loading . . . 'Who am I?': How a York County genealogist reclaims the past March 11, 2026, 4:55 a.m. ET
Neicy DeShields-Moulton researched her family's past after discovering it was a taboo subject due to the pain of slavery.
Her research traced her lineage to the Hampton Plantation in Maryland, where her ancestors were enslaved for over 200 years.
DeShields-Moulton's work has helped connect living descendants with each other and their shared history.
Neicy DeShields-Moulton’s family never shared much about their past.
Like many African Americans, it was — and, as DeShields-Moulton points out, still is — taboo to speak about their heritage. The pain of slavery ran so deep that her ancestors chose to bury it in silence and move forward without confronting it.
DeShields-Moulton, now 66, was always on the move. When an injury and five back surgeries paused her usual busy lifestyle, her mind raced instead.
She started to ask questions.
“I just had to do something. I started to wonder, ‘Who am I?’” she recalled. “I needed to know, and I needed to find out.”
DeShields-Moulton said the silence she met in her search stretches beyond her family tree. It influences how American history itself is remembered.
“When you know history, you don’t want to repeat it,” she said.
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Digging through original documents, such as deeds, military files, plantation ledgers and newspaper advertisements, taught DeShields-Moulton the story of America just as much as that of her family. Black history is American history, she said.
“I found that we took part in just about everything America did, from the very beginning,” she said.
Her research fills more than 30 oversized binders in her Springettsbury Township home and a digital database that allows her to reconstruct lineages. The work connects her family to slavery, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad and even the Revolutionary War.
But one place stood out to her as she embarked on her research: the Hampton Plantation, just outside Towson, Maryland. DeShields-Moulton began to realize that’s where most of her ancestors were enslaved, lived and died for more than 200 years.
Around 2018, the Hampton National Historic Site launched an ethnographic study to identify descendants of those enslaved there. Researchers started looking for the Batty family in York County – and they found DeShields-Moulton.
“And here was the ironic thing. I had already done all the research on my family, and my roadblock was George Batty,” she said.
She knew he lived in Peach Bottom in the early 1800s, but that was it. And then it clicked when she met the researcher.
“I pulled out my books and showed her all the information on the Batty family that I had back to George. She said, ‘We don't have to do anything else because you have it all,’” DeShields-Moulton recalled.
The Batty family is large and spread out in York and Lancaster counties today.
“I couldn't have a girlfriend without figuring out if she was family first,” Brandon DeShields, Neicy’s son, joked.
There are other spellings of the surname, such as Beatty, Boddy and Beattie, but they all can be traced to George and Esther Batty, who arrived around 1776, when America gained independence.
But African-Americans, meanwhile, weren’t quite free. Records DeShields-Moulton found told a raw story of the cruelty that was slavery.
Some referred to enslaved people as “chattel,” a word for property which comes from “cattle.”
“You were seen as an animal,” DeShields-Moulton said, adding later that fugitive slave newspaper advertisements depicted some wearing collars.
In other records, people were priced and listed among their worldly possessions.
“To see someone, a human being, right there with rice, coffee and candles. It shows they were commodities,” she said.
Often, slaves were sold repeatedly and were even given away as wedding gifts.
And even when slaves got away, and their owners looked for them, their personal identity was ignored. Notices for “freedom seekers,” as DeShields-Moulton prefers to call runaways, often listed people without names, only giving a skin tone or physical description.
The number described as mulatto – a term used for a person of mixed Black and white race – was “almost unbelievable,” said DeShields-Moulton.
“Slave owners could have their way with any woman they wanted,” she said.
Rape only added to the painful history of slavery. Through DNA testing, DeShields-Moulton confirmed that she, too, is mixed-race. Her ancestry indicates she is one-third European.
“And that’s not a little bit,” she said.
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Similar work helped DeShields-Moulton connect an older woman with her long-lost family. Barbara Williams, of Springettsbury Township, was raised by her grandparents and never knew who her father was. Several years ago, after reaching out to DeShields-Moulton, she got her answer.
Williams, then in her 70s, met her paternal family and has been in contact ever since.
“It has been a whole new life for me,” Williams, now 83, said.
The realization of who her father was gave her a relief akin to the knowledge and closure DeShields-Moulton wanted for her own family tree.
“You know, you hold these things in, you have them in your mind, but you don't talk about them,” Williams said.
Even though her father was long dead, she was able to heal.
“That was such a big relief to my heart. So much joy for me. And it's just something that I could enjoy forever,” Williams said of her newfound family connections.
Documents show that the Ridgely family, who ran the Hampton Plantation, owned more than 800 people over time. The plantation spanned some 25,000 acres – that’s as big as the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida – and the mansion measured roughly 24,000 square feet. Parts of Towson University, Goucher College and the White Marsh Mall sit on the former land of the Hampton Plantation.
After emancipation, some formerly enslaved families purchased land near where they had been held captive. Others migrated north into Pennsylvania, settling in places such as Peach Bottom, Delta, Fawn Grove and Wrightsville.
DeShields-Moulton tracked down living descendants, including those in Maryland, for a descendant engagement luncheon in 2024. Nearly 60 locals packed a bus to meet dozens more at the plantation. Many were meeting family for the first time, and some had already known each other but didn’t realize they were related.
Brandon DeShields remembers having many of those realizations during the bus ride.
“I kept saying to my mom, ‘Hold on, this is our cousin?’ And they were,” he said. “That was pretty cool.”
Together, the descendants participated in a libation ceremony, pouring water onto the land and saying “Asé,” meaning “so be it” or “let it be,” in honor of their ancestors.
It was a “really special part of the trip,” DeShields-Moulton said, because it allowed her and others to give an offering to their creator and ancestors.
Ancestors who, time and again, endured inhumane treatment and discrimination for the color of their skin.
Part of DeShields-Moulton’s research is focused on veterans, whom she calls her “war heroes.” Many of her family fought in the Civil War but were never recognized for it.
“They had to fight for their pensions,” she said.
During then-President Barack Obama’s term, DeShields-Moulton took advantage of an initiative to receive certificates for her veteran ancestors. She said she submitted so many records that federal officials questioned how one person could have evidence for that many people. Eventually, she said they told her they couldn’t process any more for her.
It wasn’t lost on DeShields-Moulton that it took the first Black president for Black soldiers to receive an official thank-you.
What troubles her now is a different kind of silence driven by discomfort and denial.
As Brandon DeShields notes, many young people don’t know their family histories.
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“And that ignorance can lead to a lot of potential issues down the road,” he said.
DeShields said he’s extremely proud of his mom for the work she is doing and hopes it will inspire others to take the research further.
“We can come together for good rather than being divided and coming at each other’s throats for whatever reason,” he said.
DeShields-Moulton said she finds it alarming that President Donald Trump doesn’t think African-American history is American history.
“It’s difficult to see the erasure that’s happening today when this country was built on the backs of my ancestors,” she said.
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She said Black history and the story of slavery are “being hushed.”
“What do you do when people try to erase your history?” DeShields-Moulton asked. “It’s painful, but who is it really painful for? You’re telling the truth.”
She rejects the idea that acknowledging slavery is about blame.
“Knowing who we are is important. And that’s what I sought to do.”
Anyone interested in researching their genealogy can reach out to DeShields-Moulton at [email protected].
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