Finding Your Roots

GATES: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to Finding Your Roots.

In this episode, we'll meet singers Alanis Morissette and Ciara... two women whose talents first bloomed in their childhood homes... MORISSETTE: My family would often say, "Can you just... Can you just stay still for one minute?"

I'm like I don't know, let's see.

CIARA: There is this part of me where I've just always been a determined little girl.

Always since day one.

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.

CIARA: What in the world?

GATES: And we've compiled everything into a book of life.

(gasp).

MORISSETTE: No!

GATES: A record of all of our discoveries... CIARA: What you about to tell me right now?

GATES: And a window into the hidden past.

CIARA: Oh, it's beautiful.

It's powerful.

MORISSETTE: Just so much intense stuff happened.

I just think about their resilience and their ability to keep going in the face of tragedy is pretty poignant.

CIARA: I feel more clear.

I feel, um, like I know myself even more.

I know my roots even more.

GATES: Ciara and Alanis have been delighting audiences for decades, giving voice to the innermost emotions of generations of listeners.

In this episode, they're going to become listeners themselves, hearing from ancestors whose stories had been lost....

Revealing secrets that will compel them to rethink their family trees.

(theme music plays) (chatter) GATES: Ciara Harris, known to her fans simply as "Ciara", is a human dynamo...

The R&B songstress with the killer dance moves has been dominating the charts for more than two decades.

Blessed with a golden voice, Ciara is a creative force in the studio, as well as on stage... She helps write and produce her own tracks, and plays a major role in her choreography, none of which should come as a surprise to anyone who knows her story.

Ciara grew up in a military family, both of her parents served, and she's approached her career with a discipline that clearly is inherited, even as the focus of that career has shifted... CIARA: Well, at first I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.

GATES: Uh-huh.

CIARA: And then that changed pretty quickly.

Um, I remember watching Michael Jackson perform and I was like, I wanna be a singer.

I saw him smile and I was like, I'm gonna do that.

That's what I'm gonna do.

GATES: Did you tell your parents?

CIARA: I did.

GATES: And did they say, uh... "Good baby."?

Or did they say, "No, here are the catalogs for the law schools."

CIARA: My mom was definitely like, "Uh."

She watched too many of those, "what happened in the music industry," you know?

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: Shows, so she was kinda like, "I don't know about that industry."

Like, that kinda scared her.

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: Right?

But my dad was kinda more, "Okay, Sugar."

Yeah, my dad was always, "What you want?

Whatever you wanna do, sugar, you could do, you could do it."

You know.

That was kind of his mentality.

GATES: That's great.

Good daddy.

CIARA: Yeah.

And then there is this part of me where I've just always been a determined little girl.

Always.

Since, um, since day one.

GATES: "Determination" has propelled Ciara a long way in just a few short years.

She started performing as a child, and by the time she was in middle school, she was putting together groups with friends and writing her own material... even so, it would take some effort for her to become the leader of those groups... CIARA: When I was younger I, I think for me, discovering my voice, I was a little timid about it.

So, you know, off the back, I wouldn't, like, say I'm gonna be the lead singer.

But as I got more confidence, you know, I had the spirit of a lead singer.

GATES: Right.

CIARA: But I just, like, let me just, you know, let me get to this thing in steps here.

GATES: Yeah, I understand that.

CIARA: Let me get my confidence up.

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: And then once I knew I was gonna do this thing, I knew, you know?

I started out in a group, it was a group called Hearsay.

And I was in high school.

And they had gone through, like, five members in the same position that they kept switching out and I was like the fifth member, um, or the sixth.

Um, and obviously that didn't work out, but I knew in my mind I wanted to be a solo artist.

GATES: Right.

CIARA: I'm like, "The, the group is my way.

I'll start there, but I know where I wanna finish."

GATES: Ciara's commitment to her own voice paid off in a big way.

After Hearsay disbanded, she signed a record deal with an up-and-coming Atlanta label, and released her debut album, "Goodies", when she was just 18 years old.

If you're looking for the goodies Keep on looking cause they stay in the jar GATES: "Goodies" was an instant phenomenon: it sold over five million copies, went triple platinum, and made Ciara an international star, utterly transforming her family even as it delighted them... CIARA: It was fun.

It was fun.

We had some funny moments.

You know, when they send the camera crews to your house and your par, my grand, my granddad's like, "What am I supposed to do?"

th, those moments like that or, you know, I cracked up my mom.

We were doing some taping one time and literally...

I mean, it's just like, just live your life in front of the cameras.

Don't do anything different than that.

My mom walks up the stairs and she's like, "Ciara, you want some breakfast?"

I'm like, "When have you asked me like, did you want breakfast, mom?"

You know.

I, it was, it was really sweet though, you know.

I think my grandma, "Yeah, Ciara got that dancing, doing her thing."

You know.

"Look at her go."

You know like.

GATES: My second guest is singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette.

In 1995, when she was just 21-years-old, Alanis released "Jagged Little Pill", It's like rain GATES: A mix of alt-rock ballads... Cause I've got one hand in my pocket GATES: That became an instant classic... You, you, you oughta know GATES: Winning Alanis four Grammys, and a legion of fans.

But "Jagged Little Pill" didn't come out of nowhere... O Canada GATES: Growing up in Ottawa, Canada, Alanis was performing in public when she was a child, and had a record deal by the time she was in high school, yielding a daily schedule that seems dizzying to contemplate... How did you balance?

MORISSETTE: There was no balance.

I think I learned a lot of work addiction tendencies from quite a young age.

And eventually a couple of my teachers took notice of the fact that the first periods I was... (snoring sound.)

GATES: Right.

MORISSETTE: And um, nothing personal.

So one of the teachers, uh my drama teacher, she said to me on the down low, "I know what you're doing after hours, and I know that you often do it until 4:00 in the morning, Alanis, so feel free to come in late."

GATES: Oh yeah?

MORISSETTE: Mm-hmm.

GATES: Oh, that's sweet.

MORISSETTE: And then one of the counselors at my school gave me an extra credit for the many, many hours I spent in the studio every day.

And I was really moved by that.

GATES: Boy, that's a cool school.

MORISSETTE: That's amazing.

GATES: You know?

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

GATES: No school like that that I ever attended.

MORISSETTE: I know, right?

GATES: They would have docked you, you know?

MORISSETTE: Right, yeah.

No, there were teachers that were docking me for having this wild life that perhaps they had issues with.

But um you know, they say, "A note from your parents means nothing to us."

I'm like, "Okay, well, I don't know how to help you here."

GATES: Though Alanis' "wild life" was extraordinarily productive, it took time for her to find her creative voice... her first two albums were conventional dance pop, and showed no sign of the emotional range that would mark her later work... Alanis soon realized that she wanted to write more personal songs, but felt she couldn't do it if she remained at home in her native Canada... MORISSETTE: I wanted to make sure that I was somewhere in a context where the slate was clean, basically, because there were a lot of preconceived notions of who I was as a teenage artist.

And then when I wanted to evolve it or just imbue it with a different consciousness, it was met with resistance.

I had some people saying, "You can't write these kinds of songs.

You know?

We need you to stay in your lane," for lack of a better term.

GATES: Yeah.

That's not you, dear.

MORISSETTE: Right.

Exactly.

Literally word for word.

GATES: Yeah.

MORISSETTE: So I just thought I'm going to go to Los Angeles.

GATES: The move to Los Angeles changed everything.

Within a year, Alanis had released "Jagged Little Pill"... And soon was filling stadiums all over the world.

She's gone on to sell more than 80 million records.

Along the way, she's also raised a family, and the raw emotions that marked her breakout hits have softened... RODRIGO: Everyone please welcome, Alanis Morissette!

GATES: Indeed, in 2022, when Alanis was inducted into the Canadian songwriters hall of fame, she returned to her homeland with a very different perspective... MORISSETTE: It's not always easy for me to receive in that kind of a formal public way, um, but at 48 now, I realize that there is some grace and some elegance in receiving recognition, even if there's some inner conflict around it, that I just have to push that aside and show up.

Now for many reasons.

Now to show up because I'm a woman, to show up because I'm a woman over 25.

You know, there's a lot of reasons to show up now more than ever.

GATES: Mm-hm.

And to let yourself be loved.

MORISSETTE: Yes.

And then to model what that looks like, as awkward as it might be, to receive love in that kind of way.

GATES: Yeah.

MORISSETTE: And then also to push through it, but then also to see it as the sweet illusion that it is as well.

GATES: Oh, I like that.

The sweet illusion that it is.

That's beautiful.

MORISSETTE: Yes, because it is.

GATES: Yeah.

You're a poet.

You oughta write songs.

MORISSETTE: I should get into this.

GATES: Yeah, you should get into it.

My two guests both found fame as teenagers, and never let it go... but growing up in the limelight means living far from your roots, with little time to learn your family stories... so both came to me knowing almost nothing about their ancestors.

That is about to change.

I started with Ciara... she spent her formative years in Georgia, and identifies as a southerner... but her father was born in New York City, as was her father's mother, and in the archives of Manhattan, we found the marriage record for her father's grandparents, Ciara's great-grandparents, Luther and Nazarene Armstrong... it shows the couple living in Harlem, in 1926... Did you know your family on this branch had such deep roots in New York City?

CIARA: No, but I always felt when I was there in New York for the times that I got to be there with them, I could feel the New York.

I could feel like that part of them.

GATES: And they were right in the heart of Harlem.

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: That's 135th Street.

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: And that's when it, Harlem, became the cultural mecca of the Black world.

CIARA: Mmm.

GATES: Jazz was coming of age in Harlem.

It was a glorious time, you know?

Duke Ellington lived eight blocks away from your ancestors.

They could go to a club at night and they could hear Louie Armstrong play.

CIARA: That's so cool.

GATES: Do you ever think about that?

CIARA: No, that's amazing.

GATES: That's amazing.

CIARA: That's some good stuff right there.

GATES: As it turns out, Luther and Nazarene were newcomers to Harlem.

They were both born in South Carolina, and came north as part of what's known as the Great Migration: the movement of roughly six million African Americans out of the deep south.

The migration began in the early 20th century, and utterly transformed almost every aspect of Black life.

But at its core, it was driven by something quite fundamental: the search for expanded economic opportunities.

And in the 1910 census for Orangeburg, South Carolina, we got a glimpse of just how urgently Ciara's ancestors needed those opportunities.

The census shows her great- grandfather Luther as a boy, living on a cotton farm with his parents, along with a large number of siblings... CIARA: "Sadie, daughter, 10.

Occupation, laborer, home farm."

Whoo, this is some, a lot of kids.

"Luther, Luther, son."

GATES: There was, there was no TV, and they were on that farm.

CIARA: It's a lot of children...

The farm produces some stuff.

"Luther, son, eight.

Charlie Junior, son, six.

Eliza, daughter, four.

Ernest, son, two."

Oh my gosh.

"Albert, son, one month."

GATES: This is one household.

All these people were living in one household.

CIARA: That's amazing.

GATES: Yeah.

So, you have roots in Manhattan, but you have deep, deep roots in South Carolina.

CIARA: South Carolina.

GATES: Did you have any idea?

CIARA: No.

GATES: That's where your people are from.

CIARA: Hey.

That's my people, and they were southern people.

GATES: And they were working in the soil.

I mean, they were hard scrabble farmers.

CIARA: Mm-hmm.

GATES: And as you can see, their older children were working for them on the farm.

Their daughter, Sadie, was just 10 years old and is listed as a laborer too.

What do you think that must've been like, not being able to send your kids to school, putting them out there to sow the seeds?

Clean the cotton?

Could you imagine that?

CIARA: Yeah, I don't even know if I have the best words to describe, you know, uh, what I... how this makes me feel.

GATES: Luther and his family undoubtedly endured a great deal of suffering simply to keep their farm running...

But, moving back one generation, we came to a man who had endured even more... Ciara's third great-grandfather, Aaron Gardner, was born in South Carolina around 1830... meaning that almost certainly he was born into slavery.

Searching for details about his life, we uncovered a labor contract signed in February of 1866, less than a year after the end of the Civil War...

It lays out terms of employment between a white cotton planter named William Zimmerman and ten newly-freed African Americans, one of whom had a familiar name... CIARA: "Aaron Gardner, X.

His mark, full hand."

GATES: That is your ancestor signing his mark, because he couldn't read and write.

CIARA: Oh.

GATES: He's signing a contract.

CIARA: Oh, wow.

GATES: This is a year he's been freed for one year.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: And he's signing a labor contract with this white man named William Zimmerman.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: This is likely the first contract your ancestor ever signed.

And the first time he was ever compensated in any way for his labor.

CIARA: Yeah, it's sad.

It's sad.

GATES: Yeah, it's sad.

CIARA: You know?

It's like you get a little bit of freedom, but you got so far to go.

GATES: Aaron's plight was even worse than Ciara had imagined...

In the wake of the confederate defeat, former slave owners sought new ways to exploit Black labor.

And contracts like this one became commonplace... under its terms, Ciara's ancestor was hired to work for one year, but he wasn't going to be paid a salary.

Instead, Aaron was to receive a portion of the food crops he grew, and a percentage of the cash profit at the end of the growing season.

But there was a catch.

There never was a profit.

They would do the books, and they would come to the Black people and say, "Hey.

It's a tough year."

"We didn't break even."

"So sorry.

No cash for you guys."

They never made any cash.

Now, what's it like to know that your ancestor had to go through that kind of business arrangement?

CIARA: That's hard... GATES: Yup.

Cause when they lost the Civil War, it took 'em about five seconds to reinvent a new form of slavery.

CIARA: Yeah.

A new way.

And unfortunately, because my people... GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: You know, weren't educated.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: You didn't even know what were, you know.

You, you, you thought there was great opportunity, and there was joy.

GATES: Cause it sounds pretty good.

CIARA: Cause you never had it before.

GATES: No, you never had it before.

CIARA: Yeah.

It sounds good cause you never had it.

GATES: And you go, "Well."

And he went back to talk to his wife.

Said, "I think we, we gonna work hard."

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: "And we gonna make it."

CIARA: And work hard to just basically end up with nothing.

GATES: There was a grace note to this story... Knowing that Aaron was working on William Zimmerman's plantation a year after emancipation, we wondered if he could have been enslaved on that same plantation.

We found our answer in the 1860 census...

It contains a slave schedule listing the 19 human beings that William Zimmerman held in bondage.

There are no names on this schedule, as was customary... but two of the men are roughly the same age as Aaron, and others match the ages of his wife and children, allowing Ciara the chance at least to glimpse a trace of her enslaved ancestors, and reflect on all that they managed to survive.

How do you think it was possible for your third great-grandparents to raise a family together?

Knowing under slavery, at this point, your wife could be raped.

They and no way... CIARA: Mm-hmm.

GATES: To protect your wife.

Your kids could be snatched away and sold.

What do you think that does to a person, to a family?

CIARA: Mm.

Breaks you.

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: Breaks you.

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: It makes you scared.

GATES: Constantly.

CIARA: Yeah.

You never really get to live.

GATES: Uh-huh.

CIARA: It just makes you also, like, appreciate.

It makes you appreciate.

Cause we didn't have to go through this.

GATES: No.

Right?

CIARA: You know.

So I appreciate them.

GATES: Much like Ciara, Alanis Morissette also has ancestors who endured the unspeakable...

Her mother, Georgia Feuerstein, was born in Hungary to parents who'd survived the holocaust, an experience so traumatic that the family actually kept its Jewish heritage a secret... MORISSETTE: I think I found out that I was Jewish in my late 20s.

GATES: Really?

MORISSETTE: I didn't know.

Yeah.

GATES: Why do you think that no one told you?

MORISSETTE: I think there was a terror that is in their bones, and they were being protective of us and just not wanting antisemitism, and so they were doing it to protect us, sort of keeping us in the dark around it.

GATES: The logic of this decision is hard to debate.

Hungary's persecution of its Jewish population dates back to the middle ages, but in the 20th century, it entered a terrifying new phase...

When World War II broke out, Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany... many Jewish men were forced into what were called "work battalions"... and were ultimately sent to the Russian front, essentially as slave labor... Alanis' grandfather Imre Feuerstein somehow managed to avoid this fate.

But his two brothers, Gyrgy and Sndor, weren't so lucky.

Alanis' relatives believe that both men were forced into one of the work battalions... A memoir written by a battalion member gives a sense of what they endured.

MORISSETTE: "As soon as our two wagons arrived packed with entirely broken people, the guards started to beat them.

They threw the helpless patients from the wagons, made them line up with us and left us standing there for hours.

This was followed by organized looting.

They took almost everything we still had left and chased us up the already crowded lice-infested barn.

The treatment and the food were so horrible, however, that typhoid, fever, dysentery and the brutality of the guards killed our comrades one after the other."

Wow.

GATES: You could see photos of men in the labor services on your left there.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: Alanis, this happened to your grandfather's brothers, your mother's uncles.

MORISSETTE: Mmm.

Yeah, I'm horrified at the thought that... at the thought of that.

And having gone there a couple of times and hearing stories from my mother sitting right next to her in the home she grew up in, it's just, it's unfathomable for me.

GATES: The men who managed to survive these work battalions returned home to be confronted by a new terror.

In March of 1944, Nazi Germany took control of Hungary.

By war's end, more than half of the country's Jewish population had perished, over 500,000 people.

Alanis' family believed that Imre's brothers were among the victims, but they had no idea what had actually happened to them... And in the archives of the Red Cross, we saw that Imre himself made enquiries after the war, hoping that his brother Gyrgy might somehow still be alive... MORISSETTE: So he was looking for him?

GATES: He was looking for him.

MORISSETTE: Oh.

GATES: In 1949, four years after World War II ended, your grandfather asked the Red Cross to look for his brother.

MORISSETTE: Mmm.

GATES: Did you know this?

MORISSETTE: I did not know this.

GATES: Can you imagine what that was like for your grandfather carrying that burden?

MORISSETTE: Not knowing where your sibling is, if they're alive or dead?

GATES: Yeah.

Having no closure.

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

GATES: No finality.

MORISSETTE: No.

God.

GATES: As it turns out, Imre's efforts to find his brother were doomed from the start.

In Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, we found testimonials that were submitted on behalf of Gyrgy and Sndor by a woman who knew them both.

Testimonials of this kind are considered to be symbolic tombstones for people whose deaths were not documented during the holocaust.. Would you please read the transcribed sections?

MORISSETTE: Yes.

GATES: Starting on your left.

MORISSETTE: "Family name, Feuerstein.

First name, Gyorgy.

Circumstances of death, he was in a slave labor army sent to Russia.

Family named, Feuerstein.

First name, Sandor.

Circumstances of death, he was in a slave labor army sent to Russia."

Wow.

GATES: Have you ever seen those before?

MORISSETTE: No.

Wow.

GATES: I mean, it's one thing to have a family rumor that they disappeared, but now we know why they disappeared.

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

No, my mother and my grandmother, we didn't get into this.

GATES: Will you tell your kids this story?

MORISSETTE: Oh, yes.

GATES: Yeah.

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

GATES: Although Alanis' family had survived the war, they soon faced another ordeal.

Following the defeat of Hitler's Germany, Hungary was occupied by the Soviet Union, and monstrous genocide was replaced by the tyranny of the communist state.

When Hungarian patriots rebelled in 1956, they were quickly crushed.

Soviet tanks filled the streets... thousands died and more than 10,000 were wounded.

Amidst the chaos, Alanis's grandfather Imre decided that his family needed to flee, regardless of the risk.

Alanis' mother was just six years old at the time, but she still harbors harrowing memories of that journey.

MORISSETTE: I mean, there were some stories that she would say where they were escaping and going through fields where they would shoot up flares to see if there were people escaping.

They'd have to drop down.

And I remember my grandmother having dropped down on one occasion, and my mom was next to her, and my grandmother said to my mom, "Go ahead.

Just leave me here.

Go ahead."

And my mom said, "Are you kidding me?

I'm not going anywhere."

GATES: Right.

MORISSETTE: So moments like that, they were getting off a train and someone whispered to them, "Get off the other side."

And so they did.

And they got off the other side and they looked back and everyone was being executed on the... GATES: Wow.

MORISSETTE: Stuff like that.

It's really intense.

GATES: Against great odds, Imre managed to get his wife and children out of Hungary, along with several members of their extended family.

Eventually, they settled in Ottawa, where Alanis grew up.

But Alanis never knew her remarkable grandfather, because Imre died in a car accident just weeks following her birth... a tragedy that Alanis, understandably, found painful to revisit... MORISSETTE: "An Ottawa man and his mother-in-law were killed Tuesday afternoon when the car in which they were traveling crashed through a Queens Bay median and hit an oncoming vehicle.

Imre Feuerstein, 65, and Katalin Gulyas, 69, died in the accident.

Mr. Feuerstein's wife, Nadinia, 51, suffered cuts and bruises in the mishap."

Yeah.

GATES: Your grandfather and your great-grandmother both died in that car crash just three months after you were born.

After he survived the Holocaust, the Russians, and the loss of his brothers.

MORISSETTE: Man...Yeah.

GATES: How did your mother cope?

(sighs) MORISSETTE: I honestly think that a beautiful disassociation muscle kicked in for her, and she just went into, "I'm going to take care of these babies."

And just eventually went back to work and didn't talk about it very much.

My grandmother was the person who shared much more about this with me eventually.

GATES: Wow.

MORISSETTE: Because I wouldn't let it go.

Yeah.

GATES: Imre had saved his family by fleeing Hungary... but in so doing, he had also cut off all connection to their deeper roots.

In fact, Alanis knew nothing about her mother's ancestry before World War II.

We set out to change that, and mapped Imre's line back to Alanis' great-great-grandfather, a man named Izrael Blumenkranz.

Izrael was born around 1845, likely in a town called Drohobych, which was then in a part of the Austrian empire known as Galicia, and now is in Ukraine... MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: So when you watch the news, that's your people.

MORISSETTE: It's interesting, because when my mom watches the news, my immediate thought was, you know, trigger re-trauma with her escape.

But now hearing this, it's a whole other level of... GATES: Your bloodline goes right there.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: Ukraine, of course, has been a site of tragedy for generations, and many records of its Jewish population have either been lost or willfully destroyed.

For these reasons, doing genealogy here can be extraordinarily difficult...

But with Alanis, we got lucky... we uncovered Izrael's death record, which allowed us to add another branch to her mother's family tree.

MORISSETTE: "Deceased Izrael Blumankrantz.

Date of death, October 25th, 1894 in Drohobych.

Date of funeral, October 25th, 1894 in Drohobych, parents, Eisig Blumankrantz and Freuda Hardstein."

GATES: Freuda Hardstein.

So you just met another layer of your ancestors.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: Your third great grandparents, Eisig Blumankrantz, and Freuda Hardstein were likely born in Galicia in the early 1800s, over 200 years ago.

MORISSETTE: What?

GATES: So when you were 28, you found that you were Jewish?

MORISSETTE: Yes.

GATES: But you had no idea how Jewish.

MORISSETTE: I had no idea how super Jewish I am.

GATES: And we have a paper trail.

200 years on two lines on your mother's family.

How does that make you feel?

MORISSETTE: I feel welcomed into a community that I always had a crush on.

I've always had a crush on Judaism and I would just show up at Passover and Seder.

GATES: Yeah.

Well.

MORISSETTE: And now I know why.

GATES: Now you know why.

It was like come on home.

MORISSETTE: Yes.

Please Come home.

Come home.

GATES: We'd already explored Ciara's paternal roots, tracing her father back to South Carolina, a place Ciara had never associated with her family.

Now, turning to her mother's ancestry, we uncovered a story that would prove even more surprising.

It begins with Ciara's great-grandparents: Louella and Willie Head.

Do you know those names?

CIARA: So, I feel like I was around Grandma Louella.

GATES: Hmm.

CIARA: For a little bit, maybe.

But I was definitely around Grandpa Willie.

He used to live in our house.

GATES: Oh, yeah.

CIARA: And, oh my gosh, I, I'm not even...

I haven't even thought about him in this way until this moment.

GATES: Wow.

CIARA: Because I got to, um, you know, be around him for a few years.

And he would chase me around the house.

You know?

And he was older.

He'd be "Go!"

You know, just going after me.

I can't remember what he was, like, exactly what he was saying.

But I just remember the feeling of him, you know, going after me, "Ciara!"

You know?

Um... Yeah, that's amazing.

'Cause I literally am just reminded of how I actually got to spend time with him.

GATES: That's great.

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: Willie would turn out to be the lynchpin of this story.

He was born in may of 1905, and we found him in the 1910 census for Georgia, listed as a son of a couple named Nathan and Emily Head.

But we soon began to wonder if this census was correct.

When we compared Ciara's DNA profile to millions of other profiles in publicly available databases, we discovered that she has multiple matches to people who are related to her through Willie Head, and through Willie's mother Emily.

But, when we tried to connect her to Nathan Head, we noticed something unusual...

Turn the page.

CIARA: Wow, it says... GATES: How many matches do you see?

CIARA: Zero.

GATES: Zero.

Now I'm gonna explain what... CIARA: What you 'bout to tell me right now?

GATES: I'm gonna explain what it means.

CIARA: Okay.

Let's go.

GATES: Nathan Head is not your biological ancestor.

CIARA: Hmm.

GATES: That means that Nathan is not Willie's father.

Willie, unbeknownst probably to Willie, had a different father.

CIARA: Oh.

Wow.

GATES: Have you ever heard any family stories about that?

CIARA: Mm-mmm.

No.

GATES: We now had a question in front of us... if Nathan Head wasn't Willie's biological father, then who was?

There were no further records to guide us.

Our only hope was DNA.

Our genetic genealogist, CeCe Moore, noticed that while Ciara did not have any matches to Nathan Head, she did match a number of individuals who could only be related to her through the man who had actually fathered Willie... and all of these people had one thing in common: they were white.

Leading to an inescapable conclusion.

Your biological great-great- grandfather was white.

CIARA: Hmm, that's crazy.

I think about, like, my grandfather's hair.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah.

CIARA: You know?

GATES: He had "good hair"?

CIARA: As he got older, it got a little more, you know, little more coarse, but... Um, I look at some of his, you know, the photos from, that I did get to see... GATES: Right.

CIARA: From when he was younger with my grandma, and it was fine hair.

GATES: Yeah.

Now you know why.

Yeah.

CIARA: Yeah, that's amazing.

GATES: It was one thing to know that Willie's father was white, another to actually find his name.

Returning back to the DNA databases, CeCe was able to do just that.

By building family trees for each of the matches that she found, connecting one of them to Ciara's ancestors.

So you wanna meet your great-great-grandpa?

CIARA: Yes.

GATES: And this is a fact beyond a doubt.

Turn the page.

CIARA: I'm ready.

GATES: Would you please read the name of the box directly above the name of your great-grandfather Willie?

CIARA: "Walker Lafayette Head."

GATES: You just met your great-great-grandfather.

CIARA: What's crazy is that they both had the last name Head.

GATES: Had the same surname Head!

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: But they weren't related.

Walker was white and Nathan and Willie were Black.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: Even though Walker and Nathan don't share a biological connection, their lives were intimately intertwined... in the 1870 census, we found Walker as a five year old boy, living in the home of his father, a white farmer named Thomas Head...

The census also shows a Black family living on the property... likely working as sharecroppers.

They have the same surname as the white family and one of them, a six year old boy, was called Nathan.

So that's Nathan Head, the man everyone believed was Willie's father.

CIARA: Ah.

GATES: He's listed along with his parents, living in the household of the white farmer Thomas Head.

So that means that Walker and Nathan grew up in the same house together.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: And at some point when both men were about 40, Walker slept with Nathan's wife.

CIARA: Hmm.

Mm-mm-mm.

GATES: And conceived your great-grandfather Willie.

CIARA: Mm-mm-mm.

GATES: We don't know anything about the nature of the relationship between Walker and Emily.

But as we looked into the circumstances surrounding the birth of their child, we noticed something curious... After growing up together on the same farm, Walker and Nathan parted ways.

By 1900, Nathan and Emily were living in Monroe County, Georgia, while Walker was living roughly 80 miles away in Butts County... we wondered how Emily and Walker ever managed to conceive a child... And found our answer in a mortgage deed filed by Nathan Head it describes crops that he was planting in Butts County the year that his wife became pregnant....

So, Ciara, what that means is that Nathan Head was farming in Butts County, Georgia in 1904.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: The same county where Walker Head was living.

So if you go back in time, you see, you go, "Nathan, no, no, no, don't go there."

CIARA: Uh-uh.

And Nathan said, "I'm going there."

GATES: Yeah.

He went there, and his wife went somewhere else.

CIARA: Oh.

GATES: And you see the name of the man whose land Nathan was farming?

CIARA: "Lands of Whit Torbitt."

GATES: Whit Torbitt.

So we believe that Whit Torbitt was a man named Robert Whit Torbitt.

And according to the 1900 census, his family owned land that was in close proximity to the land owned by Walker Head, your white ancestor.

So Nathan Head is renting land from this white guy who lives right near Walker Head, who would conceive a child with Nathan's wife... CIARA: Wow.

GATES: And lead eventually to you.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: Isn't that amazing?

CIARA: That's amazing.

That's crazy.

GATES: So we can only speculate, but... CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: What's your, what do you imagine the nature of the relationship?

Do you think it was consensual?

CIARA: Yeah.

I do.

I'd definitely like to believe there's some connectivity that happened.

GATES: People fall in love.

You can't control it.

Desire is colorblind.

CIARA: Oh, yeah.

I mean... GATES: You know?

CIARA: Yeah, love is love.

GATES: If Walker and Emily were in love, that love had no future.

Not only was inter-racial marriage illegal in Georgia, but both were already married to other people.

Indeed Walker and his wife had seven children together.

What's more, Walker himself was not long for this world...

This is the gravestone for your great-great-grandfather.

CIARA: Wow.

GATES: That is where your white great-great-grandfather is buried.

CIARA: Hmm.

GATES: He died on September 25th, 1907, when he was just 43 years old.

At this time, his son, your great-great- grandfather Willie... CIARA: Mm-hmm.

GATES: Who's now half white and half black.

CIARA: Mm-hmm.

GATES: Was two and a half years old.

CIARA: Hmm.

GATES: Do you think he ever knew who his father was?

You think his mom would've told him?

Remember, she's living with a Black man who was ostensibly his father.

CIARA: I don't know.

GATES: And he had seven white half siblings because all of Walker's kids were his half siblings.

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: I wonder if he knew.

CIARA: He probably at some point in time, you look up and you go, hmm.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: And maybe you know, but life just keeps on going on, I think, for them.

GATES: Right.

Yeah, 'cause sometimes if you say something, your whole world's gonna fall apart.

CIARA: Yeah, it's a whole big old thing.

GATES: So what's it like for you to learn this story?

When you, when we, you walked in here you had no idea... CIARA: No.

GATES: What was gonna be in that book.

CIARA: No, I had no idea.

Um, I feel more clear.

I feel, um, like I know myself even more.

I know my roots even more.

GATES: And isn't it incredible to see what we can do now with science?

DNA?

CIARA: It's powerful.

GATES: 'Cause nobody would've known the facts when that baby was born.

CIARA: Oh, yeah, no.

Yeah, no, you... GATES: They could've guessed, but no one would've known.

CIARA: Yeah, no.

GATES: But we know.

CIARA: Yeah.

GATES: We'd already traced Alanis Morissette's maternal roots back to long-vanished Jewish communities in eastern Europe.... Now, turning to her father's family tree, we found ourselves on more familiar terrain: the small city of Timmins, Canada, where Alanis' father was born and raised... Alanis grew up in nearby Ottawa, and feels a deep connection to this part of the world... and that's not all she shares with her father: the two are also bonded by an artistic sensibility.

MORISSETTE: Music was everywhere.

My father is utterly obsessed with all music, and I was exposed to uh, Carol King and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and all these different writers.. GATES: Hmm.

MORISSETTE: He just really has a profound respect for musicianship and lyricism and just the whole idea of that being how one expresses.

He's obsessed with those kinds of music, that genre of music, of singer songwriter.

So he was playing it all the time.

GATES: How come he didn't become a musician?

MORISSETTE: He wanted to, I don't think that that was one of the gifts that he took off running with.

GATES: So you're fulfilling your father's dreams?

MORISSETTE: Yes.

There is a vicarious element for sure.

GATES: As it turns out, Alanis' family ties to music actually stretch back generations, in a most surprising way...

The story begins with her fourth great-grandfather, a man named James McConnell... James was likely born in Nova Scotia, Canada around 1773... he eventually settled in Hull, a town on the Ottawa River, where he had an unusual occupation... MORISSETTE: "Owners or conductors of rafts, James McConnell."

GATES: You know what this means?

Your fourth great-grandfather operated log rafts on the Ottawa River.

MORISSETTE: Oh.

I briefly had a home, briefly meaning probably ten years, that was on the Ottawa River and looked into Hull.

GATES: No kidding.

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

GATES: Wow.

So you were drawn back.

MORISSETTE: Yes.

GATES: James' rafts were used to help guide newly cut timber downstream... it was an important job in his region's lumber economy, but that's not what makes him notable... indeed, our researchers might have passed him by entirely had his name not appeared in a book called "Pioneers of the Upper Ottawa", written by a man named Anson Gard in the year 1906.

Gard was a kind of cultural historian, what we might call a folklorist, okay?

MORISSETTE: Yes.

GATES: He interviewed people and collected local stories.

Would you please read the part we've transcribed for you?

MORISSETTE: "A Hull song of the long ago...

I one day chanced to hear an 'Old Come All Ye' being hummed by a man who lived in South Hull.

'It is,' said he, 'a song written many years ago by a Hull school teacher on the drowning of three young men.

I learned from Mr. James Moore, the nephew of the Benjamin Moore in the song, that these four young men proposed to do what had never been done... What had never been before attempted, to run a boat or canoe over the Chaudire Falls.'"

GATES: This is a story about a song, and the song is about your family.

MORISSETTE: What is happening?

GATES: The Chaudire Falls are a set of cascading waterfalls near Hull... at their height, they're over 100 feet tall, an enormous drop... but in 1815, Alanis' fourth great-grandfather James, along with his brother in law and two other men, decided to ride over them, and they all ended up in a folk song.

Can you imagine taking a boat over those Falls?

MORISSETTE: I can.

GATES: You're crazy, then.

MORISSETTE: Definitely, yes.

GATES: I could see it runs in your family.

MORISSETTE: It is.

GATES: Just like that dude.

MORISSETTE: Metaphor-wise, I always think of myself at the front of a parade or a march that I have the flag and I'm at the front.

I'm the one willing to get my head chopped off.

This is the quality that I'm sensing from him... GATES: Yeah well you came by it honestly.

We don't know what motivated James and his companions.

They may have been swept over the falls as they attempted to deliver timber nearby.

But according to this book, it seems like they wanted to do it simply because it hadn't been done before.

And they paid a heavy price for their courage.

MORISSETTE: "Intending to run them or their course they did pursue.

Their boat ran with swift motion, and from it they were threw.

Benjamin Moore and William Wright, likewise, Asa Young, those three young men were drowned and from their boat were flung.

But James McConnell was preserved, for he swam safe to shore down by those islands where the foaming waters roar."

GATES: So as a songwriter, what do you think of the lyrics?

We got any... MORISSETTE: Some classic good stuff here.

GATES: They got legs here?

Can we do something with that?

MORISSETTE: Some high quality, yes, I could work with this, definitely.

GATES: Yeah.

What do you think of this story?

This story actually happened.

MORISSETTE: Yeah.

No, it's the whole idea, not only of understanding that it was Hull and that Ottawa River, which I have a deep affinity for, but the fact that they were doing something for the first time, you know, there's such a high risk, um, high sensation seeking quality to the exploration too.

So that readiness to just go for it I resonate with.

GATES: Though James had survived the falls, his brother-in-law Benjamin Moore drowned... and when James and his wife Susan had a child the following year, they named him "Benjamin McConnell", in honor of their lost relative... preserving his memory even as the details of his death faded down the generations.

MORISSETTE: Wow... GATES: What's it been like for you to learn this story?

MORISSETTE: Um...

It really invigorates my curiosity to go even further in the history of, of what they were doing.

Feeling wise, um, the relief of his having survived, it's the felt sense.

And then um, just so much intense stuff happened.

I just think about their resilience and their ability to keep going in the face of tragedy is pretty poignant for me.

GATES: Yeah.

Yeah, and admirable.

MORISSETTE: Yes, admirable.

GATES: We had one more "poignant" story for Alanis...

Following her direct paternal line, we traced the Morissette family back to Alanis' eighth great-grandparents: a couple named Jean Morisset and Jeanne Choret...

The two married in Quebec City in 1667.

And settled on a piece of land that Jean owned on a nearby island, building a house that would stand the test of time.

That's their home.

That is your family home.

MORISSETTE: No.

GATES: That is Maison Morisset.

Look at that!

MORISSETTE: Oh my God.

GATES: This is where your eighth great-grandparents raised their family.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

On this island?

GATES: Yeah.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: You're going to go and check it out?

MORISSETTE: Heck yes.

Yep, with my whole family in tow.

GATES: Yes, and we believe that your ancestors spent their entire married lives in that house.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: Yeah.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: How many people can look at their family home from the 17th century?

MORISSETTE: It's amazing.

I want to turn that into a T-shirt.

GATES: Jean Morrisset died in Canada in 1699, when he was 58-years-old.

He'd come a long way during those years, as evidenced by his baptismal record, which we found in the archives of Surgres... A town in France!

The record is dated 1641... and it names Jean's parents, adding another generation, and an entirely new place, to Alanis' family tree.

MORISSETTE: Oh my God.

GATES: Your ninth great-grandparents.

MORISSETTE: How is that even possible?

GATES: Paul Moricet and Mathurine Guillois were likely born in the early 1600s when Shakespeare was alive.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: Likely in Surgres as well.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

GATES: What's it like to see that?

To know that you have such deep roots in one place, and there it is?

MORISSETTE: I can't even believe it.

GATES: And think about this, in a sense, you are who you are because Jean took a chance and left that place, and risked everything... MORISSETTE: To come over to Canada.

GATES: In the cold Arctic wilderness of New France.

MORISSETTE: Wow.

Wow.

GATES: Your father's family has a classic Canadian story, from settlers to lumberjacks.

MORISSETTE: Amazing.

I just want to go there now and find out more.

GATES: The paper trail had run out for each of my guests.

It was time to unfurl their full family trees, now filled with names they'd never heard before... You carry DNA from all these people.

What does this mean to you?

To see all these people, you know when you walked in here... MORISSETTE: Yeah.

GATES: All these people were lost... MORISSETTE: I know.

GATES: And now they'll never be lost again.

MORISSETTE: No, no I just, uh...

I feel here.

I've always had a challenge around defining self, and this helps flesh it out, and it's such an invitation.

This is the dream family rabbit hole for me to keep going down, and I feel really blessed right now that this information that you founded and provided it to me is a great gift.

Thank you.

CIARA: I feel, um, I just have a greater appreciation.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: Honestly.

Um, yeah, I have a great appreciation for American history.

And um, my history.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: Right?

And it feels good to know myself even more.

GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: And um, history is beautiful I think that's what's so great is that even in the not so pretty parts of it all... GATES: Mm-hmm.

CIARA: Those stories that, like I say, for me, sometimes feel uncomfortable... GATES: Yeah.

CIARA: There's beauty in all of it too.

GATES: There is.

CIARA: Right?

You can find beauty in it.

GATES: My time with my guests was drawing to a close, but there were surprises still to come... when we compared their DNA to the DNA of others who have been in the series, we found a match for each of them, evidence within their own chromosomes of distant cousins that they never knew they had... CIARA: What in the world?

GATES: That is your DNA cousin.

CIARA: You are kidding me.

GATES: Ladies and gentlemen, she is, she is looking at former New York Yankees' Derek Jeter.

CIARA: That's crazy.

GATES: Ciara and Derek share a long, identical stretch of DNA on their 14th chromosomes, DNA which we know Derek inherited from his mother.

By contrast, Alanis' connection to her cousin runs through her father... his 15th chromosome ties her to a longtime friend... MORISSETTE: Oh!

GATES: Claire Danes.

Isn't that amazing?

MORISSETTE: Wow.

Yeah, we've worked together before.

GATES: Really?

MORISSETTE: I heart her so much.

Now I'm about to explode into confetti.

(laughter) GATES: That's great.

That's the end of our journey with Ciara and Alanis Morissette... join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of Finding Your Roots.