The village of Catoctin Furnace lacks a collective memory that includes the African American workers (both enslaved and freed) who lived and worked at the village's iron furnace from the time of the Revolution until the mid 19th century. Now, the village historical society and partners are attempting to provide an avenue of reparative heritage to social justice and vindication through establishment of collective and actual kinship utilizing graveyard archaeology, aDNA, forensic reconstructions, and a "heritage at work" personal engagement program. One of the ongoing tragedies of slavery is writ large at Catoctin with the interruption of familial links and erasure of collective memory of the lives and legacy of the African American population. Today, this manifests itself in the total absence of an area descendant community of the enslaved population. Many descendants of the European immigrant laborers live in the village; however, profound social and economic upheaval in recent decades has resulted in estrangement, anxiety, and dependence on government resources. This paper will utilize Catoctin Furnace to evaluate the concepts of "dark heritage", "orphan heritage", and "shadow places" in order to analyze their applicability to this complex and contested site.
