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Who Do You Think You Are?

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Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: Mandy21 on February 13, 2011, 11:43:00 pm ---Jeff, dear God, this actually makes me want to get cable for all I'm missing.

Tim McGraw?????  OH MI GAH.........  Loved him since forever.  Hottest man in country.

Tell me everything, please?

--- End quote ---

Yeah, and he's just gettin' hotter 'n' hotter as he gets more mature. Lookin' more and more like his late father, too. Tug may have denied him for 18 years but he could never do it today.

This show is on NBC. Can't you get NBC without cable?  ???

Anyway, as seems to happen frequently in this show, they essentially ended up tracing back through a female line, from a great-grandmother (Tim's Grandmother McGraw's mother). The line was traced back to the Clinch River valley region of southwestern Virginia, where one ancestor and two of his sons were killed by Cherokees in the summer of 1777. From there, again following a maternal line, they went back to the Shenandoah Valley (where another ancestor played host to 16-year-old George Washington in 1748) and the family of Yost Hite (Johann Jost Heydt), who was instrumental in the early settling of the Shenandoah Valley. Jost Heydt was among the first group of Germans to immigrate to the colony of New York in 1710. (Another family on the same ship went by the name of Pressli. Yes, those Pressleys. ...)

We also met Tim's uncle Hank, who doesn't look anything like a McGraw. In fact he looks like Buffalo Bill Cody, with a long, thin face, long white hair, droopy white mustache, and goatee.

This coming Friday the subject is Rosie O'Donnell.

Jeff Wrangler:
Well, with advance publishing deadlines and all, this may not be correct, but according to the current TV Guide, Who Do You Think You Are? returns this Friday evening. The subject is Martin Sheen. Should be interesting.

Jeff Wrangler:
Some time agone, now, I heard that this show was not renewed. Too bad. It had an interesting way of bringing history to life through the genealogy of celebrities.

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on November 15, 2012, 03:21:18 pm ---Some time agone, now, I heard that this show was not renewed. Too bad. It had an interesting way of bringing history to life through the genealogy of celebrities.

--- End quote ---

Who Do You Think You Are? has now returned on TLC. Last night's episode was about the ancestry of Cynthia Nixon (of Sex in the City fame), and it offered a fascinating look at the history of the way communities in the past dealt with spousal abuse.

Nixon had a 4x great-grandmother who killed her husband. With an ax. Between the eyes. In Missouri in 1842. The case was so notorious it made a newspaper in Jefferson City. From what we can read between the lines of the newspaper story (very chatty and gossipy), it seems it was notorious in the local community that the woman was being abused--badly abused--by her husband. On the morning of the murder, the husband told her to get up and give their children breakfast, and then to start saying her prayers, because she was going to die that day. He went back to sleep. She fed the kids, and then she took an ax to him. She then went to the neighbors and told them what she had done.

She was indicted and tried for murder--which would have carried the death penalty--but (I find this very interesting) the jury, which presumably was made up of local people who knew about the abuse, convicted her only of manslaughter, and she was sentenced only to five years in the state penitentiary.

She was only the second woman in the history of Missouri to be sent to the state pen, and her sentence was no picnic. Her experience was actually chronicled in a book written by a fellow prisoner after his release. Apparently she had what we would now call a work release, maybe in the warden's home (the show didn't indicate if the book specified), and during her incarceration she became pregnant--the book didn't say whether or not it was rape. The child, a girl, was born in the prison, and she had no female assistance at the time of the delivery--the woman in whose home she was working refused to assist her. The baby survived, but after the birth a petition signed by a number of prominent people in Missouri was sent to the governor, and she was pardoned after serving two years of her sentence.

Next week's subject is Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

milomorris:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2014, 09:36:45 am ---Who Do You Think You Are? has now returned on TLC. Last night's episode was about the ancestry of Cynthia Nixon (of Sex in the City fame), and it offered a fascinating look at the history of the way communities in the past dealt with spousal abuse.

Nixon had a 4x great-grandmother who killed her husband. With an ax. Between the eyes. In Missouri in 1842. The case was so notorious it made a newspaper in Jefferson City. From what we can read between the lines of the newspaper story (very chatty and gossipy), it seems it was notorious in the local community that the woman was being abused--badly abused--by her husband. On the morning of the murder, the husband told her to get up and give their children breakfast, and then to start saying her prayers, because she was going to die that day. He went back to sleep. She fed the kids, and then she took an ax to him. She then went to the neighbors and told them what she had done.

She was indicted and tried for murder--which would have carried the death penalty--but (I find this very interesting) the jury, which presumably was made up of local people who knew about the abuse, convicted her only of manslaughter, and she was sentenced only to five years in the state penitentiary.

She was only the second woman in the history of Missouri to be sent to the state pen, and her sentence was no picnic. Her experience was actually chronicled in a book written by a fellow prisoner after his release. Apparently she had what we would now call a work release, maybe in the warden's home (the show didn't indicate if the book specified), and during her incarceration she became pregnant--the book didn't say whether or not it was rape. The child, a girl, was born in the prison, and she had no female assistance at the time of the delivery--the woman in whose home she was working refused to assist her. The baby survived, but after the birth a petition signed by a number of prominent people in Missouri was sent to the governor, and she was pardoned after serving two years of her sentence.

Next week's subject is Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

--- End quote ---

This is great stuff. I'm glad to see that the series is back.

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