The food at the Coleman-Richards reunion in Fayette County, Ky., offers a look at the family’s ties to America and Liberia.

By Korsha Wilson | Photograph by Andrew Cenci

On a Saturday afternoon last month in Fayette County, Ky., members of the extended Coleman family lined up along a table topped with chafing dishes of white rice, fried chicken wings and dark-green Liberian palava sauce made with stewed spinach. Nearby, a large grill sizzled, hot dogs cooking over its flames. Afrobeats, funk and classic R&B played underneath a tent providing shade from the summer sun.

In many ways, it looked like any other family reunion: Adults jumped up to do the electric slide at the opening guitar solo of “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly and Maze, and did the Cha Cha Slide. Relatives milled about, bringing out more plastic plates or utensils. Young children and adults competed in musical chairs and sack races, laughter punctuating conversations and music.

But, here, those in attendance were connecting across centuries and continents, as the descendants of William D. Coleman, Liberia’s 13th president who emigrated from the United States in 1853, met and broke bread with their American relatives, whose ancestors had stayed in Kentucky. This year was of particular significance: It was the first time the Coleman-Richards family reunion was held in the same county where William D. Coleman’s American ancestors were enslaved.

At the reunion, the link between Liberia and the United States could be seen in the food. Homemade Liberian dishes like rice, pork and stewed vegetables were piled high on paper plates, each dish giving Liberian relatives a chance to share their culture and experiences with their American family members.

“We make dry rice that’s similar to a jambalaya,” Melreta Garnett Herring said, referring to the tray of rice seasoned with herbs and studded with salt pork, fat back and smoked herring before her.

Jim Coleman, the owner and chief executive of Coleman Crest Farms, hosted the event on his 13-acre farm, which his great-grandfather James Coleman bought in 1888, after serving in the Fifth Regiment, United States Colored Infantry, part of the Union Army.

A self-proclaimed history buff, Mr. Coleman researched as much as he could about his family, learning that William D. Coleman was his direct cousin and that James, his great-grandfather, had also been enslaved on another property in the county. But he wanted to know more about his ancestors from the western coast of Africa, so while living in Maryland in 2016, he visited the Liberian Embassy in Washington, D.C. “I asked if they knew anything about Liberian Colemans,” he said. But it was instead his arm of the family they were curious about. “They said they’d been looking for Colemans from Kentucky for a long time.”

Two weeks later, he attended his first Coleman-Richards family reunion in Bowie, Md., where he met Colemans and Richardses (related to the Colemans by marriage) who had immigrated to the United States in the 1950s and also those who arrived in the decades around the Liberian Civil War in 1989. Some also still lived in Liberia. They’d also started the Richards & Coleman Family Foundation, offering scholarships to Liberian students.

“I saw people that looked just like me,” Mr. Coleman said, adding, “I just fell in love, and I thought, ‘One of these days, I’m going to have a reunion in Kentucky.’”

The close ties between the two countries go back to the early 19th century, when Americans began to settle in present-day Liberia. In 1811, Paul Cuffee, a prominent Black shipyard owner from New England, began making voyages there in hopes that freed African Americans could “establish a prosperous colony in Africa.” After Mr. Cuffee’s death in 1817, the American Colonization Society was created to continue the mission, albeit for different reasons. Fearful of slave revolts after a successful revolution in Haiti, the Society believed freed people should be moved to Liberia and founded it as a private colony in 1822. Some freed African Americans opted to go. Some enslaved people were offered freedom on the condition that they emigrate to West Africa. Ultimately, 16,000 African Americans would make the journey to what became Liberia by the end of the 19th century.

That history is reflected in Liberian cuisine, which merges strong American influences with West African flavors and cooking techniques, said the Liberian historian Carl Patrick Burrowes.

“Liberia is really a crossroads where various West African cultures come together,” said Dr. Burrowes. “Those trends of borrowing and reinventing were always happening and continued after African Americans arrive.”

He pointed to dishes like rice bread, made with ripe bananas, rice powder and spices; the prevalence of American-style cornbread; and the use of pork, of all kinds, in recipes like tender peppered pork shoulder and dry rice, as examples of American influence.

On the Saturday night of the reunion, the family enjoyed a mash-up of Kentuckian and Southern influences with West African staples, prepared by the chef Isaiah Screetch at the Lexington History Museum. Skewers of beef suya coated with peanut powder and cayenne, similar to ones found in Nigeria and Ghana, shared the menu with his versions of jollof rice and saladu nebbe, a Senegalese black-eyed pea salad, which he made with Kentucky cucumbers and tomatoes. A buttercream-frosted spice cake with spicy West African calabash nutmeg and a tart tamarind jam capped the meal. “It reminded me of jam cakes here in Kentucky,” Mr. Screetch said. “Spice cake is typically for special occasions, and it felt like that was right.”

The Rev. Genevieve E.R. Garnett, 93, William D. Coleman’s last living grandchild, made the trip to the reunion from Maryland, where she’s lived since 1955. “I’m so amazed at this,” she said at dinner, adding that she never thought she’d visit the place where her grandfather was enslaved.

As the family ate and drank, they exchanged stories and talked into the night. Jim Coleman stepped to the microphone. “This might be the best reunion we’ve ever had,” he said to cheers. “I want to have the next one in Liberia.”

Click here for the full New York Times article with images.