I learned a great deal from an important new book from Georgetown University Press called “Between Freedom and Equality: The History of an African American Family in Washington, D.C.” But the biggest impression came from a page with hardly any words on it. It’s Page 98, and it shows a map.

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       The 1891 real estate map covers a portion of upper Northwest Washington. Various properties are labeled with their owners’ names. One owner stands out, the name etched across parcel after parcel after parcel: Chevy Chase Land Co.

       Amid this encroaching developer is a tiny triangle labeled “T. Harris.” It’s a farm — Dry Meadows, it was called — but really it’s an island about to be swamped by forces beyond its control.

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       The Harris family was descended from a remarkable man named George Pointer. The story of Pointer is where authors Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green begin. Pointer was born into slavery in Maryland in 1773. When he was rented out by his owner to assist in constructing a canal along the Potomac River — a pet project of George Washington — Pointer impressed the supervisors with his skill and diligence.

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       In 1793, Pointer was able to buy his freedom for $300. He continued to work for the canal company and, later, for the C&O Canal company. Pointer married, had children and lived in a cottage near the canal.

       In 1829, Pointer learned that construction work on the canal threatened his home. He wrote a letter to the company’s directors recounting his contributions and entreating them not to take his house.

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       “I pray you to read the memmorial and humble petition of an old and Obscure Citizen,” begins the letter, which has the occasional misspelling and is printed in the book’s appendix.

       Pointer explained the history of the canal, its construction and operation. He mentioned a special visitor: “Yearly in the month of October General Washington would come to view the progress of the work, and well I recollect that at every squad of workmen he passed he would give a dollar to.”

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       “It’s a beautiful letter,” said Torrey, who, with Green, read it at the National Archives. “We knew that he was a reliable narrator, not only of his own life but also of this sort of wonderful adventure of the Potomac Canal Company that George Washington started.”

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       Pointer’s letter apparently worked. In the 1830 Census, he was living in the same place. It inspired Torrey and Green — who had collaborated on a history of their D.C. neighborhood, Brookmont — to do more digging.

       They aren’t historians. Torrey, 79, managed social science research at the National Academy of Sciences before her retirement in 2003. Green, 76, taught French for 32 years at Stone Ridge.

       “Elderly White ladies,” is the way Green laughingly described herself and her co-author.

       While the book focuses on Pointer and his descendants, it tells the broader story of life in Washington for other African Americans.

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       Once Pointer had bought his way out of slavery, he was allowed to keep his wages. He could own property, too.

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       “At the same time, however, his freedom was restricted,” the authors write. “He could not own a dog or a gun without a special license. In Montgomery County, Maryland, he was prohibited from attending large meetings that were led by Black people, and after the turn of the century in Washington, D.C., he needed a special permit to pick blackberries.”

       Pointer’s grandsons enlisted in the Union Army and were wounded in battle. A later descendant secured a good position with the U.S. Postal Service before Woodrow Wilson kicked Black workers out of jobs like that.

       It can seem at times like every gain was followed by a setback.

       Which brings us back to that map. The map includes the farm that Pointer’s granddaughter, Mary Ann, and her husband, Thomas Harris, lived on. It also includes the working-class Tenleytown neighborhood called Reno that a fifth-generation descendant, Rosetta Harris, lived in with her family.

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       Both areas were originally far from the heart of residential Washington. The streetcar and the motor car changed that.

       “As transportation got better, White households downtown decided they could afford to move out and get better housing,” Torrey said.

       Developers such as Francis G. Newlands assembled massive tracts to build Whites-only neighborhoods such as Chevy Chase. Along with housing, the gentrifiers desired schools and parks.

       In 1928, the federal government used eminent domain to buy Dry Meadows, building a school for White children, Lafayette Elementary, on the site. A few years later, the houses in Reno were demolished to make way for Alice Deal Junior High.

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       As Green and Torrey traced Pointer’s family forward in time, James Fisher was tracing his family backward, with the help of his genealogically savvy partner, Tanya Gaskins Hardy. The authors connected with Fisher, an eighth-generation Pointer descendant, on Ancestry.com and shared their findings.

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       “Of course, I was amazed, but it also saddened me that most people didn’t know about this great man,” said Fisher, 68.

       Fisher and his family are trying to rectify that. They were instrumental last year in changing the name of Lafayette Park, near the school, to Lafayette-Pointer Park.

       “It’s an American story,” Fisher said. “It’s a story for children, for adults: the way he lived and how he accomplished what he did.”

       Twitter: @johnkelly

       For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.