subject: Who Do You Presume You Could Be? [print this page] Even thought this program just aired about ten times on NBC in 2011, it brought a lot of awareness to ancestry and people tracing and learning their ancestry. Stars like Matthew Broderick, Tim McGraw, Kim Cattrall, Lionel Ritchie, Rosie ODonnell, Ashley Judd, Vanessa Williams, Gwyneth Paltrow, Steve Buscemi, and Emmitt Smith participated in the show and traveled all over the world to learn more about where their family had come from.
On the program, it didnt show much about how to personally research and watch your ancestors but it did give you a glimpse into how it is done. These stars worked with researchers and did a little bit of research themselves. They were also able to meet distant kin, visit most homes their forebears lived in, and at the end of the show, they knew a little more about who a certain family member was and what they had accomplished in their life.
Not only was this helpful for those actors and actresses that took part in in the show but also for viewers at home. Viewers saw how amazing understanding about the past can be and it brought questions into their mind about where does my family come from, what did they do, and do I have certain characteristics or beliefs that have been transferred through many generations? By undertaking research individuals can begin to understand much more about not only themselves and maybe why their family is the style it is.
For example, in the tv show with Kim Cattrall - Kim wanted to learn more about her grandfather who had left behind his wife and 3 daughters in England in the hopes that she would understand why. After journeying to England, what she found out was that he had left his family and relocated to another place where he had remarried and brought up another family and even moved to Australia with them. Even though Kim decided not to go to Australia to get together with members of her grandfathers second family she returned to Canada to tell her mother and aunts about what her look had produced. The search didn't really resolve her questions of why her grandfather had left behind the family, but she was pleased for the chance she had to meet a little bit of of her distant kin.
Usually, when you're doing family history you will learn about difficult working kin and you most likely wont uncover any skeletons still hanging in the closet. Regardless, there is always that possibility. Thus make for the unexpected and remember if you're undertaking your family history and you start to have a difficult time finding more info or if you get frustrated with one individual dont give up on the entire project, just move on and start researching and learning about a different ancestor.
