October 16, 2019. Madison, Mississippi. Finding Your Roots.

PBS has an hour show, called Finding Your Roots. I enjoy watching. The format does not change. The host has two or three people who are somewhat well known on the show. Much research has gone into the backgrounds of these people so the guests find out many relatives they had not known in the past. Most of us can only go back to grandparents but with the research, the show often will be able to go back many centuries. It is fun to find out information on these people back hundreds of years. Our Mississippi PBS shows it on Tuesday evening and if I have nothing else to do I watch it. And I find it fascinating. Last evening was no exception. The lady guest knew that her grandmother came to the US from Scotland. But it turned out that her ancestors had lived in Ireland for hundreds of years and only moved to Scotland in the later 19th century. And the gentleman guest who thought he was English turned out to be German. Ancestors of him were found in a little town in the Alps and had lived there for hundreds of years. His great grandfather emigrated to the US in the early part of the 20th century. Soon the First World War broke out and all Germans were put in concentration camps. Then the name was changed. They spoke no German at home and his grandmother never mentioned their German heritage. The great grandfather left for America when he was 18, all by himself with little money. The guest was interested because he left home for Chicago all by himself when he was 18 to find his fortune, moving from the family farm in Kansas. "Something in the genes," he said. Ken always said that the most important thing about ancestors was that they survived and had children. Nothing else mattered. The Finding Your Roots program is always entertaining.