The search for her family's truth has taken Cheryl Wills to Haywood County, Tennessee, and the nearly 200-year-old plantation her family knew nothing about until this veteran journalist started uncovering her ancestor's history and telling their story.
 

"I was born in New York City. We knew nothing about Haywood County. Zero," Cheryl said during a speech in Haywood County. "My father was born here, my grandfather was born here, his father was born here, and my great-great grandfather was born here."

Cheryl's great-great-great grandfather Sandy Wills was a runaway slave who fought with the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War.

"In 1850, he was sold to Edmund Wills, which is why I'm Cheryl Wills."

"When the Civil War broke out," Cheryl added. "he escaped to go enlist."

Cheryl has spent more than a decade researching Sandy Wills and his wife Emma, a slave he met on the Mooreland plantation after his honorable discharge.
 

(Art from "Emma," depicting Emma Wills, left, and Sandy Wills.)

Cheryl: And that plantation, remarkably, has been in the same family's hands for 200 years.

Ruschell: What was that like for you, personally, to meet that family?

Cheryl: I didn't want them to know the pain that lived in me from slavery. I wanted to treat them with respect and I just prayed that I would get the same. Fortunately for me, they could not have been nicer. They gave me a full tour of the property.
 

(Cheryl, center, meeting the descendants of the family that owned Emma and her family.)

"I got to stand there and feel what they felt," Cheryl said. "This is the closest I could possibly come to touching them."

Cheryl has written four books about her great-great-great grandparents. The latest is "Emma." It's the story of her victorious fight against the U.S. government to get Sandy's pension.

"My grandmother hired a lawyer in 1890," Cheryl said. "How does an illiterate woman living in a shack…work up the nerve?"

The story of Emma and Sandy has become a history lesson across the country. The new chapter involves Cheryl's search to find their remains, which she believes are buried on a hill at the plantation.
 

(The location where Sandy and Emma Wills are believed to be buried.)

"The family said, many years ago there use to be little wooden white crosses," Cheryl said. "That broke my heart."

But not her spirit to find Emma and Sandy and give them what she believes is a proper burial.