Unmarked graves found on land once owned by Catholic slaveholders trigger search for descendants

A team of student and professional history detectives — led by Laura Masur, assistant professor of anthropology at The Catholic University of America — have discovered what appear to be additional gravesites in a family cemetery on land once belonging to the Brents, one of early and colonial America’s prominent Catholic families. They were the first to settle in Virginia during an era when practicing Catholicism was prohibited.