Group gathers at Avoca Museum in Altavista to learn about their ancestry

The couch itself, a dark pink affair with leaf and flower designs in the fabric and frame, probably wouldn’t mean much to anyone other than an antique collector or historian.

But when Alfred Dearing eased into the couch that once belonged to Civil War General James Dearing, the gesture was symbolic.

“I’m sitting on General Dearing’s couch,” he exclaimed, grinning to his group Saturday morning.

For Dearing, it was more than touching a piece of history. Dearing traces his heritage through slaves on James Dearing’s farm, and possibly through Dearing himself or a male relative.

Dearing’s family, along with April Walker Hickman and her husband Bill, came to the Avoca Museum in Altavista on Saturday for a ceremony to consecrate the nearby slave cemetery.

Hickman, who had no trouble finding white and black ancestry, also traces her heritage through the Dearings’ plantation in Campbell County.

“I’m pretty sure that my great-great-great grandmother is here,” said Hickman, who hails from Utah.

The group came together, Hickman said, after conversations on genealogy websites led several different families to Avoca, which had ties to the Dearing and Lynch families.

On Saturday, the two families in attendance toured the house, which had been the home of Charles Henry Lynch during the Civil War.

The Lynch and Dearing families were related through marriage and frequently traded slaves, leading to a very intertwined history for the descendants, museum director Frank Murray said.

Murray said the cemetery is a special place, and not just because of its history and obscurity.

“Number one, it’s preserving a 200-year-old site,” Murray said. “Two, I felt a need to give some recognition and dignity to people that didn’t have it in their lifetime.”

He added the cemetery helps to expand the cultural and historical reach of Avoca and said he was floored that families from as far as Brooklyn, N.Y., and Utah have been able to trace their heritage to Altavista.

He said those families share in “a unique chunk of Americana.”

For Hickman, Saturday wasn’t the culmination of her years of genealogical research, but she called it “a huge milestone.”

“When I came in last night I thought ‘My great grandfather very well walked down this street, and his brothers and sisters walked down this street,’” she said.

She said until her father died and she began her searching, she didn’t even know he had African-American descents, always assuming there was American Indian in his blood.

The discovery, she said, was shocking at first, but knowing where she came from, “I feel complete. I feel like a whole person.”

Dearing said he wanted to make a point by sitting on the general’s couch — something that wouldn’t even have been a thought for his ancestors.

“Here I had a chance to sit on General James Dearing’s couch, (him) being an ancestor through slavery,” he said. “This is another leg of history being made.”

Dearing said the consecration helped to bring together people on both sides of the slavery aisle and hoped people would see it as an opportunity to reconcile.

“We need to stop blaming. We need to forgive and forget and move on,” he said.