60 Minutes - 02/12/2023: 60 Minutes Presents Revisiting the Past

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Anderson Cooper investigates the brutal past of Canada’s “residential school system.” Leslie Stahl talks with the Miller family, who purchased a large house for family celebrations. Little did they know that property had a secret. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Tonight on 60 Minutes Presents, Revisiting the Past. I grew up a very, very mean woman because of all what happened to me. You learned that here, you think? Yeah.

She is not the only one. More than 150,000 children were sent to residential schools, which Canada's first prime minister supported to, in his words, sever children from the tribe and civilize them. My name was number 65 for all those years. Just a number? Just a number, yeah.

65, pick that up, stupid, or 65, why'd you do that, idiot? Hey, we're going to gather in this room here mainly. The Millers are a large family that enjoy getting together. They purchased this historic house in southern Virginia, near where they grew up, to have a place for family celebrations. This is an original room from the 1800s. But no one could have imagined how the history of the home and its grounds would change everything they thought they knew about their family's history. It's like a full circle, like it was meant to happen. To me, it was like it was meant to happen.

This is God. This is where meant to happen to me. Like it was meant to happen. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. Good evening. I'm Leslie Stahl. Welcome to 60 Minutes Presents. Tonight, revisiting the past. We'll look at stories from history that carry lessons for the present. We begin with our story of Canada's unmarked graves. In May 2021, when archaeologists detected what they believed to be 200 unmarked graves at an old school in Canada, it brought new attention to one of the most shameful chapters of that nation's history. Starting in the 1880s and much of the 20th century, more than 150,000 children from hundreds

of Indigenous communities across Canada were forcibly taken from their parents by the government and sent to what were called residential schools. Funded by the state and run by churches, they were designed to assimilate and Christianize indigenous children by ripping them from their parents, their culture, and their community. The children were often referred to as savages and forbidden from speaking their languages or practicing their traditions. As Anderson Cooper first reported last year, many were physically and sexually abused, and thousands of children never made it home. The last of Canada's 139 residential schools for Indigenous children closed in 1998.

Most have been torn down. But the Muskegon Residential School in Saskatchewan still stands. Its windows boarded up, its rooms gutted. A reminder to a nation that would rather forget a three-story tombstone for generations of children who died here. Sometimes I wish it would be gone for all what happened here. You wish this had been torn down? Yeah, I could hear everything in here, what was done. It lingers. Leona Wolfe, who comes from the Muscalgon Reserve, was five years old when she says she was taken from her home in 1960. School officials and police would often show

up unannounced in indigenous communities and round up children, some as young as three. Parents could be jailed if they refused to hand their children over. When kids arrived at their schools, their traditional long hair was shaved off. If they tried to speak their language, they were often punished. They put me in a dark room like that. They'd shut the door and then they'd take off the light. All I had to look through was this much light, like I was in jail. She says the abuse many kids in Muskaugen suffered from the Catholic priests and nuns wasn't just physical. Father Joël was fondling the girls here.

A priest, Father Joël, was fondling girls? Yeah, this used to be a sickbay. They used to have a bed here. And he would take girls into the bed? Yeah, my cousin. He took your cousin in here? How old was she? She was only eight. I grew up a very, very mean woman because of all what happened to me.

You learned that here, you think? Yeah. She is not the only one. More than 150,000 children were sent to residential schools, which Canada's first prime minister supported to, in his words, sever children from the tribe and civilize them. For much of the 20th century, the Canadian government supported that mission. This report aired in 1955.

They learned not only games and traditions, such as the celebration of St. Valentine's Day, but the mastery of words... The idea for the schools came in part from the United States. In 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in Pennsylvania, where this photo was taken of Native American children when they first arrived. This is them four months later. The school's motto was, kill the Indian, save the man. Consequently, ours was kill the Indian in the child. Kill the Indian in the child. That was the guiding principle here in Canada. Chief Wilton Littlechild, whose Cree was six years old

when he was taken to this residential school in Alberta. Then, he says, he was given a new name. My name was number 65 for all those years. Just a number? Just a number, yeah. 65, pick that up, stupid, or 65, why'd you do that, idiot? What does that feel like, at six years old, to be called a number? Well, I think that's where the trauma begins, not just the physical abuse, psychological abuse, spiritual abuse, and worst of all, sexual abuse. You were sexually abused?

Yes. I think that's where my anger began as a young boy. Chief Littlechild says he was able to take some of that anger out on the school's hockey rink. He won a scholarship to university and graduated, eventually going on to a distinguished career in law. But his story is the exception. They didn't kill my spirit, so I'm still Cree. I'm still who I am.

I'm not 65. My name is Maikant Motil. So they didn't kill my spirit. In 2008, after thousands of school survivors filed lawsuits, the Canadian government formally apologized for its policies. It also set up a $1.9 billion compensation fund and established a truth and reconciliation commission that Chief Littlechild helped lead. For six years, the commission heard testimony from survivors across the country. And she put me underwater, slapping me and hitting me, slapping me and hitting me and punching me and punching me and holding me underwater, pulling my hair.

And I thought, God, she's going to kill me. I'm going to die first day of school. We as little boys and little girls, we lost our innocence. In 2015, the commission concluded what happened was cultural genocide. It identified more than 3,000 children who died from disease due to overcrowding, malnutrition, and poor sanitation, or died after being abused or trying to run away. A government study in 1909 found the death rate in some schools was as high as 20 times the national average. Most schools had their own cemeteries, and sometimes when children died, their parents were never informed.

It's really traumatic for those families who don't know what happened to their child or relative in the schools. Why weren't kids who died at the schools, why weren't they sent home? To save money. Archaeologists detected what they said could be 200 unmarked graves at this former school in Kamloops, British Columbia, in May 2021. Weeks later, a further 751 unmarked graves were detected across from the former Marivelle Residential School on the Cowessess Reserve in Saskatchewan. There was once a Catholic cemetery here, but the headstones were bulldozed in the 1960s by a priest after a dispute with a former chief. And what were these lists for?

A small team of researchers has been trying to discover the names of those children buried here, but for decades the government and the church have been reluctant to share their records. Chief Cadmus DeLorme is trying to get answers. Do you know that they're all children? We can't verify how much are children, but based on the research we're doing, a lot of them were children that were forced to go to the Maryville Residential School and died in the Maryville Residential School. The discoveries of the graves open deep wounds.

More than a dozen churches have been vandalized or destroyed. And thousands have marched demanding the Pope apologize and the churches open archives to help identify any missing children. Indigenous communities across the country have begun conducting their own searches using ground penetrating radar. We've laid out a number of grids throughout this landscape. Archaeologists Keisha Supernant and Terry Clark say 35 unmarked graves have been discovered at the Muskegon school. There's something going on there that's not natural. When we were there in October 2021, they found what appeared to be another. According to survivor accounts, children sometimes had to dig their classmates' graves. The priests or the school

officials would force the kids to dig other children's graves. Yep. Can you imagine being like 10 or 11 and digging a grave for your classmate? What that must have been like. Keisha Supernant says the search for unmarked graves will continue for years. This is very emotional work. It's very devastating work. It's heartbreaking for everyone who's involved. You feel that too? I do. Our communities still feel the impacts of these institutions in our everyday lives. We're way overrepresented in child welfare and adoptions and foster care. We're way overrepresented in the prisons. You can draw a direct line with that to these places and the pain of that that draw a direct line with that to these places

and the pain of that that has been passed on from generation to generation. I started school here in 1958. Ed Bitternose, whose Cree understands that pain. He was eight years old when he was taken to the Muskegon school. His parents lived within sight of the school, and when he tried to run away, he says the priest forced him to kneel on a broom handle for three days. That's where my house was. I would sit here and wonder why I couldn't be home.

That must have been devastating. Yeah. It wasn't only adults he feared. Some students, themselves victims of abuse, preyed on other children. Were you abused here? Yeah, actually in this room here by one of the boys. In this very room? This very area here.

Later, he says he was also sexually molested by a nun. When he left school, he was rudderless and violent and turned to alcohol. When he got married, he says, he didn't know how to show affection. You didn't know what love was? No, no. I never felt it here. I didn't start saying I loved her until we were married about 40 years, and then I was very careful how I said it. You didn't say to your wife for 40 years that you loved her? Mm-hmm. Yeah. He says his life changed when he began rediscovering his Cree culture,

raising buffalo and sharing traditional knowledge with children brought healing and finally an understanding of the word love. his Cree culture. Raising buffalo and sharing traditional knowledge with children brought healing and finally an understanding of the word love. You can say that now? I can say that now. And it feels good. And I still joke with my wife about that. Don't say that too loud. So you can say it, you just don't want to say it too loud? Yes. Okay. You know what? It's better than nothing. Yes, that's what she says. As for Leona Wolfe, her life and the lives of her children and grandchildren have been plagued by violence and substance abuse. Intergenerational trauma, she says, that began the day her own mother was sent to school at Muscalgon.

Did you see the impact of this place on your mom? Yeah. How? By drinking a lot, being mean to me, and it impacted us. Me and my brother and my siblings. What was done to her, she passed on to you. To me. And what was done to you and others here?

Was passed on to you. To me. And what was done to you and others here. Was passed on to my children. This is why sometimes I go into my rage of anger and I cry. Because it was all done to us, all of us. But it's going to stop now. You know, it is. You believe that? I'm breaking the cycle with my great-grandchildren. Leona Wolfe has returned to her traditions as well. Walking the halls of Muskalkin, she began to sing Hail Mary, a prayer she was forced to learn here long ago. Now she sings it her own way.

That's not how you sang it here when you were in school, though, was it? Nope. You made peace with the Virgin Mary by singing that song. Peace with myself. Since our story first aired, Pope Francis traveled to Canada for what he called a penitential pilgrimage. He apologized and begged for forgiveness for the deplorable abuses Indigenous people suffered in residential schools. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history.

I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck, available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Just off the side of the road sat a grand white house called Sharswood, silently holding secrets from the past, waiting for a new owner to uncover them.

Sounds like the opening line of a Southern Gothic novel, but as we first reported in May of last year, this story is about a real family and a real house, this country's history, and a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for. The man is Fred Miller, a 57-year-old Air Force veteran who was looking to buy property in his Virginia hometown for his large extended family's frequent get-togethers. He had never heard the name Sharswood, and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery with surprises and revelations that seem both impossible and inevitable all at once. These are the gentle hills of Pennsylvania County, Virginia,

quiet rural farm country near the North Carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state. Hey, we're gonna gather in this room here mainly. Fred Miller grew up here in a close family that likes getting together regularly for birthdays, fish fries, and as his cousin Adam Miller told us, just about anything. We play games and we do a lot of food competitions. I hear the food is mainly cake. Yes.

Too many cakes. Fred's cousin, Tanya Miller Pope, and his sister, Deborah Coles, told us it's a big family. Fred's mother, Betty, and his and his aunt Brenda were two of 11. How many cousins? Oh, my. Oh, my. At least 100. At least 100.

So no wonder Fred needed to find a big family. Yes. It's a huge place. Exactly. Fred lives in California, where he works as a civil engineer for the Air Force. But he visits the family in Virginia often. One day, out of the blue, my sister called me and told me about a big house up the road

for sale. This sister right here? Yeah. Yeah. Karen Dixon Rexroth, Fred's baby sister, had spotted it. Me and my mom was riding past the house, and I saw the for sale sign. I said, oh, my goodness, we have to get this house. I called Fred. Fred, this house is for sale sign, I said, oh, my goodness, we have to get this house. I called Fred. Fred, this house is for sale.

He's like, what house? I said, you know the house? The scary house, I call it. The scary house was less than a mile up the road from their mom's. They'd passed it every day as kids on their way to school. What did you know about Sharswood? Absolutely nothing. I just knew it was a house. A big house.

He was debating, should we put in a bid for it? I said, yes, absolutely, let's do it. Did she twist your arm? Took all the twisting she could do. I didn't want to buy it. But thinking his bid would be rejected anyway, he made an offer of just above the $220,000 asking price. Why did you think they weren't going to accept the offer?

Well, I mean, initially to me, I thought that because I was black, that they would never, surely they would never sell this house to someone that's black. So for us to be able to own this thing, I thought it would never happen in a million years. So guess what happened? A million years. A million years. Yes, yes, absolutely. We used to always see this house out here. So in May of 2020,

Fred Miller purchased the fully furnished house plus 10 1⁄2 acres of land from a family called the Thompsons who had owned it since 1917. The first time I drove up to the place, all I could do is stop at the edge of the road there and just look up in amazement. Like, wow, this is mine. This is an original room from the 1800s. Karen says she got obsessed with the house, spending nights and weekends online researching its secrets. A hiding spot, they say, was from the Civil War, so they would hide the valuables.

A secret hideaway. Yes, secret hideaway. She discovered the house had been built around 1850 in the Gothic Revival style by a well-known New York architect. And she learned and told her family that its name had been Sharswood. Every day she was calling me with new information. I'm like, my goodness, okay, relax. Are you exaggerating?

No, I'm not exaggerating. But then Karen turned up something that stunned her. In the 1800s, Sharswood had been the seat of a major 1,300-acre plantation, one of the larger ones in the county. What did you think of you owning a plantation? I was a little bit, a little shocked by that, I would say, because I just wanted somewhere to have family gatherings. When I found out that it was a plantation, and then I'm like, okay, Fred just bought a plantation. I was like, we own a plantation.

We own a plantation. What are we going to do up there? It was just a feeling of just power. It was just a powerful feeling. It is. Powerful, but of course, plantation implies slavery. And before the Civil War, Pennsylvania County held more than 14,000 enslaved people,

the state of Virginia just under 500,000. I said, do you realize what this is? They didn't have a clue. Dexter Miller, one of Fred and Karen's many second cousins, knew something about Charswood because years ago he'd been co-workers with Bill Thompson, whose family then owned it. Bill joined us for a conversation on what used to be his childhood porch. You grew up in this house? I did. This was my home. He inherited much of the farmland and still lives up the road. His sister inherited the house and sold it to Fred. You know, when Fred was buying the house,

he did not think that the house would be sold to a black person. Why would you think that for you? Because, you know, we are in rural Virginia, right? Well, this is true. For years, Dexter and another second cousin, Sonia Womack Miranda, had been trying to piece together the Miller family's origins, a notoriously difficult task for African Americans because records are hard to come by, especially before 1865. It really was a hobby. It was addictive. It was addictive. It really was. You were like private eyes.

Yes. In the land records... They'd been able to trace the whole Miller clan back to one woman. It's Dexter's great-grandmother. It's my great-great-grandmother, Sarah. Sarah Miller. Yes. They had found a picture of Sarah Miller. This is Sarah right here. And they'd gotten hold of her death certificate, which showed that she'd been born in Pennsylvania County in 1868, just three years after the end of

the Civil War. And they found an even better resource, one of their oldest living relatives, a beloved former schoolteacher named Marion Keys. Miss Keys, as everyone here calls her, recently turned 90. Sarah Miller is the matriarch of the family. Yes, she was. Did you know her? Yes, I did.

Well, tell us about her. She would always be out there with a broom in her hand, and she would be waiting for us. Marion Keys remembers her great-grandmother, Sarah, as a force to be reckoned with. What she wanted you to know, you were going to know it. Was she persnickety, as they say? Yes, yes. Was she difficult? Stern?

Very, very. She didn't? Stern? Very, very. She didn't play. She didn't play. But we loved her. But that's where Miss Key's knowledge of Miller family history ended. She didn't know anything about the generations before emancipation. When you were growing up, what did you learn or hear from your parents about slavery? Nothing.

Nothing? Nothing. They did not talk about it. I don't know whether they were afraid, whether it was too miserable or painful, or they wanted to forget it. I don't know, but they did not talk to us about it at all. And we didn't ask them questions about it. Why not? We were afraid to. We heard that again and again from members of the Miller family.

Slavery wasn't mentioned at all. Was there almost a code? We don't talk about slavery, so nobody did? It was something that every black person knew you didn't talk about. The parents would tell you not to discuss grown people business. That's what they'll tell you. The first time slavery was discussed was, I guess, in the 70s when Roots came, the movie Roots came about. That's the first time when Roots was on television?

Did you read about it in school? Not much. His family also remembers Roots as pivotal. Yes. I think that's weird. That's when we all felt like that. That was an eye-opener. But even after Roots, you didn't go and say, what about our family?

No, not at all. What held you back? I just didn't think they wanted to talk about it. But didn't you want to know? I would love to have known. I would love to have known. Fred's purchase of Sharswood was about to give him a crash course in his hometown's slavery roots. It started with a call from two archaeologists who wanted to come do research. We're historic preservationists, and so, you know so we start from the idea that these places matter.

Dennis Pogue once worked at Mount Vernon. Doug Sanford at Monticello. They asked if they could come explore Sharswood. But they weren't interested in the ornate house designed by that famous architect. What they cared about was the dilapidated building with the tin roof past the big oak tree behind it. They suspected it had once been slave quarters. There were once hundreds of thousands of these buildings. These were one of the most common types of architecture in Virginia. Let me give you the running dimensions. But now these buildings are rare,

with fewer than 1,500 believed to be still standing. And Pogue and Sanford started a project to search for them. So one, two, three, four. Fred and Karen invited them to come investigate. They examined, measured, and searched for clues. You can see the siding is... They showed us some of what they found. These are the kind of nails that we expect to see on buildings before 1800.

Handmade, wrought nails. Handmade? You can actually see the hammer strokes on the head. Is this the original siding? These are remnants of the original siding, absolutely. Okay! They worked from noon to dusk and finally gave Karen and Fred their conclusion. It's got a complex history, but we think part of that history,

a big part of that history, was a quarter for enslaved folks. They say it's one of the best preserved they've seen. They believe it was originally built in the late 1700s as a house for a white family. That's where the original door was. And was later divided into two separate single-room slave dwellings.

Two families. Yeah, one household here, another enslaved household over there. It just showed there was two different worlds. This front big beautiful world here and lavish and you go right behind the house and it was a whole different story. It's kind of crazy for me.

Just even walking around out there. Do you own that? Do you own the slave house too? I own the slave house. I do. It's mine. Wow. Yeah. Fred Miller's purchase continues to surprise his family and intrigue historians.

When Fred Miller unwittingly purchased what he now knows to be the Sharswood Plantation House, with slave quarters just behind it, he knew virtually nothing about his own family history. He'd always assumed his ancestors had been enslaved, but it felt to him like an unknowable part of a distant past. Learning about his great-grandmother, Sarah Miller, whom his mother had known as a child, piqued his interest. So when he found out her house was still standing just a few miles away from Sharswood, he asked his mother, Betty Dixon, to go there with him. All right, we're going to walk down through here. Betty's grandmother, Sarah, had been the first of their ancestors to be born into freedom

shortly after the Civil War. That's when my father's cabin didn it had no light, no electricity. Betty remembers visiting and spending the night here with her grandmother and cousins. Whoa. What is it, one room? Sarah's house didn't look much bigger than the slave dwelling. Just a single room with a smaller one above it and no indoor plumbing.

Come a long ways, huh? Sure did. Glad I didn't have to live in here. Well, you had to make it work. You want a piece of this wallpaper to take with you? Yeah. I hope the landlord don't say nothing. Oh, Lord, there you go.

Sarah Miller is buried in the cemetery of the church the Miller family still attends. I'm glad now I can actually come in and see you. But unbeknownst to this Miller family, just five miles up the road in a different church cemetery was a tombstone that also read Miller, a far older one, with names Fred and his family had never heard of, but were about to. In Karen's search for information about Sharswood, she found a document that mentioned them. It gave the names of the original owners, who was Nathaniel Crenshaw, Miller, and also

Charles Edwin Miller. Miller? Yes, Miller. Any light bulbs? Any wires connected? No, not at that point. Not at that point, it did not. Others had suspected a connection between the two sets of Millers. Because I was telling Dexter back in 88.

Bill Thompson says he had mentioned the thought to Dexter 30 years ago. What we had been taught in high school was that when they freed the slaves, they just took the last name of the person that was there, which was Miller. I just had told Dexter, Dexter, it's a good chance that your ancestors came off of this farm. He did. He said that. So you knew that this was a plantation? I did. Well, Fred, you said you didn't know. I had no idea.

Dexter, you didn't tell Fred. I did not tell Fred. I did not tell anyone. Dexter says he'd kept it to himself because he hadn't found any way to prove it. And that's where this becomes a detective story, with the Miller cousins now on a mission to figure out whether it could be possible that their own ancestors might have been enslaved on the very property Fred now owned. The first step was figuring out who their last enslaved ancestors were. And Sarah Miller's death certificate held the answer. The names of her parents, David and Violet Miller,

who would have been adults at the time of emancipation. Did you know anything about them? Not at all. Not at all. I didn't know anything about them. We didn't. Even Marion Keys, who knew Sarah Miller, had never heard their names. Nothing. Wow. Sure didn't.

I just, I want everybody to know. Enter Carice Luck Brimmer, a local historian and genealogist. Karen reached out to her to see if she could help. What are the special challenges looking for the ancestors of African Americans? African Americans were not listed by name until the 1870 census. So before that, they were just a number. I mean, if they were enslaved, they weren't listed at all. So really, you're just looking for any type of tips and clues that you can.

She started by looking at 1860 records for Sharswood's then-owner, N.C. for Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller. There he is. N.C. Miller right there. Okay. He had 58 slaves here. But with only age and gender listed... You have enslaved people 69, 44, 34, and not a single name. No names. There was no way of knowing whether Violet and David were among them. So Carice looked up David and Violet Miller in the 1870 census, the first one after the Civil War, where they finally appeared by name. It showed they were farmhands, that they couldn't read or write. And it listed their children, including, as Carice showed us, a very young Sarah Miller.

There's Sarah. She's one year old. One years old. And this looks like Emily. Yes. She's three. And here's Samuel. Yeah. He's five.

To Carice, that meant Samuel, Sarah's older brother, was born before emancipation. So Carice searched for him in another historical record called the Virginia Slave Birth Index, where slave owners had to list births on their property. This document... And there, under N.C. Miller's name... N.C.

Right. And there's Samuel. Was Samuel. And look at that. Oh, my God. It lists Violet as his mother. It was the genealogy equivalent of a smoking gun. So this is proof that Violet, Sarah's mother,

was enslaved by N.C. Miller. Yes. And this is absolute proof. This is absolute, definite proof. And you were able to tell Karen? That her ancestors, David and Violet, were enslaved at Sharswood. That was tough. So did you call Fred?

I did. I don't think he believed me in the beginning. I didn't believe him. So the connection suddenly is made with your family, slavery, in this house. In this house. And you own it. Once I realized that it was actually my blood that was here, it took on a whole new meaning for me. It really saddens me sometimes when I, you know, and I'm up, a lot of times I'm up a wee hour of the night now just thinking about what happened here. As news spread through the family, there was sadness. But that's not all there was.

I almost felt like I was losing my breath for a moment. It was almost like a feeling of being found. Yes. This is where I started. And as black people, we don't always know where we started. So here we are sitting in this house. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. That I'm in the plantation house.

Of the plantation that my family was enslaved. You're laughing as if this cannot be true. Cannot be. That's right. But it is. I felt complete. I'm not half of a human being anymore. They make me whole, even if I don't know them. I felt a connection to them at Sharswood. I touched the tree. I hugged the tree.

And I said, oh my God, you was here when my ancestor was here. I wonder which ancestor of mine has touched the tree. I didn't know what to say or do. I just hugged the tree and felt like I'm home. He shared the news with Bill Thompson, who had had that hunch all those years ago. I look at it that I've been a servant to this farm and this house my whole life. And for the Miller family to come back home, to my home, our home. Our home, absolutely.

It's great. It's a celebration of coming home. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. It's like a full circle, like it was meant to happen. To me, it was like it was meant to happen. The Millers also see the hand of their ancestors in all of this. I think there had to be, because I did everything in my power to make this fail. Did not make it happen, yeah. I tried to mess it up at every angle.

But those ancestors had one more surprise in store. With all the revelations, there was one question that continued to gnaw at Dexter. Where were his enslaved ancestors buried? So last winter, he asked Bill. I said, Bill, there's one question that's been bothering me. Where is the slave cemetery? He said, Dexter, it's right over there. I said, right over where? He said, you see those trees over there?

So did you just go right up there then? We went right up there. The trees Bill Thompson pointed to, just beyond Fred's property, sure didn't look like a cemetery. That is, until you start to look closely. Is that one of the... That's one of them right there.

Oh, my God. As you can see, this is the indention right there. The headstone there, maybe this is the footstone on the other end. Yeah. There's always seemed like to be there's one. Yeah, absolutely. Poking up through the leaves all around us were pointed rocks, some small, some medium-sized.

No names, no engraving, just plain anonymous markers of many, many lives. Wow. This is astonishing. It is. It's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? It is. It really is. I mean, we all live in the same area. We come past this place, and we would not know that our ancestors were right there beside us the entire time. Fred, if you hadn't bought that house?

Right. You're right. If I hadn't bought that house, we'd never know. Never? Never. So how has all of this affected you? It's, uh, It's changed me. It's definitely changed me.

You ever angry? I get a little bit upset sometimes when I find out things that I should have known already. Angry at yourself? At myself and at the system, because I think that we should have known more. What about the school system? Should have known more. Family? Should have known more, absolutely.

You want the story of slavery told. I want the story of slavery told. Should have known more. Family? Should have known more, absolutely. You want the story of slavery told. I want the story of slavery told. It's important. So this is converted from a door to a window? Yeah, yeah. Fred wants to do whatever's necessary to preserve the slave house. You know, this has been exposed for, you know, 200 years.

He's in the process of setting up a nonprofit to make that possible. That's important to me too, because I know a whole lot of emphasis on that big white house there. Exactly. But this right here is really near and dear to me. This is the story. This is the story. Yeah, absolutely.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's eight right here. And he's been thinking about the cemetery too. I've got to imagine this being someone young. We have to do something about this. Yeah, have to. And I will. I'm going to fix it. Do you think you might allow historians to come?

Absolutely. Absolutely. This place will be open to come? Absolutely. Absolutely. This place will be open to anyone who wants to learn. Anyone? Anyone can come here. But for now, Sharswood is serving the purpose Fred bought it for in the first place, gathering the Miller family together in celebration. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. What do you think Violet and David would think they could see that you own this place? Yeah, I'm hoping they would be proud of us, and I think they would be. They endured a lot. I mean, I can't even imagine what they went through. Looking down on us now.

They must be smiling at us. Thank you, Freddie! Since our story first aired, Fred Miller took a new job in Virginia to be closer to his family. He has set up a non-profit Sharswood Foundation to maintain the slave quarters and cemetery and has begun offering tours of the house. Tonight's story has invited us on a journey to revisit the past. As is true of so many history lessons, our looks at both Sharswood and Canada's residential schools resurrected painful and shameful eras. But other parts of those stories pointed ways to progress and healing. The late David McCullough, who chronicles so much of our history, wrote,

History is who we are and why we are the way we are. We hope tonight's broadcast has helped illuminate some of each. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.