Top 20 Darkest Family Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are

MsMojo

Family trees can hide some chilling secrets. Join us as we count down our picks for the most unsettling ancestry bombshells uncovered on Who Do You Think You Are? Our list includes Lisa Kudrow, Regina King, Sarah Jessica Parker, Courteney Cox, John Stamos, Rashida Jones, and more, with revelations spanning witch trials, royal scandal, abandonment, and the Holocaust. Which discovery hit you hardest? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Transcript

00:00Un-be-lievable. Un-be-lievable.

00:06Welcome to Ms. Mojo.

00:08And today, we're counting down our picks for the most disturbing discoveries in celebs' ancestry.

00:13For this list, we'll only be discussing the U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are?

00:17So, probably have to start there.

00:21Number 20, Sarah Jessica Parker.

00:23They have grounded suspicion that the said Elwell, Dyke, and Rowe have wickedly and feloniously committed sundry acts of wishcraft.

00:33Un-be-lievable.

00:36When Hocus Pocus star Sarah Jessica Parker was featured on Who Do You Think You Are?'s first episode,

00:41she discovered her ancestors' connection to one of America's darkest historical events.

00:45In November 1692, her maternal 10th great-grandmother, Esther Dutch Elwell, along with Abigail Rowe and Rebecca Dyke,

00:53were arrested and accused of witchcraft.

00:56During the Salem Witch Trials, hundreds of innocent people were convicted and executed based on hearsay.

01:02However, the three women never faced a judge in court, since the use of spectral evidence was abolished just a

01:08month before.

01:09Given Parker's discoveries, maybe it was fated that Esther's descendant would one day also be a witch.

01:15Well, on the silver screen at least.

01:16Come, little children, I'll take thee away.

01:24Number 19, Sean Hayes.

01:27Right there on page 1, January 30 received a sentence for three counts of assault, and this says fine, bail,

01:36or hard labor.

01:37HL, hard labor.

01:39Emmy-winning actor-comedian Sean Hayes has opened up about his estranged father, Ronald, who struggled with substance use and

01:46left the family.

01:47In researching his ancestry, he found that his grandfather, William Hayes, had similar hardships and abandoned his wife and children.

01:54In 1947, Ronald and his siblings were sent to an orphanage, four years before William died alone in a hospital.

02:01The Illinois native traveled to Ireland to see the courthouse where his relatives, unfortunately, spent a significant amount of time.

02:08Before William's father, Patrick Hayes Jr., emigrated to America, he served prison time for assault.

02:14His father, Patrick Hayes Sr., had an extensive criminal record and even took his son to court.

02:20Fortunately, it seems like Sean broke the Hayes men's generational cycle of violence and abandonment.

02:25Patrick Sr. starts dealing with it by drinking, and that, of course, affects everything.

02:32That affects all his kids, including Patrick Jr.

02:35Number 18, Kim Cattrall.

02:38So, he left in 38. Within a year, he was remarried.

02:44That if I'm really, I'm quite angry about that.

02:48Sex and the City alum Kim Cattrall traced her ancestry with a goal in mind.

02:52It solved the mysterious disappearance of her grandfather, George Baugh.

02:56One day in 1938, he left his wife and three daughters, never to be seen again.

03:01They were soon impoverished like so many others in Liverpool, England at the time.

03:06When Cattrall finds Baugh's sisters, they tell her that he abandoned them as well.

03:10Just a year after walking out on his family, Baugh married another woman and had four more children.

03:15In one of the series' most emotional moments,

03:18Cattrall tells her mother and aunts about their dad starting another family while his first one struggled.

03:23It's nothing short of heart-wrenching.

03:25He was married on the 5th of August, 1939.

03:30Oh my goodness, he didn't wait too long, did he?

03:33No.

03:34Number 17, Blair Underwood.

03:37Pestiferous darkie?

03:39Dan, pestiferous darkie?

03:40They're not speaking kindly.

03:42That's right.

03:42At all.

03:43All right, all right.

03:44All right, it will be remembered at this pestiferous darkie who claims to be the second Jesus.

03:49Knowing very little about his mother's ancestry inspired actor Blair Underwood to research his maternal family tree.

03:56He discovered his three-times great-grandfather, Sonny Early,

03:59had a neighbor accusing him of stealing his cow and, quote,

04:02murderous assault in 1876.

04:05Newspapers stated Sonny was a, quote,

04:07lunatic who claimed to be the second coming of Jesus.

04:10Later in the episode, Underwood learns he was likely a, quote,

04:14conjurer and gets context for the cow incident,

04:17which proved Sonny was defending his food source and livelihood.

04:20I see an image of Sonny emerging very much along the lines of a conjurer.

04:26A what?

04:26A conjurer.

04:27When you look at them, they are strikingly eclectic and eccentric in their appearance.

04:34He was shot in the face but lived.

04:37In 1884, another violent confrontation ended with him getting shot three times

04:42and still miraculously surviving.

04:44The reason why Sonny was admitted to Central State Hospital in 1900 remains a mystery,

04:49but Underwood admires his ancestor's spirituality and determination to survive.

04:54Sonny is, from what I see, a man who could not be broken.

05:00I'll never know for sure why Sonny ended up in a mental hospital,

05:03but he was shot four times defending his rights and was clearly never going to give up.

05:09So, for his white neighbors, maybe the easiest way to get rid of him

05:13was to commit him to a mental hospital.

05:16Number 16, Gwyneth Paltrow.

05:18Helen dies July 20th, 1912, and she's born August in 1912.

05:27So, my great-grandmother was pregnant when her older daughter died.

05:33Gwyneth Paltrow appeared on Who Do You Think You Are to discover more about her paternal ancestry,

05:38starting with her grandfather Buster.

05:40Her genealogical journey led to his mother, Ida Edith Hyman,

05:44a woman with a reputation for neglecting her children.

05:46But Paltrow learns the devastating reason she wasn't a more caring mother.

05:51In 1897, Ida lost her mother and brother within months of each other,

05:55which, of course, negatively affected her studies at Hunter College.

05:59A year later, she was discharged from the school.

06:02In 1912, her young daughter Helen died in a horrific wagon accident.

06:06Just a month before she gave birth to her daughter Marion,

06:09Paltrow's great-grandmother experienced tragedy after tragedy,

06:13and unfortunately, her living children never knew what she was going through.

06:16I wish that I could share this information with my grandfather.

06:20He didn't have compassion for her at all, and maybe this would have changed that.

06:24Number 15, Noah Wiley.

06:26I left home to end my life because I could not bear the thought of committing the deed

06:30under my dear loved one's eyes.

06:32May God, who rules the universe, forgive as far as possible my act.

06:37John H. Mills.

06:37As a Civil War buff, Noah Wiley was eager to find out if any of his ancestors served.

06:42He excitedly discovered that his maternal great-great-great-grandfather, John Henry Mills,

06:48voluntarily enlisted and fought in the infamous Battle of Shiloh,

06:51debunking the family rumor that he paid someone to take his place.

06:54But the journey took a dark turn when Wiley learned how and why his life ended.

06:58To avoid a steep insurance premium, Mills took his own life in an effort to save his five children

07:03and their mother the shame of not being able to afford it.

07:06Hearing about your ancestors' hardships can be painful,

07:09but Wiley also got emotional for a different reason,

07:12as he read his obituary that described the town's overwhelming love for Mills.

07:16I found myself being very emotionally affected by reading that up.

07:20I had to hear how beloved he was,

07:22that they shut the town shops and they told the church bell during his funeral procession.

07:29That kind of public outpouring of grief moved me.

07:34Number 14, John Stamos.

07:36Grandfather was, what, 38?

07:40Yeah.

07:40Something like that.

07:40And then my great-grandmother, Georgisa, was 27, 28?

07:45She would have been, yeah, late 20s.

07:46My grandfather was born in 1904, so he was one then.

07:51Yes.

07:52So he never had a father.

07:53Never had a father.

07:54That to me is heartbreaking.

07:56Greek-American actor-musician John Stamos returned to his family's homeland,

08:00hoping to learn more about his paternal ancestors.

08:03When visiting the Arcadian village of Kakuri,

08:06he found that his great-grandfather, Vassilio Stamatopoulos,

08:09died in 1905 at the hands of Yanis Koliopoulos, a.k.a. Judas,

08:15after a long-standing feud.

08:16This was just a year after his son John, Stamos' grandfather, was born.

08:21And despite his mother, Georgisa, still living, John was considered an orphan.

08:26This is fascinating.

08:27I mean, a man was murdered in the streets.

08:29I mean, visualize that town square or wherever it happened.

08:33Maybe they were having some sort of standoff.

08:35Koliopoulos disappeared after the killing,

08:37delaying a trial for 10 years.

08:39With the statute of limitations approaching,

08:41the trial took place on November 16, 1915,

08:44when the still-absent defendant was found guilty of, quote,

08:48not premeditated manslaughter,

08:49and sentenced, quote, in absentia to 15 years in prison.

08:53John Stamos went looking for information and found a true Greek tragedy.

08:57It's the gods.

08:59The gods are crying for my Greek tragic story.

09:04Number 13.

09:05Cynthia Nixon

09:06He told his wife to get up and get breakfast for himself and her two children,

09:12and then to commence saying her prayers.

09:15For she should die, he swore, before sunset.

09:18When actor-activist Cynthia Nixon looked into her paternal ancestry,

09:23she found a relative with a criminal past.

09:25Her great-great-great-grandmother, Martha Kernett,

09:28murdered her abusive husband, Noah Casto, with an axe in 1843.

09:32But as she read more newspapers,

09:34Nixon realized that she killed him after he threatened her life.

09:38Martha wasn't convicted of murder,

09:40but was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter

09:42and sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary.

09:44However, in December 1844,

09:46she was pardoned after serving almost two of her five-year sentence,

09:50during which time she had a daughter.

09:52Finding a killer in your lineage would shock anyone.

09:54But Nixon respected her ancestors' significant impact on prison reform.

09:58She made history certainly never in a way that she would have chosen to make it,

10:03but she did make history nonetheless,

10:04and she did start a change that affected incarcerated women all over the United States.

10:11Number 12.

10:12Rashida Jones

10:13When Ilya told me that they were all killed,

10:17I was so shocked.

10:20When your family members lived in a town and left a town,

10:23and then later everybody was taken down, it's shocking.

10:28As the daughter of Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton,

10:31actress-filmmaker Rashida Jones researched her African-American and Jewish ancestries,

10:35meaning both would reveal some painful truths.

10:38Focusing on her maternal ancestors,

10:40she follows the life of her grandmother Rita Rosenberg,

10:43who at a young age left Ireland for New York City in 1926,

10:47where she reinvented herself.

10:49Jones travels to both places,

10:51and when her search takes her back six generations,

10:53she goes to Latvia,

10:55the birthplace of her great-great-grandfather Benjamin Benson.

10:58Sadly, all of her ancestors lost their lives during the Holocaust in 1941,

11:03except for Benson's father,

11:04who went to England to evade the draft.

11:06Jones was prepared for the dark historical facts,

11:09but still found herself stunned at the brutality of it all.

11:12It's heavy and it's a lot,

11:13but these are things that I wanted to know.

11:15I wanted to really have some closure about,

11:21you know, what happened with our family.

11:24Number 11, Rita Wilson.

11:26This is the report of the guard who was on the spot,

11:30informing the state security officer on your father's escape.

11:38Oh my God.

11:39For Rita Wilson, her father's untold story was a source of grief and curiosity,

11:44and two years after his passing,

11:46the actress-singer traced his roots overseas.

11:49In the States, her father's name was Alan,

11:51though in his home country of Greece,

11:53he was born Hassan Halilov Ibrahimov.

11:55From being drafted into the Bulgarian military

11:58to his harrowing escape from a labor camp,

12:00Wilson realized why he never spoke about his past.

12:03She also learns that his first wife, Alice,

12:06died days after giving birth to their son, Emil,

12:08who tragically passed just months later.

12:24While the eye-opening experience was incredibly emotional,

12:28Wilson finally knew her father's story.

12:30And as a silver lining,

12:32she had the chance to visit Hassan's 96-year-old half-brother, Ferhat.

12:36He lived to 96, so he could wait.

12:43I'm very, very glad.

12:46Number 10.

12:47Courtney Cox.

12:48Friends star Courtney Cox set out to trace her mother's English lineage.

12:52She doesn't expect any spectacular revelations,

12:54so she's surprised to find royal roots,

12:57including her 26-times great-grandfather, William the Conqueror.

13:01So he's the reason why England is here?

13:03You conquered it from France?

13:05Okay, this is pretty intense.

13:08Another one of Cox's ancestors

13:10is her 18-times great-grandfather, Thomas de Berkeley.

13:13The English baron's Gloucestershire home of Berkeley Castle

13:15served as a prison for the abdicated King Edward II in 1327.

13:20This is also where he died,

13:21and while some accounts credit natural causes,

13:24others believed he was killed.

13:26They said Lake King was shut up in a close chamber,

13:30but that not sufficing to hasten his death.

13:34The historian shared the rumors detailing Edward's gruesome death,

13:37though it's believed that he was ultimately murdered via suffocation.

13:41Berkeley and Cox's 19-times great-grandfather Roger Mortimer was put on trial.

13:46The former was acquitted while the latter was executed.

13:49Okay, this is one of the greatest soap operas I've ever heard.

13:52Number 9, Steve Buscemi.

13:54Hello.

13:55Hi, how are you?

13:56Good, how are you?

13:57Okay.

13:57Like others on this list,

13:59actor-filmmaker Steve Buscemi's reason for digging into his genealogy is his mother.

14:03After my mother died, my sister had this made up.

14:06She had it made up because there were so few pictures up there.

14:08There's no pictures, yeah.

14:09The Brooklyn native never met his grandmother, Amanda Van Dyne,

14:12because she took her life when his mother was very young.

14:14In his search, he found that his great-great-grandfather Ralph Montgomery had a rough go of it.

14:19By 1860, he switched professions from a dentist to a grocer.

14:23Based on a discarded letter,

14:25this was also around the time he contemplated ending his own life.

14:28But then, months later, it's found,

14:31and not only found but printed in the newspaper.

14:34In 1861, he became a Union soldier in the Civil War,

14:37left his family,

14:38and later started a new one.

14:40Though Montgomery ultimately died of tuberculosis in 1878,

14:44Buscemi theorizes that generations of his family have suffered from depression.

14:48But when I think of the past generations,

14:52the things that they went through,

14:54and that they survived,

14:57it really makes me so much more appreciative of my family.

15:03Number 8. Jason Sudeikis

15:05Don't know how, don't know where,

15:07don't know what happened or, you know,

15:10how that affected my gram and obviously my dad.

15:13SNL alum Jason Sudeikis set out to find the mysterious circumstances

15:16of his paternal grandfather Stanley's death in 1948.

15:19He learned that Stanley married his wife Edna on September 25, 1945,

15:24abandoning her the same day,

15:26leaving behind his daughter and unborn son Daniel, Jason's father.

15:30So he never even met my dad.

15:32Not according to the court record.

15:33Up to this point.

15:35That's right.

15:35That's heavy duty.

15:36He never supported them financially,

15:38and by 1947, they legally separated.

15:41Reading the fatal sidewalk accident report,

15:44Jason discovered that Stanley was unhoused at the time of his death.

15:47We contacted his wife,

15:49and we asked her to attend the inquest,

15:51and she stated that she wanted nothing to do with it,

15:54that she had been legally separated for three years.

15:57His ex-wife and uncle's refusal to be involved

16:00suggested that he may have burned too many bridges with his substance use.

16:03Going back further, Stanley Sr. also abandoned his family.

16:07But the tragic irony is that Stanley Sr.'s father, Joseph, died while working to provide for his family.

16:12I feel it is a form of closure, this journey, to relay the information to my dad.

16:17Number 7.

16:18Marissa Tomei.

16:19For Marissa Tomei, this foray into genealogical research was intended to uncover the truth

16:24about her great-grandfather Francesco Leopoldo Bianchi's death in 1910.

16:29The story is that he was shot in a bar.

16:31The family story was that he was killed because of a misdeed,

16:35possibly for having an affair or getting into financial trouble.

16:38But as Tomei travels around Tuscany,

16:40she finds pieces that make up a different story.

16:43In 1911, a man named Tetzilio Lazaretsky claimed he was attacked by Bianchi

16:48and shot him in self-defense.

16:51Treacherously shot Leopoldo Bianchi, killing him on the spot.

16:56However, it was reported that the bullet entered the back of Bianchi's head.

16:59Despite evidence suggesting murder,

17:02Lazaretsky was acquitted of voluntary homicide.

17:05The animosity between the men stemmed from a business deal gone wrong,

17:08not any philandering on Bianchi's part, as his family believed.

17:12And now I have much more of a connection to him.

17:14I can feel his presence.

17:17He's much more...

17:18He's alive in my heart and in my mind's eye and in my family again.

17:24Number 6.

17:26Megan Mullally

17:26Like fellow actress Marissa Tomei,

17:29Megan Mullally grew up hearing stories about her relatives.

17:32My grandfather, my father's father, he was an alcoholic.

17:38Her grandfather was violent towards his sons,

17:40behavior that her father would later exhibit himself.

17:43Because of his emotional and verbal mistreatment throughout her childhood,

17:47Megan prepared to uncover some dark truths about her paternal ancestors.

17:51I still have certain questions on my father's side

17:55where the psychological and emotional darkness in my family comes from.

17:59Through newspapers and court records,

18:02she finds that her great-great-grandfather Richard Ira Mullally

18:05was charged and convicted of physically abusing his pregnant wife Elizabeth in 1859.

18:09After his death, Elizabeth married her second husband, James Venable,

18:14with whom she endured similar mistreatment.

18:16Even though Megan anticipated the outcome,

18:18she's still saddened to learn about the troubling history of substance use disorders

18:22and violence involving the men on her father's side.

18:26That makes me really sad.

18:28Number 5. Chelsea Handler

18:30My father, I guess, made a deal with my mother

18:33when they had children that they were going to be raised Jewish.

18:37Comedian author Chelsea Handler was raised Jewish,

18:39although her mother Rita was Mormon.

18:41Rita was born in Germany and lived there until her father Karl Stoker,

18:45a German soldier in World War II,

18:47brought the family to the United States.

18:49He was a Nazi enthusiast.

18:51And this is where my grandfather worked.

18:53Exactly.

18:54So that makes my grandfather what?

18:57The big mystery was where Grandpa Karl's loyalties lay,

19:00and Handler dreaded he might have had ties to the Nazis.

19:03In Germany, she tried to gauge his enthusiasm through his military records,

19:08which showed that he was drafted and seemingly lacked ambition to advance rank.

19:11But one of the saddest parts of the episode sees Handler reading her grandmother Elizabeth's tragic account

19:16of life in post-World War I Germany.

19:19She details the grim conditions, unemployment, extreme poverty, and scarcity of food.

19:24Oh yes, I can see my mother's head vividly when she bent her head over us,

19:28her tears dropping onto our cheeks when we asked for a small piece of bread,

19:32saying, children, I don't have anything.

19:35Number 4. Jesse Tyler Ferguson

19:37The moment my grandmother passed away,

19:40you don't have that person to talk to to get those personal stories from.

19:43Modern Family star Jesse Tyler Ferguson comes from a line of Jesse's,

19:47including his paternal grandmother, whom he was named after.

19:50She was named after her father, Jesse Wheat Upper Cue,

19:53a lawyer who was also seemingly a career criminal.

19:56The first piece of information Ferguson finds on his great-grandfather

20:00is an article about the 1872 death of Baltimore resident Amelia Wheat,

20:04Upper Cue's elderly aunt.

20:06Okay, well this got juicy really fast.

20:08He was arrested as a murder suspect,

20:10but made it through two trials without a guilty verdict.

20:13Throughout his life, J.W. moved around the country,

20:16getting into more trouble including two arrests for embezzlement,

20:19all while going through three marriages that all ended in divorce.

20:23Pull it together, Jesse, what happened?

20:25However, Ferguson is happy to hear that the otherwise disappointing relative

20:29cared for his five children.

20:31When they divorced, he continued to take care of them as his own.

20:35I'm proud of him.

20:37Number 3. Christina Applegate

20:39I want to know why my grandmother couldn't take care of him.

20:44Not just because of her age.

20:45There has to be another reason.

20:47Growing up, Christina Applegate didn't know much,

20:49if anything, about her paternal grandparents.

20:52Sadly, her father, Robert, didn't either.

20:54He was raised by his grandparents and only knew of rumors about how and when his mother died.

20:59On her genealogical journey, she finds that Lavena Shaw and Paul Applegate,

21:04her grandparents, went through a tumultuous divorce and custody battle in the 1940s.

21:09Wait a minute, when did they first separate?

21:11Well, do you want to take a look?

21:12During the legal proceedings, a doctor reported that young Robert appeared to be malnourished,

21:17a discovery that visibly upsets Applegate.

21:20And on various dates struck and beat her.

21:23More shocking revelations are Paul's alleged mistreatment of Lavena,

21:27as well as her struggles with chronic substance use,

21:30which likely contributed to her early death.

21:32Though Robert is shocked to learn the details of his mother's life,

21:35he finally has some closure.

21:37And I hope, I really, really hope with all my heart,

21:40that at the end of the process, he really sees what a miracle he is.

21:47Number 2. Regina King

21:49Using Moses' name, I then look for the family in Alabama.

21:53Since I know that's where Alice lived, and I locate them on the 1900 census.

21:58Looking into her maternal ancestry,

22:00Regina King digs deeper into the life of her two-times great-grandfather Moses Crosby,

22:05aka Moses Hughes, an educator and civil rights activist.

22:09While living in Alabama in 1868,

22:11an altercation with a white man got Moses' name added to the local Ku Klux Klan's blacklist,

22:16making him a target in the white community.

22:18It gives permission for white men and women to attack at will those who are listed.

22:27One night, a group of KKK members broke into Moses' home,

22:30and though he escaped, his wife Mary Meadow was shot and killed.

22:34Within days, he was charged with assault and attempted murder of the white man,

22:38and received a two-year sentence.

22:40When we think about all of this, the context of who the jurors were,

22:44and the fact that this sets the perfect scenario for Moses to be handed a judgment of guilty.

22:51Moses endured many hardships, but King admires his perseverance in the face of racism and injustices.

22:58Moses' entire story is very similar to stories that we're still hearing today.

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23:21Number one, Lisa Kudrow.

23:23Since she was young, actress Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of Who Do You Think You Are,

23:28heard tell of Belarusian Jewish family members' devastating lives during the Holocaust.

23:33Most American Jews from Eastern Europe, you know, they have a Holocaust story.

23:38There were relatives that were left behind.

23:39In season one of the series, she travels to the site of the 1942 Ilya Massacre,

23:44where 750 to 900 Jewish villagers were killed,

23:48including her paternal great-grandmother Mary Mordechovic.

23:51The local Christian population later told us that for many hours they could hear from afar the screams.

23:59Kudrow knew about this horrific time in history and the tragic deaths of her ancestors and countless others.

24:04But being in Ilya and reading about the detailed atrocities that were committed decades before,

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