I haven’t watched many of them but you guys should check out the original Uk version episode featuring Kim Catrall -going back to her aunties in Liverpool . England - not only does she come across a lovely person (I 'm not a SITC fan BTW) the knowledge uncovered about her grandfather is rather disturbing
I won’t link to it but don’t read her wiki bio if you plan to watch the programme. It’s currently still on Youtube I just checked
Part 1 here:
Any examples?
Something surprising to me was my paternal grandmother’s family. I knew that they’re all nuts- my grandmother was one of ten children of whom 8 spent time in psychiatric facilities. True story: my grandmother was a pyromaniac who dressed liked a bag lady (in spite of having a masters degree in chemistry from the 1920s) and was so cheap she went to funerals of people she didn’t know to get free food- and she was one of the sane ones!
Looking up her family history you see that many of them were like her: brilliant but insane. In an 1850 will by her great-grandfather he makes provisions for three middle aged insane sons (basically a house and two slaves to see to their needs). One of her earlier ancestors was kicked out of Virginia for dueling over trivial matters, and another was a leader in the “Indians are really Israelites” movement (which began more than a century before The Book of Mormon; they’re by far the most distinguished of my ancestors but also the nuttiest.
Another interesting thing is that my grandmother’s father, who died long before I was born, was (and I already knew this) a respected- and crazy- doctor. Reading about his background was interesting. Three known contributing factors to mental problems include genetics, inbreeding, and a traumatic childhood: he had three insane uncles, his parents were first cousins (and their parents had been related as well), and he was born during the Civil War and grew up during that and Reconstruction. Perfect trifecta!
My father (a historian and consultant who dealt with them a lot) nicknamed the DAR the “God DAM-DAR”. The most irksome thing about them is most of the ones I’ve helped don’t really give a damn about history; you can tell them “oh, this is cool, your ancestor was at the Battle of King’s Mountain… an interesting thing about that battle is that… [blah blah]” and they couldn’t care less, all they care about is that it qualifies them for an exclusive club.
I qualify for the Sons of Confederate Veterans but would never join because- well, for starters, I have issues with groups that exclude people based on distant ancestry, but more importantly- they’ve been taken over by the Death Eaters. They used to be- not even ten years ago- basically a male version of the DAR, now they’re a white supremacy group. Many lifelong members have dropped out and founded new groups. I’ve crossed swords recently (within the past week in fact) with several SCV members (especially a rich as hell 75 year old fart who’s so obsessed with Jefferson Davis he owns two houses associated witht he guy) for making (completely valid) criticisms of revisionistic DVD and books produced by their members on Amazon and other websites. (And I actually said the DVD had good production values and a lot of quality information, which was true- it just happens to not so much gloss over as completely omit anything bad about its subjects.) These people are scary.
I hear you. My research has linked me to Mayflower travelers, Revolutionary War vets and Civil War vets, which would qualify my family for all manner of blueblood and DAR-SAR, blahblahblah. None of which interests me. I’ve told my kids about them, but it’s up to them if they want to become members. Most of those outfits are too busy being snobs about something that has little meaning for my liking.
I’ve been watching this, and caught the Gates show as well.
The Gates show was much better, but this one has been too bad. I do wish they would cut the drama a bit though, the Kudrow show has so far been the best.
I love doing my genealogy too, been at it for two years or so. Luckily for me almost all of my father’s side come from Maryland so I can do a lot of local research. I’ve also noticed that Maryland has started to put land records and such online as well. I like being able to find someone new too, I was able to connect a father to his daughter by a will. I pulled the will on a lark not thinking they were related and was happy to see they were. I like doing the research, I just wish I had more time.
I’ve seen some episodes of the Gates show. Oprah’s was impressive: every generation of her family had somebody who had given land or money to build a school, even her poor relatives. (Of course they’re picking and choosing; since everybody has 16 g-g-grandparents and 32 g-g-g-grandparents etc. (or, in Alabama, thereabouts) everybody’s going to have quite a few who were just getting by or were else too greedy or whatever, but it’s still interesting they found somebody in all generations who did.)
Morgan Freeman’s was also interesting. He knew he had a white great-grandfather and he knew the man’s name, but always assumed it was a non-loving relationship since it began under slavery. What he was surprised to learn was that his white great-grandfather (or great-great- I don’t remember how many generations it was) and his black born-in-slavery great-grandmother apparently lived in a monogamous relationship for more than 50 years, he left his property to their children (who went by his surname) and they’re buried together; this was for all intents and purposes a marriage between two people who couldn’t legally marry. (This type of relationship was more common than you might think; in her memoir Rosa Parks told about her great-great-grandfather, a Scots Irish indentured servant who lied about his race [claiming he was a mulatto “from the islands” in order to allow for his accent] so that he could marry the freed slave with whom he had many children- one of the few men ever to cross the color line going “in reverse” [I say in reverse because going from white to black lost you rights in Alabama whereas black to white gained them].)
Henry L. Gates also found out that the cop who arrested him last year in the fustercluck incident involving the reported “break in” at his house is a relative; they both descend from an Irish farmer who emigrated to Massachusetts in the 17th century.
Gates stumbled into some controversy a few years when he fact-checked and published some criticism of his former friend, the legendary “father of 20th century genealogy” Alex Haley. It’s a fascinating story that would make a great “inspired by true events” type play since it involves an icon, a groundbreaking world famous work, friendship, race, fanaticism, truth, etc…
Alex Haley had always freely admitted that Roots was more novel than non-fiction- nobody except perhaps royalty can find enough about their great-great-great-grandparents to write a fact based narrative of any length- he had claimed the family tree/genealogical research was good and that he’d tracked his family back to Africa. Well, how knowingly or unknowingly is up for debate, but the short version is that Haley was either a not very good as a genealogist or he outright lied on parts of his research. [Wiki gives a short accountbut there were more critics than just the Mills’ and those mentioned here.]
Haley had always had critics in his lifetime who claimed shoddy research but soon after his death he was lambasted for fraudulent claims. Gates, who had always liked Haley and who had assigned Roots in his classes and hailed it as a work of extreme importance, undertook fact checking and announced that the allegations were true- even the supposed non-fiction information in Roots is far more fictional than non. Some praised Gates for this- that his integrity as a historian outweighed his personal prejudices for a friend and a seminal work- while others accused him of bandwagoning and backstabbing. Personally I admire him for it since as a historian confronted with overwhelming evidence of poor research, and knowing that to admit it would be to tarnish an icon and give Lost Cause types who love any reason to discredit the notion slaves weren’t just like beloved members of the family [who you could rape, sell, or work to death] he still said “the evidence is that Alex either lied or was incompetent as a historian”.
What’s interesting is that the re-release of Roots has a long foreward that addresses the controversy head on and doesn’t try to exonerate or excuse the research- also addresses the plagiarism lawsuits and other controversies- but says “it’s still good, even if it’s fiction it’s still important as many a truth is told in fiction, like it for what it is”, which I think is by far the best way to handle it.
David Tennant was on season 3 of the UK version. His real name is David McDonald and he explores the Scottish and Irish sides of his family.
The UK version is pretty good.
No, that record is jointly held by the Dakotas, which have an average of about 12,000 people per county. Georgia is not even the best in the southeast of the US: West Virginia has 33,000 per county; Kentucky and Mississippi have 36,000 per county. George isn’t even close, with 62,000 per county.
(Source: “Number of county equivalents per state” in the Wikipedia article on “County (United States)”)
Specifically, why we came over here was because an ancestor was an irish baron of the same last name… and his son got in enough of a pissing contest to go fight under Cromwell. Now, you can imagine exactly how well that went over at the end. So he fled here so hard that he went under an assumed name on the ship. (We think. We know when he left, we know when he arrived, there were three ships possible, but he’s not listed as a passenger on any of them.)
Later repeated with the Revolutionary War (son was a Continental Soldier), and various other non-bloody disagreements.
Before that… I forget the specifics, but basically, Irish Kings are… well, you know. Guys who rule a town or county. There was a lot of fightin. Little of which makes sense if you don’t know the history and geography, which I’m weak on.
As far as left behind… well. My family has a problem with drinking. And anger. And anger when drinking. I’ve told this story before, but when my dad was going to Ireland on vacation, he selected a ruined castle tour as part of the package. And he started researching the castles. Turns out that the… call it nephew of the guy who split kind of was responsible for ruining it. See, he got drunk. And burnt it down.
With his mother-in-law inside.
All we could say was, ‘Yeah, that’s family there.’
More recently, speaking of mormons, a cousin blew off her husband and the family to go follow Joseph Smith. Wound up being a fairly big deal, head of the relief society and all that. Possibly the last person to speak to Smith alive, if the story I heard wasn’t too garbled. There’s a bust of her in the capital building in SLC, and she wound up being a big correspondent with Susan B. Anthony. She was extremely pro-polygamy… and not in the least submissive. It’s pretty much the same urge, I figure, just translated a bit.
Do you have any more information on this movement. Their ideas sound kind of entertaining.
Seconding this, well worth a watch.
A few links:
My ancestor(links to the full text of his book)
Solomon Spalding (the big name in the field)
Mordecai Manuel Noah (a Portguese Jew who believed in the notion)
The Solomon Spalding Studies Website (yes, there is one)
I saw the Matthew Broderick episode tonight. He certainly had some exciting war time stuff in his family background.
I suspect the show hires genealogists to do a whole list of people’s families. Then pick the most interesting to appear on the show. Really, most folks have ancestors that lead quieter lives. Hearing that great-great-great granddad worked in a factory, and his son sold shoes doesn’t make exciting tv. They want relatives that fought in wars, held public office or did something special.
I wish they’d at least trace people back to when they emigrated. They only went back 3 generations with Broderick.
I only caught a glimpse in a bar’s TV. Did they make Matthew Broderick up to look like one of his ancestors, or has he really gotten that old?
I liked the Broderick episode. Obviously they are going to cherry pick the family tree to get a good story. Of all the hundreds of people in each person’s tree, it shouldn’t be too hard to find someone with an interesting story.
They spent pretty much a whole hour featuring ONE guy in Broderick’s family tree. That’s ONE guy on ONE side of the family.
Have they featured cousins and uncles and whatnot as a featured person on the show or do they only get into direct ancestors (grandfathers and grandmothers)? If they will allow featuring distant cousins and such, it shouldn’t be hard to pull some famous or interesting person into the tree. For example, my tree includes Barack Obama and Harry Truman if you stretch it into distant cousins, and I’ve read that Obama’s distant cousins include Bush and Cheney.
Lisa Kudrow met some more distant relatives in her episode.
It’s amazing what you can find if you look.
Obama is related to GW Bush & Cheney!
I could have sworn they were going to do Spike Lee this week- eh, whatever.
They should have done a two hour episode tracing the genealogy of Broderick and Parker’s children.
Bump.
Did anybody see last night’s Susan Sarandon episode? Definitely the best one yet. You also get the notion that Sarandon (who previously appeared on an English show about her Welsh genealogy) is really interested in the subject and, unlike Broderick/Parker/Shields actually was invested in some of the research and wasn’t completely passive. (I like that this one showed her and her son using city directories and microfilm- I wish they’d do more ‘how tos’ for beginning researchers.)
For those who didn’t see it it’s all dedicated to her search for her maternal grandmother who abandoned her children in the 1920s, saw them once afterwards in the 1930s and then completely disappeared. Spoilers below:
[spoiler]They knew granny was a bit of a wild child and was a barfly in the 1920s (may have worked at the Copacabana and in speakeasys during Prohibition) and they knew she was Italian and that was about it. Things they learned in this episode included:
-She was one of at least 10 children of Italian emigrants who lived in the slums of the Lower East Side and of those kids at least 7 died in early childhood. Her mother died when she was a girl as well. Her father was a statue maker (not a sculptor but a plasterer) who emigrated from Tuscany, was in his 50s when his daughter was born (this was evident from the research but not mentioned in the series- I think it would have been important that he was a 60 something widower with a wild young girl), and died so poor that he was buried in an unmarked grave in spite of the fact he was in the business of making busts and monuments.
More importantly, she got pregnant when she was 13 by their 19 year old neighbor and gave birth 3 months after the wedding (at which she lied about her age). She had two kids by the time she was 15- this explains a LOT about why she’d abandon her children.
She remarried at least twice- at least once bigamously (before her first husband divorced her) and lived until 1984 an hour from NYC. Her in-laws from the last marriage claim she was an outspoken but loyal housewife who claimed she gave Frank Sinatra his start (a claim probably made by 30,000 other people). They gave Sarandon the first pictures she’d ever seen of her other than a tiny laminated pic from the '20s and a distorted-funhouse-mirror pic from the 1930s; there’s a definite resemblance.
Sarandon commented “I wonder what she’d think if she knew her granddaughter became a famous actress” to which I wondered “You were a famous actress for years before she died- she very possibly did know” since Sarandon was interviewed a good bit and I’m sure her family was discussed in some of them, plus even if grandma was a sociopath general curiosity alone probably made her keep tabs on her kids somehow. More likely she wasn’t a sociopath- she was probably a scared 15-16 year old kid who just couldn’t take the pressure of two kids, poverty, and marriage to a guy she probably didn’t love (one who’d committed statuatory rape- even in the 1920s you’d think a 19 year old would think twice about a 13 year old) and had the memory of a mother who married young, gave birth all the time and died young and she didn’t want to do likewise.[/spoiler]
Good episode.