A critical reappraisal of the origin story of early care and education (ECE) in the United States, this article unsettles dominant narratives by investigating the carceral foundations and liberatory strategies that characterise the emergence and sociopolitical evolution of ECE. Integrating Foucauldian counter-historical genealogy and counterstorytelling, a tool from Critical Race Theory, this article advances a "genealogical counterstory" that (1) traces the carceral foundations of ECE across three sites typically exiled from public memory and origin storytelling: plantations, off-reservation boarding schools, and incarceration camps; and (2) describes three emergent themes of womanist anti-carceral praxis evident across the sites: redefinition of educational philosophy, creation of educational third spaces, and fortification of culturally relevant epistemologies. Confronting dominant narratives of ECE origins, this genealogical counterstory illustrates tensions and transformations indicative of the complexity and contradictions of American ECE philosophy and pedagogy. This article also attends to the sociopolitical significance of ECE rendered through genealogical counterstorytelling, as well as relations to pressing contemporary equity issues.