michael h. goodwyn

Kinfolk is Michael H. Goodwyn's true story of his quest to learn his family's heritage following several family tragedies. In that process, Goodwyn learns his family members have been leaders in education, business, and banking dating back six generations to George Washington's second term of office. Told in an honest, straightforward contemporary style, Kinfolk is those ancestors' stories, the true story of an American family's tragedies and triumphs, from slavery to freedom, from poverty to wealth, and beyond. The book features, among others, biographies of Levin Huston, a freed slave who helped found, fund, and build one of the first African-American schools and churches in the state of Maryland, Levin's son, Solomon T. Houston, a former slave who became the wealthy founder of one of the nation's first Black banks, and Samuel G. Thomas, the son of slaves who became a beloved leader in education in Pennsylvania.