Tanya Gaskins Hardy was born in 1955 in the District of Columbia, and lived in McLean, VA. She is the eldest of two children. Through Tanya’s expertise in genealogy, and her close friendship with James Fisher, she became an indispensable link to two discoveries that reframed their lives: James’ connection to his ancestor Capt. George Pointer and the revelation that the family, because it was Black, was pushed off the land it had owned on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC for 80 years.
The connections began when Tanya met James in 2011 and eventually, she offered to research his family’s genealogy. It was then that she “stumbled” into two historians online who were at the same time tracing Pointer’s descendants. Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green had been researching George Pointer after finding an 1829 letter he’d written about his remarkable life that went from slavery to the Superintendent Engineer for George Washington’s Potomac canal project. Seeing the Ancestry.com family tree that Tanya constructed, they knew they’d hit gold: James Fisher was Pointer’s direct descendant eight generations later.
Since then, Torrey and Green have gone on to publish Pointer’s rich biography with Georgetown University Press and Tanya and James have taken up the mantle to elevate Pointer to his rightful place as a recognized figure in U.S. history. The story turned out to also have another hook – another hard fact that makes it imperative to tell: Pointer’s descendants who eventually settled on Broad Branch Road in Chevy Chase DC in the 1840s were pushed off their land 80 years later when surrounding farmland converted to suburbs, and the new white residents didn’t want them there.
Because U.S. history omits people like George Pointer and buries the stories of local communities that practiced racial displacement, Tanya believes these discoveries present an opportunity for current residents to reconcile that history and inform future choices. She has devoted much of the last 10 years to that goal.
Tanya’s roots do have some things in common with James’: Like James’s forebears, she was born and raised in a close-knit Black community in the Washington suburbs – one of several small Black enclaves that survived and thrived into the 20th Century. The strong values her parents instilled in her, and her younger brother included the importance of education. Tanya attended a segregated elementary school until 4th grade, until the county she lived in had to stop fighting integration and allow Black children to attend white neighborhood schools. Going from a protective and nurturing school environment to a classroom where she was the only Black student took its toll on her. That was especially true when a stern and unwelcoming white teacher insisted on mispronouncing Tanya’s name as “Tonya,” with a condescending explanation of its Russian roots. Tanya never forgot that experience – or the many other times she was treated with disdain because she was Black. Even so, she excelled in school, winning the National Merit Semifinalist at Langley High School.
Tanya then attended Mary Washington College and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in special education. Her career centered on special education and behavioral counseling, first in Goochland County, VA, where she developed a curriculum covering reading, math science and history for the young men sent to the new rehabilitation farm in the county rather than juvenile detention; to Richmond, VA, continuing to work with students with special needs of all kinds, and then in Fairfax County. During a 40-plus-year career– she retired in 2018 – she purposely focused on getting poor and minority students the attention and individualized education they required to succeed in school.
Meanwhile, along with threading through a marriage and the raising of two kids, Tanya became an accomplished self-taught genealogist, spurred by intriguing stories of her parents’ childhoods. Tanya’s mother’s parents were sharecroppers and worked hard to support their family. Both parents passed away when Tanya’s mom was very young and the children were shuffled among family members, some who were also struggling and therefore unwelcoming. Tanya was deeply affected by hearing her mother’s horrific tales of descendant relatives who suffered at the hands of white male abusers during slavery and then Jim Crow. She spent time at the State Library of Virginia, learning how to access census records on microfiche. As she gained expertise, she expanded her pool of research subjects, often offering to research family histories for friends and family. Now she runs her own genealogy business. Currently, she lives in Florida with her daughter and her grandson.
It was that passion for historical research that got her involved with James’s family roots. Despite his skepticism that she’d uncover anything remotely interesting – he remembers having no one to idolize among his small cadre of chronically troubled aunts and uncles – she delved into the tenuous connections, most of which were difficult to trace further than two generations deep. “This was the million-dollar find,” she recalls of meeting Torrey and Green for the first time. Instead of only hard-luck stories, the past that spun out on Broad Branch Road for eight decades revealed itself to be a proud American story of strong family ties, with neighbors supporting each other and engaging with the surrounding community, generation after generation. It was Pointer’s granddaughter, Mary Ann Plummer Harris, who moved to that already established Black enclave in the 1840s. By the time Harris had great grandchildren and was in her grave, the Black families were being squeezed out.
Tanya’s motive in circulating this story is simple: She believes this is important work for all African American families, helping them reclaim a sense of pride, accomplishment, and resilience in the face of oppression.
The following are excerpts from two oral history interviews in March and April 2021:
On her early childhood: “I grew up in McLean, VA, which is one of the cities of Fairfax County. We lived in a small community of about 10, 15 African American families. This was during segregation, so the neighborhood was—we were blessed, because it was a nice one. Everybody in the community was either a schoolteacher or held a job that allowed them to support their family, so we weren’t struggling like some other people who might have been very poor. That neighborhood was in between many large white neighborhoods. … so, we were a close-knit group. Everybody knew everybody, you know, all the kids played together. My paternal grandparents lived in the black neighborhood that was east of us, about a mile up. And there were about 13, 14 homes there too. Same scenario, the families—most everybody had decent jobs for that time. They had their own homes. In our house was just my brother… I have a younger brother and my parents.”
On her transfer from an all-Black segregated school, to desegregated a nearly all-white school: “I started school during segregation, I went to Louise Archer Elementary School in Vienna, VA and I was there from first grade through third grade. And at the end of third grade, Fairfax County finally realized they had to integrate their schools. They fought it for many years after it started; they didn’t want to integrate, but it finally got to the point where they had no choice. So that’s when I left Louise Archer (Elementary) and went to Churchill Road Elementary School, which was in a very white neighborhood. And that’s when things changed for me educationally because I lost all my friends. I lost all those connections. I lost a family because the school that I was in was really a family. Everybody knew each other. And I’m not just talking about in my classroom, but we just all knew each other. It was also that most of us went to one of two churches. So, we knew each other just from being in the various churches, church activities. Many of the parents of the children that I went to school with went to school with my dad, and all of them were together at Manassas School for Colored Children. So, it was just a very close Group.”
On reatment she received by her new 4th grade white teacher: “And one thing that happened was about my name… Tanya. When I got to fourth grade, my teacher, who I’ll never forget, like I think I’ve told you all before, she was the true schoolmarm. I mean, she looked like she walked out of the 1800s. Long black skirt, that white shirt buttoned up here. Every day, she wore that. She was an older lady. And then she called my name. I was the only Black person in my classroom. She called my name, pronouncing it “Tonya” and I told her my name was “Tanya,” a little scared to even talk to her, a white woman, on the first day of school. She looked at her paper and she said, ‘No, your name is “Tonya”. That’s Russian. That’s not how you pronounce your name. Your name is Tonya, I’m going to call you Tonya.’ So, I just sat there, like, okay. And this is the very beginning of the school day, so I’m assuming that’s just the way it’s supposed to be. That’s not my name, and I didn’t really go home and say anything about it. Because to me, okay – you know, I’m not gonna tell my mom and dad, they’ve been pronouncing my name wrong all this time. I thought, this important person who’s supposed to be a teacher and knows everything just corrected me. We’ll just keep calling me Tanya at home and that’s my nickname. That was my thought about it. It wasn’t until years later that I realized, forget this. This is not my name. This is what you’re going to call me….Tanya.”
On her feelings about race labels over time: “I grew up knowing I’m colored. Then we became Negroes and were called such. Then Black Power became popular, you know, so we said we should call ourselves Black. So, I was a Black person. And then it became African American. So, African Americans are the only ones—and I choose to say that, because we are African and American. But I’ve never heard of another race having to have their name changed four times, not knowing who they are. You go from slaves to colored – you know, slaves to niggas to colored to Black to whatever. You see what I’m saying? You don’t know what to say. And I remember a period of time when I didn’t know which one to say. I was used to saying colored all the time, and then ‘No, no, we’re calling ourselves Negro.’ So, this was confusing and frustrating. No other race on this earth has had to go through the process of trying to figure out who or what they are…not knowing what they are, or who they are, which is typical of slavery and not knowing who our ancestors are and where we came from specifically. We were stripped of our entire culture, treated like animals, and judged as animals. You all can say “my family came from this place or that place”—you know, you shared that with me—I wish I knew from what country in Africa my ancestors came. I wish I didn’t learn that because of constant abuse of my great-great grandmothers….. who were abused by slave masters and then Caucasian men during Jim Crow…. that my ancestry runs through other countries including England, Ireland, Northwestern Europe, and a few other countries that I found through my DNA research…I am not proud at all of those connections because through their behavior they were stealing from us and forcing on us, not giving anything to us WITH OUR PERMISSION.”
On receiving recognition from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation in high school: “That was a big deal back when I was in high school. And the day before the assistant principal announced over the intercom the names of semifinalists and winners, and he didn’t name me. So, I went home…I said ‘Dad, I am a National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalist, right?’ And he said ‘Yes, you are a semifinalist in the ninth National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students, The Negro students aren’t allowed to receive the actual National Merit Scholarships’ he added…..And I said, ‘Well, Mr. Chester did not call my name this morning over the intercom. He called everyone else’s.’ The next day, I went to school. I was going into an English class, and somebody came up and said, ‘Your daddy just came in the front door, and he’s got his briefcase, and he is not happy.’ I said, ‘Oh no,’ knowing how my dad can be. So, we started English class. And about 10 minutes later, there was an ‘Excuse me, we have a special announcement’ coming on the intercom. And they said, [laughs]’We forgot one student who is A National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students Semifinalist,’ and he announced my name. A few minutes later, my daddy left. And that was my dad, you know. I later heard from a friend who was in the office while my dad was there that he heard Dad say, ‘You are not going to short my children. You are going to announce that like you did the white students. What did you mean, you didn’t call her name?’” That was my dad when it came to my brother and I…if we were doing our best in school then he expected the school to do its best for us.”
On the daily worry over men and boys that African American women experience: “I just had this conversation with a friend of mine … who’s younger than me. She’s white. And she couldn’t understand this Black Lives Matter situation. And I said, ‘Let me explain how life is for me, right now … Every single day, I wake up stressed. Some days, I wake up stressed and depressed because I know my dad, my brother, my nephew, my sons, have to go out in this world. And if this is a bad day, they could be stopped by a ticked-off police officer, or someone who’s decided they’re going to kill some people, just because they’re Black. You don’t have to worry about that for your dad, your uncle, and your two sons. They can walk this country without fear. Mine, on the other hand, must be careful of who they see, what they say, where they are, and extra polite in some situations, taking abusive treatment without being able to defend themselves so they can get home in one piece. My friend kind of looked at me. And by that time, tears were running down my face, because I was just so tired of hearing someone say, ‘I don’t understand why this is important,’ as well as being tired of worrying every single day. You know, if you look at the news, you know why it’s important. And so, she said, ‘Oh’—she calls me Mom, she’s really my daughter’s friend and I’ve claimed here as mine too—’I’m so sorry, Mom.’ I said, ‘Well, I hope you’re listening to me because I’m serious about this. Every day—I don’t have a day of peace. And I won’t, until these things change.’
On her love of history viewed through the lens of genealogy: “I’ve loved history. I wanted to be a history teacher. But … my grandfather said, ‘That’s not going to work.’ When I graduated from high school, he said, ‘There’s hundreds of history teachers, so you need to choose something else.’ But I never gave up. Even in my classroom, history was the one class I loved to teach, and I made it very engaging and interesting. Because I loved it, you know. “So, I—my oldest son was probably five, and I decided to start going to the State Library of Virginia to use the microfiche machines and start researching census records. My whole summer off, I would be going at least three times a week, and I brought my son’s crayons and his coloring book. He’d sit on the floor beside me for hours. I even brought a lunch bag. I didn’t let them see that, but he was sitting down there eating little snacks [laughs]. But it fascinated me just to find out where people lived. I would go to the census records to look, first of all, over my grandparents’ information and it was fascinating for me. I could look up something and then close my eyes and envision, ‘Okay, I was in this place, and this is what it was like.’ I started keeping all that information, and it just grew. I constantly looked for someone to say, you know, ‘I had a grandmother who lived in such and such place, but I don’t know too much about him.’ My response was always, Oh! What’s the name? Where’d they live? What’s the birthday? I’ve got you [laughs]. So, I spent a lot of time doing that just for people who were interested, you know, somebody saying, ‘I wish I knew…’ “And I first started with my mother’s family, because I knew that they had come from a life of being enslaved. And I had been down to West Virginia for several family reunions, we have them every other year. I learned a lot about that. So, I began researching her family first. I think it just made me feel close to my ancestors. I never met them; I never met her parents because they died so young. But when I was able to research, and learn something about where they lived, and who their families were, and what their occupations might have been, that helped me feel like I was meeting them. I knew a little bit about them. My mom’s family was very big. I spent a lot of time doing that research. And then when I began building the trees, and the lineage charts and such, my dad helped me to organize it all and put it into a booklet that I was so proud of. And I got it copyrighted, so that it was placed in the [Library of Congress].”
On her offer to James Fisher to research his family history: “I would meet people, they’d say, ‘I don’t have this knowledge. I wish I knew this.’ I’d research it and give them that information. And I would teach them how to do it themselves. I said, ‘It’s not really hard to do this if you’re really interested. You can just do this, this, and this, and you can build your own trees.’ And then, the way that I became interested in the Pointer search was kind of the same way. When I met James, we were talking, and he noticed that I was doing a lot with genealogy….and he said, ‘Well, there’s probably nothing worth researching in my family.’ You know, he was very skeptical. I said, ‘You don’t know that. Just give me your mom’s name and your dad’s name, and your grandparents’ information, and I’ll show you.’ So, he gave it to me, and I saw him the next week, and he couldn’t believe how much I had built into the tree. He said, ‘who told you all that? Where’d you get that information from?’ And I said, ‘It’s on the internet, you just go to certain databases, and you’ll find it all.’ And that’s how I got involved with the Pointer family. That’s how it began.”
On meeting up with Barbara Torrey and Clara “Tiggy” Green: “And then just about that time, as I was moving from, you know, contemporary back, Barbara Torrey and Tiggy Green, who are the two researchers who have authored the book, were conducting their research on George Pointer. And they said the reason— you know, our first question was ‘why were you even going in that direction?’ – and I believe they said they were working on a book about the area that they lived in, in Maryland, which I think is [Brookmont] or something like that. And somehow, George Pointer’s name came up. So, they decided, ‘oh, this is interesting, let’s start researching.’ And they began to do so. Because my Ancestry tree for James was public, and they were on Ancestry also, as well as other platforms like I was, and their work popped up. They were able to see some ancestors that they were placing in their tree also, which would have been Mary Harris, I believe, and the Motens, Mary Moten. And so, she sent me a note through Ancestry introducing themselves and saying, ‘We believe we’ve found some information about this ancestor, would you like to come together?’ So, I was very excited to tell James, but first, I decided to contact them. And they mentioned that this person’s name was George Pointer, and that they had found pieces of information about him. “I got as much information as I could, and I told James. And he was shocked. He had no idea that Pointer was their ancestral name. He didn’t know anything much about his descendants—he knew about his grandmother, but not about his great-grandmother, great-great… He’d heard stories. He had heard that when his grandmother and family lived in Lafayette Park, she had long dark hair like a Native American, and she smoked a pipe. So, they remembered that, that she liked her pipe. He remembered. Also, though…he was the youngest of his siblings…the sisters had more information than he did, but that’s all he had to share.
“So, Barbara and Tiggy invited us to come to Tiggy’s house for lunch one day, and that was the start of something wonderful because they had all this research that they had done. They had made packets for us to show where they were getting information from, who George Pointer was, what his significance was. And it was just amazing, you know. James was floored, he couldn’t believe it. He was so excited. And, after lunch, we walked down to the site (on the C&O Canal near Lock 6) where the Pointer cabin was—there’s a road very close to the river. And it’s where all the lock cottages are. So, we were able to walk down there, go into the bushes, where I was looking for snakes, because I don’t play with snakes. And it was springtime, [laughs] so I was really careful. But it was just— it was a wonderful thing. James was thrilled, he couldn’t believe it. He was excited. He just— he was, he was, wow. He was wowed. So that started us— from that point on, Tiggy and Barbara and James and I worked together.”
On seeing the Harris property on Broad Branch Road for the first time: “Tiggy and Barbara told us about Lafayette Park, what is now Lafayette-Pointer Park, and the fact that the homes were in that area. So, I don’t know if it was that day— it was probably the next time, because we had lunch with them twice. But in any case, they took us also to Lafayette Park and talked to James and I about where the house probably stood in that park. There is a beautiful old tree there that is huge, that I’m certain was there when those people lived there. It’s the biggest, most beautiful oak tree I’ve ever seen. So, James kind of just stood there and looked at it and said, ‘Wow, I can—can you imagine what was going on around this tree here, and how the family was?’”
On the Pointer Descendants family reunion in August 2015: “We actually had a two-day—a weekend affair. So, the first day, Saturday, was the picnic at the park. The second day was lunch and dinner at another event site in another place, just to kind of reflect on what we had seen and meet family. That family hadn’t come together in years and years and years. Some of them had not seen each other since they were little ones. So, it was a wonderful time for people to come together. I mean, it was— I had never heard so many people say, ‘Wow, I haven’t seen you for 10 years; I haven’t seen you for 15 years; Wow, these are your kids,’ you know, they were seeing grandchildren and cousins and kids that they had never seen—it was just amazing. It was Amazing. “And the people that came through—so this was a Saturday, it was a beautiful day. And the people in the Chevy Chase community, a community that is predominantly white, use those days to come to the park, to bring their children. So, you can imagine the looks we got when we’re setting tables out and setting grills up. And I had huge banners made that shared the name of the reunion and the year 1773 – 2015, all over the place. A lot of people came up and said, ‘What’s going on? … what’s this?’ And I said, ‘I’m so glad you asked me.’ I wanted to tell them. And every single one that I spoke to said, ‘We never knew that. We were told this land was abandoned. You know, it was just nothing here.’ I said, ‘No, there was very much something here.’ And they were all encouraging. They said, ‘Wow, congratulations, good for you all.’”
On the question of reparations: “I think about reparations, and you know, I would love to see, like James is always saying, I would love to see somehow a nice plot of land somewhere in this country. Put together for all the land that’s been taken from African Americans through eminent domain and have it, a place where we can establish a place that supports us as a people. That puts our culture first, that is ours, that we can manage by ourselves. And I’m not trying to be separated from everybody. But when you think about it, African Americans are the only race in this country that doesn’t have home, we don’t have land. And people are saying, ‘Well, go back to Africa.’ Well, that’s all well and good. And I’m definitely claiming my African heritage. But I would also like to be able to claim my American Heritage too, and have a space that’s mine, just like everybody else can have a space. So, it’s just hard. “Some people say, ‘Well, just give me some money.’ That will never work. You know, it’s more than just the money. More than just money and opportunity were taken. So, we need to consider—I’d love to see a place where we have schools that focus on teaching true American history with all the good, the bad, and the ugly. So that African American students can be proud of who they are. And just like you were saying, these craftsmen, these women and men are doing amazing things, but treated like animals. We need to be able to really talk about that and teach how and why that was happening, and let our young folks know that they do have a purpose….that they are amazingly intelligent, and not to let other people say that you aren’t. You have a lot to contribute. So, there’s so many things I can think of that I’d like to see, I don’t even know where to begin. But I think recognition for who we are and what we’ve done is probably at the top of that list. To recognize George Pointer—it shouldn’t have taken this long for anybody to realize what he was doing, how important he was, and how intelligent he was getting the job of Superintendent Engineer for the Potomac Company.”
On the power of history and genealogy to instill pride in the achievements and resilience of African Americans: “Well, at first, I think that we need to, as African Americans, we need to continuously tell ourselves, we are good, amazing, productive, intelligent people. I think we, a lot of times and in a lot of situations, accept what the public wants to say about us. Some of our young people, it makes me so sad, because they’re just like, ‘Well, they’re going to accuse us, or they’re going to this’ or ‘they don’t believe us anyway, so we’re just going to do this, and we’re going to act this way.’ We need to somehow find a way to help our younger people realize who they really are…strong, intelligent, masterful at what we are able to do successfully if aloud. I don’t know how that’s gonna happen. Maybe—I don’t know, like, the black-on-black crime, and the shooting, and being upset with each other over nonsense. The system wants us to fail in many ways. It’s just, I think, it’s all part of just having—what is the word I want to use? A lot of them don’t have hope. A lot of them just think they’re not worth anything. Worthless lives, you know, what’s the difference, nobody cares about us. So, I guess the problem might be bigger, and that we need to come together in our communities and just start praising the little things and then move forward…. tell them that you are an amazing person, you came from royalty.
“We need to start seeing that more in our media, we need to start seeing it more—TV is just trash sometimes. We need to find a way to get a station that’s really showing African Americans, who we are and where we came from. We didn’t come from here; we came from across that ocean. The beginning is over there. It’s not here. We need to really focus on that. A lot of that history is not known. So, I guess the African history, the history of Africa, and then how we came here. And just start pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, loving yourself, realizing who you are, realizing that you are meant to be great. And stop thinking that you must be what everybody tries to make you look like you are. Stop listening to stuff on the media and thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to be like that, because that’s about all I can get.’ Not believing they’re better than that.
“And I would say, just start asking questions. If they want to know more about their families, start talking to the elders. I would also like to say for the elders, start just telling stories. Write down your stories, or leave some names of elders, and birth dates, and where they lived. Little stories sometimes are amazing to students, I’ve noticed. I was working with a group of teenagers once and I was telling them about my genealogy business, just to be talking, and I shared some story I had, and practically all of them said, “Oh, I’d like to know where my grandfather was. And my grandmother, I wonder if we were slaves.” You know, “I wonder if that—”. So, to be able to just teach, it’s easy to do. And there’s all kinds of information online about how to start genealogy research. So, I think we just need to put that little bug in their ear. You know, “Why don’t you do a little history searching and see what you can find. I can guarantee you’ll find something good.” Something good. If there’s nothing else but the perseverance of somebody who’s been enslaved, and then suddenly, the 1870 census shows them working somewhere, they made it through. They’re still alive, they have families they’re taking care of, and then go from there.”