Ancestry dot com commercial

Cafe Society
1

<I think the santa commercial is really cute>

So there is this black guy who goes on to check, and he is nervous because he thinks he will find slavery in his background, but he is thrilled because great2 grandfather was born a slave and died a businessman.

Would he be just as happy to find that his great grandfather was an immigrant from Cuba that was visibly mostly black? A servant brought back from one of our ambassador’s family’s stint of duty in Losetho and not previously a slave?

Why does it matter how someone got here, as long as they are here now?

2

My assumption was that he was worried he would only find unhappy stories in the history, so perhaps there was some “why bother?” about searching the site. Sort of like, “well, they were all slaves or close enough, why should I sign up just to see how young they died or if they were shot or lynched or something.”

Instead, he found a good story. An ancestor who came out of slavery and went into business, and it made him happy to see his family’s own little bit of the American dream that far back, realized by a man born into slavery.

3

nm

4

There’s one in which a women proclaims herself the family detective. Umm, no, you are just some lady who paid a fee to look at online information.

5

Real detectives have been doing that for decades. Lexis/Nexis and services like it are bread and butter for investigators.

6

I have never understood the appeal anyway, I honestly don’t care. My father says he had a native american grandmother, its probably true based on his and my own appearance but I don’t really care.

I have run into people who believe in some kind of hereditary magic or something, like finding out these things will tell them something about their own identity.

7

Are you asking about why a black person would care about family history as opposed to anyone else? To those of us that are interested in our own genealogy, it is perfectly obvious why anyone would. No one simply shows up in the present day to join hands with our fellow time compatriots with no other context. Traditions, stories, oddities, and unexplained possessions get passed down through families over time even if you aren’t aware they are even there until you uncover the reason behind them. Some people really don’t get why anyone is interested in genealogy and I respect the viewpoint but find it quite odd and cold. Now, if you are wondering why black people shouldn’t care but it is OK for Jews or Italians, there is another word for that.

8

Are you asking about why a black person would care about family history as opposed to anyone else? To those of us that are interested in our own genealogy, it is perfectly obvious why anyone would. No one simply shows up in the present day to join hands with our fellow time compatriots with no other context. Traditions, stories, oddities, and unexplained possessions get passed down through families over time even if you aren’t aware they are even there. Some people really don’t get why anyone is interested in genealogy and I respect the viewpoint but find it quite odd and cold. Some people aren’t interested in any history and genealogy is just history on a smaller, more personal scale. Now, if you are wondering why black people shouldn’t care but it is OK for Jews or Italians, there is another word for that. Would you criticize a Jewish person for wanting to know what happened to their family during WWII?

9

Also, can’t they just cherry-pick some good hits? I mean, by the time you get to great, great grandparents, doesn’t everyone have 16 of those? Plus, the commercial where the lady thinks she’s lucky because her grandparent was the only one of some huge number to survive. So? That’s not lucky. That’s how life works. It’s written by the winners. You only see the end result.

10

My mother’s bio dad was an actual nazi, no joke. Some people I tell this to act as if I should feel bad about this fact or something or as if it reflects on me. Maybe it soured my opinion but I don’t feel anything about a dead guy I never met, I actually stopped telling people about it.

11

People like stories about overcoming adversity.

12

It is odd that people think who their ancestors were matters to who they are today. I’m pretty sure my family all came from peasant stock in Poland. Both grandfathers were manual laborers, both grandmothers were homemakers. I think the fact that I became an engineer doesn’t so much say anything about my family as it does about society. I had opportunities they didn’t have, and I made choices that they may not have made. So?

I’m curious about the family before they emigrated in the early 1900s, but I doubt I’ll ever find out anything, and even if I did, it’d be nothing more than small talk. I think it’s safe to say that the ancestry ads don’t speak to me.

13

It’s history on a personal level. I got geneological info - names, dates, places - from a researcher that goes back over a dozen generations on my mom’s side of the family. What I learned is that they stayed in the same two tiny districts for hundreds if years until a few of them decided to move to the US. :smack:

My mom was thrilled to get the info, and it’ll help those of our relatives who are researching. I don’t begrudge them the interest.

14

That’s interesting. What country was this? Also, were these districts densly populated?

I think one thing a lot of people using Ancestry.com are looking for is any famous or historical figures in their family trees. In my research, in terms of people whom I’m directly related to, I did find about this guy who is a footnote historical figure in English history. He’s also proof there is sort of a tradition of antipathy toward organized religion in at least my father’s side of the family.

15

That commercial irks me a bit too, for much the same reason that the U.S. version of the show Who Do You Think You Are? does.* I can’t stand forced drama; Sarah Jessica Parker crying because a distant ancestor was involved in the Salem Witch trials and terrified to look at the records because she might be an accuser (she wasn’t she was an accused- eventually freed), or Spike Lee acting as if slavery was something he’d never heard of until that program.

I have an on-again/off-again passion for genealogy; I anticipate it clicking on again in a couple of months when the 1940 Census records are released. I love genealogy because it’s a great way to study history on a personal level- it’s your clew into many famous and not so famous (and no so famous but monumentally affective) world events.

I’m guessing the guy on the commercial is an actor, probably one hired to appeal to black demographics, because I really can’t imagine anyone with a serious interest in the subject would say that. And one of the first things you need to learn when you get interested in genealogy is that you’re not going to find out you’re a descendant of Harriet Tubman through her fling with Custer- you’re going to find out you’re a descendant of a lot of common folk, and some lines are going to be untraceable.

If I were a black American I would take for granted some of my ancestors were slaves. It would be interesting, however, to find out where they were slaves and what records you can find of them in slavery. (I’ve helped some black colleagues and students do genealogy and it’s amazing how much info you can find by googling the phrase “IN the name of God amen” and their ancestor’s name- slaves weren’t named in the Census but, being extremely valuable property, they were very often mentioned by name in wills and that’s one of the best places to find them.)

But no matter what color you are, accept for granted there are bad things back there. It’s pretty much a given that by 21st century standards your ancestors were racist and ignorant, that many were probably illiterate, died indigent, had lots of kids who died in childhood, and both committed and suffered from any number of injustices.

I am guessing that most people’s mega-picture genealogy experience is like mine:

*A few rich ancestors, maybe even powerful on the local level, who left copious records
*A lot more “just getting by” ancestors, mostly farmers (if you’re from NYC or another major metropolis substitute ‘laborers’ for farmers and it’s probably still true) whose surviving records are lots of mundane stuff (property purchase, tax, etc.) with occasional bits of bad news (fire, evictions, forced sale, etc.)
*For every ancestor who has an interesting story and is mentioned in newspapers or important documents of their day, lots of ancestors who are ultimately just names, dates, and places and occasional records (i.e. you know the names of their kids, how much their property was worth, whether they owned slaves or went to court, but nothing as to whether they were naughty or nice/stupid or bright/beloved or hated by those who knew them/etc.
*A few interesting riddles (e.g. for me “He lived in southern Virginia from 1690-1732, and in the Carolinas from 1740-1765, but from 1734-1738 he’s in what’s now Maine- and it’s definitely him- why?” or “He only lived to be 49 but he married 6 times? Damn… was he the inspiration for Bluebeard or was he just naturally drawn to women who were small hipped hemophiliac consumptives or, what exactly?”
*Some lines that are well documented (often courtesy of distant cousins who’ve researched them) and painlessly researchable back into the 16th century or before, and others who seem to have emerged fully grown and fertile from a fog near Baltimore on July 30, 1802 with no evidence of how they got there or what they were doing there.
*A few finds that remind you why you got into this (for me, learning what tribe my Native American ancestors were from [Tutelo-Saponi], or that I had a slave ancestor whose descendants registered as mulatto for several generations until one moved to Alabama and ‘became’ white, or that one of my ancestors was the legal guardian of Andrew Jackson [and was a planter/judge/justice-of-the-peace/Indian fighter- all things Jackson became, which might not be total coincidence)
*Learning about groups of people you’ve heard of but never knew that much about til now (the Scots-Irish- really interesting group, or the Saponi mentioned above- a Sioux tribe in the Carolinas [don’t you know that several generations of Saponi men got bitched out over that one by their wives? ‘Oh, I can smell the buffalo from here’ he says, just turn east, and next thing you know we’re surrounded by freaking Cherokees because he wouldn’t ask directions’"
*I’ve never seen the U.K. verson, so I don’t know if it’s the same in the forced drama department.

16

The Netherlands, so I should have said “provinces,” but it’s even worse than it sounds in that most stayed in the same few towns as well. One half were from the same couple towns in one province, and the other branch from a couple towns in the province next to it, going back anywhere from 5-13 or so generations in each line of the ancestry. They wouldn’t have met except that they hopped on ships to America in the mid-1800s, even though they lived maybe 30 miles apart at most, as had their families for centuries prior. Mom’s got the list, maybe they can figure out if those ancestors were on same ship or if they simply ended up in the same new village in America, because they didn’t move once they settled, either! (I nearly yelled when I found a single person born in Germany listed amongst all the so very similar entries.)

17

That’s more than some of the people around here can say.

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I’m not even like my own brother or Father, let alone any of my ancestors who I never even met. I have no idea why I have the interests or talents that I do, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t due to my great great great grandmother (my moral character stems mostly from my parents and upbringing, though).

19

Do you realize that one day there will be an ancestry dot com commercial wherein her great-great-grandaughter proclaims herself the descendant of some lady who paid a fee to look at online information? That her great-great grandaughter was one of the first to use ancestry dot com? That her great-great grandaughter was one of the “pioneers of the Internet”? :rolleyes:

20

You’re essentially asking why the past matters.