give "Angela" a voice -- one they hope will be heard, shared and help bring healing to a nation still wounded from the sins of the past.

“Our work is more than just digging. It’s not just the volume of soil that we move,” Lee McBee, the supervisor of the First Africans Site, explained. “It’s the story we tell as we do that.”

: “You think you know Angela?”

: “Emotionally, yes.”

Angela’s name was changed at some point when she landed in Virginia. On the muster that listed her as the property of Capt. William Pierce, her name was conveyed as “Angelo.”

She lived in what was once a bustling area on Jamestown Island.

“She lived somewhere between, actually, this large tree and that reconstructed ditch over to the edge of Ambler House, near the wall of those remains,” McBee explained, gesturing. “What we have in front of us is a collision of multiple centuries, at least a 250-year span on just what you see in front of you.”

We stood on the grounds of what used to be the home of Capt. Pierce – a wealthy and well-connected planter and merchant during the 1600s. McBee showed us more of the Angela site and revealed that there were probably 12 to 15 other structures underground. As one house would go down back then, another would be built on top of it.

Angela lived and worked in the Pierce household. For the past two and a half years, archaeologists have been trying to find out more about her daily life. What did she eat? Which was her structure? What did she deposit into this space with her presence? There are some clues that would have come from across the Atlantic.

“This is a habitation area of some sort, potentially could be a cellar pit. But to find these together when the previous two and a half years we found one cowrie shell, total – to find two back-to-back days was just incredible,” McBee said. “They have basically lain here since they fell.”

Dr. Jim Horn is the CEO of Jamestown Rediscovery. Much of Jamestown Island is still untouched and pristine. As you walk along the paths worn into the ground, you can see exactly what Angela would have seen in the moments she disembarked from the

.

“You’ve got to imagine that she didn’t know what was going to happen to her. There’d been so many upheavals in her life over the previous year or so,” Horn, a colonial educator, said. “She must have wondered whether she could get through.”

Horn offered some insight into the world 400 years ago ahead of the events that would change and shape a nation.

“The Portuguese are trying to carve out a big colony of their own that would be called Portuguese Angola,” he explained. “We think that Angela was one of the thousands who were either killed or captured during this period.”

From there – Angela was taken captive and placed in a barracoon – holding pen – for a time before marching some 100 miles to the slave ship that would carry her out to sea. That slaver was built for 200, but carried 350 across the Atlantic. Angela and the others were kept below decks most of the time, possibly in chains.

The crossing is absolutely horrendous because many of the Africans perished during the voyage.

”While the Portuguese were a big superpower in the trade of bodies, the British decided they want in on the action. They commandeered the ship with Angela after a fierce battle at sea. Angela is one of the few Africans who ended up on the

which sailed toward Jamestown.

“She was here alone. She was by herself. She didn’t have her family,” Fairfax said. “She was a young woman, having to work for someone else to make her life in the hands, really, of someone else.”

Horn said Angela likely worked in the gardens and more broadly around the house floor probably alongside her mistress, Joan Pierce, and another female indentured servant named Esther.

“She was reared to be able to complete certain tasks: To cook to care for others, to have relationships with people, to show respect to elders, to have a sense of worship,” Fairfax said. “And to have a sense of a relationship with the divine.”

Angela had been a free person in Africa.

In Virginia, she had to come to terms with her new existence.

Eventually, her new home would create an institution where hereditary and lifelong slavery was the sentence for Angela and the millions of Africans to come.

“These pieces that we find are parts of people’s lives, just like we are. All these people had homes and mothers and fathers and hopes and dreams,” McBee said, glancing at the Angela dig site.

"People say, ‘If you’re not going to acknowledge what happened to us, if you’re not going to share our story of tragedy and harm and displacement with the rest of the world in a real way, we don’t feel welcome here. Because you're whitewashing everything that happened.'"

The site is considered urban archaeology, which means as visitors come by, the scientists often stop to share what they’ve learned here. But getting people who look like Angela, or those from indigenous communities to take this in on Jamestown Island have not always felt welcome.

“We have to be able to talk about the pain,” said Kym Hall, the Colonial National Historic Park superintendent. “And, I think, as an agency we’ve shied away from that.”

She said they are trying to make sure everyone’s story gets told.

“People say, ‘If you’re not going to acknowledge what happened to us, if you’re not going to share our story of tragedy and harm and displacement with the rest of the world in a real way, we don’t feel welcome here. Because you're whitewashing everything that happened,'" she explained.

Fairfax added Native Americans were enslaved first in what would become the story of people who were not free in the United States.

“We tend to gloss over that reality, they were here,” Fairfax said. “Their lands were encroached upon. And many of them were seized and taken and used as enslaved people.”

Horn added that part of the reason why this narrative hasn't been as fully embraced and understood is because of who has been given the power to share it.

“White people really dominated the narrative and this is partially true with Indian peoples as well. What takes place across those four centuries is consistent,” Horn said. “The bottom line is that Indian people were systematically discriminated against and so were Africans and African Americans, and that has significant consequences into the modern period.”

This renewed sharing of legacy is something 400 years in the making and changing the narrative around the diversity of who truly built this nation.

But this work, funded by the National Park Service and Jamestown Rediscovery, is winding down it's collective efforts to uncover more about Angela’s life.

“This could be the critical discovery if this ground holds Angela’s remains. Now, we don’t know by what we see,” McBee, the Angela site supervisor, said. “I’d have to say there is a possibility.”

For McBee, tending to the land where Angela walked and working to give her life new meaning, is a calling. He believes Angela and the other ancestors of Africa, whose names we haven’t heard, deserve to have a place of honor among the many who shaped a new world.

“I just want to let her know that she’s remembered,” McBee said. “So she can speak, so she can have a voice again.”

Angela was much more than just a name in a ledger who moved through history.

The archaeologists who are connecting with her spirit daily hope they have more time to bring her story and those of other enslaved Africans to the light. If this site is a stage, they are still in the wings hoping for the day when the curtain rises to showcase all the architects of the nation we call the United States.

So where do we go from here 400 years later? And how do we turn the page and work toward a more perfect union?

Fairfax believes part of the work involves unpacking the stories of people who birthed this nation with their labor, their bodies and their lives: Africans – brought here against their will – and most certainly the native people who were here before slavery and freedom co-existed.

The other part, includes those of us here now and what we do to advance the legacy of the unknown builders and shapers, and the uncomfortable truths around a system of inequity with vestiges that linger today – something to ponder.

Written by Lesli Foster