When Rachel Knight started looking into her family’s genealogy, she came across a history her grandmother had typed years before, and a shocking discovery.

The history detailed how she and her brother, Jonathan Knight, were descendants of Maj. Richard Bibb, a significant slave and land owner in Kentucky who on his death bed in the 1800s emancipated dozens of his enslaved people. They inherited land, tools, houses and money — the resources needed to establish themselves as free Blacks in America.

It’s a story and a relative they had never heard about. As the siblings started to do more research, they began to realize how complicated history can be, especially depending on who is telling it.

“We found this connection through the daughter of Richard Bibb, and my grandmother had written in there a blurb about freeing the enslaved people,” Jonathan Knight, of San Anselmo, says. “I think she treated it well but it was interesting it was treated as this purely altruistic act and instead of…