- I have no idea who that is
and why I'm upset about it. - Oh! (gasps)
What? - I feel like my roots
have been spread out and I'm reaching out into the past. ♪ (rock intro) ♪ - (FBE) Well, this time of year
tends to bring people together, and it usually means a lot of
family gatherings. - Mm-hmm. - (FBE) So today we've partnered
with Ancestry to take you on a special journey
through your family history. - Oh my God, I'm gonna cry.
(laughs) You better get me tissues. - Okay, so the patralineage
of my family tree is like missing. There's a lot to my history
that I don't know about. - (FBE) So our friends
over at Ancestry were actually able to find
some pictures of your ancestors that you may have never
seen before. - Huh, okay, sick! - Oh my goodness, I can't wait.
- (FBE) Take a look. - Who is that? - (FBE) This is your maternal
great-great-great grandfather. - Are you kidding me?
- (FBE) Floyd Morgan. - Oh my gosh. That's probably like his Sunday best. - That just straight up looks like
an old photo, like if I didn't know
that they were related to me, I would just be like yeah,
that definitely belongs in like an old museum,
like a gold rush museum. - (FBE) So this is your
great-great-great grandfather, George Kamphaus with his parents
Wilhelm and Sophia. - So great-great-great, it goes,
me, my parents, my grandparents, great, great, great,
that's this guy, sixth, and then that means
those are my great, great-great-great-great grandparents. - Who is that? (laughs) - (FBE) So this is your maternal
great grandfather. Conklin Sandidge.
- Oh my goodness! This is gonna bring
a lot of life and happiness to our family reunions,
'cause we talk about these names, but they're just names.
We don't have photos to go with them. - I have no idea who that is
and why I'm upset about it. - (FBE) What do you think it is
about something as simple as a photo that makes you so emotional? - 'Cause it's also something
as complex as a photo. - (FBE) So this is a photo
of your paternal great-great grandfather,
Amado Gomez. He was a farmer,
born in Hidalgo, Mexico in 1860. - I know a lot of my family
were migrant farmworkers. This is crazy. - (FBE) Now here's the same picture,
but as you'll see, it has now been altered.
- That is so crazy. I always talked to
like my ancestors. That's a big part of what I do
to guide me, to give me strength, to do things,
and I'm looking at one of them. And it's not like this
ambiguous cloud in my head. There's a face to it. There was an estrangement,
so I can't readily go and like talk to people
and get information. That adds to this overwhelming feeling
of like oh my gosh, I'm seeing part of my lineage.
It's super special. - (FBE) So we were able to
take things a little further today when it comes to your family history.
- Okay. - (FBE) Would you like to see
what else the researchers at Ancestry were able to dig up for you today? - Absolutely. - Of course, I'm so happy
to cry about this. - (FBE) This is an 1870
U.S. Federal Census. - Oh! Sophia, George,
that was the grandparents, the great-great-great-great
grandparents. - (FBE) I'm gonna direct
your attention over here to this column,
this is where they're from. - Russia?
- (FBE) Prussia. - Prussia! My great-great-great-great
grandparents are Prussian, and they're first generation,
and that means Georgie here, was born in Iowa,
so he's a first generation American. It's like this puzzle piece in my head
just (spits) you know, getting put into place. - What is this certificate? Is it a marriage certificate
in Spanish? - (FBE) Do you notice any names here? - Oh, I see Rosario.
That's my mom's father's name. And how I ended up with it
is crazy, I don't even know. I looked at my birth certificate, my father's not
the father that's on there. But I wanted to keep it,
it was really important that I kept it, so when I got married,
I made sure it was hyphenated. - (FBE) So this is a federal census that lists your great grandfather,
Robert Brown. This is your father's grandfather. - Oh, my father's grandfather. - (FBE) Can you find
his profession on here? - Looks like school something.
School teacher! (gasps) Oh my goodness, my family's
gonna be just off the wall for me to share
these facts about them. - (FBE) Well, now we're gonna take you
a little bit deeper. - Oh my God! - Oh my goodness.
Oh, this is the family tree? George Hardin, Kittie Moore,
Caesar Brown, Sallie Vernel. I don't know about them. - Okay, here's something
kind of nuts, right? So we have Catherine here,
Catherine here, right? And then we skip a generation,
and then Kathy Johnson, right? And then on my dad's side,
is Katherine Lusk, right? And then my girlfriend
is named Katherine. If I have a girl,
she's being named Katherine. Like, that's it.
I'm feeling connected. You know what I mean? I feel like my roots
have been spread out and I'm reaching out
into the past. - I don't know a lot of these names,
and that's sad. My mom was diagnosed with cancer,
and people started coming up to me out of the blue,
like people I didn't know, and saying like
"oh, I'm related to you in this way," and I know my mom has
a lot of holes in her history, so this is really important, 'cause
it's something I can share with her. (whispers) I don't ever cry. But it's good,
it's all good. - Oh! (gasps)
What? I don't know if I've ever
heard the Ellerson name. Viola Sanders, that's my grandma,
and holy [bleep]. You have Robert Sanders
and Margaret Sanders, William Lambert and Dicy? - (FBE) Here's a bit more
on the Morgan side. - Oh my! Oh my gosh! And there's Floyd Morgan, wow! That's the Morgan you showed me. My mom has no idea
who either one of their parents are. No clue, they just never
talked about that stuff. - (FBE) We have another
surprise for ya. - Okay. - Oh gosh.
- What the hell is this? (Ruby laughs) - (FBE) So what you're holding
right now... - Uh-huh. - (FBE) Is a marriage record
for your great-great grandparents, George Hardin and Katherine Moore. - Wow! - (FBE) So they were married in 1866, as newly emancipated people
in Tennessee. - Yes! My siblings are gonna be blown away! - This is the 12th Census
of the United States, the 12th! - (FBE) So this is a 1900 U.S. census
that shows your great-great grandmother,
Catherine Kamphaus, who was the daughter of George. Catherine is listed
in the 1900 U.S. Census as Katie, and as a servant
at age 15 in the household of the Gleisner family,
who are of German descent. - (sighs) Honestly, I feel like
I'm in my own story. Like, I feel like I'm
watching a movie and uncovering these plot twists
over and over again. Like wow! - I Amado Gomez,
immigrated to the U.S. of America from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on July 1882, on the skiff, is that how you pronounce that?
- (FBE) A skiff. - What's a skiff, I don't know.
- (FBE) It's a small boat. - There's literally a line
that says I'm, like he has to tell them
that he's not an anarchist, which is kind of punk rock. - (FBE) Putting yourself in his shoes,
and thinking about his journey, he came here on a boat. What do you think
that must have been like? - Frightening, and terrifying! If somebody said like hey,
"why don't you just take the bus?" Like, I'd probably
piss and moan about that, and he got in a little boat,
and went to a different country. That takes guts. - (FBE) So this is an application
detailing your great-great-great-
great-great grandfather's service in the Revolutionary War.
- Holy cow. So my grandmother was born
on the ranch, and in 1976,
the ranch house burned down. All of these things
that she probably had were gone. Gone! And so what a gift it is
to be able to have copies of so many things
that burned in that fire. It's just absolutely incredible. - (FBE) As we said earlier,
this is a common topic for families during
this time of year especially, so in honor of the holiday season,
we're gonna send you home with the perfect gift
to give today. - This isn't my first time
giving this as a gift. - (FBE) Today we're sending you home
with an Ancestry gift membership which is a family history
six month subscription to build a family tree and search
historical records for yourself. - Wow! - (FBE) Along with this
Ancestry DNA kit to discover your origins. - My mom's gonna be so delighted. I will probably give this
to her for Christmas, and this will be one of her
favorite Christmas presents ever. - I've actually done mine. I've been desperately wanting
one of my brothers to do it. - So this'll be like
in depth too, right? So this is more than just
like learning about the family tree. This is gonna learn about
where I come from, and what's in my DNA.
That's insane. - (FBE) How does it feel
to know that you'll be able to continue this journey
and share what you've learned with your family members
this holiday season? - Other than the gift
of having my mom still around, it's the next best thing
I can think of. - Every two years we have
a family reunion, and we go over the family tree,
so that all the younger people can remember the names.
They will be all in. - I cannot wait to tell my mom. It always made her sad that
she doesn't know anything about her side of the family, and so I cannot wait
to call her and tell her that
we have information now. - (FBE) So we really hope
that you enjoyed taking a deeper dive
into your ancestry. - Oh yes! - (FBE) From your perspective, how important
is understanding your past and how it impacts you today? - I think it's everything. If you learn from your past,
what to do and not to do, I mean, you're so far
ahead of the game. - There's the whole reason
that storytelling is so part of the human culture,
in general, and it's so that we could transfer
these knowledges down generations. - You discover like, a door,
and you open it, and it's a door to a room of doors. So you have all these questions
that pop up more than the initial question
that you had. But that's the great part about it. - (FBE) So finally, can you tell us
what this experience has meant for you today? - Well you know,
when you can see things, when you see evidence,
it just makes you feel real good and want to know more. - It's meant everything. FBE and Ancestry,
I cannot thank you guys enough for giving me something
to give my mother that I just never thought
to be possible. - I've always been very big
into learning about myself and my family's past,
okay, you know what it's like? Mulan. You know, where she goes
into that one chamber, and all of her ancesters
come alive as blue ghosts? That's how I feel right now! - Hey, it's Sierra,
Producer here at FBE. Thank you so much
to Ancestry for partnering with us on this really special episode that's helping bring families
closer together this holiday season. Every family has a story,
and Ancestry is a gift that can help bring you
closer to your origins. To see how you can give
your friends and family the gift of discovery with Ancestry, check out the links
down in the description. Bye guys!
