It is a story of success and accomplishment. But like most Black families in America, the Englands have questions about who they are, where they came from, and what happened to them along the way.

The judge has always wondered about the lore he learned as a child from his mother and aunts about Ella. More than a decade after she was emancipated — and Clement Claiborne Clay, her enslaver, was disgraced as a traitor to the United States and imprisoned for his suspected role in President Lincoln’s assassination — why did Ella get married in the former senator’s house?

England, his daughter Faith, and…