Carrie White of Cobbs Creek has seen a lot in her 90 years in Mathews, growing up not far from where her ancestors had once been held in slavery.

White was born in 1925 in Potato Neck in Peary, where her family lived on property she understood to have once been part of a plantation. The small house she and her family of five lived in was one among a group of shanties known as “slave quarters” to the local black community. Her father, Willie B. Smith, was a Peary native, while her mother, Zora Brooks, was born and grew up at Richfield in Beaverlett. Carrie had two older brothers—Willie Ray and Theodore. Historically, Carrie understands that her father’s family came from the Sands Smith plantation, Beachland.

Carrie lived near Hamburg Elementary School, where teacher George White taught reading, writing and arithmetic in a single room with a wood stove in the middle of the floor. From the beginning, Carrie loved school, even though it could be difficult to lea...