09/06/2026: Sharswood, Boom Chicago

0:09The Millers are a large family that enjoy getting together. They purchased this historic house in southern Virginia near where they grew up to have a place for family celebrations. This is an original room from the 1800s. But no one could have imagined how the history of the home and its grounds would change everything they thought they knew about their family's history. It's like a full circle. Like, it was meant to happen. To me, it was meant to happen. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. The Dutch are famous for their windmills, their canals, their bikes. Their comedy, not so much.

0:52So you might be surprised to learn that some of America's funniest figures sharpen their comic chops at this improv club in Amsterdam. Yes, Amsterdam. Dutch people not the most giving laughers. I was going to ask you about that. Dutch people laugh like this. Ha ha! And they immediately get quiet. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes.

1:31just off the side of the road sat a grand white house called sharswood silently holding secrets from the past waiting for a new owner to uncover them sounds like the opening line of a southern gothic novel. But as we first reported in 2022, this story is about a real family and a real house, this country's history, and a man who found himself at the center of far more than he had bargained for. The man is Fred Miller, then a 56-year-old Air Force veteran who was looking to buy property in his Virginia hometown for his large extended family's frequent get-togethers. He had never heard the name Sharswood, and yet this old house would lead him on a journey of discovery with surprises and revelations that seem both impossible and inevitable all at once.

2:31These are the gentle hills of Pittsylvania County, Virginia, quiet rural farm country near the North Carolina border that once produced more tobacco than any county in the state. Hey, we're going to gather in this room here mainly. Fred Miller grew up here in a close family that likes getting together regularly for birthdays, fish fries, and as his cousin Adam Miller told us, just about anything. You play games and you do like a lot of food competitions. I hear the food is mainly cake. Yes. Too many cakes. Fred's cousin, Tanya Miller Pope, and his sister, Deborah Coles, told us it's a big family.

3:18Fred's mother, Betty, and his aunt, Brenda, were two of 11. How many cousins? Oh, come on. Oh, come on. At least a hundred. So no wonder Fred needed to find a big family. Yes. It's a huge place. Exactly. Fred lived in California, where he worked as a civil engineer for the Air Force. But he visited the family in Virginia often. One day, out of the blue, my sister called me and told me about a big house up the road for sale. This sister right here? Yeah. Karen Dixon Rexroth, Fred's baby sister, had spotted it. Me and my mom was riding past the house, and I saw the for sale sign. I said, oh, my goodness, we have to get this house.

4:00I called Fred. Fred, this house is for sale. He's like, what house? I said, you know the house, the scary house, I call it. The scary house was less than a mile up the road from their mom's. They'd passed it every day as kids on their way to school. What did you know about Sharswood? Absolutely nothing. He just knew it was a house. A big house. He was debating, should we put in a bid for it? I said, yes, absolutely, let's do it. Did she twist your arm? I took all the twisting she could do. I didn't want to buy it. But thinking his bid would be rejected anyway, he made an offer of just above the$220 ,000 asking price.

4:45Why did you think they weren't going to accept the offer? Well, I mean, initially to me, I thought that because I was black, that they would never, surely they would never sell this house to someone as black. So for us to be able to own this thing, I thought it would never happen in a million years. So guess what happened? A million years. A million years. Yes. Yes, absolutely. We used to always see this house out here. So in May of 2020, Fred Miller purchased the fully furnished house, plus 10 and a half acres of land, from a family called the Thompsons, who had owned it since 1917. The first time I drove up to the place, all I could do was stop at the edge of the road there and just look up in amazement, like, wow, this is mine.

5:31This is an original room from the 1800s. Karen says she got obsessed with the house, spending nights and weekends online researching its secrets. A hiding spot, they say, was from the Civil War, so they would hide the valuables. A secret hiding. Yes, a secret hiding spot. She discovered the house had been built around 1850 in the Gothic Revival style by a well-known New York architect. and she learned and told her family that its name had been Sharswood. Every day she was calling me with new information. I'm like, my goodness, okay, relax. Are you exaggerating? No, I'm not exaggerating. But then Karen turned up something that stunned her.

6:18In the 1800s, Sharswood had been the seat of a major 1 ,300-acre plantation, one of the larger ones in the county. What did you think of you owning a plantation? I was a little bit, a little shocked by that, I would say, because I just wanted somewhere to have family gatherings. When I found out that it was a plantation, and then I'm like, okay, Fred just bought a plantation. I was like, we own a plantation. We own a plantation. What are we going to do up there? It was just a feeling of just power. It was just a powerful feeling. It is. Powerful, but of course, plantation implies slavery. And before the Civil War, Pennsylvania County held more than 14 ,000 enslaved people, the state of Virginia just under 500 ,000.

7:10I said, do you realize what this is? They didn't have a clue. Dexter Miller, one of Fred and Karen's many second cousins, knew something about Charswood because years ago he'd been co-workers with Bill Thompson, whose family then owned it. Bill joined us for a conversation on what used to be his childhood porch. You grew up in this house? I did. This was my home. He inherited much of the farmland and still lives up the road. His sister inherited the house and sold it to Fred. You know, when Fred was buying the house, He did not think that the house would be sold to a black person. Why would you think that for you?

7:56Because, you know, we are in rural Virginia, right? Well, this is true. For years, Dexter and another second cousin, Sonia Womack Miranda, had been trying to piece together the Miller family's origins, a notoriously difficult task for African Americans because records are hard to come by, especially before 1865. It really was a hobby. It was addictive. It was addictive. It really was. You were like private eyes. Yes. And the land records is... They'd been able to trace the whole Miller clan back to one woman. It's Dexter's great-grandmother. It's my great-great-grandmother, Sarah. Sarah Miller.

8:40Yes. They had found a picture of Sarah Miller. This is Sarah right here. And they'd gotten hold of her death certificate, which showed that she'd been born in Pittsylvania County in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War. And they found an even better resource, one of their oldest living relatives, a beloved former schoolteacher named Marion Keys. Miss Keys, as everyone here calls her, was almost 90 years old. Sarah Miller is the matriarch of the family. Yes, she was. Did you know her? Yes, I did. Well, tell us about her. She would always be out there with a broom in her hand, and then she would be waiting for us.

9:25Marion Keys remembers her great-grandmother, Sarah, as a force to be reckoned with. What she wanted you to know, you were going to know it. Was she persnickety, as they say? Yes, yes, yes. Was she difficult, stern? Very, very. She didn't play. She didn't play, but we loved her. But that's where Miss Key's knowledge of Miller family history ended. She didn't know anything about the generations before emancipation. When you were growing up, what did you learn or hear from your parents about slavery? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing. They did not talk about it. I don't know whether they were afraid, whether it was too miserable or painful, or they wanted to forget it.

10:12I don't know, but they did not talk to us about it at all. And we didn't ask them questions about it. Why not? We were afraid to. We heard that again and again from members of the Miller family. Slavery wasn't mentioned at all. Was there almost a code? We don't talk about slavery, so nobody did. It was something that every black person knew you didn't talk about. The parents would tell you not to discuss grown people business. That's what they'll tell you. The first time slavery was discussed was, I guess, in the 70s when Roots came, the movie Roots came about. That's the first time when Roots was on television?

10:57Did you read about it in school? Not much. His family also remembers Roots as pivotal. Yes. I think that's weird. That's when we all felt like that. That was an eye-opener. But even after roots, you didn't go and say, what about our family? No, not at all. Even then, what held you back? I just didn't think they wanted to talk about it. But didn't you want to know? I would love to have known. I would love to have known. Fred's purchase of Sharswood was about to give him a crash course in his hometown's slavery roots. It started with a call from two archaeologists who wanted to come do research.

11:36We're historic preservationists, and so we start from the idea that these places matter. Dennis Pogue once worked at Mount Vernon, Doug Sanford at Monticello. They asked if they could come explore Sharswood, but they weren't interested in the ornate house designed by that famous architect. What they cared about was the dilapidated building with the tin roof past the big oak tree behind it. They suspected it had once been slave quarters. There were once hundreds of thousands of these buildings. These were one of the most common types of architecture in Virginia. Let me give you the running dimensions.

12:20But now these buildings are rare, with fewer than 1 ,500 believed to be still standing. And Pogue and Sanford started a project to search for them. So one, two, three, four. Fred and Karen invited them to come investigate. They examined, measured, and searched for clues. You can see the siding is... They showed us some of what they found. These are the kind of nails that we expect to see on buildings before 1800. Handmade, wrought nails. Handmade? You can actually see the hammer strokes on the head. Is this the original siding? These are remnants of the original siding, absolutely. Okay! They worked from noon to dusk and finally gave Karen and Fred their conclusion.

13:06It's got a complex history, but we think part of that history, a big part of that history, was a quarter for enslaved folks. They say it's one of the best preserved they've seen. They believe it was originally built in the late 1700s as a house for a white family. That's where the original door was. And was later divided into two separate, single-room slave dwellings. Two families. Yeah, one household here, another enslaved household over there. It just showed that it was two different worlds. This front big, beautiful world here and lavish. And you go right behind the house and it was a whole different story.

13:45It's kind of crazy for me just even walking around out there. Do you own that? Do you own the slave house too? I own a slave house. I do. It's mine. Wow. Yeah. Fred Miller's purchase continues to surprise his family and intrigue historians when we come back.

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14:46When Fred Miller unwittingly purchased what he now knows to be the Sharswood Plantation House with slave quarters just behind it, he knew virtually nothing about his own family history. He'd always assumed his ancestors had been enslaved, but it felt to him like an unknowable part of a distant past. Learning about his great-grandmother, Sarah Miller, whom his mother had known as a child, piqued his interest. So when he found out that her house was still standing, just a few miles away from Sharswood, he asked his mother, Betty Dixon, to go there with him. All right, we're going to walk down through here.

15:29Betty's grandmother, Sarah, had been the first of their ancestors to be born into freedom shortly after the Civil War. I saw this cabin and it had no light, no electricity. Betty remembers visiting and spending the night here with her grandmother and cousins. Whoa. What is the one room?

15:53Sarah's house didn't look much bigger than the slave dwelling. Just a single room with a smaller one above it and no indoor plumbing. Come a long ways, huh? Sure did. Glad I didn't have to live in here. Well, had to make it work. You want a piece of this wallpaper to take with you? Yeah. I hope the landlord don't say nothing. Oh, Lord, there you go. Sarah Miller is buried in the cemetery of the church the Miller family still attends. I'm glad now I can actually come in. But unbeknownst to this Miller family, just five miles up the road in a different church cemetery was a tombstone that also read Miller, a far older one with names Fred and his family had never heard of, but were about to.

16:45In Karen's search for information about Sharswood, she found a document that mentioned them. It gave the names of the original owners, who was Nathaniel Crenshaw, Miller, and also Charles Edwin Miller. Miller? Yes, Miller. Any light bulbs? Any wires connect? No, not at that point. Not at that point, it did not. Others had suspected a connection between the two sets of Millers. Because I was telling Dexter back in 88, I knew... Bill Thompson says he had mentioned the thought to Dexter 30 years ago. What we had been taught in high school was that when they freed the slaves, they just took the last name of the person that was there, which was Miller.

17:32I just had told Dexter, Dexter, it's a good chance that your ancestors came off of this farm. He did. He said that. So you knew that this was a plantation? I did. Well, Fred, you said you didn't know. I had no idea. Dexter, you didn't tell Fred. I did not tell Fred. I did not tell anyone. Dexter says he'd kept it to himself because he hadn't found any way to prove it. And that's where this becomes a detective story, with the Miller cousins now on a mission to figure out whether it could be possible that their own ancestors might have been enslaved on the very property Fred now owned. The first step was figuring out who their last enslaved ancestors were.

18:17And Sarah Miller's death certificate held the answer. The names of her parents, David and Violet Miller, who would have been adults at the time of emancipation. Did you know anything about them? Not at all. Not at all. I didn't know anything about them. We didn't. Even Marion Keys, who knew Sarah Miller, had never heard their names. Nothing. Wow. Sure didn't. I just, I want everybody to know. Enter Carice Luck Brimmer, a local historian and genealogist. Karen reached out to her to see if she could help. What are the special challenges looking for the ancestors of African Americans? African Americans were not listed by name until the 1870 census.

19:08So before that, they were just a number. I mean, if they were enslaved, they weren't listed at all. So really, you're just looking for any type of tips and clues that you can. She started by looking at 1860 records for Sharswood's then owner, N.C., for Nathaniel Crenshaw Miller. There he is, 1860. N.C. Miller right there. Okay. He had 58 slaves here. But with only age and gender listed... You have enslaved people 69, 44, 34, and not a single name. No names. There was no way of knowing whether Violet and David were among them. So Carice looked up David and Violet Miller in the 1870 census, the first one after the Civil War, where they finally appeared by name.

20:05It showed they were farmhands that they couldn't read or write, and it listed their children, including, as Carice showed us, a very young Sarah Miller. There's Sarah. She's one year old. One years old. And this looks like Emily. Yes. She's three. And here's Samuel. Yeah. He's five. To Carice, that meant Samuel, Sarah's older brother, was born before emancipation. So Carice searched for him in another historical record called the Virginia Slave Birth Index, where slave owners had to list births on their property. This document... And there, under N.C. Miller's name... N.C. Right. And there's Samuel.

20:55Oh. Was Samuel. And look at that. Oh, my God. List Violet as his mother. It was the genealogy equivalent of a smoking gun. So this is proof that Violet, Sarah's mother, was enslaved by N.C. Miller. Yes. And this is absolute proof. This is absolute definite proof. And you were able to tell Karen? That her ancestors, David and Violet, were enslaved at Sharswood. That was tough. So did you call Fred? I did. I don't think he believed me in the beginning. I didn't believe him. So the connection suddenly is made with your family, slavery, in this house. In this house. And you own it. Once I realized that it was actually my blood that was here, it took on a whole new meaning for me.

21:53It really saddens me sometimes. A lot of times I'm up wee hours of the night now just thinking about what happened here. As news spread through the family, there was sadness. But that's not all there was. I almost felt like I was losing my breath for a moment. It was almost like a feeling of being found. Yes. This is where I started. And as black people, we don't always know where we started. So here we are sitting in this house. Can't believe it. I can't believe it that I'm in the plantation house of the plantation that my family was enslaved. You're laughing as if this cannot be true. That's right.

22:39But it is. I felt complete. Wow. I'm not half of a human being anymore. They make me whole, even if I don't know them. I felt a connection to them at Sharswood. I touched the tree. I hugged the tree. And I said, oh my God, you was here when my ancestor was here. I wonder which ancestor of mine touched the tree. I didn't know what to say or do. I just hugged the tree and felt like I'm home. He shared the news with Bill Thompson, who had had that hunch all those years ago. I look at it that I've been a servant to this farm and this house my whole life. And for the Miller family to come back home to my home, our home.

23:41Our home, absolutely. It's great. It's a celebration of coming home. This is God. This is where we're supposed to be. It's like a full circle, like it was meant to happen. To me, it was meant to happen. The Millers also see the hand of their ancestors in all of this. I think there had to be because I did everything in my power to make the snail. Did not make it happen. I tried to mess it up at every angle. But those ancestors had one more surprise in store. With all the revelations, there was one question that continued to gnaw at Dexter. Where were his enslaved ancestors buried? So months later, he asked Bill.

24:32I said, Bill, there's one question that's been bothering me. Where is the slave cemetery? He said, Dexter, it's right over there. I said, right over where? He said, you see those trees over there? So did you just go right up there then? We went right up there. The trees Bill Thompson pointed to, just beyond Fred's property, sure didn't look like a cemetery. That is, until you start to look closely. Is that one of the... That's one of them right there. Oh, my gosh. As you can see, this is the indention right there. The headstone there, maybe this is the footstone on the other end. Yeah. There's always seemed like to be there as one.

25:13Yeah, absolutely. Poking up through the leaves all around us were pointed rocks, some small, some medium-sized. No names, no engraving, just plain anonymous markers of many, many lives. Wow. This is astonishing. It is. It's kind of overwhelming, isn't it? It is. It really is. I mean, we all live in this same area. We come past this place, and we would not know that our ancestors were right there beside us the entire time. Fred, if you hadn't bought that house? Right. You're right. If I hadn't bought that house, we'd never know. Never? Never. So how has all of this affected you? It's changed me.

26:00It's definitely changed me. You ever angry? I get a little bit upset sometimes when I find out things that I should have known already. Angry at yourself? At myself and at the system, because I think that we should have known more. What about the school system? Should have known more. Family? Should have known more, absolutely. You want the story of slavery told? I want the story of slavery told. It's important. So this is converted from a door to a window? Yeah, yeah. Fred wants to do whatever's necessary to preserve the slave house. You know, this has been exposed for, you know, 200 years. He's in the process of setting up a nonprofit to make that possible.

26:42That's important to me, too, because I know a whole lot of emphasis on that big white house there. Oh, exactly. But this right here is really near and dear to me. This is the story. This is the story, family story. Absolutely. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. There's eight right here. And he's been thinking about the cemetery, too. I can imagine this being someone young.

27:05We have to do something about this. Yeah, have to. And I will. I'm going to fix it. Do you think you might allow historians to come? Absolutely. Absolutely. This place will be open to anyone who wants to learn. Anyone? Anyone can come here. But for now, Sharswood is serving the purpose Fred bought it for in the first place, gathering the Miller family together in celebration. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to ya. Happy birthday to ya. Happy birthday to ya. What do you think Violet and David would think? They could see that you own this place. I'm hoping they would be proud of us, and I think they would be.

28:01They endured a lot. I mean, I can't even imagine what they went through. Looking down on us now. They must be smiling at us. Since our story first aired, Fred Miller created a non-profit Sharswood Foundation and is applying for grants to maintain the slave quarters and cemetery. Earlier this summer, the Millers held the fifth annual Sharswood Juneteenth celebration with more than 3 ,500 attending.

28:51These can be unnerving times for American comedy. The TV sitcom is going by way of the Cannes laugh track, while the president tries to heckle late-night comedians out of jobs. But as we reported earlier this year, funny persists, and funny travels internationally. In the early 90s, two opportunistic comics decided to open an English-language improv joint in Amsterdam. It sounded less like a winning business idea than a punchline, given the Netherlands' reputation as a comic, well, Netherland. But 30-plus years later, their club, Boom Chicago, has imported American funny folk and then exported them back as future stars, including Seth Meyers, Jordan Peele, Amber Ruffin, and Jason Sudeikis.

29:34Could it be that America's ultimate laugh factory is an improv theater position near an Amsterdam canal? Yes, and... The Bush days seem quite good now in retrospect, don't they? Oh, I know! WMD's Colin Powell, Comte Rice, what a lark! Comedy, they say, is hard. Improv comedy, harder still. Then imagine doing it in a country not generally known as a barrel of laughs. Dutch people not the most giving laughers. I was going to ask you about that. Dutch people laugh like this. Ha ha! And they immediately get quiet. Seth Meyers needs no introduction. He and Peter Gross, actor and Emmy-winning comedy writer, were college pals who then developed their comic chops in Amsterdam?