Who Do You Think You Are?

My grandmother got me hooked on genealogy at a young age. Before she passed away herself, we could be found roaming cemeteries, hanging out in county court houses, and diagramming family connections. It can be an all-consuming hobby if you allow it, but you're likely to learn more along the way than with most hobbies.

Recently NBC added "Who Do You Think You Are?" to their Friday evening lineup. Even if you're not a genealogy buff, you may enjoy this show. Each episode is based on a celebrity who is interested in learning more about their ancestry. For viewership, it necessarily focuses on the more interesting details of the star's research - jailed activists throughout Martin Sheen's family, a murder mystery in Marissa Tomei's, and a trip to Cameroon to reconnect with African ancestors for Blair Underwood.

But tonight's episode was one of the best I've seen so far. Reba McIntyre was the celebrity guest. She wanted to research who was the first of her family to come to America. She went home to Oklahoma to learn what she could from her mother about her maternal family - including the grandmother (Reba Brassfield) after whom she was named. This took her to Mississippi where a genealogist helped her track back to her 4th great grandfather who was a child in North Carolina during America's War of Independence. Her excitement over being the first in her family to track back this far turned to a bit of shock when she learned that this 4th great grandfather was also a slave owner; in fact, a slave trader.

Like Ms. McIntyre, genealogy tends to bring history to life for me. When I can see how my own ancestors fit into historical events those events become more meaningful to me. She understood slavery intellectually, but it became all too real to her when she realized her own family owned and traded slaves. My family took a northern route of migration - New York, Ohio, and Illinois before reaching Iowa - and one of my own great grandfathers (five or six generations back) fought for the North in the Civil War. I could understand the basic concepts and principles behind the Civil War, but it became more "real" to me when I could read letters sent home from those who fought.

Though clearly upset by the news of slave ownership in her family, Ms. McIntyre was not deterred from her goal of finding her first ancestor to come to America. In an interesting twist, her 6th great grandfather came over from England as an indentured servant at the young age of 9 or 10. Her questions then turned to "How could a little boy make that voyage alone? Where were his parents?" To summarize an already long story, she found that the boy's mother had died a couple of years prior and his father had little means for supporting the family. In that context, the father made the courageous, but gut-wrenching, decision to send his son to America to provide him with his best chance for a better life. Hard as the life of an indentured servant would be, he managed to become a landowner and was the common ancestor for the Brassfield family in the U.S. (For the rest of the details you can check out the episode at the link above.)

An aside: A wry smile escaped me when listening to the very "southern" Ms. McIntyre visiting with one very English gentlemen. What would her career have been like had her family retained its British dialect? Come to think of it, what would the Beatles have sounded like with a shared drawl? Just the thought made me laugh.

So, who do you think you are? Do you know which of your ancestors was the first to arrive in America? And what brought them here? If you take some time to dig, you'll most certainly find some interesting history. If you'd rather just see celebrities dig into their past, check out "Who Do You Think You Are?" on NBC Friday evenings.