By Mary Ellen Wright
If family lore and the online
genealogical records my relatives and I have been able to piece together
are reasonably accurate, I have some colorful stories hidden in the
branches of my family tree.
From
what I’ve learned so far, my ancestry apparently includes war heroes
and scalawags, blue bloods and moonshiners, people who thrived in the
New World’s earliest settlements and ancestors who came to desperate
ends in the Old World.
It’s
funny how I tend to embrace the heroes, imagining their blood flowing in
my veins, while I have so much trouble coming to terms with stories of
my slave-owning ancestors and other notorious characters in my family’s
past. I view them almost like fictional tales that don’t really have a
connection to my life.
I get to watch celebrities experience the very same thing every week on one of my favorite TV shows,
“Finding Your Roots.”
Each
Tuesday night on PBS, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. traces
the ancestry of two or three well-known actors, musicians, comedians, TV
stars, authors or government officials, helping them uncover secrets
hidden in their family stories — and even in their own DNA.
The
celebrities gasp or wipe away tears as they turn the pages of their
“book of life” — a scrapbook of photos, archival records and newspaper
clippings Gates gives each guest. They learn the show’s researchers have
traced their roots back to King Charlemagne, or to the Jewish Pale of
Settlement in Imperial Russia.
The
DNA tests they’ve allowed Gates’ researchers to conduct might show they
have Native American relatives, or tell them in which part of Africa
their ancestors lived.
Like me
and my relatives, these celebrities marvel at the coincidences and
incongruities found in their ancestors’ journeys through life.
Earlier
this season on “Finding Your Roots,” actor Bill Hader giggled as he
found brave war heroes on his family tree, admitting they possessed the
courage he lacks. “Modern Family’s” Ty Burrell was clearly moved to
learn he is descended from both a slave owner and a slave.
Academy
Award winner Patricia Arquette learned she had a Civil War soldier in
her ancestry. The Civil War memorabilia of her grandfather, comedian
Cliff (“Charley Weaver”) Arquette, was the founding collection of what
eventually became the Soldiers National Museum in Gettysburg.
Political opposites Bill Maher and Bill O’Reilly sarcastically embraced the news that they’re distantly related.
The
program often teaches me something new about world history. Through the
examination of celebrity chef Lydia Bastianich’s ancestry on Tuesday’s
show, for example, I learned about the post-World War II “Istrian
exodus,” in which Italians fled the Istrian Peninsula when it was taken
over by Yugoslavia.
I think the
most moving “Finding Your Roots” episode so far came a couple of weeks
ago, when actor and rapper LL Cool J learned that the grandparents he’d
spent a lot of time with weren’t his biological relatives.
Through DNA
testing and a serendipitous “hit” in a genealogy database, the actor’s
mother learned she had been adopted, and who her birth parents were.
LL
Cool J, a big boxing fan, found out his biological grandfather was
boxer Nathaniel Christy Lewis, brother of hall-of-fame pugilist John
Henry Lewis.
By the end of the episode, the actor and
his mother were laughing and talking with cousins they’d never known
they had. This story of these hidden roots unearthed was more dramatic
than any episode of “NCIS: Los Angeles,” the show on which LL Cool J
stars, could ever be.
I’m glad
“Finding Your Roots” wasn’t slowed down by the Ben Affleck controversy,
in which the actor apparently convinced the program not to have Gates
mention he had slave-owners in his family tree.
My
family is, I think, pretty typical in the way my parents passed down
the stories of our ancestors. There were proudly told stories of
hard-working immigrants opening their own store, along with sordid tales
of murder and mayhem in the Deep South that my father was hesitant to
share.
“Finding Your Roots”
helps its celebrity guests separate fact from fiction in their family
lore, and fascinates and entertains the rest of us in the process.
I only wish I had Gates’ access to archivists and scientists, to fuel my family’s own, continuing genealogical journey.
