In black and white

How Raleigh Marshall traced his ancestry to Paul Jennings,a slave who worked for former US President James Madison....

History has a way of sneaking up on a family. A few years ago,Raleigh Marshall was finally getting around to sorting through several generations worth of accumulated stuff in the familys ancestral home in Georgetown. He found a pair of heavy old lamps. He showed them to his father. Oh yeah, the old man said. Those lamps came from Dolley Madison.

That was how Marshall came to discover that he is a great-great-great-grandson of Paul Jennings: a slave who worked for President James Madison,who helped Dolley save valuables from the White House hours before the British burned it during the War of 1812,who dictated the nations first White House staff memoir,who helped plot the ill-fated slave escape aboard the Pearl in 1848,and who founded what would become several lines of accomplished African-American Washingtonians.

Marshall,26,is still catching up to the details of his ancestors role in American history,and shaking his head over how excited total strangers are about it. Nearly two dozen of the extended clan reunited at the White House last Monday,the 195th anniversary of the flight from the White House and the rescue of Gilbert Stuarts famous full-length portrait of George Washington,hours ahead of the invading British,on Aug 24,1814. The portrait now hangs in the East Room.

After living at the White House,Jennings worked in Dolley Madisons house at the northeast corner of Lafayette Square,visible today in pretty yellow as part of a court complex. As a free man,he built a house at 1804 L St. NW.

Amid the reminiscing throng at the White House was Beth Taylor,the Montpelier research associate whose genealogical sleuthing,starting two years ago,helped return a familys history to itself. Jennings was born into slavery at Montpelier in 1799. He moved to the White House at about 10 when Madison became the fourth president in 1809. The city was a dreary place, he reported in his memoir,A Colored Mans Reminiscences of James Madison.

On that August day in 1814,Mrs Madison ordered dinner to be ready at 3,as usual; I set the table myself,and brought up the ale,cider,and wine,and placed them in the coolers, Jennings recalled. Suddenly,a messenger galloped up,shouting,Clear out,clear out! The painting and some silver were packed and the household fled to Georgetown to take a ferry.

I was always with Mr Madison till he died in 1836,Jennings wrote,and shaved him every other day for 16 years.

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Dolley sold Jennings to an insurance agent in Washington for 200,then Webster bought him for 120 and gave him his freedom papers. Dolley was impoverished,and Jennings sometimes gave her money. He died at 75 in 1874.

Marshalls father apparently knew the story but shared few details with his son before his death about two years ago.

Marshall was accustomed to thinking of his family as historicbut on the Marshall side,not the Jennings side. Jenningss granddaughter Pauline 8211; Raleighs great-grandmothermarried Charles Marshall and moved into the house on P Street in the 1890s.

Now,says Raleigh Marshall,tours will sometimes stop outside the house,and hell hear the guides speak of the Marshall family as one of the last of the old African American families still living in Georgetown.