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Published Saturday March 6th, 2010 at 12:47am
Tonight, "Who Do You Think You Are?", a new reality TV series premiered on NBC. The show takes seven celebrities on a journey that researches the genealogical roots of their family, giving them a new identity as they find out who they are and how they are related to important events in American history. Ancestry.com is NBC's official partner on the series, but the celebrities will have all the research done for them. The show is based on the British series with the same title.
In tracing their own roots, the celebrities who take part in the show get to tell larger American stories. The episode featured tonight was the journey of discovering the ancestors of actress Sarah Jessica Parker, most known as a star of "Sex and the City". Parker, who had assumed that she was primarily of German descent and that her family had only been in the United States since the mid-19th century discovers there's more to it than that as genealogists help her trace her roots all the way back to colonial Massachusetts. After discovering Parker's family was connected to the California Gold Rush, she finds her family is linked to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Her ancestor Esther Elwell was accused of being a witch, but survived the trials.
Next up to find out their family roots will be Lisa Kudrow, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick, Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon, and former Dallas Cowboys star Emmitt Smith.
After tonight's show premiered, people were anxious to start looking on Google for free ancestry search services. Several free services that provide ancestry resources are OneGreatFamily.com, FamilySearch.org, and GenealogyToday.com
In tracing their own roots, the celebrities who take part in the show get to tell larger American stories. The episode featured tonight was the journey of discovering the ancestors of actress Sarah Jessica Parker, most known as a star of "Sex and the City". Parker, who had assumed that she was primarily of German descent and that her family had only been in the United States since the mid-19th century discovers there's more to it than that as genealogists help her trace her roots all the way back to colonial Massachusetts. After discovering Parker's family was connected to the California Gold Rush, she finds her family is linked to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Her ancestor Esther Elwell was accused of being a witch, but survived the trials.
Next up to find out their family roots will be Lisa Kudrow, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick, Brooke Shields, Susan Sarandon, and former Dallas Cowboys star Emmitt Smith.
After tonight's show premiered, people were anxious to start looking on Google for free ancestry search services. Several free services that provide ancestry resources are OneGreatFamily.com, FamilySearch.org, and GenealogyToday.com