Who Do You Think You Are?

Lately Alex and I have been watching episodes of NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are" on our free demand channels. It has been interesting to see people's responses as they learn more of the history of their ancestors. One episode features actress Sarah Jessica Parker tracing her ancestry all the way back to Salem, MA, where she learns that her great great ++++ grand mother was accused of witch craft, but lucky for her family, the craziness in Salem settled down and they weren't put to death without actual evidence that they killed their neighbor. Her ending comment at the end of the show was that she really felt like an American, now that she knew the history of just a small fraction of her family.

Now she feels like an American???? She is from Cincinnati, Ohio! Is being born and raised in America not enough to make you American anymore? I guess it is this kind of mindset is a result of our beautiful melting pot of a country. It never has crossed my mind that I am not an American, even though I have ancestors who at some point or another crossed a large body of water to set the first foot on America soil.

Ancestry.com is there on the show to make their plug of course. I have to admit, I have used a website called myheritage.com to record genealogy stuff for Alex and me, but ancestry.com is far superior because you can actually look up old records that have been scanned to uncover ancestors.

Monday night, I spent some time using a free 14 day trial at ancestry.com following the Robinson family name and found out that Alex's first Robinson Ancestor came from Cork Co. Ireland to the promised land of Boston, MA sometime before the revolution, and eventually settled in Maine.

Anyway, I find it fascinating to know where you and your loved ones come from... and I really love to see pictures!