Tiny wooden cabins line the dirt road once known as Slave Street as it winds through Friendfield Plantation.
More than 200 slaves lived in the whitewashed shacks in the early 1800s, and some of their descendants remained for more than 100 years after the Civil War. The last tenants abandoned the hovels about 30 years ago, and even they would have struggled to imagine a distant daughter of the plantation one day calling the White House home.
That daughter is of course Michelle Obama. Researchers have uncovered the Robinson family tree, tracing it back to Mrs. Obama's great-great-grandfather Jim Robinson who was born around 1850 and lived early life as a slave in Georgetown, South Carolina.
I can't help but to think about this scene from HBO's John Adams: