Finding Your Roots

Gates: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots".

In this episode, we'll meet three pioneering scientists... Francis Collins, Shirley Ann Jackson, and Harold Varmus.

Each has made dramatic contributions to our understanding of the world, all the while understanding little about their own ancestry.

Jackson: Well, there are stories.

Gates: But you don't know if they're true.

Jackson: I do not.

Varmus: I've never been able to figure out where my people came from.

Something I've struggled to obtain.

Collins: I'm really interested to find out what you can tell me.

Gates: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available, genealogists combed through the paper trail their ancestors left behind, while DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets hundreds of years old, and we've compiled everything into a book of life.

A record of all of our discoveries.

Varmus: Pretty damn good!

Collins: I did not know this.

It's all shrouded in the mists of the past.

Jackson: You know, you've taken my breath away, you really have.

Gates: My three guests have devoted their lives to lofty goals... striving to push scientific knowledge beyond its bounds, and unraveling the deepest of mysteries about the human experience.

In this episode, they are going to look inward, to see what mysteries lie hidden in their own family trees.

(theme music plays) [Applause] Gates: On June 26, 2000, the world watched as President Bill Clinton marked a moment of immense historical significance.

The unveiling of the Human Genome Project.

Clinton: We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome.

Gates: It was the first ever mapping of human DNA, a precise sequencing of the great majority of every gene that each person carries.

At its helm was geneticist and physician Francis Collins.

Collins had spent nearly a decade on the project, helping produce a tool that would forever change our understanding of human life.

Today, he's the director of the N.I.H., the National Institutes of Health, and a legend in the scientific community.

But learning the story of his origins took me by surprise.

Francis grew up on a farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, and he was home-schooled until the sixth grade.

It was unusual to do homeschooling in our generation.

Collins: Oh, very unusual.

The truancy officer regularly came to our farmhouse to find out whether this was really appropriate or not.

But I was the youngest of four boys and my mother taught all of us at home for various lengths of time.

Uh, for me, that ended in the sixth grade when we had the chance to move in town and go to better schools, but that was an incredible gift, uh, she gave me because she was such an inspired teacher.

Gates: Francis' mother may have given him a passion for learning, but where exactly that passion would lead wasn't yet clear.

She was an amateur playwright, and she loved music and the arts.

It wasn't until Francis reached high school, and found another inspiring teacher, that he began to focus on science.

Collins: That first day of chemistry class in tenth grade, uh, all of us were given a black box about this big with something inside it.

It was sealed up and he said, I want you to do whatever experiments you can on this, but I also want you to think about all the experiments that maybe we don't have the equipment to do here in high school that you would do to figure out what's inside.

That was such a great metaphor for what science is.

Gates: Yeah.

Collins: A black box and you're trying to find out what's inside, and then ultimately, we got to take the tape off and see what it was.

I had a candle inside of mine and I had no idea that's what it was.

But that got me started, this is fun.

This is a detective story.

Gates: For Francis, the "detective story" would rapidly become his life's work.

In 1984, when our understanding of DNA was still in its infancy, Francis arrived at the University of Michigan as an assistant professor, and helped develop a pioneering technique to screen for the genetic basis of cystic fibrosis, a Herculean task that would lay the groundwork for his later success.

Collins: Here was a devastating disease that was inherited.

We knew that and yet nobody had a clue about what the basic problem was, and biochemistry hadn't provided that answer, so the only way we were going to figure it out was to find the gene, and yet this was the worst possible needle in the haystack kind of situation.

It was so bad that I've actually got a picture of myself sitting in a Michigan haystack holding a needle to try to explain why this was such a difficult issue, because people wondered why haven't you done this yet, and it took five years.

And finally, one day there it was, this very clear signature, just three letters out of three billion that were missing in people with cystic fibrosis.

Gates: Did you cry?

Collins: Huh.

Huh.

I think I did.

Gates: My second guest is Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of one of America's most esteemed Research Universities: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Shirley is a nuclear physicist, an expert on sub-atomic particles.

But her love of science began with something far more mundane.

Bumblebees, which she began collecting as young girl.

Jackson: Well, they were all over our backyard, and I always thought they were interesting, pretty in their way, and I never thought having a dead insect collection was particularly interesting.

So, they used to fly into the flowers in the back yard, and I would just close the petals and pluck it off, and then drop it into a mason jar.

And do experiments based on how much light, how much dark they had, and I would keep a log of their behaviors, based on that, and their diets.

I always tried to let them go before they died.

Gates: What'd your mama say?

Jackson: Well, my mother thought it was interesting.

My father thought it was great.

Gates: Shirley's parents may have had different opinions about her bee collection, but they were united in their desire to see their daughter pursue her dreams, and growing up at a time when there were virtually no black women in science, Shirley needed all of the encouragement she could get.

Indeed, as a student at Roosevelt High School in Washington, DC, she even faced resistance from her advisors.

Jackson: Well, we had an assistant principal for girls in my high school, and an assistant principal for boys.

Now, the assistant principal for boys suggested I apply to M.I.T.

Gates: Hmm.

Jackson: But the assistant principal for girls thought I shouldn't.

Gates: Mmm-hmm.

Jackson: And then, I remember when I was admitted to M.I.T., and in those days, they would tell the school, and all of that... Gates: Yeah.

Jackson: And so, she was announcing the different colleges one day, the assistant principal for girls, that people had gotten into, and uh, this woman made some comment that I was getting too big for my britches because I had been admitted to M.I.T.

Gates: Oh my God, that's terrible.

Jackson: So, I told my mother.

So, the next thing you know, she had a chat with her... Gates: That's a horrible thing.

I mean, how many kids from Roosevelt had ever been accepted in M.I.T.?

Jackson: None.

Gates: You know?

Jackson: None.

Gates: Wow, that's terrible.

Jackson: But what can I say?

I went.

Gates: Shirley was not only the first person from her high school to attend M.I.T., she was also one of only two black women in her entire freshman class.

It was a tremendous accomplishment, but, in many ways, her struggles were just beginning.

Jackson: When I got there, I was very excited, but when I started going through classes, you know, I had a professor, I took his course, I had the highest grade in the class, but when I went to talk to him, he told me, "Colored girls should learn a trade," and he didn't think I should try to do physics.

Gates: No kidding.

Jackson: And so, I was totally upset, and then, there was another, uh, the other African-American woman and I were in a class, and he would call us Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee.

Gates: Oh my God, really?

Jackson: Yeah, really.

Gates: That must've hurt.

Jackson: It did.

Gates: Yeah.

Jackson: But you know, because of my parents, you know, I could always keep going.

Gates: Much like Shirley and Francis, my third guest, the Nobel-Prize winning cancer research scientist Harold Varmus, is the product of a tightly-knit family.

Harold grew up in Freeport, Long Island, the child of a physician and a social worker, and his memories of his parents are among his happiest, though it would take time for him to follow in their footsteps.

Varmus: My parents were very nice people, and we had a very warm nuclear family.

But I was not a scientist in training as a, as a high school student I didn't even like high school science.

I spent a lot of time reading novels and I didn't have the credentials of a high school science fair winner or someone who was off tinkering with um, with um, toy cars or radios.

Uh, more likely to be found on the tennis court or down at Jones Beach.

Gates: Harold's path from Jones Beach to scientific fame would be circuitous.

At Amherst College, he set out to study medicine, but ended up majoring in English.

He then moved on to Harvard, where he began work on a master's degree in poetry, before deciding to change course yet again, and return to medicine, a decision that did not, initially, impress.

Varmus: I rode a bike one afternoon over to Harvard Medical School, talked to the, to the admissions dean and was told, um, in a somewhat forbidding tone that, that all this indecision suggested a level of immaturity that might best be conquered by spending some time in the army.

Gates: Oh my God.

Varmus: And that was clearly the path that I wanted to avoid.

And so I got myself into another medical school.

Gates: Harold earned his medical degree from Columbia University, where he saw his future begin to take shape, but there was still another twist on the path in front of him.

In 1968, as an opponent of the Vietnam War, he avoided the draft by joining the Public Health Service, and ended up in a laboratory at the N.I.H., a chance assignment that would change his life.

Varmus: The whole experience at N.I.H.

was completely transforming.

I suddenly found myself experiencing what it was to do an experiment, ask a question of one's own invention and learn something that someone, that nobody knew before.

And at the same time I was taking courses at the N.I.H.

trying to make up for my deficits in basic science, so, those two years at the N.I.H.

were probably the pivotal years in determining how someone who had the kind of prolonged adolescence that I had experienced would actually begin to settle down and do some serious work.

Gates: After spending time with my guests, I was deeply humbled by the breadth of their intellects, and I wondered, what can I possibly be able to tell them, that they didn't already know?

But when it came to their roots, these three brilliant minds were, like most of us, surprisingly unaware.

All three were in for an education.

I started with Francis Collins, and his paternal grandmother, a woman named Elizabeth Sellers.

Francis told me that Elizabeth was somewhat cold and aloof, and rarely spoke about her family's past.

As we commenced our research, it soon became clear why.

The story begins with the 1900 census for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we found Elizabeth living in the home of her father, a thriving businessman.

Collins: "Henry D. Sellers, head of household, 48, a real estate dealer.

Caroline R, wife, 39.

Elizabeth, daughter, 16."

Gates: There's your grandmother Elizabeth as a teen, living with her parents, your great-grandparents, Henry Downes, and Caroline Robinson Sellers.

The family also lives with a servant and Elizabeth's four younger brothers, who are your grand-uncles.

Did your grandmother ever tell you much about her family?

Collins: She did not.

Uh, she wasn't particularly chatty when I was around so maybe that got missed.

Gates: On your left is an advertisement that we found for your great-grandfather Henry's real estate business.

Collins: "Money in large or small sums on mortgages.

H.D.

Sellers & Company."

Oh my gosh.

Gates: Your great-grandfather Henry was a very successful real estate dealer and lawyer.

Uh, your Sellers family was quite prominent members of Pittsburgh's high society.

Collins: Hm.

Gates: Did you not know this?

Collins: I did not know this.

It's all shrouded in the mist of the past.

Gates: Henry's success brought wealth, and comfort, to his family.

But, as we dug deeper, we discovered that his life would be forever altered by an almost unimaginable loss.

Collins: "Harry D. Sellers age 20.

Cause of death, gunshot wound to the head due to accidental discharge of revolver while preparing to shoot a dog."

This is just wrong in so many ways.

Gates: You ever hear this story?

Collins: Never heard this story.

Gates: Can you imagine what this was like for your family?

Collins: Oh my gosh, what a disastrously sad story, and what was he trying to shoot the dog for?

Was this a rabid dog?

I wonder.

Gates: Well.

Harry's father, your great-grandfather Henry, reported the death as an accident, but reports circulated that the deputy coroner didn't buy that story.

Collins: Oh.

Oh, really?

Gates: Your family was quite prominent so at the time this was very big news.

On the left are front page headlines from both The New York Times and The Washington Post about your grand-uncle's death.

Collins: Huh.

"Member of well-known Pittsburgh family may have committed suicide."

Wow.

How tragic.

Gates: Unfortunately, the Sellers family story was about to become even more tragic, we discovered that Francis' great-grandfather was irreparably wounded by the death of his son.

Collins: "Young Henry Sellers, on a Sunday morning a year ago, almost to the day, complained of feeling ill and said he would not go to church.

The other members of the family left him alone in the house with the servants.

When they returned at noon, they found him lying dead in the bathroom.

Young Seller's father, who discovered his body, never recovered from the shock.

Recently he had been in poor health and brooded constantly.

This morning he said that he was feeling too ill to go to church and the other members of the family departed without him.

His wife, wow, Mrs.

Caroline D. Sellers, went to the bathroom and discovered the body of her husband."

Hm.

Yeah, that's heartbreaking.

Gates: So, not only did your great-grandfather Henry also commit suicide, he did it in exactly the same manner.

Collins: The same way.

Gates: Down to using the same excuse to get everyone out of the house.

Both father and son said that they were too sick to go to church and then shot themselves in the bathroom.

What do you make of this story?

Collins: That's a heartbreaking story, and you have to wonder what was the underlying mental health issue, because people don't commit suicide generally without a mental health diagnosis, and certainly a very high-risk would be bipolar disease.

Gates: And multigenerational.

Collins: Which does have a high-risk of being passed from parent to child, and now thinking about the father's success in real estate, uh, people with bipolar disease sometimes can be very successful as well because the manic phase often correlates, if it doesn't get too out of control, with a lot of energy and a lot of capability to do things that other people might not do, but then when you hit the dark depression that is a very high-risk, uh, for people taking their life... Gates: How do you think this affected your grandmother?

I mean, does it, all of a sudden you can see your grandmother in a completely different light.

Collins: Yeah.

Maybe this is part of why she was a bit defended, a bit less comfortable.

What she must have carried with her.

Gates: Oh, and you couldn't talk about it.

Collins: Yeah, I guess probably continued to try to argue these were all accidents.

Gates: Mm-hmm.

And you couldn't sit around and process it with your family, you didn't know the stories.

Collins: I think that tells you what a stigma mental illness and suicide were that this was basically a family secret that became closed up tight and didn't trickle down.

Uh, it certainly didn't trickle down to me.

Gates: Mm-hmm.

Collins: I had no idea.

No idea.

Gates: My second guest is physicist Shirley Ann Jackson.

Like Francis, Shirley's family's story begins with a tragedy.

Shirley's mother, Beatrice Cosby, lost her own mother when she was just 14 years old, and she lost her father less than three years later.

In the interim, she'd been sent away from home to a boarding school, paid for by her older siblings, and the cumulative effect of these traumatic experiences shaped Beatrice to her core.

Jackson: She was always a person who could spend time by herself, and she tended not to ask you for much, and I think that might've come out of, you know, losing her parents so young, and then having, then being sent off to a boarding school so young.

And, and I think, you know, people would tend to use the word "tough," but I would say "strong."

Gates: Beatrice grew up to be a career social worker, beloved by her children.

But Shirley told me that while her mother was proud of her accomplishments, she rarely discussed her childhood, much less her ancestors.

As a result, Shirley knows little about her mother's roots.

We began with the 1880 census for a rural Virginia town known as Cuckoo, where we found Beatrice's grandparents struggling to get by.

Jackson: "Cosby, Wingfield, black, 64, widowed.

Occupation: carpenter, Birthplace: Virginia; cannot read, cannot write.

Harry, black, 27, son, Birthplace: Virginia, Occupation: farming, cannot read, cannot write."

Gates: So, you're looking at the family of your great-grandparents Harry and Lavinia Cosby in the year 1880.

Jackson: Wow.

Gates: What's it like to see that?

Jackson: You know, it's so interesting because, you know, you see "cannot read, cannot write," and my mother was so literate.

Gates: Oh, yeah.

Jackson: It's really amazing.

Gates: According to this census, Shirley's great-grandfather, Harry Cosby, was born in Virginia sometime around 1850.

His wife, a woman named Lavinia, was born around the same time, also in Virginia.

In 1880, they lived together in a household headed by Harry's father, a man named Wingfield Cosby, and when Shirley did the math, she realized something profound.

Jackson: Wow, wow.

Gates: Harry, Lavinia, and Wingfield were all likely born into slavery in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Jackson: Hmm.

Interesting.

Gates: What's it like to see the names of your enslaved ancestors?

Jackson: Well, it says they're real people.

Gates: Mmm-hmm.

Jackson: And how they then came from that, you know, to where we are today... It's really interesting.

Gates: We wanted to learn more about the Cosbys, yet with very few exceptions, enslaved people weren't identified by name in public records prior to 1870.

But, in Shirley's case, we were fortunate.

We learned that Harry's mother, Shirley's great-great-grandmother was named "Mary Tally", and though we couldn't find a marriage record connecting Mary and Shirley's great-great- grandfather Wingfield, we did find a tax record from 1867, listing Wingfield as the employee of a white man, a doctor and planter named "P.B.

Pendleton".

This raised an intriguing question: If Wingfield had a relationship with this planter after slavery, could he have had one during slavery?

Gates: Shirley, you're looking at the 1839 estate records of Colonel Edmund Pendleton... Jackson: Good grief.

Gates: The father of Dr.

PB Pendleton.

The colonel owned at least 49 slaves.

Jackson: "Wingfield: $1400," that's what he was worth, "Mary: $850."

There they are.

Edmund Pendleton.

Hmm.

There they are.

Gates: What's it like to learn this, to see the name of your enslaved ancestors, and to know the name of the people who owned them, and their quote-unquote "value"?

Jackson: Well, you know, it's important to know where they were, but the idea that you can put a price on somebody tells you something, $1,400, $850, human beings.

Okay, oh my God.

You know, you've taken my breath away here.

You know?

You really have.

Gates: My third guest, Harold Varmus, came to me with a very specific request: his father Frank had died of heart disease when Harold was just 32 years old.

And though the two were close, Harold knew little about his father's family.

Varmus: My father's side has always been mysterious for a variety of reasons, and he and I, strangely, talked very little about it, and my efforts to trace back where his parents actually came from has always been clouded in a bit of mystery.

I know his mother sadly died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, but where his father came from, when his father arrived, where they actually lived before, uh, who the other relatives were, that's always been mysterious to me.

Gates: We began to unravel this mystery in the 1910 census for Newburgh, New York, where we found Harold's grandparents, Jacob and Ester Varmus, and learned that both had been born in Russia.

Moreover, we also saw that Jacob had immigrated to the United States in 1906.

This was a crucial clue, and it led us to another: The passenger record for a ship called the SS Campania.

Your grandfather Jacob arrived in New York City on May 19, 1906 when he was 26 years old.

Varmus: I never could get this.

That's interesting.

Gates: What's it like to be able to see that document?

Varmus: Ah, it's, it's, it's very striking.

It provides me with the first, um, concrete information I've had about where my grandfather came from.

Pretty damn good!

Gates: According to this record, Jacob was from Warsaw, which today is the capital of Poland, but was then within the Russian empire.

We sent researchers into the city's archives, searching for traces of Jacob's family, but because we didn't know his parents' names, they came up empty.

It seemed like we had hit a dead end, but then we noticed something in Jacob's Social Security application, filed in America in 1937.

Varmus: "Jacob Varmus.

Date of birth, 1881.

Father's name, Joseph Varmus, mother's maiden name, Mary Liverman."

Gates: You ever heard of Joseph and Mary outside of the context of nativity?

Varmus: No.

Gates: Well, my friend, you just met your great-grandparents on your Varmus line.

Varmus: Mmm.

Gates: They are the grandparents that your father, Frank, never met.

Varmus: Oh, interesting.

Gates: Would you please turn the page?

Now, Harold, we found this record in the archives of Warsaw.

Varmus: "13th of April 1869.

A religious marriage was contracted between Josek Lieb Wermes, a widower, 27 years of age, son of Michel and Liba, uh, Rivka, Liba no longer living, a married couple Wermes, and Merla Liberman, a spinster, 17 years of age, living with her parents in Warsaw."

Gates: Now, you're looking at the marriage record from the year 1869, which I think, first of all... Varmus: Spinster age, 17, seems a little... Gates: Well... Varmus: A premature designation of spinster.

Gates: Yeah.

Different definition.

Varmus: Right.

Gates: Uh, single, unmarried, virgin?

Varmus: Right.

Gates: So, this record also introduces us to not one but two sets of your great-great-grandparents.

So, you just met two more generations.

What's it like to learn their names?

Varmus: I'm amazed you were able to find it!

I take my hats off to you, my hat off to you for finding it.

Gates: This was a remarkable discovery, in part because of the history behind it.

During World War II, the Nazis attempted to erase all traces of Poland's Jewish population, even destroying their records.

As a result, it can be very difficult to trace a Jewish family in this region.

But in Harold's case, we had gotten lucky, and we weren't done yet.

We uncovered a marriage record in Warsaw, from 1807.

It names his third great-grandparents.

Moszek Wemes, and Ester Wolf.

Moszek and Ester are your great-great-great-grandparents.

Varmus: Wow.

That's, that's a long time ago.

Gates: This is six generations of your family by name.

Varmus: No.

It's quite impressive.

Certainly much further than I expected to be able to go.

Um, I could put together quite the itinerary for a trip to Poland.

Gates: Indeed.

Varmus: Armed with this history.

Gates: You have, as we say, a purchase on Poland.

Varmus: Right.

Right.

Gates: We had one more story to tell Harold about his father's family... His grandmother Ester had six siblings, many of them left Poland for France in the early 20th century, hoping to escape anti-Semitism in their homeland.

But in June of 1940, Nazi Germany invaded France and they found themselves trapped.

Harold knew that he had relatives who'd experienced the Holocaust, but he had no idea about the specifics of their fate.

Until now.

We traced the family of Ester's younger sister, a woman named Doba Hajwentreger, to a terrible place.

Varmus: "Jew.

Hajwentreger, Szmul.

Deported to Auschwitz from Camp Pithiviers, uh, on July 17, 1942.

Convoy number six.

Second Jew, uh, Hercek Hajwentreger.

Deported to Auschwitz from Camp Drancy on July 27, 1942.

Convoy number 11."

Gates: You have an idea what you're looking at, right?

Varmus: Yeah.

Yeah.

Gates: Those unfortunately are indices to French transportation lists from and Harold, they tell us that in July 1942 both Doba's husband Hercek and her 20-year-old son Szmul were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

They arrived there ten days apart after what would have been a three-day journey in a packed cattle car.

And we wanted to find out... Varmus: Whether they survived.

Gates: Whether they survived.

Would you please turn the page?

This is from the archives at Auschwitz.

Would you please read the transcribed section?

Varmus: "Auschwitz, the 30th of January 1943.

Szmul Hajwenteger.

Died in Auschwitz on January 23, 1943 at 4:30 pm.

The father was Hercke Hajwentreger, mother was Doba Hajwenteger, born in Grafenberg.

Cause of death, pleurisy."

The story I had been told this young man, whose name wasn't actually familiar to me, was that he had been, um, put in some kind of holding camp for Jews in France near Lyon and died of tuberculosis.

Gates: Uh-huh.

Interesting.

Varmus: So that was the story I received.

Gates: Right.

Varmus: And so, you know, I mean, this is clear evidence that he got to Auschwitz, um, and died there, and of course many died of disease, not as many as died of, uh, of, uh, of, um... methodological execution, but uh... Gates: Right.

Varmus: But there were, you know, as we all know from many depictions of life in the camps people got sick there, lives were horrible, and um, some didn't require execution because they died of natural causes.

Gates: So when you read about Auschwitz in school, you had no idea that anyone related to you actually had perished there.

Varmus: No.

No.

And you know, I grew up, you know, understanding that we had some relatives in Europe, we knew that a couple of people had died during the war, but the idea that, that members of the family had been in famous camps like Auschwitz, no that was not revealed.

I just was told that a couple of people had died in camps in France.

Gates: As it turns out, there was a great deal more that Harold didn't know about what happened to his relatives during the war.

We learned that his Great Uncle Hercek and his cousin Szmul were not the only members of Harold's family who died at the hands of the Nazis.

Your grandmother Ester's brother, Wowa, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz on July 22, 1942.

Varmus: I see.

Gates: He died there one month later on August 23.

Ester's brother Motel's daughter Leonie was killed in Auschwitz at the age of 21.

She was your father's first cousin.

Motel was deported to Auschwitz but survived the war and returned to France in 1945.

Brother Ydes and his two sons, Avrom, age 22, and Schlome, age 19, all died in Warsaw in 1942 under unknown circumstances.

Ester's sisters Sarah and Scheindele along with their spouses and children all survived the war.

So it's a complicated picture.

Varmus: Yeah.

Many more deaths than I had ever been told by, and I did make some inquiries.

I always felt a little uncomfortable saying, you know, who died during the war because I didn't know the family that well, I didn't know what the stories were, but there certainly were many more casualties than I had, than I had known.

I've always been grateful to, um, parents on both sides, my mother's and my father's for getting out of Europe early enough to avoid what happened during World War II.

Um, uh, the, you know, it's a little hard to ingest all the information about other members of my, of my grandmother's family.

I had always, I had always known they had stayed there.

I thought fewer than the number you've shown me were, were killed in the war.

This is, this is daunting.

It doesn't for me change the fact that, that you know, the very simple fact that the reason I'm here is that my grandparents left.

Gates: Right.

Varmus: If it had been otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Gates: Right.

Varmus: And I'm alive because they did what they did.

Gates: And that's the luck of the draw.

Varmus: That's exactly right.

Gates: We had already taken Francis Collins back over a century on his father's side of his family tree, uncovering a history of suicide that had lain hidden for generations.

Now, we had a very different kind of history to reveal.

Francis' fourth great-grandfather, a man named Francis Sellers, was born in Scotland in 1756.

He immigrated to America, likely in the 1780s, and settled in Maryland, where he became a wealthy man, the owner of hundreds of acres of land.

But land wasn't all he owned.

This is a poem from a book about the history of Caroline County, Maryland.

Collins: "Francis Sellers.

He was very honest, steadfast and true, and his fellow citizens knew it too.

Now as to slaves, he had many but was never known to ill-treat any."

Whoa.

Gates: This poem is about your fourth great-grandfather.

How's it feel to see that?

Collins: Well, obviously, it's deeply troubling to know my own family was part of this really dreadful chapter, uh, in American history.

A chapter that I've certainly known about in a general way but now it becomes a lot more personal.

Gates: Hm.

And your family never talked about that?

Collins: Never.

Never ever once.

Gates: By the early 1800s, Francis Sellers possessed at least nine slaves, which was almost twice the number owned by the typical slaveholder in his county at the time.

But when Francis died in 1804, he did something that was not at all typical, he set them free.

Collins: Wow.

Gates: Do you have any idea why Francis made this decision?

Collins: I have no idea.

I'm, I guess I'd like to think that he realized that this was the right thing to do.

Gates: We don't know for sure, and we hope that you're right.

Historians, whom we consulted, tell us that after the revolution with the concept of freedom and liberty for all fresh in their minds some slaveholders were moved to manumit their slaves, and your ancestor, we believe, was a part of that wave, so that was a good thing.

Collins: That was a really good thing.

Um, not that it makes it all fine, but it was still a really good thing if he had that motivation.

Goodness.

You are revealing things here that I had no idea about.

Gates: We had one final story for Francis.

Switching from his Sellers line, we focused on another of his fourth great-grandparents, a man named Christopher Doughty, who was born in 1755, likely in New Jersey.

Collins: Doughty.

I never heard that name in any discussions of my family's past.

Gates: Alright, well, fasten your seatbelt, because I have something to show you.

Please turn the page.

This is a pension record from the National Archives.

Collins: Oh, ho-ho.

Gates: Would you please read the transcribed section?

Collins: Yes.

"Christopher Doughty, uh, was a private in the company commanded by Captain Stillwell."

Gates: Your fourth great-grandfather, Christopher Doughty enlisted on November 2, 1775 in New Jersey at the age of 20.

Collins: Huh.

Huh.

Gates: Your ancestor, Dr.

Collins, was a patriot.

Collins: All right.

Gates: He served in the Continental Army in the American Revolution.

Collins: Well, that's a nice revelation.

Gates: Did you have any idea that you were descended from a patriot?

Collins: I hoped that might be the case, because I thought with all these branches and enough of them having been in the us at the time of the Revolutionary War there might be somebody who, uh, took some role in that.

Go Christopher.

Gates: Christopher did more than play a "role" in the revolution, he has one of the most dramatic war stories that we've ever uncovered.

In early January of 1777, Christopher was captured and sent to New York City, where the British had set up a vast prison system, converting warehouses, ships, and even churches into detention centers.

Conditions were horrible.

And disease was rampant.

Indeed, many more patriots died in these prisons than they did in battle.

Christopher must have known his chances of survival were slim, because he took an enormous risk and stole a boat.

Collins: "I made my escape," ha, "Taking with me three young men that were also prisoners, and landed safe on the shore of Middle town Township Monmouth County, New Jersey on the morning of the 11th of July our handkerchiefs worn out with muffling the oars to keep from being heard by the enemy."

All right, Christopher.

You are an adventurous guy here!

Escaping from capture, that's amazing, and landed safe, so escaping by boat.

And I can't think about the geography here but I daresay that was not an easy trip.

Gates: Uh-uh.

Collins: And wrapping their handkerchiefs around the oars, I guess in the uh... Gates: So that... Collins: So, you wouldn't hear the, sort of, rattling of the wood against its holders.

Wow.

That's pretty cool.

Gates: Christopher not only escaped, but he returned to the patriot army, and, according to his pension application, served until 1781.

Then, after the war, he became a cabinet maker and lived what seems like a very full life... He died at the ripe old age of 93.

Collins: Oh wow.

Gates: Which is like Methuselah in Colonial America.

Collins: Yeah, that's impressive.

Gates: You have deep roots in the history of the United States.

Collins: Indeed.

Gates: Going back to the beginning.

Collins: Uh, from slaveowners to patriots.

Gates: What's that feel like?

Collins: Well, it's taken a blurry picture of where I came from and it's decorated it with some really interesting characters and some reality, and some history that I had no concept of.

Uh, and it certainly gives me a different sense of how I came to be and what I have within me that was gifts from all of those ancestors down through the years.

Things to be proud of, uh, things to be sad about, things not to be so proud of.

It's all mixed in there together, but it creates a different sense of one's identity to have that, and I didn't have it before now.

Gates: We'd already traced Shirley Jackson's maternal roots back to the early 1800s in Virginia, uncovering generations of ancestors whose names, and stories, had been a mystery to her.

Now, we had a more recent mystery to solve.

Shirley's father, George Hiter Jackson, had lost his own father when he was a child.

As a result, this entire branch of Shirley's family tree was blank.

We set out to fill it in.

Our search began with a death record from the year 1919.

Jackson: Wow.

Gates: You are looking at the death certificate for your grandfather George, also known as Hiter, Jackson.

He died in Philadelphia at the age of 24 of pulmonary tuberculosis.

Your father was just four years old.

Jackson: His, my father was four years old.

Gates: Yeah, he was four years old, and he lost his daddy.

Jackson: That's tough.

No wonder we knew so little about him.

You know there was always the mystery, and, and he never talked about it, but, but if he was three, four years old, then maybe that's why he never talked about it.

Gates: Right.

Absolutely.

Jackson: Because, uh, he hardly knew his father, and that's interesting.

Gates: Shirley's grandfather was working in Philadelphia when he died, but his roots lay elsewhere.

In fact, we were able to trace George back to the same town where we'd found many of Shirley's maternal ancestors living in the years just after slavery: Cuckoo, Virginia, a place that is very important to both sides of her family, so much so that George's body was transported back to Cuckoo for burial after his death.

Jackson: That's, uh, that makes me feel good, in a way.

Gates: It does?

Why?

Jackson: Because it says they, they, you know, however they originally came to this country, you know, they were tied to the land.

They may have started as slaves or whatever, and they, they have family ties... Gates: Yeah.

Jackson: Were very strong.

That's pretty cool.

Gates: As we dug deeper, we realized that George's strong ties to his family were evidenced not only in his hometown.

But also in his first name, which he passed onto his son, Shirley's father, and which, records revealed, predated them both by two generations, stretching all the way back to Shirley's great-great-grandfather, who was born in Virginia around 1830.

Jackson: You gotta be kidding me!

Gates: No, on the left is your great-great grandfather, George Jackson's death certificate.

He was a farmer, he died in Louisa county in September of 1894, at the age of 60.

Jackson: 1, 2, 3, 4!

Gates: That's right!

Jackson: Wow.

Gates: And he lived in Cuckoo.

Jackson: They all live... Gates: They all live... Both: In Cuckoo.

Gates: Isn't that incredible?

Jackson: I love it.

Oh, you have, you have changed my life here.

The reason this is so meaningful is that it was like my father came out of nowhere, and he never told us anything.

Maybe he didn't know a whole lot, but to have all these Georges and George H.

's, that is stunning.

Gates: They had a family tradition, you know, and a naming tradition.

Jackson: They clearly... Gates: And proud, they were proud of the name, they passed it down.

Jackson: That's amazing.

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

It was time to see what DNA could tell us about their deeper roots.

We gave each an admixture test, which reveals a person's ancestral heritage over roughly the last 500 years.

The results mirrored what we'd already learned.

96% of Francis Collins ancestry traces back to the United Kingdom, and Ireland.

Harold Varmus's ancestry is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.

And Shirley Ann Jackson is 82% sub-Saharan African.

These numbers were not surprising on their own, but taken alongside what we'd discovered within their family trees, they provoked a profound question... What makes us who we are?

Our experiences, our families, or our DNA?

Jackson: I think what, how one really develops is a function of values, and as they say, how you were raised.

Gates: Right.

Jackson: And, and what your parents showed you, in terms of who they were, but also in terms of what their expectations were, and the degree to which they supported their children.

And that's really what I'm about.

You come from where you come from.

The question is, what do you do with it.

Varmus: When I think about what makes me what I am, you know, I understand there is some basic foundation that is built on the genetic variants that I've inherited, and that is significant, but what I think about when I ask myself what has actually made me behave the way I do and do the things that I do it is my parents, probably to a certain extent my sister and my wife.

Gates: Right.

Varmus: So there's a, you know, a rich variety of human experience that has very little to do with genealogy.

It has much more to do with the structure of our training, our social lives, um, and those things end up being meaningful, and they're the things that keep me going, and they're the reasons why what I've learned today, um, is going to have, is going to change the way I assess myself, but it's not going to change my behavior very much.

Collins: Anybody who tries to say well, you're just a product of your culture, or you're just a product of your family, or you're just a product of your inheritance you can't, basically, zero in on one part of this enormously complex equation of inputs, uh, to who we are and say that's the one that mattered most.

They all matter.

I think it also comes down to what choices we make.

Ultimately we are still people with agency, and sometimes we screw up really badly, and once in a while we do something that's really wonderful and noble, and that's why it's so amazing, uh, to be able as a person who's a scientist and who studies biology but also gets to be surrounded by remarkable human beings to see how that all plays out.

Gates: That's the end of our journey with Shirley Ann Jackson, Harold Varmus and Francis Collins.

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

Duvernay: This was incredible!

Narrator: Next time on, "Finding Your Roots" actor S. Epatha Merkerson.

Merkerson: I've always wanted to know where we came from.

Narrator: Film director, Ava Duvernay.

Duvernay: Fascinating that your whole history is just blank.

Narrator: And musician, Questlove.

Questlove: Until an hour ago I didn't know who I was.

Narrator: Slavery... Merkerson: I'm blown away.

Narrator: Impacts family histories... Duvernay: He's white.

Narrator: In unexpected ways.

Gates: You hit the jackpot!

Questlove: Oh!

Narrator: On the next "Finding Your Roots".