Finding Your Roots

GATES: I am Henry Lewis Gates Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll meet actors, Lea Salonga, and Amanda Seyfried, two stars who are about to discover that their ancestors led far more dramatic lives than they'd ever imagined.

SALONGA: Missing an action?

Whoa, that's a mystery.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God, what?

GATES: Your third great-grandfather was murdered.

SEYFRIED: What?

GATES: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available genealogists comb through paper trails, stretching back hundreds of years while DNA experts utilize 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.

SEYFRIED: This is so cool, it's so heavy!

SALONGA: That's amazing.

GATES: A record of all of our discoveries.

SEYFRIED: Oh, no way, no way.

GATES: And a window into the hidden past.

SALONGA: That's nuts, I didn't even know this existed!

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

I mean, you can read it, but it's hard, but it's beautiful.

SALONGA: Wow, we didn't know anything about anything like this.

SEYFRIED: Makes me feel whole, makes me feel me.

GATES: Amanda and Lea have been entertaining the world for decades, crafting an array of unforgettable roles.

In this episode, they're going to meet characters every bit as dramatic as the ones they play, except these characters aren't fictional and all along they've been hiding in the branches of their family trees.

(theme music playing).

(book closes).

GATES: Amanda Seyfried is a human dynamo.

The actor, model and singer has shown incredible range moving seamlessly across genres from comedy to horror, musical theater, to prestige drama.

Along the way, she's earned an Emmy award and Oscar nomination and countless accolades.

In 2022, "Time Magazine" even named her one of the world's 100 most influential people.

But to hear Amanda tell it, she simply pursuing a passion that was nurtured in her childhood home.

SEYFRIED: I was dressing up as a kid all the time.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: All I did was dress up, I mean, that's what kids do, but I took it very seriously, and I loved playing characters.

GATES: Were you entertaining your family?

SEYFRIED: Yeah, I was playing, I was like putting on plays.

I remember putting on this one play that was just black and white, so everything that was black and white in the house, I would bring over and put it on the set, and I would make my family watch me do nothing with these things like move around.

I see my daughter doing it.

GATES: Amanda's ambitions initially seemed misplaced.

She was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where her parents both worked in a hospital.

Show business was a truly distant dream, but Amanda was determined.

She took acting classes as a child, got an agent by the time she was 15, and began traveling to and from New York City for auditions, a journey of almost 100 miles.

And she didn't mind that at first, nothing worked out.

SEYFRIED: I felt like I had found something I really loved, and I wasn't good at it because I was so scared.

And you can't really do anything very well if you're scared.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: Because there are too many things inhibiting you.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And I tried anyway, I kept trying, I kept auditioning because now I had this, this path with these agents to these auditions, and they would send me on them, and I felt like, why not?

And I get outta school, take the Bieber bus to the city with my mom, and I would audition, and they wouldn't go great, but at least I was, I was fully invested in something creative and outside of school.

GATES: Amanda's persistence paid off, after brief stints on a pair of soap operas, she landed a lead in the cult classic "Mean Girls."

The film became an enormous hit, thanks in no small part to Amanda, and launched a career that shows no signs of slowing down.

But for all she's accomplished, Amanda has never lost sight of her roots and credits her success to the forces that have shaped her from the start.

SEYFRIED: I think I have a really good, healthy attitude, I think it was built in me by my parents.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: I didn't expect anything, and I felt like anything good that happened was just, I was so grateful for it.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And I also worked so hard, I really, really wanted the jobs that I wanted when I wanted them, and I, I wouldn't take no for an answer in the sweetest way.

(laughs).

GATES: Right.

SEYFRIED: "You don't wanna see me for this anymore?

I'm gonna be back.

And it's gonna be quick.

It'll be harm... it'll be painless for you."

GATES: Now, being grateful, pinching yourself, you know, "I can't believe my life."

That's, uh, I, I share that.

SEYFRIED: Good.

GATES: Yeah, it's a good thing.

SEYFRIED: It is a good thing.

GATES: My second guest is Broadway superstar, Lea Salonga, famed for her pitch-perfect voice and groundbreaking performances in "Miss Saigon" and "Les Misrables."

Much like Amanda Seyfried, Lea stepped into the limelight at an early age with more than a little help from her parents.

Growing up in the Philippines, she began singing at family parties and her mother soon sensed an opportunity.

SALONGA: My mother had this brilliant idea, let's put out recordings and so she established a recording company, it was my dad's initials called FGS and Associates, was what she named it.

And put out a single, two songs, "Someone's Waiting For You," "Rainbow Connection" was the B side.

And then we, she, in her station wagon, she put the records in the back and she would go to the music stores in the city of Manila that would sell musical instruments and records.

And then it got to a point where she would start getting calls from the stores to refill.

GATES: Oh man.

SALONGA: They would be reordering because... GATES: Mom said, "That's what I'm talking about."

SALONGA: Exactly, because what she was finding, what the music store owners were telling her, they were saying, moms are buying this for their children because there's no recordings for kids.

GATES: Hallmark of an entrepreneur, yeah?

SALONGA: Yeah.

GATES: Lea quickly became one of the most successful child performers in the Philippines, leading to the watershed moment in her life.

In 1989, when she was just 17, the producers of "Miss Saigon" offered her the starring role in their show's, London debut, as a brothel worker.

And suddenly Lea had to make a very difficult choice.

SALONGA: I was really concerned with how conservative audiences in the Philippines were going to take it.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: Because my career up to that point was just very wholesome.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: And I was a child entertainer, a performer, so... GATES: You were about to turn the page... SALONGA: And I was about to turn, I was about to turn the page in a really big way.

GATES: Big way.

SALONGA: Because back home actors and especially actresses, you were either really wholesome... GATES: Mm-hmm.

SALONGA: Or really not.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: It was, there was no gray area.

GATES: Were you afraid that there would be no coming back?

SALONGA: I would be like, yeah.

GATES: Right.

SALONGA: Like, am, am I gonna be like a, what they called a bold star?

Am I gonna be like a branded as that?

GATES: A bold star.

SALONGA: A bold star, that's what they were called.

And then I realized in the West, the gray area was where a lot of actors resided.

GATES: Ultimately, Lea decided to take the role and has never looked back.

"Miss Saigon" would move from London to New York where it became a phenomenon.

Winning Lea a Tony for best actress in a musical, the first woman of Asian descent ever to win that award.

Since then, Lea has sold more than 19 million records and developed a worldwide following.

But she's never lost her perspective or a sense of gratitude for just how far she's come.

SALONGA: When you win a Tony, it's really not just the actor that wins it, it's everyone that helped to shape that performance.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: So I really share that award with my mom and my dad and my brother, and all of my friends who said, "Go, go, go."

And, you know, and achievements are wonderful, and I can be proud of all of that.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: But I think maintaining a sense of humor in a business that can be fickle and cruel and heartbreaking, that's an achievement.

GATES: That's key to... SALONGA: Yeah.

GATES: Sanity.

SALONGA: Exactly.

GATES: Lea and Amanda know themselves well.

They both realize their childhood dreams, and they have the confidence that flows from that success.

But when we turn to their roots, that confidence wavered.

Each told me that they had questions about entire branches of their family trees.

It was time to provide them with some answers.

I started with Amanda, her mother's relatives know a great deal about their roots, but her father's family tree was a blank slate.

We built it out, going back four generations to a man named John Peter Ebert.

John was born in Germany in 1844.

As a young boy, he immigrated to the United States and found work as an apprentice baker in Allentown, Pennsylvania, just miles from where Amanda herself grew up.

The job would've involved a great deal of manual labor, and John may well have wondered why he'd left his homeland behind.

But in the 1880 census for Allentown, we saw that he eventually came to thrive in America.

SEYFRIED: Ah, John Peter Ebert, head of household 35.

Occupation: baker.

Amanda, 32 wife, occupation: keeping house.

Lizzie eight, daughter, Harvey six, a son, Gerdi four, a daughter, and Frank, one, a son.

Wow, this is crazy.

GATES: In 20 years, John worked his way up from nothing, he's now a professional baker.

He's married to Amanda, your namesake.

SEYFRIED: So funny.

GATES: And he is living with his family, what's it like to see that your ancestors lived the American dream?

SEYFRIED: Yeah, he did it like he found a, a nice woman, hopefully, and had four kids, which is what they did back then, just kept having kids.

I mean, they're, he's, he's created his own kingdom.

GATES: Looking closer, we realized that John created his kingdom out of nothing.

After his apprenticeship, he worked as a baker at what was known as the Lehigh County Poor House, a public home for the impoverished.

From there, somehow, he went on to run a successful business of his own, becoming a prominent citizen along the way.

But tragically, John's prosperity didn't last.

Would you please read the transcribed section?

SEYFRIED: Oh my God, what?

Oh my God.

Um, "John P. Ebert, the well-known retired baker, was shot three times by an unknown assailant on the back step of his home at Washington and Lumber Streets.

It took Mr. Ebert only about three minutes to extinguish his lights and lock up shop.

He had just reached the back door, and his hand was probably on the doorknob when from between the outhouse and the grape arbor, which screens it, stepped a man who fired three shots at him, point blank."

Oh my God, that's so sad.

GATES: Your third great-grandfather was murdered.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

GATES: Have you ever heard this story before?

SEYFRIED: Nope, no, definitely, no.

SEYFRIED: Poor Amanda and those kids.

GATES: What's it like to read this?

SEYFRIED: It's weird, I don't know him, but yet he's family, and I'm just like, "How dare they!"

like, "Find justice."

GATES: In the wake of the murder, it seems that the police did, in fact, make every effort to find John's killer.

But ironically, this would have devastating effects on his family, as the investigation soon revealed that John had fathered an illegitimate son named Herbert, and Herbert became a prime suspect, much to the embarrassment of John's wife.

SEYFRIED: "The coroner put the question to Mrs. Ebert as to what was the reason that her husband had left the poor house as baker some twenty-five years ago.

She burst into tears and said she could not say it.

What that exact story was, is not given out.

It is however alleged that some 25 years ago, when Mr. Ebert was baker at the poor house, there was a certain woman and there was an infatuation, and the son was born.

The matter grew into the scandal at that time, which led to his being relieved from the position and his return to this city."

Wow.

GATES: Amanda had to talk about her husband's affair and see it in the newspaper, can you imagine?

SEYFRIED: Mm-mm.

GATES: What that would be like now, let alone what that was like in 1905?

SEYFRIED: And a local newspaper, it's so much worse, you can't go anywhere.

GATES: What do you think that must have been like for her?

SEYFRIED: Awful.

GATES: I mean, to lose your husband.

SEYFRIED: And then to have his name dragged through the mud.

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: What happened to Herbert?

GATES: Please turn.

SEYFRIED: Jail?

GATES: Please turn the page.

SEYFRIED: Oh.

GATES: This is a newspaper article.

SEYFRIED: Oh, wow.

GATES: Published March 2nd, 1905.

SEYFRIED: No!

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

SEYFRIED: Herbert Ebert proves a complete alibi, the theory that Herbert Ebert knew something about the tragedy fell flat.

When he first heard of the murder, he did not know the victim was his father.

He was under the impression his father was Peter Ebert and he saw him, but once, when he was six years old at the Allentown Fair..." Been there a few times!

"Mr. Ebert first learned the identity of his father as the murdered man by seeing in the newspapers that suspicion was directed towards him."

Wow, okay.

GATES: Hmm.

SEYFRIED: So he didn't do it.

GATES: So he didn't do it.

Herbert had nothing at all to do with the murder.

He didn't even know the guy was his father.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

GATES: So he had to go through that shock of recognition and then be accused of murdering the guy he didn't know was his father.

SEYFRIED: Soap opera.

Oh, these poor people.

GATES: Though Herbert was cleared, his mother, a woman named Mary Wurtz, suddenly saw the most private details of her life, exposed to the public.

Newspapers described how Mary had arrived in the poor house when she was just 12 years old and given birth to Herbert at 15.

We're not sure how she ended up there, but she appears to have been by herself, and perhaps she was an orphan.

We just don't know.

But three years later, she has an affair with your third great-grandfather, who's the baker there, becomes pregnant, and has a baby.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

GATES: Later, after putting the baby up for adoption, she went on to marry and she kept her son's parentage a secret until John's murder.

What do you think that was like for her?

SEYFRIED: Uh, she must have been sick.

GATES: I mean, there are two women who are now forced to confess secrets from the past.

SEYFRIED: It's so, it's so twisted.

GATES: Mmm.

SEYFRIED: To harbor that having, know that you have this kid out in the world, horrible, hard.

GATES: And every day 24-7, you're not telling the man who loves you.

SEYFRIED: Yeah, it's just gotta feel like a knife in the stomach being twisted every day.

GATES: Horrible.

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: I mean, think about what this tells us about the world these people lived in.

This is a little less than 150 years ago, in your own hometown, but it seems like it's another planet, right?

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: And a brutal one.

SEYFRIED: Absolutely.

GATES: There is a final beat to this story, it turns out that John Ebert's murderer had nothing at all to do with his complicated family.

Instead, John was shot by a troubled neighbor, in a botched robbery attempt, leaving Amanda to wrestle with the meaning of his story.

So let's think about John's life again, he came to America as a boy, he learned a trade, had success in business, and was a pillar of his community.

And yet he had a secret.

SEYFRIED: Yep.

GATES: What do you make of him now?

SEYFRIED: I make, he's a human.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: He made a mistake.

He put, he put some lives in turmoil, and he had to make choices.

He had a lot of kids.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And a business, and he wanted to keep his life, and he made choices that ensured that his life would be saved and selfish, as that is, he was also protecting his kids.

So I can, I can turn that story around.

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: And he didn't have to be shot.

GATES: Mm-mmm, nobody deserved that.

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: We now set out to see what we could learn about John Ebert's deeper roots, and got very lucky.

In the 1860s census for Pennsylvania, we saw that John was born in Wrttemberg, a state in southern Germany.

This proved to be a gold mine for our researchers, allowing us to trace his family back seven more generations.

SEYFRIED: This is great, so long.

GATES: Would you please read the name and relationship at the very top?

SEYFRIED: Simon Ebert 10th great-grandfather.

GATES: Your 10th great-grandfather.

SEYFRIED: So when was, oh my God, this, he was 1600s.

GATES: He was born 1595.

SEYFRIED: Wow, this is, they're all Eberts.

GATES: It is a straight line through the paper trail.

You're one of the few people who can actually trace a branch of your family back to the 16th century, Shakespeare's writing plays.

SEYFRIED: God.

GATES: Over in England.

SEYFRIED: Oh, oh my God.

GATES: In Shakespeare's day, Amanda's ancestors were living in a small town called Grein, which is roughly a mile and a half from Darsberg, the town where John Ebert, the baker, would be born two centuries later.

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: What's it like to know that you have deep roots in this one place?

SEYFRIED: It makes me feel very grounded.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: Um, a part of something, I guess.

GATES: Please turn the page.

SEYFRIED: This is amazing, oh how cool.

GATES: Amanda, this record is the oldest primary document we obtained on your entire family tree.

Would you please read what we've translated for you?

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

"Simon Ebert," this is insane.

"Simon Ebert, legitimate son of Hans Ebert of Grein.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: Katharina, Katarina.

GATES: Katarina, yeah.

SEYFRIED: Legitimate daughter of Ulrich Mnch.

GATES: Ulrich Mnch.

SEYFRIED: Ulrich Mnch of Darsberg.

GATES: Uh-huh.

SEYFRIED: We're blessed on May 19th, 1618.

GATES: You know what that is?

SEYFRIED: A marriage certificate?

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: That is your 10th great-grandfather's marriage record from the year 1618, it's over 400 years ago.

SEYFRIED: How did you find this?

GATES: Isn't that?

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

I mean, you can, you can read it, but it's hard, but it's beautiful.

GATES: We now traced Amanda's father's roots back almost five centuries in and around these two small towns in Germany.

And that's as far as the paper trail could take us.

But her family likely lived in this area much longer, indeed, there are settlements near Grein that date to Roman times and Amanda's ancestors may very well have lived within them.

A notion that drew Amanda's thoughts back to her father.

SEYFRIED: This makes him wide open to me, the just flat, it just spreads him out.

Like picturing him right now, I feel like he's just gotten, he, he's got, he's like just grown eight feet tall.

(laughs).

And I think he's gonna be really proud and really interested in hearing everything that I've just learned.

But I also feel like it's his story too.

GATES: Definitely.

SEYFRIED: And it's my grandmother's story, and it's like her parents' story and it, you know, and it goes on and on and on.

It's just like, so I feel like I'm giving them a gift, to having received all this information.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And with this incredible research, I feel like I have something to offer them, which is, I mean, I know I have my love to offer, but I also feel like we were so enmeshed in all those family trees on my mom's side that I, and it's fasc, it was fascinating what they found but, but there was really nothing, it was a big gaping hole.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And to know that my grandmother is two generations closer to Simon and Hans.

GATES: Right.

SEYFRIED: Is just, it's, I don't know, they're kind of glowing in my mind right now.

GATES: Like Amanda, Lea Salonga was about to gain a new appreciation of her father's roots.

The journey began with Lea's father himself.

A man named Feliciano Salonga.

Lea remembers Feliciano as a complex character, she's heard that he was mischievous and playful out in the world, but at home, he was often emotionally distant.

To understand him better we focus on his career.

Feliciano spent decades in the shipping industry, beginning as a young man, when he left the Philippines to study at the U.S.

Merchant Marine Academy, Lea knew that her father was intensely proud of his work, but we discovered that he didn't always take it so seriously.

SALONGA: Name: Feliciano Salonga, age 19.

Above: missed the ship at Honolulu.

GATES: You didn't know this?

SALONGA: No.

GATES: Your father missed the boat to the Merchant Marine Academy.

SALONGA: Okay.

GATES: He never told you this story?

SALONGA: No, and I can only guess what he might have been up to.

I have a feeling he was engaged in some sort of shenanigans... (laughter).

But he ended up, I'm sure, charming his way onto another boat.

GATES: Well, let's see what happened.

Would you please turn the page?

Lea, this is a... SALONGA: Ah, there he is!

GATES: This is a newspaper article published in "The Honolulu Advertiser" 11 days after your father missed his ship.

Would you please read the transcribed section?

SALONGA: Okay, "Cadet missed the boat."

I love it.

"Feliciano G. Salonga, Jr. 'Commander,'" Quote-unquote, "Of 19 other young Filipinos learned that when a ship is scheduled to sail at a certain hour, she sails.

Young Salonga learned that lesson the hard way by missing the American President liner, General MC Meigs when she left Honolulu at 6:00 PM Salonga left the ship to visit a cousin."

GATES: A cousin.

SALONGA: A, I'm gonna put "a cousin."

"We were having such a good time that I, well, I guess I was a little late and starting back to the ship."

(laughter).

GATES: Having a good time with the family, does that sound like... SALONGA: As I said, shenanigans.

I wasn't wrong.

GATES: No, you weren't wrong.

And he never told you this story, nobody ever told you this story?

SALONGA: No, nobody told me the story.

All I know is about the days at the academy.

GATES: Feliciano's silence regarding this matter may have been due to his pride, but it may also have flowed out of respect for his father, a man who shared his name and who had been a sailor himself.

Lea's grandfather Feliciano P. Salonga was born in 1894 in a rural corner of the Philippines, and it seems that he was not inclined to stay there.

At the time, the Philippines were an American protectorate, which meant that Filipino citizens could join the U.S. armed services and that's what Feliciano did.

In 1919, he enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to a ship called the U.S.S Vestal, on active duty in the Pacific Ocean.

It was a repair ship, meaning it was designed to provide maintenance support to combat ships.

SALONGA: Right.

GATES: And you could see a photo of the actual vessel on your left.

SALONGA: Okay, wow.

GATES: What's it like to see that?

SALONGA: It's crazy.

GATES: Yeah.

SALONGA: It's like seeing a part of history, but at the same time, it's like my grandfather worked on that ship.

GATES: Yeah.

SALONGA: It's, it's interesting.

GATES: Can you imagine working and living on that ship for months at a time?

SALONGA: Oof, oof.

GATES: Could you have handled that?

SALONGA: No.

GATES: No, me neither.

SALONGA: I'm claustrophobic.

GATES: If Feliciano was claustrophobic, he didn't show it.

On the Vestal, he worked in the boiler room, far below deck in the sweltering heat of a coal-burning fire.

And while his ship's log is filled with names of sailors who were disciplined for violating rules, Feliciano's name is never mentioned.

He seems to have done his job admirably, despite the grueling conditions.

SALONGA: Oh, the heat.

GATES: Hot and dirty.

SALONGA: Yeah, I mean, the Philippines can be hot and dirty, but that's a whole different kind of hot and dirty.

GATES: What does it tell you about your grandfather, that he was able to do that job and do it well?

SALONGA: And not get in trouble.

GATES: Yeah.

SALONGA: And be a model, model sailor.

GATES: And that he was willing to do it, that this was an opportunity for him.

SALONGA: Yeah, I think that's what he saw.

He didn't see it as drudge work, he saw it as a way to better his own life.

GATES: Feliciano was able to build a better life for himself in the Navy.

He received promotions and started a family, but the stability created would prove to be an illusion.

(explosions).

In 1939, World War II broke out and spread across the Pacific.

By the time it came to the Philippines, Feliciano was 47 years old and had just been transferred back home to Manila.

SALONGA: Wow.

GATES: And you notice the transfer date on that record?

SALONGA: August 19th.

GATES: That's less than four months before Pearl Harbor.

SALONGA: Yeah, December 7th.

GATES: Did you hear any stories about this?

SALONGA: No.

GATES: No.

Well, you know what happened to the Philippines during the war?

SALONGA: Yeah, pretty much a nightmarish existence for a lot of people.

GATES: Just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines and overwhelmed its defenders.

Innocent civilians were suddenly subjected to torture, rape, and pillage.

Within weeks, Filipinos in the Navy were released from duty and told to try to save themselves.

By May of 1942, Feliciano was on his own, and the Japanese had taken complete control of his homeland.

Massacres became commonplace sometimes of entire villages.

And anyone associated with the U.S. military was in grave danger.

The war killed approximately one million civilians on the islands.

SALONGA: Yep, I don't doubt that.

GATES: Do you know what your grandfather did after his release?

SALONGA: No, my relatives never said anything.

GATES: Let's see.

SALONGA: Yeah, my father never said anything.

GATES: Lea, this is from another part of your grandfather's Navy personnel file.

SALONGA: Okay.

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

SALONGA: Alright.

Name: Feliciano P. Salonga.

Missing in action from May 6th, 1942 to March 4, 1945.

Whoa, that's a mystery.

GATES: We don't know what happened to Feliciano during these years, we only know that somehow, he survived.

According to scholars, this means that he likely either went into hiding or else managed to convince the Japanese that he wasn't part of the U.S. Navy.

It must have been terrifying, not just for Feliciano, but for his entire family.

How do you think this affected your father, he was 12 years old.

SALONGA: Yeah.

GATES: When the Japanese invaded.

SALONGA: Yeah, and that's a very delicate time for anybody.

GATES: Mm.

SALONGA: It might be a contributing factor to why he was not necessarily a very emotional.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: At least overt overtly emotional person.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: Because he, he was the oldest son, so there might have been an expectation for him that he might have to have been like the man of the house, and that carries a responsibility.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: Yeah.

So there might have been that "This, this is what I have to do, this is what I need to do because this is my family."

And it may have also given him a sense of life is short.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: I'd better take advantage of what it has to offer.

GATES: We'd already explored Amanda Seyfried's father's ancestry, telling the story of John Ebert, the baker who met a violent end.

Now turning to Amanda's mother's roots, we encountered an ancestor who endured a very different kind of violence.

The story concerns Amanda's third great-grandfather, a man named Peter Friesell.

We found Peter in the 1860 census for Pennsylvania, living with his wife Lydia, and their infant daughter, not knowing that his life was about to change radically.

Just over seven months after the census was taken on April 12th, 1861 shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

SEYFRIED: Right.

GATES: And that sparked the American Civil War, as you know.

SEYFRIED: I thought you were gonna say shots fired at Peter Friesell.

(laughter).

It's like not again!

GATES: Well, Peter was a young father.

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: Struggling to get ahead, let's see what happened to him during the war.

Would you please turn the page?

SEYFRIED: And Lydia's a name that kept getting passed down.

GATES: Oh yeah?

Now you know where it's from.

SEYFRIED: Wow, wow.

GATES: This is a record from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. SEYFRIED: Wow, he fought.

GATES: Yeah, could you please read the transcribed section?

SEYFRIED: "Volunteer enlistment.

I, Peter Friesell, aged 28 years old, have volunteered this 27th day of August, 1864 to serve as a soldier in the army of the United States of America for the period of one year.

I solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whomsoever.

Signed, Peter Friesell.

GATES: And you never heard anything at all about this?

SEYFRIED: No.

GATES: Peter volunteered to fight for the Union to end slavery, how does that make you feel to have done that?

SEYFRIED: Great, good, very nice.

GATES: Okay, right side.

SEYFRIED: Yeah, that's right.

GATES: Peter enlisted at the height of the war and was assigned to a newly formed artillery regiment.

But while he likely trained to fire a cannon, he ended up with a job that was more closely aligned with Amanda's interests.

Peter Friesell, musician, Company F, 6 Regiment, Pennsylvania, heavy artillery.

GATES: Peter served as a musician.

SEYFRIED: What?

(laughs).

What did he play?

Like, that's the, so interesting.

GATES: He played the fife.

You know, all those war movies "do-do-do."

SEYFRIED: Yes.

GATES: That was, that was your ancestor.

SEYFRIED: What?

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: That's a really beautiful picture.

GATES: The fife is a very traditional military instrument prized for its high pitch, which can carry over the sound of battle.

By the time of the Civil War, however, as combat was becoming louder and louder, the fife had largely been relegated to marches.

So Peter almost certainly carried a weapon along with his instrument, and he may well have had to use it in order to survive.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

GATES: These are photos of what's known as the Siege of Petersburg, Petersburg, Virginia.

It was some of the most brutal fighting of the entire Civil War.

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: Essentially, they reduced Petersburg to ruins, and the battle devolved into trench warfare.

It lasted 10 months.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God.

GATES: The front would eventually stretch almost 40 miles and claim roughly 70,000 casualties.

Peter's regiment was assigned to protect supply lines, but that doesn't mean that they were out of danger.

Please turn the page.

SEYFRIED: Oof.

GATES: Could you please read the transcribed section?

SEYFRIED: "A party of guerrillas reported to belong to Kincheloe's gang also committed similar outrage yesterday between Accotink and Burke's Station.

The active measures now being taken will prevent any similar outrage on the road."

GATES: Your third great-grandfather's regiment was attacked by Confederate guerrillas, and at the time, his regiment was stationed along supply lines near Washington, D.C., which was a prime target for Confederate Raiders.

SEYFRIED: That's some heavy stuff.

GATES: What does that mean to you, learning that you had an ancestor who actually risked his life... SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: For the Union?

SEYFRIED: And made it.

GATES: And made it.

SEYFRIED: I'm relieved, I guess, that's not what happened in my last one.

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: Um, I mean, he would've died in, you know, with honor, but... GATES: It's better that he didn't die.

SEYFRIED: It's better that he didn't, yeah.

GATES: After the war, Peter came home to his family in Pennsylvania, but he did not return unscathed.

Records show he would soon be suffering from hearing loss, and by the time he was in his mid-50s, he'd be relying on an invalid pension from the Army for financial support.

As a musician, the loss of hearing must have been especially painful.

But even so, it seems that Peter still retained his passion for his craft.

SEYFRIED: "The big drum corps being organized to head the Veteran Corps of the 18th Regiment in the 10th Regiment reception parade.

J.K. Hefflick, Jacob Spade, and Peter Friesell, old-time leaders of Marshall Bands are working hard to have this corps, the largest and best ever seen in Pittsburgh."

Oh my God, he was in the drum corps.

GATES: Yeah, Peter didn't let his trouble stop him by now, according to his pension file.

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: He was almost entirely deaf.

SEYFRIED: Okay.

GATES: But he's organizing a drum corps for a military parade.

SEYFRIED: Right, wow.

GATES: What's your mom gonna make of that story?

SEYFRIED: I feel like she, she must know it somehow, she must, I don't know.

I think that would, if she doesn't know, I think it would make her very happy.

GATES: Well, let me know.

SEYFRIED: I will.

GATES: If she knows, if she knows.

SEYFRIED: I'm gonna call her straight after this.

GATES: Peter Friesell, like many of Amanda's ancestors, had roots in Germany, but because his family arrived in America long before Ellis Island opened, we could find no record of their passage.

We had better luck on another branch of Amanda's maternal tree.

The story begins with a passenger list for a ship that arrived in New York on June 4th, 1873.

On board was Amanda's great-great-grandfather, John Williams, traveling with his mother, Ada, and his six young siblings.

SEYFRIED: "Country to which they severally belong England, country to which they intend to become inhabitants, U.S. America.

GATES: You just read the moment when your great-great-grandfather John, identified as that 7-year-old "J."

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: First set foot in the United States, isn't that cool?

SEYFRIED: That's amazing.

GATES: And they came from Liverpool on that ship right there.

SEYFRIED: The S.S. Greece.

GATES: That is the ship that your ancestors came on.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God, that's insane.

It doesn't look that big, it just looks scary.

GATES: No, it wasn't.

Yeah, you're a mother, imagine having seven kids and making that trip all by yourself.

SEYFRIED: And taking, yeah, what ha... GATES: 'Cause John's father's not there, remember?

SEYFRIED: Yeah, why?

GATES: Because Ada is number one.

We believe he was already in the United States.

SEYFRIED: Right, making, like, make, creating, getting a home, making sure, because that's what a lot of the men did, they went over first.

GATES: That's right.

SEYFRIED: Right, wow.

GATES: Ada and her husband John, would eventually reunite and settle in Whitehall, Pennsylvania.

And in the 1880 census for Whitehall, we saw that the family had originated in Wales.

This led us back to a census for Neath, a small town in western Wales.

It lists Ada and John and their children just two years before they set off for America.

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: And the census tells us that John was a railway laborer, and he may have done the same work in the United States.

We're not sure.

SEYFRIED: Oh, that's crazy.

GATES: Please turn the page, final surprise.

You know who they are?

SEYFRIED: I, I've seen her.

GATES: Those are your third great-grandparents.

SEYFRIED: Wait, wait, hold on.

GATES: That is John Williams and that's Ada Ziller Barber.

SEYFRIED: I know her, we have a picture of her in my grandmother's house.

GATES: There you go.

SEYFRIED: Wow.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: I've seen her, I mean, she's very familiar to me.

GATES: Well, she, now you know all about her, her name was Ada Ziller, and she brought that, that tribe over with her on the S.S. Greece.

SEYFRIED: That angel and he made a place for them.

GATES: That's right.

SEYFRIED: My God, these are beautiful pictures.

I just can't believe the.

GATES: It was their decision to immigrate.

SEYFRIED: They came.

GATES: That's right.

SEYFRIED: These people.

GATES: And that's why you are here.

SEYFRIED: And that's why I'm here.

GATES: Yeah.

SEYFRIED: What a beautiful man.

GATES: In a sense, you are who you are because they took that chance.

SEYFRIED: Yep.

GATES: How's that make you feel?

SEYFRIED: I didn't have to, grateful.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: Connected.

Man.

GATES: We'd already explored the life of Lea Salonga's paternal grandfather, culminating with his harrowing experience in the Philippines during World War II.

Now turning to Lea's maternal grandmother, a woman named Carmen Alcantara, we found ourselves back in those tumultuous years.

SALONGA: Occupation: Housekeeper.

Oh, there's a story, I have a story about that.

GATES: Okay.

SALONGA: Nationality: Filipino.

Date of marriage: May 1st, 1925.

GATES: So you know what you're looking at?

SALONGA: Yeah, Registro de Casamentos, yeah, register of marriages.

GATES: That is your grandparents' marriage record, what's it like to see that?

SALONGA: That's crazy, that's nuts, I didn't even know this existed.

Um, I mean, my mom doesn't even have a birth certificate.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: And I was hoping that there would be some copy somewhere, and I've never been able to find it.

But yeah, here's the story.

GATES: Yeah, I wanna hear the story.

SALONGA: Okay, so here's the story.

So, Japanese occupation in the Philippines.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: And my mother remembers this 'cause she was around maybe six or seven years old.

GATES: Mmm.

SEYFRIED: And her mother was a housekeeper already with these children, she was a housekeeper for this Japanese officer.

And so the Japanese officer, I think he was a higher-up, gave her his like calling card and said to my grandmother, if you're ever in trouble, if, if say you're in trouble with the Japanese authorities, you show them this, that you work for this person.

And so my mother remembers bayonets in her direction.

GATES: Wow.

SALONGA: And remembers her mother showing the card.

GATES: Wow, that's amazing.

SALONGA: So that's a story.

GATES: That's a story.

SALONGA: So when I see housekeeper, I'm like, "yeah, that tracks," so.

GATES: Though Lea's grandmother was a housekeeper during the war, she'd had a very different life just a few years earlier.

In the 1930s, her husband was a successful politician, and she'd lived in comfort until his death left her impoverished.

To Lea's great surprise, it turns out that this wasn't her family's only brush with prosperity.

In the 1870s, Lea's great-great-grandfather, a man named Anacleto Villacorta had served as the mayor of his town.

How is this not passed down, do you think?

SALONGA: I don't know, maybe it was just a matter of moving forward in life and not prioritizing the preservation of this information.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

But your mother's family was a family of privilege.

SALONGA: Mmm.

GATES: Did you sense that?

Was that... SALONGA: Um.

GATES: Not the story, but the sense of that we were special, that we are different?

Was that passed down?

Does your mother walk like somebody, you know what I'm saying?

Well, she does because I'm her daughter right.

GATES: Go ahead girl, I like that.

(laughter).

SALONGA: You know, and she's very proud.

But I, you know, she said that there were times in her growing-up years where she didn't know where her tuition fee would come from.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: Where she would have to, you know, she'd wear her uniform during the day, come home, wash it right away, hang it to dry because she would have to wear it the next day.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: So she knows what it's like to not be in a privileged background.

As a child, I think she was because her father was in a high political position in their town.

So she remembers that there was a beach house, she remembers going to the ocean.

And, but then after he died, all of that just was taken away.

GATES: Poof.

SALONGA: Poof.

GATES: Turning to another line of Lea's mother's roots, we encountered another piece of heritage that had been lost.

Lea's great-great-grandfather was a man named Pedro Malhabor, Pedro's surname is decidedly not Filipino and Lea has relatives who believed that he was a professor of physics from Germany.

We found nothing to suggest that Pedro was a physicist.

But in the early 1870s when he likely arrived in the Philippines, a wave of European naturalists, including a large number of Germans, were visiting the islands to explore and study.

So we think if Pedro was a professor, he was likely a naturalist, not a physicist.

SALONGA: Okay.

GATES: Sound reasonable?

SALONGA: Yeah, it does.

GATES: So let's see what else we found out about this mysterious Pedro, would you please turn the page?

SALONGA: Okay.

My gosh, this is amazing.

GATES: Lea, we're back to the year 1872.

SALONGA: Oh, here it is!

(laughs).

I love it, oh my goodness.

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

SALONGA: Okay "On the 2nd of January, I baptized a Mestizo German boy named Amedeo Malhabor.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: Son of Pedro Malhabor from the Prussian Nation.

GATES: Nation, that's right.

SALONGA: And of Victoriana Perez, a native of the city of Manila.

GATES: Have you ever heard the Prussian Nation?

SALONGA: I must have been a European history class, but... GATES: Well, at the time, the Kingdom of Prussia was a vast territory that spread across what are now parts of Northern Germany, Poland, and Russia.

The part of Prussia where Pedro likely came from is in modern-day Germany.

SALONGA: Germany.

GATES: Because Germany wasn't Germany then.

SALONGA: Right.

GATES: And you heard the rumor but... SALONGA: I mean, the only connection that I knew with regards to the Malhabor was that it was German.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SALONGA: But beyond that, we didn't know anything about anything like this.

GATES: This baptism record was a boon to our researchers because it not only listed the name of Pedro's, Filipino wife, Victoriana Perez, but also names his parents, Lea's third great-grandparents.

SALONGA: "His paternal grandparents are Enrique Malhabor and Luisa Hintze," what is that?

GATES: You just met your great, great, great grandparents.

SALONGA: Okay.

GATES: From Germany.

SALONGA: Yeah, Hintze looks German.

GATES: Those are German, yes, but both of them.

SALONGA: Yeah.

GATES: Enrique, you know, they would've just Hispanicized.

SALONGA: Yeah, he was probably Heinrich.

GATES: Heinrich, right.

What's it like to learn the names of your German ancestors unmixed.

SALONGA: Wild, I'm definitely sharing all of this with my daughter when I get home.

GATES: Mmm.

SALONGA: Um, she's gonna, she's gonna flip because she's the most Asian-looking person, um.

GATES: Oh, she is?

SALONGA: She really is, uh, um, and so for her to learn that you're great, great, great, great grandparents... GATES: What do you think all these ancestors would have made of you, dear?

SALONGA: I don't know.

I honestly don't know what they would've thought.

Maybe the scientists would've been disappointed that I ended up in the arts.

GATES: Everybody would've been happy you won that Tony.

(laughter).

SALONGA: I think so.

I, I think at that point, everybody would've been quiet.

GATES: You're doing alright.

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

It was time to show them their full family trees.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God, this is so amazing.

GATES: Now filled with names they'd never heard before.

SALONGA: Oh my Lord.

GATES: For each, it was a moment of awe.

SEYFRIED: This is gonna blow my parents' mind.

GATES: Find yourself at the bottom.

SALONGA: Mm-Hmm.

GATES: Offering the chance to see how they fit into a much larger family story.

SALONGA: This is amazing.

SEYFRIED: These people have all had crazy lives.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: And I'm only just part of it, I'm gonna be a name in here one day, and someone's gonna be learning about me as I'm learning about them.

SALONGA: My mind is kind of blown.

GATES: My time with my guest was running out, but we had one more surprise for Amanda.

When we compared her DNA to that of others who have been in the series, we found a match, evidence within her own chromosomes of a relative that she never knew she had.

So you wanna meet your DNA cousin?

SEYFRIED: Yeah.

GATES: Turn the page.

SEYFRIED: Oh my God, you're kidding me.

GATES: Amy Ryan.

SEYFRIED: Wait, what?

We're DNA cousins?

GATES: Amanda shares an identical segment of her x chromosome with renowned actor Amy Ryan, which means that the two descend from a common ancestor somewhere in their family trees.

SEYFRIED: God, it, it, it, the world just got smaller again.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: Like, it feels very big, and I, I see this tree and I see how many of us there are and how it grows back.

But I also like, she's an actress.

GATES: Mm-Hmm.

SEYFRIED: It's what a fun thing to share, what a fun, random thing to share that you would never normally know.

GATES: That's the end of our journey with Amanda Seyfried and Lea Salonga.

Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of "Finding Your Roots."