I really enjoyed all the military history that was provided and seeing how pleased and genuinely surprised Chris was with each new find.
All the wonderful family treasures, letters, documents and photos that genealogy researchers kept turning up for him left me in a state of genealogy envy! But I liked how they kept stressing that their finds were unusual and that we are not always so lucky.
When they got to his ancestor who fought in the War of 1812, I was actually dreading what was coming. There's a lot of bickering and controversy over who won that war and of course as a Canadian with ancestors on the British side, I'm backing the point that the Battle of New Orleans was won after the War had officially ended. So it doesn't count. But that controversial point was never mentioned thank goodness.
All in all I think I enjoyed this week's episode almost as much as Christina Applegate's episode. And Chris came across as a decent and rather nice guy! I didn't realize he played the young man in "Scent of a Woman" which is one of my favourite movies of all time. What a great job he did!
What are your thoughts and feelings on last night's episode?
5 comments:
I really enjoyed it. Christina Applegate's show was great because it focused on going in depth on one family member (which I love to do) and Zooey Deshanel's was great because it tied her family in with historical events (which I also love) and Chris O'donnell's was great because of the tangible artifacts they were able to locate. I don't think you have to be a genealogy addict (which I am) to enjoy these shows and I hope they will continue beyond this season! I'd also like for Henry Gates to do some more of the Finding My Roots series.
I really liked the beginning of the show where they brought in the niece who had been doing the family's genealogy. That was a nice touch. Looks like Chris O'Donnell's family followed the same migration route as my family: Maryland to Missouri to California!
I couldn't believe how dumb he was. He read his ancestor's recollections of the cholera epidemic in St Louis, where he came home from the Mexican-American War because his mother wrote to him that his father, a graveyard manager, was dead and his brother was too sick to dig the graves. Then he's looking at his service records and he couldn't figure out why he didn't stay the full year he signed up for. Maybe they filmed it out of order.
But then he goes to Baltimore, and when the tour guide is talking about the battle, I'm thinking, hey, that's the 'whole bombs bursting in air' Star Spangled Banner thing. And he didn't know that. And I'm Canadian. And when they said it was horrible for the British to burn the White House, they neglected to mention the Americans burned our parliament buildings first.
I agree with "Anonymous." I was stunned Mr. O'Donnell was so ignorant of basic American history. If that had been my ancestor, I would have been jumping like crazy as soon as his service record said he was posted at Ft McHenry.
I've really enjoyed all the "Who Do you Think You Are" productions.
My only question is why does the person researching leave the different archives empty handed. No one asks for copies of the great materials they are shown.
KSAOK
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