Does Sharon Osbourne have American descendancy? | FULL EPISODE | #WDYTYA

it was always a mystery to me I mean I didn't know anything I mean I didn't even think that my grandmother was married or my mom had like a stable dad in her life so this is like I think that he can't have been on the scene but what happened to him I don't know so that's my granddaddy yeah what did you get up to mister yes I and I think this lady is ra and I think that might be Dolly's sister because she had a sister called Ira her sister her sister I think I never knew that Dolly even had a sister no she would have been my great aunt yes I wonder what happened to her no idea yeah Dolly come on come on come on come on come on media personality Sharon Osborne divides her time between her homes in Los Angeles where she lives with her husband Rockstar Aussie Osborne a Sharon over here and England the country she was born [Music] in this is me and my mother at our home in Brixton I lived in Brixton for the first I think 10 or 11 years of my life my mother was a dancer my father was an agent in the music business very ambitious he became a manager and then he opened a record label he was like a workaholic I had a very interesting childhood my brother and I just had a lot of freedom I used to run wild we didn't have that sort of structure where you know Mommy takes you to school and Mommy's there waiting for you and you come home and you have something nice eat and then you do your homework and a nice little bath and bed it wasn't that way after she left school Sharon joined her father in the music business I think I'm hardworking and I got that work ethic from my parents definitely you know if you ever wanted anything you had to work for it come on Sharon knows about her father's roots in Manchester's Jewish Community but very little about her mother's side of the family my whole life I just thought they're all Irish but I don't know if that's really true the little bits I do know my grandmother was called Doris and she was known as Dolly she was a choreographer dancer and worked a lot in bordille as a child Dolly frightened me she had white white hair and she would put a lot of red lipstick around her mouth and it would always be on her false teeth I always thought she looked like a witch I had no idea of my grandfather's name just don't know it there weren't any pictures and she would never speak of him it's very exciting to kind of find out how it all started what am I connected to you know what are my roots you know probably I came from load of old witches that were burnt at the Stak or something that would be fabulous I just don't [Music] know I'm waiting for my niece Gina to arrive I think she'll be able to help fill in all the gaps that we have she knows a lot more than I do hello so good to see you come on Sharon's niece Gina has always taken an interest in the family history and she's brought along some memorabilia do you know who that is M that's your mother hope that's hope yes oh my Lord wow what year would this have been I don't know oh it says on the back there you go Southampton 1935 oh my Lord and look at the name of the song or the ACT come over here come over here it's quite a sultry picture as well isn't it I definitely got her legs me too gee thanks a lot hope and this one yeah so this is Dolly your grandmother your mother's mother and who is that I think that is Dolly's husband Arthur James Shaw your grandfather wow there there he is it was always a mystery to me I mean I didn't know anything I mean I didn't even think that my grandmother was married or my mom had like a stable dad in her life so this is like I think that he can't have been on the scene but what happened to him I don't know so that's my granddaddy yeah what did you get up to mister yes I really and I think this lady is IRA and I think that might be Dolly's sister because she had a sister called Ira her sister her sister I think I never knew that Dolly even had a sister no she would have been my great aunt yes I wonder what happened to her I no idea yeah I don't know and they were called Houston Houston Houston Trio I never heard the name H it's not catchy is it and if you look here this is the stage newspaper from March 1912 and it lists the renowned Houston Trio um an act that is always working oh wow and they seem to repeat the lines a lot which quite funny Houston's Trio the greatest novelty vocal and dance a in Ville I wonder what the novelty was to the ACT yes it looks like it's a bit of a comedy turn doesn't it yeah it does like he's being very naughty cuz they're shaking their finger at him yes they're telling him off aren't they yeah they were going to be performing in Darwin sford and Durham must have been a hard life I think fun but no um sense of um home no sense of home no sense of family no no because you're always on the Move listen you saw with my mom and dad coming going there's no sense of no of security and then this is their marriage certificate Arthur James Shaw so your grandfather and Doris armill Dolly your grandmother they're both listed as musical artists what date they married in 1915 and the first world war had started the year before so that could explain why he wasn't on the scene he might have been killed in the war yeah he could have been he could have been did you go into the war what happened to you mister right yeah so I never even knew that my grandmother had a sister and this is the first time I've ever seen a picture of my grandfather Arthur James sure they look like a very sassy Trio to me it's nice cuz it goes to prove that my suspicions are all wrong and you know I go right to the edge it's like right she was never married she you know and here she is with her husband my grandfather but um I'd still like to know what actually happened to him and why nobody ever spoke of him Sharon's grandmother Dolly performed in a music hall act with her sister Ira Sharon's great aunt as well as with the man she married in 1915 Sharon's grandfather Arthur James Shaw who went by the name of James to see if James was called up as a soldier Sharon is checking the British Army service [Music] records here we go he was in the Royal artillery ah what is this so this is his enlistment papers Mr James Shaw and his number was 11 12235 are you a British subject yes what is your age 27 and 2 months what is your trade of calling musical artist are you married yes rank driver he had very nice handwriting oh my Lord he was very short height 5' 5 and a half so he'd signed up before he got hold on so he signed up the year he got married or before he got married no after because they got married in July 1915 and he signed up in October so really they weren't get along for he he absolutely went to war particulars as to children so he had hope my mother and it gives the date of birth 12th of April 1916 the military history sheet so one month before my mother was born he was sent across to the Mediterranean ended up in Egypt he returned home in 1919 so he was gone three years that's a long time but he survived it he came home it must have been tough for my grandmother I mean he's off a sub godforsaken place in the middle of a war must have been very hard just to get by every [Music] week Sharon wants to know how her grandmother Dolly coped left to look after her newborn baby Sharon's mother hope I'm so interested to join up all the dots I wonder what happened to Grandma I just instinctively feel that she must have kept working that was the only way she could have survived [Music] by the time of the first world war music hall had become known as variety theater a program of Acts featuring singers acrobats jugglers and dancers it was the most popular form of entertainment at the time and elegant new theaters sprung up across Britain Sharon has come to one one of the handful of venues still preserved from that period in tumbridge Worlds it's been converted into a pub she's meeting historian Dr Caroline Radcliffe hi Caroline hi Sharon how are you lovely to meet you what a wonderful place we're in well we're standing on the stage of the tumbridge Well's opera house and it's not the sort of Opera House you think of as performing grand opera it was built more as a variety theater at the beginning of of the last century and just over a hundred years ago at Christmas in 1917 your grandmother and her sister were performing on this stage wow unbelievable and I'll tell you a bit more about it if we go up to the Dress circle come on let's go so when your grandfather went off to the Great War Dolly and Ira her sister were left behind so the Houston Trio couldn't function anymore so they went and joined the philas got 4 it was Phil who ran the group and then the three women so Ira Doris Dolly and one other woman so we've managed to find a program from Eve 1917 the Phil Ascot for the famous novelty dancers introducing the English Pony Trot it a pony Trot it was um a novelty dance and it was really modern at the time and I think this is an amazing photo of your grandmother and her sister there's Dolly with the girls wow it's wild it is now amazingly we've managed to find a little bit of film that it doesn't show your grandmother unfortunately but it shows a troop of dancers doing the pony Trot so you get an idea of the kind of liveliness and and energy that went into it oh yes yes yes I'm loving it I absolutely love it wow they must have been knacked after this that's like wild for those times animal dances like the pony Trot were all the rage at the start of the 20th century and there were many of them including the grizzly bear bunny hug and even the Turkey Trot and it wasn't just the ballroom dancing purists they offended these sorts of very modern novelty dances they they were accused of being a little bit edgy yeah little bit risky and the Pope in particular condemned the Turkey Trot so I don't know what he would thought thought about the pony TRS I'm sure he wouldn't have liked it I think they must have really added to to that you know escapism from worrying about the war and everything that was happening it was exciting and and it was what all the young people wanted to be watching it's just amazing so they must have been doing this all through the war your grandmother had a daughter by this time hope my mother so she had look after the baby they couldn't stop working do you know how old they were what the difference was between Dolly and her sister Ira yeah Ira would have been 17 and Dolly was 25 of 26 um so dolly was obviously the one who took charge when they were traveling and sort of chaperoned her younger sister and they were living together as well they're all registered at the same address so they must have been so close so this the last thing that I've got to show you and This concerns Ira death certificate oh she died on the 9th of November 1918 wow she was 18 oh my God tuberculosis and it said here that she was 2 years into it so she was clearly ill all the time she was performing theaters were a place where illnesses did get spread yeah all put together in dressing rooms and oh my Lord she must have suffered so much my my grandmother was present at her sister's death eoline in um Brixton that must have been absolutely awful to be there and see like an 18-year-old die how terribly terribly sad in the back of my mind I suppose I was fearing that for her because there was never any any any any mention of her ever terrible at the time Ira died tuberculosis was one of the deadliest diseases in the world highly contagious and spread through the air it had killed hundreds of millions of people just 3 years after Ira's death in 1921 a vaccine was introduced and given to Children which would help curb the spread of the disease I knew my grandmother not well cuz I was too young to know her well but I have a whole new respect for her as a woman and what she did for those years on the road and you know dealing with her sister's death and the birth of my mother and it's like I don't know how she did it all you know her husband was away in Egypt this woman was a hard worker a very very strong woman I don't know how she went on after she lost her sister and even though she's gone years and years ago it's still [Music] um it matters to me the way I thought of her and um my impressions of her from a child to now were totally [Music] wrong after the first world war dolly was reunited with her husband Sharon's grandfather James shaww James returned home to live with his wife and their daughter hope Sharon's mother at 29 Acre Lane in brickton South London Sharon's trying to find the house she remembers seeing as a child not where Tes goes is oh you're joking that is so depressing oh what a [Music] shame Sharon's grandmother's house at AC Lane and the buildings next door were demolished in the 1970s we used to come up and down here all the time and whenever we were on the bus cuz we went everywhere by bus my mom would always point out the house you know that was a big house like that nothing stays the same though does it while they were in aain Dolly and James had a son Sharon's Uncle who was born in [Music] 1920 Sharon is meeting social historian Dr Kate Bradley to find out about her family's life in Brixton Sharon I have got some documents to show you i' like to start with a photograph wow my grandmother my mother and my uncle it's actually one of the nicest pictures I've seen of my grandmother where she looks quite soft and I love the way that my mother is holding on to her her mother it's a very warm photograph it is my mom looks very sweet in there too wow so this is an extract from one of the South London newspapers mhm what year was this this is 1929 a Brixton incident mother and daughter charged child takes the blame oh my Lord mayel Shaw 35 a variety artist of aalan brick but who is this this is your grandmother mael yes she seems to be calling herself mael here whether it was a name she came up with when she'd been arrested or whether she was using a slightly different name at that time probably cuz she was arrested yeah Doris Dolly mael however um your mother's name hope yes is correct Mabel Shaw 35 and hope Shaw 12 were charged before Mr Harold McKenna at lambus Police Court being concerned together in stealing two pairs of stockings and other articles valued at 8 Shillings and4 they pleaded guilty unbelievable wow must have been pretty desperate to do that when they were stopped the girl exclaimed I will take all the blame if you will let Mommy go oh my God that is just heartbreaking a detective officer said Mrs Shaw was separated from her husband and had an aged mother to support she was a variety artist but had been out of employment on and off for five or six months talking here about being out of work and separated yeah yeah so to have two kids a husband gone it must have been really hard yeah at the time that Sharon's grandmother and mother were caught stealing in 1929 they were no longer living with James Shaw Sharon's grandfather oh it's like I feel a pain in my heart you know looking up my mom's little face in this photo she's just such a sweet innocent little thing holding on to her mom really tight and she must have had one hell of a childhood with no father her mother was working so growing up and not having the comfort of your parents my heart really does break for her and it gives me a sense of why she was the way she was after they were arrested Dolly and hope were taken to the Police Court in Lambeth today the court has become a Buddhist and meditation center but much of the original building has been [Music] preserved oh my Lord they've still got the original doors too yeah wow there are a couple of things I'd like to show you if we go inside this cell here okay the first thing I'd like to show you is the jailers index this is for December 1929 this kind of is the list of the people who' come through the cells on their way to kind of going to court and down here we can find May or Dolly and hope Mabel's 35 Hope is 13 and they were arrested on the 12th of December and it was for stealing stockings Etc I wonder if they were stealing for Christmas gifts I don't know quite possibly yeah would they have been brought in here yes were they kept overnight do you know um I don't know for sure I think it's quite like ly because we do know that they saw the Magistrate on a Monday and we know they're arrested on a Saturday and the fact that they're on this suggests that they were here from Saturday night through to Monday morning you'd just be traumatized wouldn't you stuck in here as a little kid yeah and what is this this is the 1939 register this is going forward about 10 years which is similar to a census of everybody in the country shortly after the outbreak of the second world war and it was used to gather information on the population for things like generating ID cards and ration books and we can find Doris here mhm she's here oh she was back to Doris now back to Doris mhm here she is and if we read along she's a petrol can filler that was her job yes during the war yeah okay and a designated heavy worker what does heavy worker mean it meant that she was doing heavy industrial work okay and she would have got more rations as well really mhm for doing the manual work yeah so we find out 10 years later my grandmother is working in the war effort filling petrol cans and it says W yeah so she's given her marital status here as a w which would mean Widow Widow yeah yes it is possible that she was indeed widowed it's also possible that she was trying to keep up appearances easier to say that you're a widow than to say you're separated or divorced particularly at particularly at this time yeah this is where grandfather falls off the Record um not been able to find a death certificate um or find him on the 1939 register so it's quite possible he was using a different name the thing is about my grandfather don't know where he went or where he was from initially I don't know he anything about his background at all and I put it in the ad James ad family members yeah Sharon is Keen to know more about her grandfather's past so she's searching the census [Music] online this is a census um from 1891 and I'm trying to trace Arthur James Shaw who was my grandfather I'm trying to trace his family to see where he actually came from because this man is like a ghost okay it says Arthur Shaw here head head of family Annie his wife so my great grandmother and father and then there's three sons Thomas John and Arthur James my grandfather okay so he was son of Arthur and where is he from hold on is that laner and his mom Annie came from this is really really hard to me make out to me it looks like America Fallen River wow America that's unbelievable my great grandmother his mom was American my God I'm really really shocked about this I would never ever have thought that I wonder what she was doing in England how on Earth did they meet how did Annie who here was 22 meet Arthur sha to be my great grandparent and where is Fallen River I've never heard of it to find out more about her American ancestry Sharon's traveled to the United States she's come to Newport New England to meet up with genealogist Dr Stephanie Cy who's been researching the life of Sharon's great grandmother [Music] Annie hi Stephanie hello hello hello how are you welcome to Newport oh it's my pleasure to be here so I'm going to tell you what I know about my great grandmother okay her name was Annie and she comes from a place called Fallen Rivers actually it's Fall River it must have been a the registar wrote down in the wrong information but it's actually called Fall River Fall River Massachusetts and she moved from here to England and she married um an Englishman and she had three sons and then one of her sons was my grandfather so you have Deep Roots I think in Fall River so this is your great-grandmother Annie yes and here is her birth certificate in Fall River Massachusetts she was born on August 17th 1868 and her name was Hannah yes so Annie nickname Hannah odonnell her father's name was Thomas odonnell and her daddy was Irish her mother's name was Katherine and her mother's birthplace was England yes a father who was Irish and a mother who was English and they immigrated to Fall River Massachusetts so is this surprising to you um it's all surprising to me I never thought that I was connected to anyone who actually was American so there you go you're American too wow Sharon has learned that Annie's father Sharon's great great grandfather Tom came to America from Ireland while her mother Catherine came from England in the middle of the 19th century crop failures and famines struck Europe causing death and suffering across many countries it was particularly bad in Ireland where around a million people died after a failure of the potato crop and this may have been why Thomas odonnell who had grown up during this period decided to go to America Thomas was part of a massive European migration to the United States but Sharon wants to know why Thomas and her great great grandmother Catherine chose to live in full River there's a travel guide that's called the tainter's guide that you could read to learn about the Glorious qualities of the communities which you were traveling to including Fall River Massachusetts so this was enticing people to come to Fall River its streets are handsomely adorned with shade trees adding much to the comfort and beauty of the place it says that Fall River contains many elegant residences still does and the sunset views from here are said to rival those in Italy if I read this I would come the way it was written about the sunsets and the trees and the Beautiful Rivers it's like oh it must have been like you know heaven right I can I can see people just you know closing their eyes and imagining what it would be like with anticipation yeah it says this important manufacturing City it was a major manufacturing center because of location because of temperature and a lot of people that wanted work yes the principal manufacturers are for cotton wool print iron and the making of various kinds of Machinery it was the largest cotton textile manufacturing center in the whole United States second only to Manchester England in the world yeah at uh at the height of fall Rivers's Mill industry there were 2,000 miles of cotton cloth produced today wow in the 1860s the American Industrial Revolution was in full swing textile mills were using modern production methods and the United States was rapidly transforming from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy Sharon's great great grandparents Thomas and Katherine were both hoping to benefit from this economic boom in full River now I have the marriage record of Annie's parents Thomas O'Donnell color white a 24 his first marriage the bride Katherine Dow white 22 her first marriage birthplace England and they were married by James Murphy Catholic priest in December 1867 and the parish is St Mary's parish which is located in Coro which is a neighborhood where uh predominantly Irish people live yeah and that's where the church is it's still there yes oh yes that's great I would love to see where they were married Sharon is on her way out of affluent Newport heading for for River just 20 M away it is nice to know my Heritage cuz I had no idea before nothing and it's nice to come too from um people that fight for a better way of life and that are brave enough to get on a boat and go to the unknown land and I I really admire that I think it's great strength of character Pioneers you know I love that and Fall River I'm really interested it sounds beautiful with the Italian like sunsets and trees everywhere I'm I'm really looking forward to going in the 19th century Fall River Grew From a collection of villages to become one of the most important cities in New England today there are still many relics of its industrial Past St Mary's Cathedral where Sharon's great great grandparents Thomas and Catherine were married was built in the 1850s in response to the growing number of Catholics coming to work in the [Music] city wow [Music] incredible [Music] [Music] that's so unbelievable that I would be here walking down the same aisle as my great great grandparents did that's incredible oh [Music] 4:00 that's nice I'd love some of those candles with the crosses on aie would love them look fabulous gosh they must have felt so special getting married here cuz it's so beautiful Sharon is looking at the records kept by St Mary's Cathedral this is the baptismal records started in 1861 she's been given printed copies of the certificates to see what else she can learn about her family so this is the birth certificate of Hannah Annie o Donald my great grandmother born 17th of August in 1868 then we have um April 19 1870 Margaret odonnell oh her sister she had a bubber sister oh all right what do we have here April 21 1871 Mary o o Donald so they had another little girl October the 3 1872 oh Lord one after the other John O oh Donald there's more April 1874 Elizabeth Donal oh at least she had a 2-year Gap okay April 1875 Thomas o Donnell God six kids can you imagine how hard that must have been whoa they must have been in and out of this church baptizing the kids every year another one and another one you know I knew people had big families in those days but um um wow to find out more about Thomas and Katherine O'Donnell's life here Sharon is visiting the full River historical [Music] society it's based in a former Mill owner's house she's meeting historian Dr Mora doti so I have something for you here and this is the city of Fall River Massachusetts 1877 yes at this point there's 45,000 people living there it was a small town that grew very fast in one year in 1872 6,000 people came wow so it's growing rapidly and a bit chaotically although we can see the Mills are well laid out yeah so many mills all around all of this here and leading all the way up to there and around here it's all industrial Mills yes it's unbelievable I I saw yesterday a a pamphlet on um Fall River and it was saying how the sunsets are really equal to what you see in Italy and it's like where everything is just factories and Industry and that's it just an industrial Town basically Fall River that's right they're burning coal and I'm not sure how much of the sunset one would have seen seen because even in the map you look at it and you see all the de coming out of all the factories so it all of that pamphlet was just a terrible enticement to get these people here with all of this industry going on there must have been a constant Cloud over here must have been terrible place to live you can see right here this is one of the first mills built the Troy Mill in 1813 you have some ancestors who work in this Mill in this one right there so it would have been my great great grandmother and grandfather yes so this is where Katherine and Thomas worked oh Troy Mill one of the oldest in the City full River Massachusetts and here I have the uh accounting books for the Troy Mill if you want to take a look at this page here here an OD Donal they called her Kate Kate yeah yeah if we look here that's how much she made for the month $17 and4 cent4 cents and if we look here your great great grandfather Thomas o Donell yes and we can see here what he earned for the month 3450 mhm even in those days this is this is low pay yeah Fall River was known for being one of the lowest paid wow and so what did my great great grandmother do she's working in the carding room where the raw cotton comes into the process and gets combed so that the fibers are all going in One Direction in order to be able to to spin it later carding was a vital part of the production in Cotton Mills men women and children operated large rolling machines which disentangled and cleaned the raw cotton in preparation for spinning the carding room was considered actually one of the worst uh to work in the mill there's more cotton fibers in the air it would have been all over the hair all over the clothes every day um then you breae these fibers in what an awful job and if there was fibers everywhere they must have gotten sick they must have got bad chest and coughs and everything from inhaling that all the time people um also um got uh something we call Brown lung or bosis is its technical term and it's just a cotton disease of just infecting your lungs over and over what a terrible place to come to when you're you've got dreams and you leave one country because it's so terribly hard there and you think you're going to go to a better place and you get here and it's just so bad did you have many women working in the mills in those days yes um there were a lot of women in America who worked um and in Fall River we see a lot of women and children are working it's really a family system here wow families made up a big part of the workforce in for River some of the children working there were as young as 6 years old this was in contrast to the cotton Mills in England where there were child labor acts restricting working hours and raising the age of employment to nine the mill workers were they given homes or not well that's an interesting question if we see here we have one column that is for rent mhm the Troy Mill required that its workers live in the housing owned by the Troy Mill with each uh apartment being about 18 square met so that's smaller than an average hotel room sure and they had six kids at the end of the day living like that so families and rows and rows of this and the first thing that one would have noticed walking into one of these tournaments would have been the stench yeah they were filthy they took very little care to build this housing because the city was growing so rapidly and they didn't take care for the sanitation so that bred disease yeah a lot of people who came from um Ireland and from England came here to Fall River thinking that it was the El Dorado you know that the streets would be paved with gold and they got here and they faced longer hours they faced uh harsher working conditions these machines are running faster than the machines that they had operated before and yet they're getting paid less money for all of that I think I'd have taken the next boat back people were asked that in the newspapers and they said we we can't leave we have no [Music] money I know that my great great grandmother and father had six children how did they survive all of this no money breathing in all this bad air and all they did was work it was a tough life yeah my great great grandparents Thomas and Katherine O'Donnell I mean what a place to end up been what a place the brochures said that it was a beautiful place to be and they come over here they give up their lives they give up their families and come to another land for a better life and they get here and it's just a hell ho horrible existence for young people that were enticed and then trapped basically they had six children one after the other and she was working pregnant it's just unbelievably hard it's just Unthinkable complete nightmare Sharon knows that her great grandmother Annie left America and ended up in England but what happened to Annie's younger siblings Margaret Mary Elizabeth Thomas and John [Music] Mora has been looking into this for Sharon I have some more records here city of Fall River it's a [Music] um certificate of death so Margaret o Donald died um on June 19 19 1870 cause of death convulsions oh my God two months she didn't even last longer than that and I have this another um record of death Mar odonnal age two months chera chera in Phantom what does that mean it's a term used for babies usually when they die with diarrhea oh my Lord to lose two babies in a year hideous I have another document oh Lord another um record of death Elizabeth a odonnell oh my God so 3 years later my great great grandmother loses another little girl and she lost her at six days and she died of weakness don't tell me another one oh my Lord July 6th 1875 and this was for thas o' Donell oh and he was um 3 months and 29 days old again weakness they're living in M's house what is that that was a poor house a poor house oh my God similar to a workhouse you know in in England here we go again and this is for John odonnell and Lord so she lost her Thomas on July 6 and then July 26 she lost John the same year and he died at 2 years old consumption oh my Lord consumption was the name used for tuberculosis in the 19th century it came from the idea that the body was being consumed as the sufferer wasted away and when Sharon's great-grandmother Annie's brothers and sisters died tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United [Music] States certificate of death and it was for Katherine odonnell she was 35 years old and she died March 3rd 1880 consumption my Lord what a life her lost five of her babies in work to death wow it's just unbelievable 35 is no age that poor little thing and those little babies can you imagine how heartbroken she must have been do we know what happened to her husband shortly after after her death um he and Annie went back to England and settled wow so we now know why Annie went to England it does suggest to me that she had a better start than the others Mother wasn't ill that she had enough nutrition at the beginning and probably a lot of luck but that she made it you know she made it and the others didn't yeah they were just you know people just wanting a better way of life that's all they were like Pioneers you know going off to a new world and then they come here and it's worse than what they left mhm terrible Mora has left Sharon with one final [Music] momentum wow a photograph of her great grandmother Annie the struggles that this young woman must have gone through just to you know stay alive is incredible she was at an age where she could remember her mother dying in a workhouse and her um brothers and sisters Dying God what she's experien what she had experienced in her life and then I just hope she found some happiness when she went back to the north of England and she obviously married and had three children and one of those children was my grandfather but all these women in the family suffered all of them my great great grandmother my grandmother my great great grandmother suffered terribly but they didn't give up and I don't really um I must have inherited that from [Music] Annie I never thought for one minute that I would have had an American great grandmother when we started this whole thing and I'm proud that my family came from nothing just trying to get some dignity in their lives just trying to just get by yeah that makes me [Music] proud

Channel: Who Do You Think You Are?

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Length: 57min 57sec (3477 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024