I am fascinated by the stories of African people who came/were brought to the New World. Can anyone trace a whole family all the way back to an African genealogy? I realize this might not involve a celebrity but with so many trails lost in the vague documentation of slavery I wondered If Genealogists had traced anyone back 400 years like many of us of European or Chinese (for example) descent.
@@christinecharbonneau4448 I agree with you. My family was told we had British, Irish and Cherokee Indian but after two of my Mother's sisters tested, there's no Cherokee Indian. They have Southern Bantu.
Why George RR Martin is taking so long: - Size of the world and sheer number of moving pieces. Immense attention to detail that needs to go into every sentence in a series of many thousands of sentences. There are over a million words so far and the story isn't over yet. - Age (people often forget: what he can write in a day at the age of 25, 30 or 40, is *way* more than he can write at 60 and he just turned 73) - He is writing other books. He knows he will probably be dead around 80 - 90 like many humans and so he is eagerly exercising his passion which he has a right to do. As he says: No-one wants the books finished more than he does and I'm a HUGE fan of his writing so I a can only imagine how he feels with ASOIAF being *his* baby. - He has given a HUGE chunk of his life to giving us these stories so I will forever be grateful as we all should be that we were gifted with these incredible stories, even if we never get ADOS. Being upset at him may be many people's reaction but it reeks of ingratitude, petulance and immaturity. He has given us everything he can and will continue to do so.
And it's totally not because he made a mistake in making the Stark children too young and his backing cast became too active so that the 5 year time skip he intended couldn't work out. The TV show lucked out in how its cast aged up 8 years without its audience wondering how exactly. Also, the TV show killed off Rickon because you couldn't hide a five year old aging 8 years but still be about 6 or 7. "Immense attentional to detail" ABSOLUTELY love it. That guy totally wouldn't make such a novice mistake. Too bad that guy was Robert Jordan. He wrote THROUGH his plotholes, you could feel his plot physically shift during book 10 and fixed itself in book 11... then he died.
I had a similar story: I was told all my life by my Nana (maternal grandmother) that we were Irish. A little bit of French, German and Welsh in there but mostly Irish. I got a DNA test a few years ago and on both sides showed I was like 75% GERMAN. The bit of French and Welsh was still there but not a Drop of Irish! Same thing happened when my sister took a test too. Turned out it was because of Nana we found out from a great aunt still with us: Nana was born out of wedlock during the depression to a teenage mother who was 2nd generation German, her biological father was a full German immigrant as well. But he was married to someone else and wanted nothing to do with them after she was born and just ditched out. Nana was treated very badly during this time in her community and called the B word for kids without married parents all the time growing up. When she was 10 an Irish immigrant moved to town and asked her mother out. He took both great grandma and Nana to the movies. Eventually he proposed to her mom and adopted my Nana as his daughter in a time period were it was very rare to do so. He told her "I'm your dad now, I signed the paperwork, and that's that! Anyone gives you crap anymore about not having a dad you tell them my dad's name is Thomas and he works at the bank!" She and her mother converted to catholicism and all. So years later when she embraced Irish culture and swore up and down to her children and grandchildren we were Irish, it was because of her adoptive father who loved her no less than his own. And that's honestly beautiful to me.
As an Irish person, that is a hugely affecting story for me. So proud of my countryman, your ancestor. Your great grandma and Nana were obviously wonderful women also. So glad they got a man in their life that they deserved.
I hope this is more comforting than anxiety inducing. If so, find a great German restaurant and celebrate, or go to the store and make an awesome German dinner, with Brats, saurkraut, etc.
I met him at a comiccon a few years back. He was walking in the crowd and no one seemed to recognize him but me and my dad did and he was kind enough to take a picture with us
That's awesome, Raphael! It's lovely to hear that he took the time to take a photo with you both. Do you and your dad have a favorite book in the series, or a favorite season of the show? 🙂
Hi, Raphael. Thanks for your comment. We're glad to hear how much you've enjoyed this segment of Finding Your Roots. Getting a picture with him is very fun.
Yup. I found a half-sister. My father impregnated a married woman and they kept it a secret. My sister and I have known each other well for 30 years, but we didn’t know that we were actually siblings until 5 years ago.
That plot has more to do with the son of Henry VI of England than anything else. His queen Margaret of Anjou was rumoured to have conceived her son with one of his nobles during one of his periods of madness. The first 2-3 books at least of ASOIAF are based on British and European medieval history and the War of the Roses. This is why its story is so compelling, it's based on real history so it's easy to make it believable.
"You always thought Louis cheated on Grace. But it turns out it was Grace who cheated on Louis!" That hit me where it hurt. He spent his entire life believing his grandfather was an unfaithful cheater. Imagine spending your entire life believing a lie just to have it showed to you that you were mistaken for 70+ years!
George knew less about his ancestors before the episode than after the episode. He thought that he was Italian but in reality, he wasn't. A whole line of what he thought were his cousins weren't his biological cousins at all.
George was probably not one of them but imagine being anti-Semite all your life thinking your not a Jew yourself but ended up having g a Jewish granpa? Honest GRRM does look like a Eastern European granpa.
Dr. Gates does an excellent excellent job in these segments so well done and well researched. I could literally listen to him talk all night. He has such a soothing easy to listen to voice.
Disagree. I doubt I'd want "your grandmother cheated on so and so" delivered in such a way. I mean it's the truth but it seems like a pretty apathetic delivery of ancestry news.
So his mother went to her grave telling her son his father walked out on them when she cheated and the father left. She took any chance of finding out who the real father was. I wonder if he always identified with his Italian side only to find out he has no Italian side.
I was the same way, told I was Irish all my life only to find out I'm like 75% German and the other 25٪ French, Jewish, Welsh... but not a drop of Irish. It was wild! (There is a reason for that though, my Nana was the one that said we were Irish because her adoptive parents were Irish immigrants and she loved them and considered them her own... but emphasis on the ADOPTED part she still considered us Irish even if we weren't biologically.
Just to clarify : there's an awful lot of "cheating" talk, and while it might be the case, never forget that lots of women have been raped, and were too terrified or ashamed to tell anyone.
I had a similar surprise to George's. I'm adopted, years before taking a DNA test my birth mother found me. She knew her family's history, but told me that my birth father was born & raised in Germany after the war and never knew who his father was. She knew his mother was 100% German (turns out she was German/French), but she did let me know that he would get real tan in the summer so she thought he might have been 1/2 Italian or Greek. Took two DNA tests and find out that he was 1/2 Mexican and that I was only a few hours drive from half Aunts & Uncles that never knew they had another 1/2 brother born 1/2 way around the world from when their father was in the Military and had a medical stay in Germany.
We hope you enjoyed this, Boss. Have you found out new details about your family history? Any stories that stand out in your own personal research? We hope you'll find time to share your family stories and encourage others to do the same.
This is fascinating. It also shows an example of how we, as writers, as creative people, are at risk of misrepresenting people from our past. We may assume that stories that our families told us where true whenever it is actually either more complicated or entirely the flipside of what we thought we knew.
Louis leaving for a younger woman is probably just more of grandma's lies. He probably found out about the affair and left for another woman who he thought might be more loyal. Interesting how a cheater's lies persist for generations
So the man he thought was his grandfather actually wasn't, because his grandmother cheated. His real family history is like something out of his books.
@@greywolf7577 if someone came up to me saying that my ethnicity and cousins did not match I would think something is screwy. I would like to check all possibilities. Especially with the implication of cheating spouse.
Checking Grace's side would do nothing. They've already demonstrated that George is not related to Louie's side of the family. The conclusion is obvious given that Louie abandoned Grace for another family. She cucked him and he got out of dodge.
@@veloce5491 Georgie didn't just steal it he perverted it. He can't even bring himself to finish the damned thing. He's too busy gorging on his ill gotten gains. It's what they do. Bezos is next up to bat. He can cram it up his cramhole too!
It’s quite amazing how you find out something you never knew. I never knew I was a bit Native. ( my mom took the test, and showed me her results. Never took the test yet but want to. )
@@big.brained.creature not necessarily, you’re dads side would make it less then that, plus the dominant genes of both sides. Say you’re mom is 20%, add your dad who may not have Native (plus his parents and theirs etc), you could be >5-10% depending who in your family was native! You could even have a trace result which doesn’t necessarily mean you would have that gene, just that someone in your family did! Check out GeneaVlogger! He has tons of videos and reactions to these!
@@big.brained.creature Ahh so she has a trace result! that would be interesting to see if you have a trace result too, you’d probably be >.5% most likely around .2% if you have any trace result in you at all, which if you’re mom is 1% is kind of unlikely that you’d have a trace. unfortunately trace results don’t mean anything like i said which sucks
There are Italian Jews but seems unlikely to impossible that a man who believed he was ETHNICALLY Italian would be full blooded Ashkenazi Jewish without any knowledge. That would mean both his parents, all 4 grandparents, all 8 great-grandparents would have to ashkenazi Jews without his knowledge. Seems impossible.
@@gstrdms Ashkenazi Jewish from what I know have partially probably Southern European DNA including Italian. That's bow it is *translated* but it still could be the result of Middle Eastern mixing with North-Central European? I am not sure.
@@junejuly6060 Ashkenazi Jews tend to be from Polamd, Lithuania, Germany, Romania, Hungary, France. I'm Ashkenazi myself, but I not familiar with many Italian Jews. I know there are Greek Jews and they are more Sephardic, which means Jews from Spain and Portugal.
@@imisstoronto3121 Nonetheless, they can genetically plot as Southern European or SE + NE iirc. They were Jews in Greece that were another caste entirerly and were called Romaniotes. Shephardic Jews came in Greece to escape the Inquisition, from Spain. The only truly in fact genetically Middle Eastern Jews are the Samaritans but still they are not consider from tribe of David or Judea.
*GOT Fans* : So, when does the next book come out? *G.R.R. Martin 10 years later* : ...You know I've always thought about writing a new book about my family.
FYI, a woman who has a child isn't due to cheating. Obviously, a woman can get pregnant whether she wanted to or not, by someone she would choose, or not.
Honestly my DNA has my mind preoccupied, with findings I never knew. People who are related to me. I have a headache. It's like a match game with a learning experiences.
I know what you mean. Thanks to Ancestry I found out that most of the people I went to school with are cousins, Jimmy Carter is a 5th cousin, one of my distant maternal N-th great grandfathers was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, King Edward I was one of my 21st great grandfathers, Emily Dickinson was a 9th cousin, and many more including French and Norwegian royal bloodlines thanks to the Vikings.
@@JohnFourtyTwo as for me James Madison the 4th president, and Franklin Pierce the the 14 th president of the United States are my 4th cousins. I have a family member who's a founding father, and relatives that are Quakers.
Isn't it interesting how the first assumption is that the the grandma cheated? Has anybody thought that was a victim and was ashamed to tell? Besides, he still could have been the one that left her. These are all assumptions and nobody will know the truth facts. But it's a fact that the first thought was that the woman was unfaithful. Women are blamed since the beginning of times.
Most of these cases it's safe to assume that it was indeed cheating than to create an elaborate conspiracy that wash away grandma's blame for modern ideological gender reasons.
That might explain his passion for complicated family stories. He might not even have been aware of this, but maybe this was his unconsciousness driver for his writing.
I wish someone could help me find my African ancestors. The records say I am European & Native American. My DNA says I have African, yet I haven’t found any African ancestors. Appalachian Melungeon are so secretive about their past! 😔
Take the African Ancestry DNA test, this test specifies your ethnic group. Saying '40% Nigerian' for instance is not helpful because Nigeria is a colonial creation and not very old. Plus, over 200 ethnic groups live there that all have distinct cultures, languages and pre-colonial kingdoms or histories. By narrowing down the ethnic group you will get a better picture.
Hi Michael! These are just clips from the episode. Check your local listings if you're interested in seeing the whole episode. We're thrilled to hear that you've enjoyed these clips!
When I tried to view the older shows I was only able to go back a couple of years and not the entire show. I was disappointed as I was ready to binge watch them all. LOVE the show. My husband has been working on his line and an Ancestry member for years. I'm working on mine, too.
We're happy to see another fan of the show. Have you been inspired to research your family lines after watching 'Finding Your Roots'? Good luck and enjoy finding new clues about your ancestors.
Hi, Roguewas. Thanks for your comment. We're happy to let you know that much of the information found in this program is researched through Ancestry. We have records from over 80 countries, with some dating back to the 13th century. In any of our public member trees any living people are shown as 'Private.' People marked as “living” in family trees are not visible in searches at any privacy level. We have two articles we hope you find helpful. support.ancestry.com/s/article/Family-Tree-Privacy?language=en_US support.ancestry.com/s/article/AncestryDNA-Privacy?language=en_US
I have a complaint. When George Martin is told that Louis couldn't be his grandfather, it wasn't sensible to tell him that his grandmother, "cheated". None of us were there, we don't know if that conception was consensual or not. We can't go affirming, the unaffirmable; it's unethical and unprofessional. On another episode, (I don't remember which) an African American was told, "Nope. You don't have any Native American DNA". There it is, again: "affirming the unaffirmable". We can say, "It was undetected", but, we can't say, "You don't have any". A person's cultural heritage is crucial to their identity. DNA tests can not reveal all the DNA in a person's past. Another example exists for those who were adopted. The DNA may not match the culture, they were raised in, but that culture is still part of that person's identity. There's "ethnicity" and there's "genes"; both are equally important. Please, consider saying, "It is undetected, but, that doesn't mean, it was never in your past." And, please, don't suggest, "someone cheated". Thank you.
Most of these cases it's safe to assume that it was indeed cheating than to create an elaborate conspiracy that wash away grandma's blame for modern ideological gender reasons or "cultural heritage" babble.
I feel like these stories could be so much longer. It is like of like watching video but only getting to see part one and wondering where is the rest of it.
