John F. Baker Jr.

Genealogy Expert John F. Baker Jr. has lived his entire life just a few miles from Wessyngton Plantation, a town populated by hundreds of descendants of its slaves. In seventh grade he discovered the story of his ancestors by accident when he saw a photograph of four former slaves in a social studies textbook. Months later he learned that they were his grandmother's paternal grandparents, Emanuel and Henny Washington, who had been enslaved on Wessyngton Plantation. For more than thirty years, he has been using his research to unravel his family history and others.