GATES: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Welcome to "Finding Your Roots".
In this episode,
we're going to do something we've never done before...
You're about to meet three viewers who reached out to us,
hoping that we could solve mysteries that have haunted
their families for generations.
MORROW: How do you build a life knowing that your mother
left you and never came back?
ROBERTSON: Hearing stories about my dad's side of the
family got me really interested in, in finding out some answers.
GATES: Mmm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: And realizing very quickly that there was no way
for me to find out those answers.
WILLIS: It would be awkward.
It would be uncomfortable to find out that I'm carrying
the name of a stranger...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: But it would still settle me,
because I would still have the truth.
Whatever that truth is, I would still have that.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: So the truth is really the thing that I crave.
GATES: To uncover their roots,
we've used every tool available.
Genealogists combed through paper trails stretching back
hundreds of years.
While DNA experts utilized the latest advances in
genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have
lain hidden for generations.
And we've compiled everything into a book of life.
A record of all of our discoveries.
WILLIS: Thank you already.
GATES: And a window into the hidden past.
MORROW: This attaches me to these people.
And that is a big deal for me.
WILLIS: Okay, down the rabbit hole we go.
ROBERTSON: I'm trying not to cry this whole time.
Whoo.
GATES: My three guests have fundamental questions
about who they are.
And those questions,
at last, are about to be answered.
In this episode,
they're going to meet ancestors whose identities
they never imagined...
hear stories they've only dreamed of hearing...
And see, for the very first time,
where their roots really lie.
(theme music playing)
♪ ♪
(book closes)
♪ ♪
GATES: Okay, ready?
♪ ♪
"Finding Your Roots" is my pride and joy.
Since we premiered in 2011,
we've introduced more than 200 people to their ancestors,
tracing roots all over the world.
But for this episode we decided to do something new.
We reached out to our viewers,
asking if they had a mystery for us to solve.
The response was overwhelming.
We got over 9,000 submissions,
from a dizzying array of people.
Choosing one turned out to be an impossible task,
so we chose three.
The first is Terrie Morrow, a school bus driver in
Birmingham, Alabama.
GATES: What are you hoping to learn today?
MORROW: Um, my mother's grandfather,
Walter Kirkland Moore Tagger is how we kind of refer to him.
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: Um, we call him Papa.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And Papa was old when I was a little girl.
But he was sweet.
And we would talk to Papa and ask Papa questions about,
when he was growing up.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: But, his mother, he never got to know.
He knew her up until I think maybe about the age of five.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And somewhere in the course of time, she left him.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Um, she left him with a family whose last name
was Tagger and that's who raised him.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And he never saw her again.
So from the time of about five for the rest of his life into,
I think Papa was somewhere between 105-plus when he passed.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: He never knew what happened to his mother.
He never saw her again.
And so we've often wondered not just who she was because
we knew her name, but why?
You know, why would you leave a little boy?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And I don't know that the family that
she left him with,
I don't know if they were strangers to him or not.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: They must not have been strangers to her 'cause
I don't think anybody would just abandon their child to
a family and don't know anything about them.
But we want...
Why did she leave him?
GATES: Hmm.
MORROW: I mean, he's five years old.
GATES: It's showtime!
My second guest is Megan Robertson,
a speech therapist from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Are you excited?
Like Terrie, Megan's mystery begins with a child.
According to her family, Megan's great-grandfather,
a man named Green Marshall Church,
was put up for adoption when he was a boy,
and no one knew the identity of his biological parents.
GATES: Now how old were you
when your father told you about this?
ROBERTSON: I was probably 15 or 16.
GATES: And how did he tell you?
ROBERTSON: I just remember, you know, him telling me,
my dad telling me, um,
along with my grandfather, you know, that his name was
Green and that's where my dad's middle name came from, um,
and that they didn't have any information.
That he had passed away and we didn't know who had raised him
or where he came from.
GATES: What was your reaction?
ROBERTSON: Uh, I remember being sad.
Sad because I knew all of my grandparents.
I was very close with all of my grandparents, you know?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: I had two sets of grandparents up until
I was in college.
GATES: Really? ROBERTSON: Yeah.
GATES: Oh, you were very lucky.
ROBERTSON: I was very lucky. GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: So to know that he had none of that.
GATES: Mm-hmm. ROBERTSON: It was heartbreaking.
GATES: What would it mean,
um, for you finally to get the answer?
ROBERTSON: So, in recent years, um, like six years ago,
my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: And, and one of his siblings has
Stage 4 breast cancer.
GATES: Mmm.
ROBERTSON: And having, um, illnesses and things like
that kind of come at our family.
Um, I...
I think I felt like the time was getting to be
a little shorter than I'd like and I wanted to, like,
to be able to give them this information is,
is the greatest gift.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: These were their grandparents.
GATES: That's right. ROBERTSON: You know?
GATES: This is your father's grandfather.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
To be able to tell them, you know, like,
"Hey, this is what our last name may have been"
GATES: Uh-huh.
ROBERTSON: You know, or,
"This is when we came over to this country."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: Um, because no one ever,
has ever known.
GATES: My third guest is Joyce Willis,
a civil servant in Philadelphia.
Joyce came to me with a with a question about her grandmother,
a woman named Beatrice Willis.
Beatrice grew up in a small family,
closely bonded to her sister Melba.
But late in her life,
she told Joyce that she didn't know if the man who had
raised her was actually her biological father.
The reason?
When she was young,
Beatrice's father had teased her,
claiming that she was not his daughter,
and those words lingered on.
WILLIS: She told me one time, just once,
her father said to her, in joking,
that he might not be her father.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: It stuck with her for the rest of her life.
GATES: Why would a parent, um, tell a child,
“You know, I'm not really your father"?
WILLIS: I can't imagine.
GATES: I mean, what kind of joke is that, right?
WILLIS: Yeah. Yeah. So he had to have some reason.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: I imagine he had to have some reason for doubt,
you know, uh, I don't know what he looked like.
I have never been able to find a picture.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: So I can't compare her, you know?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: Her physical features to either of my
great-grandparents,
'cause I've never seen a picture of 'em.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: So I don't know if he was Melba's dad and
not my grandmother's,
or if he was really my grandmother's dad and
not Melba's, or maybe he wasn't either one of their
father and he was
you know, I, I don't know what the story is.
GATES: My three guests have spent decades trying
to solve their family mysteries,
and each told me that they wanted to know the truth,
even if the truth was painful.
It was time to give them the answers they had been seeking.
I started with Terrie Morrow.
Terrie's great-grandfather Walter was abandoned
when he was five.
For a few years after that,
he received letters and money from his mother,
but he never saw her again.
Terrie knows that Walter's mother was named
“Lenora Kirkland”,
and she suspects that Lenora was a White woman
who conceived Walter with a Black man named “Hal Moore.”
But beyond that,
Terrie's many efforts to learn about Lenora have
come up empty.
Why do you think the mystery has proven so hard to solve?
MORROW: She left Alabama when, apparently,
I think Papa thought that she went to Georgia when she left.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Maybe that's where the mail came from or whatever.
And I think she cut all ties.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: So when you cut ties, you, you know,
you end whatever relationships.
And maybe because she knew she had a child back there,
but at some point the money stopped coming.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: You know, she didn't forever send,
and I don't know if it stopped coming because she,
she died or her circumstances changed or what.
And so I think that she cut ties and just didn't
wanna be found.
GATES: Why is this question, this mystery,
haunted you all this time?
MORROW: There's few things for me that are more important
than my family.
Papa was important to me.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: But he can't be here to solve that mystery.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: He can't be here to say, you know,
"I would love to know."
Because I'm sure,
who wouldn't wanna know what happened to their mother?
You know, and so in his stead, you know,
for me to try to find out as much as I can, uh, you know.
Any answer is better than the answer that he had,
which was nothing.
GATES: Turning to the paper trail,
the evidence seemed to confirm what Terrie had suspected:
census records for Alabama show that in 1880,
the year after Walter was born,
a 32-year-old, unmarried White woman named
“Lenora Kirkland” was living in the same county
as a married 19-year-old African American
named “Henry Moore.”
Indeed, the two were practically neighbors.
MORROW: That's what I thought,
"Inhabitants in Beat 4 in the County of Autauga,
State of Alabama.
Henry Moore, son, mulatto, age 19, married.
Henrietta Moore, Black, age 18."
And can I just say?
When I was kind of doing...
GATES: Sure.
MORROW: A little bit of sleuthing,
"Hal" is a, one of those nicknames
that people give “Henry.”
GATES: Mm-hmm, that's right.
MORROW: And so that was like, "Okay."
So, this is him.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: That's what I came to the conclusion.
He's 19, she's 32.
GATES: Mm-hmm, right. MORROW: And he's married.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: To a Black woman, no less.
GATES: Right. MORROW: It was like,
"Okay, what you doing with that White girl?"
GATES: We don't know anything about Lenora
and Hal's relationship.
But we do know that when Walter was born,
interracial marriage, and even interracial sex,
was illegal throughout most of the United States.
So Lenora and Hal could not have stayed together
even if they had wanted to,
a fact that was meaningful to Terrie.
MORROW: For me, this puts her in the light of...
she made choices outside of what was expected of her,
even for a moment.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Even for a moment.
Because to be honest,
what's wrong with loving somebody of another race?
Nothing has ever been wrong with it.
GATES: Right.
MORROW: Not even back to the beginning of time.
Because people made it wrong at that time.
Now, I don't...
Maybe that married man thing, but,
but there's never been anything wrong with loving someone
who doesn't look like you.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And for her to make that choice herself,
she didn't let her society,
she didn't let the people around her dictate
that that was what she wanted to do.
Whether it was illegal at the time,
that's a law that should never have ever been
on a book ever anyway.
GATES: Right.
MORROW: You know?
I say she did, it was a brave thing.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: You know, it's brave. There's some courage there.
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: There's a, you know...
I've been a little too independent most of my life.
From early childhood.
My brother came along just after I did.
And so I had to get off my mother's knee,
and as I tell people, make my own milk bottle,
change my own diaper.
And so to see that she was independent thinking,
to the degree that nobody was gonna tell her,
"Because he doesn't look like me..."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: "He's not worthy." You know?
Now, that he was married,
I'll leave that for a whole ‘nother segment.
But, you know,
but the fact that she could independently say,
"It doesn't matter."
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: You know.
"I love, I like," you know, whatever the case may be,
I'm going to make it a love story.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Because that's just what I do.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: "I love that Black man. I love me some,
some Hal, you know, Moore."
And that shows to me that she was a woman who
would do what she knew in her heart.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Not what society told her.
GATES: Terrie's feelings are supported by the fact that
no one in her family has claimed
that Lenora's relationship with Hal was not consensual.
But this only underscored our question,
why was Walter abandoned?
The paper trail couldn't tell us.
So we turned to DNA, and found a clue.
We knew that Lenora's father was a man named
“Henry Chambers”...
And when we compared Terrie's mother's genetic profile
to millions of other profiles in publicly available databases,
we saw a cluster of matches that only made sense if they were
viewed with the “Chambers” surname in mind...
Now, Terrie, look at that graphic in front of you.
That's a family tree from one of your mother's
maternal DNA matches, a woman named Mary Pitts.
I'm sure you've never heard the name Mary Pitts?
MORROW: I've never heard Mary Pitts.
GATES: Now do you see Mary Pitts at the bottom of the tree
in the blue box?
MORROW: I do, matched to my mother.
GATES: Mary was born in 1944.
She's roughly the same age as your mom and
she and your mom share 127 centimorgans of DNA,
which is a fairly significant amount.
So we believe that they are half-second cousins.
Okay?
Now your mother has a number of DNA cousins
like Mary in the DNA databases,
but Mary became especially important to us
when we built this tree.
Take a look.
The two boxes above Mary represent her parents.
MORROW: Mm-hmm.
GATES: Would you please read their names?
MORROW: “Charles Herman Sims, born 10 June 1907,
and Dee Fant, born about 29th of May, 1915.”
GATES: Now the two boxes above Dee Fant represent
her parents, Mary's maternal grandparents.
Would you please read those names?
MORROW: “Lawrence Fant, born about 1863.
Mary Chambers, born about 1885”"
GATES: Any of those surnames ring a bell?
MORROW: Chambers is flagging there.
GATES: This name was a “flag” for us as well.
It turns out that Mary Chambers was Lenora's daughter,
and in the 1900 census for Georgia, we found Lenora,
listed as a widow,
living with Mary and a son named John.
All three are described as being “white”,
suggesting that Lenora left Walter behind
to start a family with another man.
A White man.
What's more, this same census shows that when Lenora
was asked how many children she had,
she answered “two”,
as if Walter did not even exist.
MORROW: Okay.
GATES: She's run away and invented a new life.
MORROW: Well, you know, what do you do?
If you say a third one,
then somebody's gonna ask where he is, you know?
GATES: Right. MORROW: Where is he?
GATES: But imagine the guilt she harbored.
I mean, when someone looked at her and said,
"How many children..." She said, "Two."
But she knew it was three.
MORROW: You know, people do
what they have to do sometimes, I guess.
GATES: You can forget a lot of things,
but you can't forget a child.
MORROW: Yeah, no.
But for some reason, she had to say two.
Or at least what she thought was the reason.
GATES: Oh well, we know why. In 1900, in Alabama?
MORROW: Yeah I'm out of there and I'm leaving that
whole story behind me.
GATES: How many White men would have married a
White woman who had a Black baby?
MORROW: Not one.
GATES: No, I mean, it was illegal.
MORROW: Not one. GATES: And, and shameful.
MORROW: Yeah. I mean, you know, and I don't...
I'm not mad at her.
I'm not, I'm not. I feel bad for her.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Because as a mother, you don't forget.
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: You know?
GATES: Right.
MORROW: You, you have to forget on paper,
when people question you.
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: You have to pretend.
But as a mother, you don't forget.
GATES: No, you can't.
MORROW: So it's not like you can ever say,
well, you know, with any,
any sense of, of truth within yourself that,
"I'm the mother of two."
GATES: Right.
MORROW: Because you know you're the mother of more than two.
You're the mother of three.
GATES: Right.
MORROW: At, at the minimum, you're the mother of three.
GATES: We know very little more about Lenora.
She likely died sometime between 1920 and 1926
in Donalsonville, Georgia.
The last record we have for her is the 1920 census,
which shows her living in Donalsonville with
her daughter Mary.
By that time,
her son Walter would have been 40 years old.
Think about this, Walter died in March 1986 at the age of 105.
The family story is that Lenora left him with the Taggers
when he was about five years old,
which means he lived 100 years...
MORROW: 100 years.
GATES: Without ever seeing his mother again.
MORROW: Yup. Yup, yup, yup.
GATES: What do you think he would've felt
learning what you've learned today?
MORROW: He would have longed to see her again,
longed for the possibility of seeing her again,
because what child doesn't want to see their mother?
You're always your mother's child.
He would've been pleased that she was being taken care of.
You know, she's with her daughter,
who must be caring for her.
I think that what he would've wanted most
was to know that she was okay.
GATES: Mm-hmm. MORROW: You know, here's 1920.
He's, he's building a family, because at this point,
my grandmother's born.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: So he's building his own family.
I would think maybe the desire to present his family may have,
you know, been within him. "These are mine."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: But I think that he would've been most happy to
know that she was being taken care of.
GATES: There is a final beat to this story.
According her descendants,
Lenora's daughter Mary had a cerebral hemorrhage
and passed away around 1926,
roughly the same time as Lenora,
throwing her family into chaos.
Indeed, Mary's daughter Dee ended up in an orphanage
following her mother's death.
MORROW: No.
Oh my goodness. That's terrible.
GATES: What's it like to know that Lenora's other family
had such tough going?
MORROW: It was hard for everybody.
I mean, it was hard.
It was hard for her, for choices that she made,
but it was hard for everybody.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: But an orphanage?
Boy.
GATES: Unfortunately, remember, there's another sib?
We don't know what became of Walter's half-brother,
John Chambers.
He disappeared from records after the 1910 census.
Not only Black people disappear from it.
(laughing)
Now, I know it's a lot to process,
but does what you've learned change how you feel about
Lenora and about her decision to abandon
your great-grandfather?
MORROW: I think it makes me appreciate her more.
You don't get to...
be on this earth and not make mistakes.
You don't get to be on this earth and not...
make some bad decisions.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: But the fact that other people could sit in
judgment of you does not change the decision.
It just changes what other people think.
GATES: Right. MORROW: She made a choice.
She made a choice that was a difficult choice to make.
I mean, how many of us could make the choice.
And what do, what do you do?
You know, you've got this kid.
You love this kid, obviously.
What do you do?
GATES: Right.
MORROW: So she made a choice that, at the time,
she thought was the best choice for him, for her.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And so to know that,
and especially when you take into consideration,
which I do,
but sitting here with you makes me
really think about, the times.
The times were so terrible.
And this was before, you know,
anybody would dare to think that you could make it out alive.
GATES: Right.
MORROW: You know, you wouldn't dare to think you could
make it out alive of this situation.
And so she gave, she gave him a chance too.
GATES: Right. MORROW: She gave him a chance.
She made a choice that no doubt broke her heart.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: Because you can't leave your child and
not grieve it, grieve that loss.
But she...
GATES: And guilt, and suffered guilt.
MORROW: And even with the guilt,
that's something she had to live with.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: And I don't, you know, I don't charge her as guilty.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: I charge her as a mother who had to
make an impossible choice.
GATES: Right.
MORROW: And what she did,
she made a choice that saved her life,
saved his life, and brought me into the world.
You know?
GATES: That's a lovely way to put it.
MORROW: She made the choice.
And, and I can honestly say I appreciate the choice
that she made.
GATES: Like Terrie,
Megan Robertson was about to confront a mother
who faced an “impossible choice.”
Megan came to me believing that her great-grandfather,
Green Church, was put up for adoption
when he was young.
And she's spent years trying to learn the identity
of his biological parents.
As it turns out,
Megan was searching in the wrong place...
In the 1900 census for North Carolina,
we found Green as a five-year-old boy
living on a farm.
However, he wasn't living with an adoptive family,
he was in the home of his grandparents,
as well as a number of other close relatives,
including a brother named Rufus Church.
ROBERTSON: Okay. GATES: Okay.
Did you have any idea that he had any siblings?
ROBERTSON: Like, my aunts had told me that his mom
had remarried or something.
Remarried and had a son named Rufus.
GATES: Oh.
ROBERTSON: But I never knew that they lived together at all.
GATES: Mm-hmm. Uh-huh.
ROBERTSON: And so, like, I knew that he...
he probably had a brother named Ru, like, a half-brother.
GATES: Uh-huh.
ROBERTSON: But I, I didn't know that they ever
knew each other, or lived together.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: Or anything like this.
Wow. That's amazing.
GATES: Green and Rufus seem to have had an unusual childhood.
Records show that in 1900,
the same year that they were living with their grandparents,
they also spent time in the home of a couple named
Caroline and Solomon Moxley...
Caroline's maiden name was “Church”,
which suggests that she and Solomon were Green's parents.
We wondered if perhaps the boys were simply being raised by
both their parents and their grandparents.
If so, that arrangement didn't last.
Within a decade,
Caroline and Solomon were living in another state,
with another group of children.
ROBERTSON: "T.S. Moxley, head, age 46, married,
occupation, farmer.
Caroline, wife, age 37, married.
Children born, 5.
GATES: Mm-hm.
ROBERTSON: Children alive, 5.
Dora, age 8. Birdie, age 5.
Minnie, age 4. Lloyd, age 2.
Frank, age 2 months."
I've never heard any of those names.
GATES: Right.
ROBERTSON: Five children. GATES: Five children.
By 1910, Solomon and Caroline had moved out of North Carolina
and settled in Virginia.
And as you can see, neither your great-grandfather Green
nor his brother Rufus are living with them.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
GATES: But five other children are.
So, what that means is that sometime around 1906,
Solomon and Caroline left your great-grandfather Green and
his brother Rufus in the care of their maternal grandparents.
ROBERTSON: They moved. GATES: In North Carolina.
Packed up, headed off to build a new life in Virginia.
We found no evidence that Caroline and Green ever
reconnected or that she ever reconnected with Rufus.
It seems she just left the boys behind forever.
ROBERTSON: Yeah. GATES: Megan Moxley.
[laughing]
ROBERTSON: That doesn't sound right.
GATES: No. I like it. I think it's got a nice ring.
ROBERTSON: Megan Moxley. GATES: Megan Moxley.
ROBERTSON: I don't know about that.
GATES: You think your father would like being a Moxley?
ROBERTSON: No, I don't think so.
GATES: This story was about to take a twist.
Trying to learn more about the Moxleys,
we uncovered their marriage register.
And it contains a curious piece of information.
The couple married in February of 1898,
but Green was born, three years earlier, in 1895.
So that marriage took place when Green was about
three years old.
ROBERTSON: Okay.
GATES: What do you make of that? And...
ROBERTSON: So, he was three and?
GATES: And Rufus was six
ROBERTSON: Rufus was? Was six.
GATES: Yep. ROBERTSON: Wow. Okay.
So they had two children together, and then got married.
GATES: Well, either they had two children together...
ROBERTSON: Or she had children.
GATES: Or she had two children. ROBERTSON: She had children.
GATES: And then they got married.
ROBERTSON: And then they got married.
GATES: It had to be one or the other.
ROBERTSON: 'Cause we don't know when they met.
GATES: Right.
ROBERTSON: She might've had two children when they met.
GATES: So, this got us to wondering,
was Solomon Moxley in fact Green's father?
ROBERTSON: I'm guessing no.
I'm guessing that she,
she had two children and met him and got married.
GATES: Mm-hmm, and then... ROBERTSON: In 1898.
GATES: Part of the deal was she was gonna leave...
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
GATES: The kids fathered by the other guy behind.
ROBERTSON: Okay. GATES: That's your theory?
ROBERTSON: Yeah. Yeah. GATES: Okay.
ROBERTSON: That makes sense to me.
GATES: There was only one way to test this “theory”, DNA.
Megan's father, Eugene Church,
took what is known as a Y-DNA test.
It traces a man's direct male lineage by identifying the
genetic signature that is passed down from father to son
across generations.
If Green was, in fact, the son of Solomon Moxley,
and if descendants of other Moxley men are in the database,
then Eugene's test would match him to those men,
and bring our mystery to a close...
GATES: You ready? ROBERTSON: Yes.
GATES: Please turn the page.
Would you read the number of men we found who were Moxleys.
ROBERTSON: Zero. GATES: Zero.
ROBERTSON: None of 'em.
GATES: So you know what this means.
ROBERTSON: Not a Moxley.
GATES: Forget, uh, Megan Moxley.
ROBERTSON: Megan Moxley.
GATES: Uh, you don't have to worry about that.
ROBERTSON: Not Megan Moxley. Okay.
GATES: Didn't sound right in your mouth.
Well, it wasn't right in fact.
Solomon Moxley was not Green's biological father.
ROBERTSON: Okay. Wow. Yeah. That's good.
GATES: So, how are you feeling right now?
ROBERTSON: I wanna know who it is.
I wanna know.
GATES: To learn the identity of Green's father
we needed some luck,
and, fortunately, we got it.
The same Y-DNA test that showed Megan's father had no matches
to anyone named “Moxley”,
also revealed that he did have
a significant number of matches to men with
a different surname...
The surname of Green's biological father.
You can see it on the right of the chart,
would you please read it out loud?
ROBERTSON: “Halsey.”
(crying).
I've never heard that.
Sorry.
I've never heard that, ever.
We, we thought Holtz.
We thought, we had heard a couple different names
but never, never Halsey.
GATES: Mmm.
ROBERTSON: Wow.
Halsey.
Everyone was wrong. We were all wrong.
GATES: How does “Megan Halsey” sounds to you?
ROBERTSON: It sounds. I guess it sounds right.
It sounds right.
Wow.
I want to know who he is and how he met her.
That's amazing.
My vision's all blurry.
GATES: Yeah. ROBERTSON: I can't see.
Oh, wow.
GATES: We don't know how Caroline met Green's father,
but we were able to figure out who he was.
Using the same techniques that we'd used with Terrie Morrow,
we searched publicly available databases for people whose
DNA profiles matched Megan's father's.
Eventually, we focused on a small cluster of individuals
who had Halsey ancestors,
and who also shared enough DNA with Megan's father
to be a half-second cousin,
meaning they all shared a great-grandfather,
a man who had to have been Green's biological father.
ROBERTSON: “William Cleveland Halsey.”
That's him. Wow.
GATES: You just met Green's father.
ROBERTSON: Wow. William and Caroline.
Hm, I, I'm speechless. I...
We've wondered about that for a long time.
Wow. William Cleveland Halsey.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
What do you think your dad's going to say when
he learns this?
ROBERTSON: He's gonna cry. He's gonna cry.
GATES: Once we'd identified William by name,
we could research his life.
We discovered that he was a farmer who lived in
Piney Creek Township, North Carolina,
just about ten miles from where Caroline was living
when Green was a boy.
And though we don't know anything more about
the two of them,
census records show that by 1900,
William had a wife named Malinda Halsey,
and they had two young sons.
ROBERTSON: He had another family.
What year was this from?
GATES: 1900.
ROBERTSON: 1900. Wow.
So, wait, he, he had another family.
He had a four-year-old and a three-year-old in, in 1900.
GATES: Mm-hmm, that's right. And when was Green born?
ROBERTSON: And Green was born in 1895.
GATES: Right, so Green was five.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
GATES: So, technically, he had a five-year-old,
a four-year-old, and a three-year-old.
ROBERTSON: Right. And maybe Rufus, so...
GATES: Yeah, and maybe Rufus, we don't know.
ROBERTSON: Wow. Wow.
I was fully prepared to come here and be angry at him.
I was prepared to be angry, you know.
GATES: Are you angry?
ROBERTSON: No. I'm not angry, I'm, I'm curious.
I, I wonder how they met,
I wonder what the nature of their relationship was,
or if, you know, like, that kinda thing.
But, I was fully prepared to come and be angry.
GATES: Mm-hmm. But you're not.
ROBERTSON: No, not at all. GATES: So why aren't you angry?
ROBERTSON: I'm not angry because I, you know,
they may have had two children together, we don't know.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
ROBERTSON: You know, it may have been an actual, like,
relationship of some sort.
GATES: Mm-hmm. And then faded away.
ROBERTSON: Yeah.
GATES: Which happens. ROBERTSON: Uh, yeah.
Hmm. That's something.
GATES: We'd now solved our first two mysteries.
Turning to Joyce Willis, we faced our third.
The story begins in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
where Joyce grew up, close to her paternal grandmother,
Beatrice Willis, and proud of their shared surname.
But when Beatrice was nearing the end of her life,
she told Joyce that she might not actually be a Willis.
She said that her father,
once had teased her when she was a child,
telling her that she was not really his daughter.
This shocked Joyce,
who'd never imagined that Beatrice's parents had ever
revealed any secrets at all.
WILLIS: She always talked about them and they were a very
traditional couple of the time.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, grown folk's business is
grown folk's business,
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: You know, and even,
she mentioned one time when they had gotten into an argument,
and she was there and she came into the kitchen to, you know,
to take up for her mother, and, um, her mother told her,
turned around and looked at her and said,
"You need to go back to your room and mind your business.”
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: “This is between me and your father."
GATES: Uh-huh. WILLIS: You know,
so they were a very traditional family of the time.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, as far as, you know, what they presented to,
to their daughters in the household.
GATES: Beatrice's parents were Robert Willis
and Elnora Carrington.
The two may have projected a calm exterior,
but as we looked into their lives,
we discovered a great deal of turmoil beneath the surface.
Records show they married in 1915,
and that they had their first child, a son,
about a year and a half later.
But their happiness did not last.
WILLIS: Wow. “In police court, Robert Willis,
33 years old, colored,
was saved from a term of 60 days in the penitentiary
yesterday by his wife.
Willis was arrested early yesterday after he...
had struck his wife.”
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: “Mrs. Willis, carrying a baby,
begged Justice Colmets to be lenient,
so the man was ordered to report to parole agent,
AJ Masters.”
GATES: You never heard anything about this?
WILLIS: That's sad. That's really, really sad.
Just to think that,
the one that he hurt was the one that saved him.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
Well, she clearly saved him,
'cause he was going to go in the can.
WILLIS: Whew. Wow.
GATES: This was the only mention we found of anything
involving Robert and Elnora and the law.
So it may have been an isolated incident.
However, it was not the end of the couple's struggles...
WILLIS: “Robert Edgar Willis,
infant son of Robert and Elnora Willis,
died yesterday morning at their home.”
GATES: In March of 1918 Robert and Elnora lost their baby boy
just before he turned eight months old.
WILLIS: Wow. How sad to lose a baby.
GATES: How do you think that might have
shaped their relationship?
WILLIS: Must have strained it.
I can imagine it would have strained,
if they were already going through anything.
GATES: Uh-huh.
WILLIS: If there was already discord in the marriage,
losing a child is,
it could either go one of two ways.
It could either bring them closer together,
or it could push them further apart.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, so, I imagine since there was
already some marital discord,
that it may have pushed them further apart from each other.
GATES: Mm. Okay. Could you please turn the page?
Can you read the transcribed section of that document
in front of you?
WILLIS: “Certificate of birth,
name of child, Beatrice E. Willis,
date of birth, November 20th, 1919,
name of father, Robert Willis,
name of mother, Elnora Carrington.”
GATES: Now, I know you've seen that before,
WILLIS: Yes, I have.
GATES: But what's it like to see it now,
in the context of this story, and think of your grandmother
as a young girl?
WILLIS: Well, it looks like they're trying to stick it out.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, her parents are trying to stick it out.
You know, they're trying to make things work maybe.
At least I hope that that's what that means for them.
And I hope that,
I hope that my grandmother's childhood as an infant,
as a little one, as a newborn in this world,
I hope that there was peace there for her.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, that there was a,
a safe place and a calmness there for her.
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: I would hope.
GATES: Security. WILLIS: Yeah. I would hope so.
GATES: We don't know if Beatrice was born into
a peaceful home.
There are no further records even to suggest
why Robert might have said that she wasn't his daughter.
To learn that, we had to turn to DNA.
But first, we needed to know more about Robert.
As we'd seen with our other guests,
genetic genealogy requires a family tree
to make sense of DNA relationships,
and nobody knew anything about Robert's family tree.
Joyce herself had made significant efforts to
reconstruct it, but she didn't even know
Robert's parents' names.
We set out to change that...
And after combing through a maze of documents,
we discovered that Robert was the child of a couple named
Howard Willis and Francis, or “Fannie”, Steward.
This discovery led us to the 1870 census for Virginia,
where we saw Robert's family tree
begin to grow exponentially...
WILLIS: "Matt Steward. Age 45. Male, Black.
Occupation: Farmhand. Place of birth: Virginia.
Sarah Steward. Age 35. Female, Black.
Occupation: Keeps home. Place of birth: Virginia.
Frances Steward. Age 13. Female, Black.
Place of birth: Virginia.”
GATES: Recognize any names on that census record?
WILLIS: Frances Steward. GATES: Frances Steward.
WILLIS: Okay. GATES: Right.
That's Frances Steward in the household of her parents
whose names are Matt, and Sarah Steward.
If Frances or Fannie was in fact Robert's mother,
then Matt and Sarah were his grandparents.
So what's it like to learn that?
WILLIS: That's really cool.
I never thought I would ever get to see these names.
GATES: Hm. WILLIS: I was just so stuck.
I've, I never thought I would ever see these names.
GATES: Well, that's why the Lord sent you here.
WILLIS: Ex, Yes. Exactly.
GATES: Now that we knew more about Robert's roots,
we could see what genetics had to say about his relationship
to his children...
Before she passed away,
Joyce's grandmother Beatrice took a DNA test.
We used it to create what's called a genetic network,
a map of DNA matches who all descend from a common
individual or couple.
It allowed us to trace Beatrice back to
a familiar pair of names...
WILLIS: “Matt Steward Sr. and Sarah.”
GATES: So you know what this means?
Your grandmother, Beatrice,
descends from Matt and Sarah Steward.
WILLIS: Awesome. GATES: Right?
You see how the connection goes?
WILLIS: Yeah, it's awesome. Oh, my goodness.
GATES: So this is the very link you've been searching for.
WILLIS: Yes, it is.
GATES: Matt and Sarah were Fannie's parents.
Fannie was Robert's mother,
and Beatrice was Robert's daughter.
WILLIS: So...
GATES: So you know what this means.
WILLIS: That means that I am
Robert G. Willis' great-granddaughter.
GATES: That means Robert is your
biological great-grandfather.
WILLIS: He's my great-grandfather.
(sighs).
See, you was teasing her for nothing.
Mmm.
Oh, I feel she's so justified and vindicated now.
GATES: How does...
(sighs).
How does it make you feel, finally,
to have this mystery solved once and for all?
WILLIS: Relieved.
I feel so relieved to know that this is the truth.
GATES: You are a Willis. WILLIS: I'm a Willis.
GATES: For real. So what does that mean to you?
WILLIS: My grandmother always used to say, you know,
whenever we were trying to cut up,
"You're a Willis."
GATES: Hm.
WILLIS: "You know, you go out in the streets,
however you act, you are a Willis.
“You carry that Willis name.
So you have to carry yourself with some dignity."
That was the, the thought and the feeling behind her saying,
"You're a Willis."
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: And she meant that.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: And so growing up, my siblings and I, you know,
when we're ever, we're feeling kinda, a little,
you know, cock of the walk,
"Yeah, I'm a Willis." "You know, we're, we Willises.
Hey, we Willises. The Willises."
You know? So it...
Knowing that that's actually legitimate, I mean,
not to have inordinate pride 'cause I don't like that,
but just, just to know that this really is my name.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: After so many other areas of my family line where
it's big question marks, this is an ex,
this is not even a period, this is an exclamation point.
GATES: There was still a question in front of us:
why had Robert teased Beatrice?
We don't know for certain, but we have a theory...
Beatrice had a younger sister named Melba,
and Melba's daughter took a DNA test.
It shows that Beatrice and Melba were half-siblings.
They shared a mother, but they had different fathers.
And since we knew that Robert was Beatrice's father,
that means Melba was the child of another man.
Which made Robert's behavior more understandable to Joyce...
WILLIS: He must've known. He must've had some kinda inkling.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: For him to say what he said to my grandmother.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: Now, I don't know why he said that to her,
but maybe because Melba was still just a kid and maybe
he didn't want to, maybe he was blowing off steam and
he didn't wanna blow steam in that direction.
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: You know, um...
GATES: Or maybe he sussed out.
WILLIS: Yeah.
GATES: That infidelity that led to Melba,
and then wondered how long the relationship had gone on.
WILLIS: It could be, it could be.
GATES: Right.
WILLIS: You know, "Was this something longstanding that
I'm just now finding out about?"
GATES: What do you think your grandmother would have said?
WILLIS: She would've been shocked.
This would have completely shocked her.
GATES: Mmm.
WILLIS: It's always been Beatrice and Melba.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, there was never a question.
They've, grew up with Robert G. Willis
in the same household.
He raised them both.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: So there was never a question in Nana Bea's mind
that that was just her full sister.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know?
So to find this out, I think it really would have
knocked her outta her chair.
GATES: Robert Willis passed away in 1955,
17 years after his wife Elnora.
We were not able to learn anything more about their
relationship, but we did discover something about
Robert's life that seemed relevant.
In the archives of Rockingham County, Virginia,
we found the death certificate for his father, Howard Willis.
It shows that Howard died six months before Robert was born.
WILLIS: He grew up without his father.
Never even got to see the man.
He never got to be held by his father.
Never got to know him.
GATES: And Robert's mother, your great-great-grandmother,
Fannie, would've been just about three months pregnant...
WILLIS: Oh, my gosh.
GATES: When her husband died.
Can you imagine?
WILLIS: No.
She must've been devastated.
GATES: Hmm.
WILLIS: She must've been... devastated.
GATES: Does knowing this change how you feel
or think about Robert?
WILLIS: Well, I was bothered by that, um,
that, that news article.
That troubled me. That, that hurt.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: Uh, but this informs it a little.
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: You know?
So, it, you know, there,
there's always room for grace and mercy, you know?
There should be room for grace and mercy.
GATES: Should be, right. Yeah. WILLIS: You know?
So it's, it's humbling, um, to see this, to see this,
to understand a little bit more about what made this person.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, the adult version of each,
of ourselves that we see didn't occur in a vacuum.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know?
There's history behind every person that we meet.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know? And not all of it's good.
GATES: Mm-hmm. WILLIS: You know?
But it definitely shapes us.
GATES: My guests' mysteries had now been solved...
It was time to show them their full family trees...
ROBERTSON: Oh, my gosh.
GATES: Filled with new branches they'd been yearning to see.
WILLIS: Oh my goodness. Look at this. Oh my goodness.
GATES: For Joyce and Terrie,
these branches led back into the slave era
in the American South.
MORROW: I feel all these people. They are really beautiful.
ROBERTSON: This is amazing.
GATES: For Megan, they led to England...
ROBERTSON: I'm speechless.
GATES: And contained at least one slave owner...
But for all three, they were a source of wonder.
WILLIS: Wow.
GATES: Offering the chance to see themselves,
and their families, in an entirely new way.
ROBERTSON: Oh my gosh.
MORROW: I now have a fuller picture of who I am,
where I come from, the people that...
I like to say who are my people.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: To be able to put a name,
to know that these were real people.
To know.
You always know that they're there, but to name them...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
MORROW: You know, I talk a lot,
but it's something to share now.
It really is something to share.
ROBERTSON: It is overwhelming.
It is overwhelming,
it's gonna take a lot of time to kind of digest,
but it's absolutely fantastic.
GATES: You are the first person in your family
to know the truth, how does that feel?
ROBERTSON: To know. A little selfish.
That I, that I know and no one else knows yet.
Um, but I, I'm very excited for them to know too.
WILLIS: I'm over the moon.
I feel like life for any person is a puzzle.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
WILLIS: You know, and pieces fall into place whenever they
happen to fall into place.
But these are pieces that I've been looking for
for a very long time.
So I just, I could just breathe now knowing th,
this bit of information and it's...
DNA don't lie.
It's, it's verified and valid and it is the truth.
And that is what I've been seeking,
and thank you for helping me find that truth.
GATES: That's the end of our journey with Joyce Willis,
Megan Robertson, and Terrie Morrow.
Join me next time,
when we unlock the secrets of the past
for new guests, on another episode of
"Finding Your Roots."