Sunday, November 5
3:00 - 5:00 pm

Denise Valentine and Jeannie Day Roggio met after Valentine's performance at Historic St. Georges’ Church in 2015. Denise was telling the story of "The Weeping Time," the largest sale of human beings in the history in the United States. Pierce Mease Butler of Philadelphia sold the families enslaved on his South Carolina plantations in order to pay off his enormous debts. Pierce Mease Butler was Jeannie's great, great, great uncle. His wife, Fanny Kemble wrote "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838 - 1839, “circulated among the abolitionist community" and published after emancipation. Jeannie's ancestral line includes the Middletons, Mitchells, Langdons and Butlers, signers of our nation's founding documents. Denise and Jeannie began a dialogue about their family genealogies. Jeannie has generously loaned the ‘Red Book’ which tells the story of Roggio’s family tree to be part of “Unforgetting and Reconnecting” a historical exhibition of archival materials and ephemera from the Museum collection, curated by PHLA collaborator and storyteller Denise Valentine and digital librarian Karina Wratschko.

The Library Reading Room, Perelman Building, 2nd Floor. Runs through November 10th.