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00:15I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
00:17Welcome to Finding Your Roots.
00:21In this episode, we'll meet talk show host Sarah Haynes
00:24and actor and playwright Tracy Letts,
00:28two people whose ancestors made truly surprising journeys.
00:33So he's the first one here?
00:35You just met your original immigrant ancestor
00:38on this line of your family tree.
00:40Oh my gosh.
00:41That is almost 300 years ago.
00:44That's crazy.
00:46Born 1782.
00:49That's right.
00:50I wonder what was going on with these people.
00:53To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.
00:59Genealogists comb through paper trails stretching back hundreds of years.
01:04Wow.
01:05While DNA experts utilize the latest advances in genetic analysis
01:10to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.
01:15How the hell do people find this stuff?
01:16And we've compiled it all into a book of life.
01:23A record of all of our discoveries.
01:26Is it weird I'm already crying?
01:28And a window into the hidden past.
01:32I didn't know any of this.
01:34My questions were met for all of my childhood with a shrug.
01:38We don't know.
01:38You had no idea?
01:40None of these things.
01:41I know nothing of this.
01:43I have identity.
01:45Deep American.
01:46Deep American identity.
01:47Yeah.
01:48I feel a little bit more ownership of this country.
01:53Tracy and Sarah both descend from people who came to North America
01:59long before the birth of the United States.
02:03In this episode, they're going to retrace the journeys those ancestors took,
02:09inspiring them to see themselves and our nation in a new way.
02:45Sarah Haynes has America's ear.
03:00It's Sarah's birthday.
03:02The beloved co-host of The View has built an enormous fan base
03:07because she can connect to almost anyone, anywhere, with warmth and humor.
03:13It's a rare talent, one that Sarah did not initially know she had.
03:20Sarah grew up in Newton, Iowa, a small town east of Des Moines.
03:26Her parents were both Air Force veterans,
03:29and Sarah was raised to pursue pragmatic goals.
03:34But after graduating from Smith with a degree in government,
03:37she decided to chase a dream and told her parents she wanted to move to New York City
03:43in order to try acting, a decision that was not well-received.
03:50My dad said, I didn't send you to Smith College to be an actress.
03:53And I thought, oh, that's a truth bomb, but I'm grateful, but oh my gosh.
03:59Yeah, but what did you say in return?
04:01I said, okay.
04:04I mean, because my dad and my mom, but my dad specifically, I have such a reverence for him.
04:08So when he speaks, like it or not, I have deep respect for when he speaks.
04:14And so in my mind, I remember thinking, oh, crap, I don't break with them very often.
04:20This is going to hurt regardless.
04:22Either I'm suppressing me or I'm disobeying in some ways them.
04:27And I knew what I had to do.
04:28I knew right away I was going to go anyway.
04:30But to look at my dad and think, oh, my gosh, they gave me this whole life.
04:34And now I'm saying, I want something else.
04:39Sarah's pursuit of that something else would follow a very circuitous path.
04:45In New York, she found a job, not as an actor, but as a production coordinator on the Today Show,
04:54where she would eventually work with hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb.
04:59The show was extremely popular, but also in need of younger talent.
05:04And Sarah seized an opportunity.
05:08I was watching producers do interviews, but they were off camera.
05:12And I said, I'll do all the research.
05:14I'll do all the work.
05:15I'll do your entire job for you if you let me do that interview and sit on camera.
05:20So I started doing interviews for the website.
05:23Now I'm making a reel, and I'm thinking, great, I can't wait to send this out to audition for things.
05:29And Kathie Lee and Hoda were like, why wouldn't you come play with us?
05:32We have this fun hour.
05:33And I was like, people don't start at the Today Show.
05:37That's where we end.
05:38So I asked them, I go, what do I want to offer you?
05:41I'm not a trainer.
05:42I'm not a chef.
05:42I do what you do.
05:44And they were like, teach us something young.
05:46And so they were like, think of something you'd teach your mom.
05:49And so I remember the first segment I pitched was like how to get your digital photos and put them on things,
05:54like back when the mugs were starting out.
05:56That's pretty good.
05:57It's a very mom segment, you know.
05:59So I did that.
06:00And they were like, that was fun.
06:01And eventually I pitched changing their Facebook page because the Facebook page had 200 friends for the most winning morning show at the time.
06:11And we should change it.
06:12Right.
06:12But this is how early it was, though.
06:14When I notified the PR at Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg's sister flew in to meet with me to design the page.
06:22And the day that page launched, that real-time fan interaction, that was the day I started being on every day.
06:30I'm keeping you hip and Hoda was asking about these.
06:32That moment changed Sarah's life forever.
06:35What fun it always is.
06:37After five years with Kathie Lee and Hoda, she debuted as a guest host on The View, America's top-rated daytime talk show.
06:47Soon she would join full-time, and now she's one of the show's longest-tenured members.
06:54But even as she's risen to the top of her profession, Sarah has preserved the passion that first drew her to the camera.
07:03In fact, she credits her success to it.
07:07What do you think made you good at it?
07:11A genuine curiosity for people.
07:15I love hearing how people end up where they are.
07:20I'm not trying to take your job.
07:21Not ancestry.
07:22But, like, I want to know, like, do you have siblings?
07:25Where did you grow up?
07:27Where are you in the birth order?
07:28Are you close with your family?
07:30I want to know what makes you tick, because I know that all those things make me tick.
07:34My second guest is writer and actor Tracy Letts, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for August Osage County, one of the most brilliant plays in the history of American drama.
07:49Tracy grew up in Durant, Oklahoma, a small city near the Texas border.
07:58Much like Sarah Haynes, he comes from a close-knit family and adores his parents.
08:06But Tracy's parents were very different from Sarah's.
08:08His father taught literature.
08:12His mother was a writer.
08:15And Tracy was eager for their approval.
08:19I was an entertainer.
08:21I liked to entertain the family.
08:23I liked to get laughs.
08:25I liked being the center of attention in my family.
08:28And according to my parents, I was.
08:30I was entertaining, and I kept things pretty light for a while anyway.
08:35But also, my parents put such great stock in artists, they just considered it kind of the highest calling.
08:46They wanted us to get out of Durant, Oklahoma.
08:50And they wanted us to have interesting lives.
08:54I can't tell you the number of times my mom expressed delight and satisfaction that my brother and I had not become bankers.
09:06She considered that just sort of the...
09:09The pits.
09:10Just the worst.
09:13Though Tracy's career choice would please his parents, it would also lead him down a very dark road.
09:20After dropping out of college, he moved to Dallas, then to Chicago, pursuing acting while trying to write plays.
09:30But success proved elusive, and Tracy soon bottomed out.
09:35I was hurting a lot of people around me.
09:39Mm-hmm.
09:40I had broken up with a longtime girlfriend, and she called my dad.
09:45She called my dad and said, look, we've broken up.
09:49This isn't about that, but I'm worried about Tracy.
09:51You should know he's not doing well.
09:53Mm-hmm.
09:54And I had recently gotten into heroin, and my dad flew up to Chicago.
10:00He found me, and he said, he said what you say.
10:04He said, I love you, and I'm worried about you, and I hope you can get some help.
10:08It's clear you're struggling, and I can't do this for you.
10:11You're going to have to do this for yourself.
10:13I hope you can find some help.
10:14And I had a friend who was sober, and I asked her to take me to a meeting.
10:19I've been sober ever since.
10:20Sobriety would prove Tracy's salvation.
10:26Not only did it improve his work, his work came to focus on his family.
10:32Indeed, August Osage County is essentially an artistic retelling of the dark stories and
10:40deep secrets that Tracy had absorbed from his relatives.
10:44In a different family, such a play might have been destructive.
10:48But Tracy knew his audience well.
10:53Did that change your relationship to your mother and father, once they had seen the
10:58plays, when you were drawing on their trauma, in fact?
11:03I don't think so.
11:05It's a funny thing, you know?
11:06People like to see themselves represented.
11:09Yeah.
11:09And it kind of doesn't matter how you represent.
11:13In some ways, just the fact of representation is what's important.
11:17There's a story in August Osage County, a character tells about a stepfather beating a child with
11:25a claw hammer.
11:25The gentleman in my family, to whom that happened, came to see the play.
11:32He was an old man.
11:33He was 80 years old.
11:35And when the play was over, he said, how the hell do you know the claw hammer story?
11:40And I said, well, I don't know.
11:43I just, you know, family lore.
11:44I've picked it up over time.
11:46And my parents didn't know the claw hammer story.
11:49And they turned to him and they said, you got beaten with a claw hammer?
11:53He laughed about it.
11:55He said, yeah, my Uncle Ray damn near killed me.
11:59But he roared with laughter in the theater, you know, like seeing himself represented.
12:04So my folks weren't daunted by my representation.
12:07And they understood that as an artist, that was my job and my right.
12:14So for you, playwriting is a version of writing a family history, preserving a family story.
12:20I think that's true.
12:23After spending time with my guests, it was clear that Tracy and Sarah
12:28have both been shaped by the values of their parents.
12:32Now, each is about to take a journey that will forever change how they understand the origins of those values.
12:41I started with Sarah and with her father, Richard Haynes.
12:46On the surface, Sarah and Richard may appear to have little in common.
12:51But they share a profound bond.
12:53My dad, I always described, even in my online dating profile, where I met my husband, is I said, I'm looking for someone who does the right thing when no one's watching.
13:05Because that's my dad.
13:06He is a very stoic, serious person that when he speaks, you care and you want to hear because he doesn't overpopulate the airwaves.
13:15Like, I'm a talker, I'm silly, I'm always going for the moment, I'm a performer, he's not.
13:21He knows what's right and he knows what's wrong and he does those things.
13:27Richard's confidence may flow in part from his family.
13:31He grew up in eastern Pennsylvania, knowing that his roots in the region were deep and illustrious.
13:38In fact, there's a prominent mill near his childhood home that his ancestors have owned since the 1860s.
13:47But Richard had no idea where his family was before they got their mill.
13:53And Sarah hoped to learn.
13:55The answer lay deep in the past.
13:59With Sarah's seventh great-grandfather, a man named Jacob Hottenstein.
14:04Jacob was born in what is now Germany.
14:08But in 1731, he's listed on a resolution passed by the Pennsylvania legislature,
14:15back when Pennsylvania was still a British colony.
14:21Whereas by the encouragement given by the Honorable William Penn
14:25and by the permission of His Late Majesty King George I,
14:29be it enacted that Jacob Hottlstein shall be to all intents and purposes
14:35deemed His Majesty's natural-born subject of this province of Pennsylvania.
14:39Am I royalty?
14:41No.
14:43But this is the moment in 1731 that your seventh great-grandfather
14:50became a naturalized citizen of the British Empire.
14:54So he's the first one here?
14:56You just met your original immigrant ancestor on this line of your family tree.
15:02Oh, my gosh.
15:06That is almost 300 years ago.
15:09I knew we'd been here a minute, but I did not know that.
15:13That's crazy.
15:17Jacob arrived in Pennsylvania when he was in his 20s,
15:20part of a wave of German immigration to the colony.
15:24But court records back in his hometown suggest that Jacob was not a typical immigrant.
15:31He was leaving a secret behind.
15:36Today, the innkeeper's maid came to me and duly reported that Jacob Hottlstein
15:41had slept with her several times and impregnated her,
15:44and that she was already a quarter of a year pregnant.
15:47Hottlstein, however, had tried to get her to abort such a pregnancy
15:50and had already brought her a handful of savin,
15:53saying that this would be quite useful and also wanted to bring her some laurel,
15:57which others had used in the past, with very good effect.
16:01Wow.
16:02This guy slept with the maid.
16:03In 1717, your ancestor was accused of impregnating a woman named Maria.
16:11Maria was a maid at a local inn, and when she became pregnant,
16:15he allegedly tried to force her into having an abortion using that combination of herbs.
16:21When she refused, he allegedly abandoned her.
16:24Maria was, in fact, physically okay, but she was not happy with Jacob.
16:36When her pregnancy was discovered, she sought help from a local pastor.
16:41He informed the baron who presided over their town, and Jacob found himself in jail.
16:49Jacob went to the clinker?
16:51He went to the... he did.
16:52Maria was placed in a local cottage, and then an investigation was launched.
16:58He went to jail?
16:59He went to jail.
17:00Does that surprise you?
17:01Obviously, it does.
17:03Well, I mean, more just the times, like that getting someone pregnant could put you in jail.
17:08Mm-hmm.
17:08It's just...
17:09It's just...
17:11It just feels so antiquated on so many levels.
17:14I mean, the year was 1717.
17:15Well, we're back in antiquity.
17:17So, what do you imagine your ancestor had to say to defend himself?
17:24I...
17:24I don't know.
17:26Please turn the page.
17:27Special interrogation of Jacob Hottenstein, whether he knows the innkeeper's maid here.
17:34Yes, of course, because he lives here.
17:37Had he ever slept with her?
17:38No, he was pure.
17:40She was a wicked person.
17:43Hottenstein confesses that the maid revealed her pregnancy to him in the meadow about three weeks ago.
17:49And at the same time, he confesses that the maid told him that she had already eaten all sorts of things other than horseradish and yeast, but that it didn't help.
17:58He replied that she could eat whatever she wanted for his sake.
18:01It was none of his business.
18:03Oh, my gosh.
18:05Your ancestor, like a typical male, denied the allegations against her.
18:10She's a wicked person.
18:11A wicked person.
18:13What's it like to see that?
18:15Oh, I hope for better.
18:16I hope, like, I loved her or something noble.
18:19He sounds very shallow.
18:22Not a lot of character here.
18:23Who was telling the truth?
18:25I think Maria was.
18:27You think Maria was?
18:27I'm going to go with Maria on this.
18:31Sarah's intuition proved correct.
18:34After a witness came forward to corroborate Maria's story, Jacob admitted to having had a relationship with her and was forced to face the consequences.
18:44According to the documents discussed and the minutes kept, it is clear that Jacob Hottenstein was the perpetrator of the impregnated innkeeper's maid.
18:54The gracious lordship has finally graciously resolved to release him in return for which he must pay a fine of 30 guilders and also pay the child five guilders annually for 10 years for its alimony and livelihood.
19:07She had the baby.
19:08She had the baby.
19:09Wow.
19:12That is bonkers.
19:15As it turns out, Maria did not just have one baby.
19:19She had twins.
19:21And she would go on to marry a farmhand and give birth to 10 more children.
19:28As for Jacob, he seems to have escaped his responsibilities by heading off to Pennsylvania.
19:34What's it been like to learn this story?
19:39It's like it was mind-blowing just to know these people exist.
19:42But when you look at their names next to these years, you just see these in your head, these old visuals of people that led proper lives.
19:49You know, it's a different time.
19:50And it reminds you that they were always just human, just of a different time.
19:57Yeah, and passionate.
19:59They had feelings.
20:00They had romps and meadows.
20:01This isn't the, you know, when you studied the history of immigration to the United States.
20:06This is not what we learned of.
20:07Not in the school books.
20:09No.
20:09Though Jacob may have immigrated under a cloud, his family would flourish in their new country.
20:19Indeed, his son David would help to found our nation.
20:25David is Sarah's sixth great-grandfather.
20:28He was born in Pennsylvania around 1734.
20:32And he was roughly 40 years old when the American Revolution broke out.
20:37That was old for a soldier.
20:40But David joined a patriot militia.
20:45Oh, my gosh.
20:50Wow.
20:52That's really cool.
20:56I am deeply American.
21:00You are deeply American and deeply German, too.
21:03Oh, God, I bring that German back.
21:04Yeah.
21:05I don't know how much I want to be with Jacob right now.
21:06No, no.
21:07I much prefer his son.
21:09Unfortunately, this story was about to take a somber turn.
21:15While David may have been a patriot, a tax register from the year 1779 shows that he was also something far less noble.
21:26Hottenstein David, 200 acres of land, six horses, one bound servant, and one slave.
21:37One slave.
21:38Have you ever contemplated even the possibility that your ancestors may have been enslavers?
21:44I think so, not understanding necessarily why or having a mental explanation other than if we've been here a long time in this country and slavery was such a huge part of the economy of the country that the likelihood, I mean, it's kind of you hope it doesn't, you hope you're one that wasn't that way.
22:05But if even hearing that they had mills and property and land, I kind of started to see a trend that, yeah.
22:15Pennsylvania would begin to abolish slavery in 1780, and it appears that David relinquished his human property soon after.
22:27But even so, the very fact that he owned another human being at all left Sarah struggling to make sense of her ancestor.
22:36It's almost unfathomable, as much as you're going back in history and you know that the world was a different place, the country was a different place, it's, it's, you know, here people are flocking for opportunity, for something better, to create a life, to maybe dodge their own mistakes, and yet they're going to own a human on, like, I, I, it doesn't track.
23:02It's not consistent.
23:03But what this shows is that family history is complicated.
23:08Yeah.
23:09You know, there are no saints and no, no devils, purely, you know?
23:14No.
23:16Like Sarah, Tracy Letts came to me knowing nothing about an entire branch of his family tree, but for a very different reason.
23:26Tracy's mother, Billy Dean Gibson, had often claimed to have Cherokee ancestors, but in Oklahoma, long the home of various native peoples, such claims are common, and usually wrong.
23:42And Tracy and his brothers never believed them, but our researchers uncovered an obituary for Billy Dean's great-grandfather, a man named Jack Burgess, and it suggests that Billy Dean knew what she was talking about.
24:00An old-timers gone.
24:03Jack S. Burgess was buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery Sunday.
24:08He was well-known here, where he had resided the greater portion of his life.
24:12He was a Cherokee Indian.
24:14As a boy and young man, Jack Burgess chased the deer, buffalo, and wild coyote over the site of the present city of Tulsa.
24:23So, your family lore appears to have been true.
24:28According to that article, your great-great-grandfather was Cherokee.
24:31What's it like to see that in black and white?
24:33Well, it's great.
24:36My mom is taking her revenge for all the teasing we gave her over the years about saying that she had Cherokee blood.
24:44I'm telling you, anybody who's from Oklahoma claims Cherokee heritage, and it so often turns out not to be accurate.
24:53And so, my mom used to claim it, and we teased her about it as if it were not true.
24:59And it turns out, Jack Burgess was a Cherokee Indian.
25:05Tracy's mother would have been pleased to know that Jack Burgess was not her only Cherokee ancestor, not by a long shot.
25:13In fact, we were able to trace her indigenous roots back to a man named William Burgess, who was born in the 1780s in what we now call the Old Cherokee Nation, an immense tract of land in the southeastern United States.
25:32William is Tracy's fourth great-grandfather and the first of his ancestors to settle in Oklahoma.
25:40But the story of how he got there is agonizing.
25:43In 1830, the United States government initiated what became known as the Trail of Tears, the forced removal of roughly 60,000 Native people from their traditional homes in the eastern and southern United States to a new territory in the west, a harrowing journey of more than 800 miles.
26:08For the Cherokee, the forced removal began in 1838.
26:14But curiously, we discovered that William was willing to leave long before that.
26:22Muster roll of Cherokee Indians who enrolled to immigrate west of the Mississippi River under the direction of Benjamin F. Curry.
26:321831, December the 12th, William Burgess.
26:37Total in party, 10.
26:38Any idea what you're looking at?
26:40Not really.
26:41This is a list of Cherokees who signed up to leave voluntarily, the Old Cherokee Nation, and move westward in 1831.
26:49Oh, wow.
26:50And if you notice the date, this is before the Trail of Tears.
26:53Before the forced removal, some government official comes out and says,
26:58who wants to sign up for this?
27:00Mm-hmm.
27:01And they say, we do.
27:04Why?
27:05We can't answer Tracy's question definitively, but we do have a theory.
27:13William appears on this list with at least nine other members of his family.
27:18They were among the first Cherokees to make the journey west.
27:23And we believe that they left willingly because they preferred to take control of their own destiny rather than wait for the federal government to compel them.
27:34Wow.
27:40That's really interesting.
27:41It is, isn't it?
27:42It's fascinating.
27:43Yeah.
27:44And it wasn't likely as brutal as the journey made by the thousands forcefully removed several years later.
27:51But still, it was by no means easy.
27:54They likely traveled for several months, likely mostly on foot, for hundreds of miles.
28:00Right.
28:01Can you imagine?
28:02No.
28:03At least they were in the spring.
28:05Yeah.
28:05You have deep Cherokee roots in modern-day Oklahoma.
28:10Did you ever imagine that this branch of your family had been there so early?
28:18I don't suppose I did imagine that, no.
28:21The fact that this has not really been passed down in any kind of solid way through my family history, through verbal history, I don't know.
28:36Like I say, we teased Mom about her, quote-unquote, Cherokee heritage.
28:43She used to play into the joke, too.
28:44She'd say, well, my great-great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess or whatever.
28:48She played into the joke.
28:50But what's your theory?
28:51How could this knowledge be lost?
28:54I don't know.
28:54I suppose along with assimilation, we're talking about moving from chasing the deer into the, quote-unquote, civilized world.
29:04Maybe along with that assimilation also comes...
29:07Obliteration.
29:08Obliteration.
29:09Mm-hmm.
29:09Shame.
29:10Mm-hmm.
29:12Code switching.
29:13Mm-hmm.
29:13Right?
29:14Yeah.
29:14This is an act of imagination to even try and think of what that must be.
29:19But we can only imagine.
29:20And we can only speculate because we don't know.
29:22Right.
29:23You know?
29:25Though we'll never know what Tracy's ancestors were thinking, we were able to glean a little
29:31more insight into their lives.
29:33In the National Archives, we uncovered what was called a spoliation claim, which William Burgess
29:42filed in 1842.
29:44It describes the property he left behind in the East, hoping that he might be compensated
29:50for its loss.
29:51The claim was denied by the federal government, but it contains a detailed list of all that
29:58William owned.
30:00So he's living in this situation in that Eastern Cherokee territory.
30:06Right.
30:07And he gives this up in order to make the move.
30:11Mm-hmm.
30:12In advance of the Trail of Tears, because he sees which way the wind's blowing.
30:16And then after he makes the move.
30:17He files a claim.
30:18He files a claim.
30:19Right.
30:19I think I gave all this up.
30:21Right.
30:21And they say, we're not paying that claim.
30:23No, because you did this voluntarily.
30:25Wow.
30:26He lost it all.
30:28What's it like to learn this, realizing that it directly affected your own ancestors?
30:32Well, I'm not surprised by that.
30:36I'm, my anger over the treatment of Native peoples in our country isn't changed by this
30:48information, though I do suppose I have a little more ownership of that anger in a way,
30:55right?
30:55Just in the evidence of it.
30:57But the truth is, wrong is wrong.
31:00Mm-hmm.
31:00Wrong is wrong, whether you're related by blood, by heritage.
31:06Wrong is wrong.
31:09There was one more beat to this story.
31:12We uncovered an application for membership in the Cherokee Nation, filed by one of William's
31:19sons in the year 1906.
31:23It not only lists the tribal names of William and his wife, it also lists the names of William's
31:29parents, adding yet another level to this branch of Tracy's family tree.
31:35Wow.
31:38You now know the names of your Cherokee ancestors going back to your fifth-grade grandparents
31:44in a continuous line.
31:47Yeah.
31:48That's more information than I expected to get.
31:51Hmm.
31:52And I want to call my mom, but she's dead.
31:55Yeah.
31:55So I can't.
31:56But it's, I want to tell my mom.
31:59Hmm.
32:00Hmm.
32:01It's all true.
32:02Yeah.
32:03I'm sorry, mama.
32:04Yeah.
32:05Right.
32:06Sorry we teased you about it.
32:07Yeah.
32:08It's great.
32:09What is that added identity, as it were?
32:12How do you process that?
32:13How does this fact complicate you?
32:15You know, a couple of my plays, August, Osage County, and my play, The Minutes, my most recent
32:23play, take on at least partly characters of Native American heritage.
32:28And there's always some question, especially very contemporary playwriting, who gets to tell
32:36the story?
32:36Right?
32:37That's a question that we're often met with.
32:39Now, I'm not going to go take this book out and put it on the rehearsal table and say,
32:45I get to tell this story.
32:46And yet, I admit that the sense of connection with that family line, it's evocative for me
32:58because of the stories that I've told and the stories that have been told me simply about
33:03growing up in Oklahoma.
33:05Right.
33:06So, I don't know.
33:07It brings up a lot of things, a lot of feelings.
33:09We'd already traced Sarah Haynes' father's roots, back more than 300 years.
33:18Now, turning to her mother's family tree, Sarah was worried we wouldn't get nearly so
33:24far.
33:26Sarah's mother, Sandra May Haynes, grew up in Neotashay, Kansas, a tiny, hard-scrappled community.
33:35And Sarah didn't expect that we'd be able to learn much at all about Sandra's ancestors.
33:41But Sarah was in for a surprise.
33:44The story begins with her great-great-grandfather, a man named Michael Stoner.
33:51We found Michael in the 1860 census, living in Illinois on the eve of the American Civil
33:58War, a discovery that raised a compelling question.
34:03Have you given much thought to how the Civil War may have affected your ancestors?
34:07No, please tell me there are no more slaves.
34:11Well, Michael would have been about 32 years at the time.
34:14Okay.
34:14Which side?
34:15You got to guess.
34:16Please, God, just go with the North.
34:17Please, please, please.
34:19If I've done anything right in my life, I'm going to go with, please, the North.
34:23Okay.
34:24Please turn the page.
34:25Oh, my gosh.
34:33He joined the Union Army.
34:35He made the right decision.
34:38I knew I had good people somewhere.
34:42But you had a patriot, too, remember?
34:45We also had a slave.
34:46So we're, we're, I just feel so much better right now.
34:50Michael would prove to be well worth Sarah's admiration.
34:54Not only did he volunteer for the Union Army, he re-enlisted after his first term and served
35:02through the end of the war.
35:04And then, when the fighting stopped, Michael did something even more remarkable, something
35:10that would change the trajectory of his entire family.
35:14In 1872, Michael moved his wife and their six children, roughly 500 miles west, to purchase
35:23land in Kansas, near what is now Neodoshe.
35:28It must have been a grueling journey.
35:31And its end brought sorrow.
35:35Michael's wife passed away soon after arriving.
35:39But Michael was not to be deterred.
35:42In 1880, he got married again, to a fellow settler named Nancy Burkett.
35:48And the two started a new family, a family that began with a girl named Lulu Stoner, Sarah's
35:56great-grandmother.
36:00And of course, she was followed by your grandmother, Alberta, in 1918, and then your mother, Sandra,
36:06in 1941.
36:08That's the lineage right there.
36:09Wow.
36:11Wow.
36:12And you never heard any stories about this?
36:15No.
36:15No, not anything about how they got there.
36:18Some of the names, the stoner last name I knew, but nothing else.
36:23What's it like to know that you come from these people?
36:25These people are tough.
36:26This tracks for my mom, like the whole Kansas, like out in the country, you know, fighters,
36:32survivors.
36:33That's definitely my mom.
36:35Yeah?
36:35Yeah.
36:36Kansas posed an array of challenges to Sarah's family, but it also offered opportunities.
36:44And the move seems to have transformed Michael.
36:49Records showed that he'd worked as a blacksmith in Illinois.
36:53But in his new home, he demonstrated a wide array of talents, as evidenced by a large number
37:00of newspaper articles.
37:01The appointed officers at Neodoshae for the ensuing year are M.C. Stoner, street commissioner,
37:09and marshal.
37:10Mm-hmm.
37:11Well, hello.
37:12Yeah.
37:13And then April 30th, 1875, county court M.C. Stoner was appointed constable for Neodoshae
37:20Township.
37:20We are going places now.
37:22November 19th, 1875, township officers, Neodoshae, justices M.C. Stoner.
37:28Mm-hmm.
37:28September 5th, 1879, M.C. Stoner has been hired by the citizens and city council as
37:34marshal and night watchman.
37:36That sounds like Game of Thrones.
37:37Mr. Stoner will make the best man we have had in this capacity.
37:41Mm-hmm.
37:42August 14th, 1885, M.C. Stoner has been appointed police judge by the city council.
37:48How about that?
37:49You never heard anything about this?
37:51Nothing.
37:52Your great-great-grandfather did not stay a blacksmith for very long.
37:56Once he got to Kansas, he changed his life.
37:59He held the titles of Justice of the Peace, Conveyancer, Marshal, Night Watchman, and Police
38:04Judge.
38:05And that's in just a handful of the newspaper mentions that our team found.
38:09We found a lot more that we just didn't have time to show you.
38:12Isn't that amazing?
38:13That's really cool.
38:15You had no idea.
38:17None of these things are tracking.
38:19I know nothing of this.
38:21I'm so impressed.
38:22Sarah was about to become even more impressed.
38:29Shifting to another branch of her mother's family tree, we traced back from Kansas to
38:36Colonial Massachusetts and introduced her to a man named Henry Adams.
38:43Henry is Sarah's 11th great-grandfather.
38:45He settled in Boston sometime before the year 1640.
38:52And when we mapped his family tree, we saw that it connects Sarah to a very significant
38:59person.
39:02You know who that is?
39:03He looks like a lot of people in my history book.
39:07That is the second president of the United States.
39:09That's John Adams.
39:09That is John Adams.
39:10He is your third cousin, nine times removed.
39:25Oh, my God.
39:30I'm related to a president.
39:36And he was a good one.
39:37He was a good one.
39:39They weren't all.
39:40He was a good one.
39:43Oh, my God.
39:48Sarah's link to John Adams also links her to his son, the sixth president of the United
39:54States, John Quincy Adams.
39:58These two presidents are not the only notable figures on the Adams line.
40:03Sarah is also related to the famed patriot, Samuel Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
40:14Him, too?
40:15Him, too.
40:19I feel like I'm getting punked.
40:23It's for real.
40:26What's your mother going to say?
40:28I hope my mom feels a deep pride in hearing all this, because coming from so little and
40:36not being able to pass on much in knowledge or pictures or stories because of, you know,
40:43they were just trying to eat.
40:44You know, like, that was all they did.
40:46That's important.
40:47It's important.
40:48But none of this, to know this is all behind and comes through her.
40:52I mean, I don't think my mom ever felt good enough for my dad, because my dad came from
41:00such a different background.
41:02Uh-huh.
41:02To know this was what my mom had the whole time.
41:08Wow.
41:11We'd already introduced Tracy Letts to Native Americans on his mother's family tree.
41:17Now, turning to his paternal roots, Tracy expected that we'd explore similar terrain.
41:25His father, Dennis Letts, grew up knowing that some of his ancestors were members of the
41:32Muscogee Creek Nation, and we did have a story for Tracy about those ancestors.
41:38But first, we had a very different kind of story to tell.
41:42It begins with Tracy's third great-grandfather, a man named Silas Barber.
41:49We found Silas living in Texas in 1860, just months before shots were fired at Fort Sumter,
41:58which brought me back to a question I'd ask Sarah.
42:03Have you given much thought to how the Civil War may have affected your ancestors?
42:07Not at all.
42:09Not given it any thought.
42:12Never heard anything about Civil War history in my family.
42:16Silas would have been about 38 years old at the time.
42:20What do you think he did during the war?
42:26He did not fight in the war.
42:28Okay.
42:29That's a good guess.
42:31Please turn the page.
42:32Let's see.
42:33Oh!
42:35Would you please read the transcribed section?
42:37Fought on the wrong side.
42:40Confederate.
42:41Company B, 10th Regiment, Texas, Silas H. Barber, private, age 38, enrolled on October
42:4810, 1861.
42:50Your ancestor joined the Confederate army.
42:52Well, that's too bad.
42:53What's it like to learn that?
42:55It's a surprise because I've never heard Civil War associated with my family in any capacity.
43:01Right.
43:0238-year-old private in the Confederacy sounds like a, just sounds awful.
43:08Everything about it sounds bad.
43:10What would your father say?
43:11Oh!
43:13He would not have much patience with that.
43:17As it turns out, Silas himself would be sorely challenged as a soldier.
43:26In January of 1863, he was stationed at a Confederate fort on the Arkansas River when the Union Army
43:35attacked, supported by a fleet of gunboats, the fort was completely overrun, and Silas found himself in a very unfortunate situation.
43:48Prisoners at Camp Douglas, S.H. Barber, Regiment, 10th Texas, Company B.
43:53Where captured?
43:54Arkansas Post.
43:55When captured?
43:56January 11, 1863.
43:58Your ancestor was captured.
44:00Good!
44:01Good!
44:02He should have been captured.
44:05Did you ever think you had an ancestor who had been in prison?
44:07Oh, yeah.
44:08Oh, yeah?
44:09I would have bet on prison for a lot of them.
44:11But imagine what that was like.
44:13I wouldn't imagine that was any fun, but yeah, good.
44:20Silas was sent to a Union prison in Illinois.
44:24He would be exchanged after only a few months.
44:28But he did not return to the South unscathed.
44:31In May of 1863, he appears in the records of a Virginia hospital, where he was being treated for debilitas, a Latin term for enfeeblement, also used to describe feelings of depression or melancholy.
44:47Silas spent just over a month recuperating.
44:52You want to guess what happened to him next?
44:55He was fine.
44:57He went back to active duty.
45:00No, really.
45:01He went back to active duty.
45:03He was serious about the Confederacy.
45:07Silas, what were you thinking?
45:09Why would he do?
45:12I mean, it's so mystifying to me why he would want to fight at all, why he would want to fight for the Confederacy, why he'd want to fight at 38 years old, and certainly after being imprisoned and suffering from melancholy and debilitas and enfeeblement.
45:32I mean, why would you want to go back into battle?
45:35You had a strange ancestor.
45:37Yeah, he was passionate.
45:39He was passionate.
45:40That's right.
45:41We don't know why Silas cared so much about the Confederacy.
45:45But as we looked into the records that his family left behind, we found what might be a clue.
45:51His father, Tracy's fourth-great-grandfather, was a man named Alan Barber.
45:59And the 1830 census shows that Alan had a vested interest in the Southern cause.
46:07Slaves, one female between the age of 36 and under 55.
46:14Your fourth-great-grandfather was a slave owner.
46:18Well, that sucks.
46:19That's just terrible.
46:21The Barber's are not impressing me.
46:24Alan's father, your fifth-great-grandfather, was a man named James Barber.
46:28He died in 1842, and as Will mentions, that he owned two enslaved persons.
46:33So did you ever think about having ancestors who may have enslaved human beings on your family tree?
46:39Well, have I thought about it?
46:42Sure.
46:44Coming, as I do, from Oklahoma and meaning the southern part of the United States,
46:50would I have thought it possible?
46:52Sure.
46:52So I'm disgusted.
46:55I'm not surprised.
46:57I'm like, eh, the Barber's.
47:00Maybe that's why I didn't know about him.
47:01We now turn to the part of Tracy's father's family that he thought he knew better.
47:11His Muscogee Creek ancestry.
47:13It's extensive, and it contains one particularly intriguing individual, a man named Alexander Posey.
47:23Alexander is Tracy's second cousin four times removed, and the two seem to have inherited some of the same talents.
47:32In his day, Alexander was a renowned poet who chronicled the hopes of his people.
47:40I pledge you by the moon and sun, as long as stars their course shall run, long as day shall meet my view, peace shall reign between us two.
47:53I pledge you by those peaks of snow, as long as streams to ocean flow, long as years their youth renew, peace shall reign between us two.
48:06I came from mother soil and cave.
48:10You came from pathless sea and wave.
48:14Strangers fought our battles through.
48:17Peace shall reign between us two.
48:20Nice.
48:21What do you think of that?
48:22I think that's great.
48:23What would your dad say?
48:25My dad would like that.
48:26He would like that there's a poet in the family, and he'd like this a lot more than he'd like these bastard, these damn barbers.
48:34He'd like these posies a lot more than these barbers.
48:38Alexander is related to Tracy through his third great-grandmother, a woman named Sarah Posey.
48:44Digging deeper, we were able to identify Sarah's grandmother, Tracy's fifth great-grandmother, who was born on Muskogee tribal lands in the 1780s.
48:59Seeing yet another branch of his native roots laid out in such detail was deeply moving to Tracy, and he was eager to share the news with his children.
49:11My son is six years old.
49:15He's in the first grade, and he just had his first lesson in his first grade class about indigenous people.
49:25Oh, wow.
49:25And he came home, and he started telling us about the lessons that he had learned, and my wife said to him, you know, we think that you actually, you yourself come from a family line that includes indigenous people.
49:45And he reacted strongly to that.
49:49I mean, there was a moment of, oh, really?
49:51Again, we love it when we can relate it to ourselves.
49:56Sure.
49:56So the fact that I can now take this to him and say, you in fact do, and here not only do you, but here are their names.
50:04Your fifth-grade grandfather is his sixth-grade grandfather.
50:06Right.
50:07Yeah.
50:08That's pretty cool.
50:09That's very cool.
50:10The paper trail had run out for each of my guests.
50:16It was time to show them their full family trees.
50:20Oh, my gosh.
50:21Whoa.
50:23Now filled with names they'd never heard before.
50:26For each, it was a moment of all.
50:29Oh, my gosh.
50:31That's a lot.
50:33It's fantastic.
50:34This is the best gift I've ever been given.
50:37Offering the chance to see themselves in a new light.
50:44Look at all these people.
50:46Look at all this history.
50:47It's amazing.
50:48This is just so crazy.
50:51I have identity.
50:53You big time.
50:54I like...
50:55Deep American.
50:56Deep American identity.
50:58Yeah.
50:58My time with my guests was running out, but I still had one surprise to share.
51:05When we compared Tracy's genetic profile to that of others who've been in the series,
51:11we found a match.
51:13Evidence of a distant cousin he never could have imagined he had.
51:19Okay.
51:21I'm nervous.
51:22Okay.
51:24You ready to meet your cousin?
51:25Sure.
51:26Please turn the page.
51:26Oh, that's fantastic.
51:33Tracy shares a long segment of DNA with actor Julia Roberts.
51:44They also share an experience.
51:47The two work together on the film version of August, Osage County, Tracy's breakout hit.
51:55And I adore her. She's just great. We had such a great time. She's just such a lovely person.
52:03That's amazing. That's great.
52:06That's the end of our journey with Tracy Letts and Sarah Haynes.
52:11Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests
52:16on another episode of Finding Your Roots.
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