Finding Your Roots

Gates: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll meet actors Christopher Meloni and Tony Shalhoub... two Americans whose families came to this country against enormous odds... I mean, the guy walking around called Meloni... Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: You know, with no father... Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: And no mother.

Meloni: Gotta fight your way out.

Shalhoub: It's a miracle that as many survived as did.

I mean, it's, it's... Gates: Oh, my God.

It's a miracle that we're having this conversation.

Shalhoub: It's a miracle that I'm here, yeah.

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.

Shalhoub: Thank you.

Meloni: Wow.

This wasn't even part of the legends, the myths that we passed down.

Gates: Your family didn't discuss this?

Shalhoub: No.

They shielded us from all of that.

It's amazing what these people kept inside.

Gates: Tony and Christopher share a common thread... Each descends from ancestors who had to grow up fast and find their way across the globe.

In this episode, they're going to retrace the journeys those ancestors took, hearing stories of sacrifice, courage, and survival, all hidden in the branches of their family trees.

(Theme music plays).

Gates: Christopher Meloni is instantly recognizable, yet difficult to categorize.

The chiseled, steely-eyed actor has a reputation for playing tough guys, hot-heads and hardened psychopaths, but he's also done remarkable work in some very funny comedies... and, in person, he's as gentle as they come.

This mercurial mix may well be the result of the fact that Christopher spent a great deal of his early life trying to figure out who exactly he was.

He grew up in suburban Virginia.

His father was a successful doctor and his grandfather had been a doctor, too.

But Christopher felt no temptation to follow in their footsteps... Meloni: I didn't understand chemistry.

And I was horrible at math.

And also I'd had a lot of training as being a, I would, I think I was a, a disruptive class clown in, you know, school.

Gates: Did you have any learning disability?

Meloni: You know, I think back then, that wasn't in vogue.

And now in retrospect I, I absolutely see, uh, an OCD and ADHD.

You know, I don't think it's severe by any stretch, but I would see others being able to sit still, listen, take in information and process and I couldn't, and start spinning out.

Gates: Christopher found his "focus" at the University of Colorado, when he enrolled in an acting class and was so smitten that he ended up dropping out and heading to Los Angeles on a motorcycle, determined to break into the business.

He soon discovered that he had a lot to learn... Meloni: So this is how naive I was.

I'd look up all the agencies.

Gates: Right.

Meloni: And I just would, I didn't know any of the agencies, so I'd just, whatever sounded good and it was kind of convenient to each other, I would and I drove in, and I walked in with bug guts on my leather jacket.

I had a beard and long hair.

And invariably it was this, going, "Can I help you?"

And I said, "Yes, I want to be an actor."

And they would say, "Well, drop your picture and resume."

And I said, "Okay, what's a resume?"

I didn't know what a resume was.

And I said, "Picture?

What kind of a picture?"

"You need an 8 x 10 picture.

This is your calling card.

This is."

So you know... Gates: That's sweet.

Meloni: Oh, thank, God bless you.

I've other adjectives to use, but whatever.

It's, it was what it was, man.

Gates: Six weeks later, Christopher found himself back in Boulder, seriously humbled.

But his passion for acting hadn't dimmed.

After college, he moved to New York City and tried again.

This time, he didn't quit.

Instead, he spent decades working various jobs to support himself before finally landing a lead role on "Law & Order" a role that would make him a star and provide some relief to his parents, who'd been on his side all along.

Meloni: My parents never pressured me, of, like, "What are you doing?"

Because there are a lot of years of... truly, radio silence.

Because, you know, I mean, I'm just trying to make a living and I'm try, trying to pay my rent and I'm going to classes, acting classes at night.

I mean nothing is happening.

I don't even have representation.

What do you do all day?

(Groans).

So, it was always that, that quiet, that silent, but very important, because I knew.

Gates: Yeah.

They gave you that foundation.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: You could fall back into the nest of comfort and support.

Meloni: Yes.

Yes.

Support.

Gates: That's, that's power.

That is a very powerful thing.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: My second guest is actor Tony Shalhoub, beloved for his roles on "Monk" and "The Marvelous Mrs.

Maisel" as well as for an array of Broadway shows and Hollywood films... Much like Christopher, Tony followed a very circuitous path to fame.

His journey began in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he grew up in a large, tight-knit family.

An experience that would nudge him, subtly, towards his future profession... Shalhoub: I was second-youngest of ten.

And so, um, of course we had a lot of friends and things, but even when the friends weren't around we had sort of a built-in playmates, built-in audience you might say.

And so... Gates: Yeah.

You almost had a football team, man.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

We entertained each other a lot.

We played games, play acted.

Um, there were a lot of big personalities.

They're still big personalities.

But and all of them kind of, all different.

And I remember, uh, when I was younger, just sort of observing.

And in my work now and, and, and it's been true for years... I draw from them.

They're a part of me.

I'm made up of all of them, I feel.

Gates: Neither of Tony's parents had any kind of theatrical background.

But somehow, their crowded household propelled not one, but two of their children towards the stage, even if Tony started out with little idea of what he was getting into... Shalhoub: An older sister of mine, Susan, who's, uh, still an actress and she did plays at her high school.

They were at a, um, all-girls Catholic school.

And, uh, when they needed kids, they would, I would get sort of drawn into these, you know, productions.

"King and I" when I was six.

"Carousel" when I was seven or eight.

Um and so I, I got a little sort of a taste of that, of, of being in a live theater and big audience, and-and I think that must have infected me in a way.

Gates: When did you know that you were going to make it as an actor?

Shalhoub: What's today?

Saturday?

(Laughter).

You know, you never, you, you're always, that's the life of an actor.

I mean, you just, there's no "making it".

There, I mean, maybe, maybe that's, uh, something that people perceive from the outside.

Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: But in our deepest, darkest, you know, paranoia... Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: You know, we don't, uh, it, it, it's just one day at a time.

Gates: Tony's modesty and easy charm stand in stark contrast to the intensity that he brings to his craft, he's built his career by creating indelible characters, many of them wracked by inner demons and Tony admits that he's struggled with some of those demons himself, his salvation?

The people who'd supported him from the very beginning... Shalhoub: You know, the challenges of, this kind of career, uh, yeah, there were times when it was not going well.

Uh, or, or, or in my mind maybe not going well enough.

And, uh, my family was really there to, to, to support me.

To, to, uh, encourage me.

To, to, uh, remind me of what was really important.

And I think without that, the stress and the negativity would have probably consumed me.

Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: Uh, but they did not allow that to happen.

Gates: That football team you were born into.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

They said, "Hey, sit on the bench for a while and then we'll, we'll bring you in later."

Gates: Meeting Tony and Christopher, it was clear that both were deeply devoted to their families, and thankful to them for giving them the confidence to pursue their challenging careers.

But their roots are comprised of people who weren't so blessed: ancestors who were forced to confront immense challenges almost entirely alone.

It was time to explore their stories.

For Christopher Meloni, this meant focusing first on his great-grandfather, Enrico Meloni, an Italian immigrant who sold olive oil on the streets of Boston... Christopher grew up hearing about Enrico's legendary strength and determination, but we had more to share than legends... We began with the passenger record of a ship that arrived in America on June the third, 1896... Meloni: "June the third."

Wow, "Enrico Meloni, 35, married, farmer.

Intended destination, New York.

Port of embarkation, Genoa."

Gates: Genoa.

Meloni: That's the ship, huh?

Gates: That's the ship my man.

Meloni: Wow.

That makes me so happy.

Gates: You're one of the few people who can actually see the moment... Meloni: The moment, man.

Gates: That your immigrant ancestor set foot on American soil.

Meloni: Wow.

That's a deep thing.

Uh, there's something about the specificity in all that is really and-and the ship.

You know, I think it fills in, you know, the fantasy that you have.

You know, it's almost like, I've seen those newsreels where, you know, the, your huddled masses on the deck and all of a sudden you, you see, like, "oh yeah, there you are."

Gates: Enrico's journey across the Atlantic began in the port of Genoa which, at the time, was a bustling center of international trade.

But Enrico's roots lay elsewhere, his wedding record reveals that he and his wife Maria were from a village called Velva, roughly 40 miles south of Genoa and truly a world away.

Nestled in the Ligurian Mountains, Velva had a population of barely 400.

Meloni: So they're in the middle of nowhere.

Gates: You're right about that.

Meloni: Wow.

Gates: When the Meloni's lived in Velva, the village was primarily inhabited by peasant farmers.

Their main crops, not surprisingly, olives and grapes.

Meloni: Sure.

Gates: So, think about that.

Enrico went from farming olives in an olive-producing region, to selling olive oil in the United States.

I bet he said, "Hey, one thing I know is olive oil."

Meloni: Exactly.

Gates: Yeah.

What's it like to see that?

Meloni: Well, you know, look at the smile on my face.

I'm like, ah.

This is the, you know, you go "this is the beginning.

This is Adam and Eve," you know?

For as far back as I know.

It's amazing.

Gates: Christopher's joy was about to give way to darker emotions... A closer look at Enrico's marriage record revealed a curious detail... His parents were "unknown" meaning he was likely an orphan.

This sent our researchers into the archives of hospitals around Velva, where we soon uncovered a heart-wrenching story... Meloni: "Enrico, at birth, received from the wheel, wrapped in swaddling clothes of cotton rags, given the nickname of Meloni."

Do you know what "Received from the wheel" means?

Gates: Have you ever heard of a foundling wheel?

Meloni: No.

Gates: Essentially, they were wooden cradles built into the sides of religious buildings where parents could abandon their newborn child.

You could have the baby, and you'd go to the foundling wheel, and you'd put the baby, newborn, in the wheel.

If you look on the left that's an image and a drawing of the hospital where your great-grandfather Enrico was left as a newborn.

The wheel was a rotating platform in the outside wall of the building.

The person leaving the baby would rotate the wheel and its contents into the building... Meloni: Sure.

Gates: And then ring a bell to alert the attendant, and they would leave without being identified.

Meloni: So it's completely anonymous.

Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Gates: Christopher, your great-grandfather was an abandoned child.

Meloni: Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Gates: He was born and then he was abandoned.

Meloni: Mm-hmm.

I wonder if he ever talked about it.

You know, that's the thing.

You know, my family wasn't very, too chatty in that regard, and, you know, on either side.

Gates: But that wouldn't have, in my family, at that time, I don't think anybody in that generation would be talking about that.

Meloni: No.

No.

I mean, you know, there's reasons.

Like, "unwanted" was meant, it was like, people were doing something they shouldn't have been doing.

Gates: Right.

Meloni: This is the product of that sinful behavior.

You know, it's so, so wrapped up in all that stuff.

Gates: Yeah.

It is.

Meloni: Wow.

Gates: We don't know anything at all about Enrico's biological parents, but the fact that he was left in the wheel clothed only in rags suggests that they were impoverished.

Regardless, as a foundling, Enrico was starting out at the bottom of Italian society and this was encoded in his very surname.

"Meloni" which translates to "melon" in English, was likely given to him as a mocking description of the way he looked, as was the custom with many foundlings.

So, he was called "melon" probably because he had a round head.

You know?

Meloni: Wow.

Gates: What do you think it was like for your great-grandfather to carry that kind of, well, he could have taken it as a stigma.

Meloni: Yeah, and, I guess, and I don't know why I'm stuck on this, but the, the idea, it's the idea of Velva.

It's the idea of being in the middle, or just away from, you know, if it's a town of, at that time, four hundred or so?

Gates: Mm-hmm.

That's right.

Meloni: I mean, that's it.

That's your entire world.

Gates: Right.

Meloni: As opposed to if he had gone through this, and he's in Genoa.

So, you know, especially something like that, a port town, where you, you see the potentials of, "Oh, I wonder where that ship is going?"

Gates: Sure.

Yeah.

Meloni: And what are the adventures that, you know... Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: There's life.

There's industry.

There's a million things.

What do you want to be?

What do you want to do?

Velva, it's "no one wanted you, and we got olives and grapes."

Gates: Absolutely.

Meloni: "And those positions are filled.

Now figure it out."

Gates: We wanted to understand how Enrico "figured out" enough to leave Velva for the United States, the answer likely lies within his own character.

He certainly didn't get much help from the people around him.

The archives of the hospital where Enrico was abandoned contain a series of invoices filed by a nurse in Velva who appears to have raised him, they detail the small amounts of money she spent on his care, but payments stop when Enrico was about twelve years old, suggesting that, at that age, he was left to his own devices, a practice common with orphans across Italy.

Meloni: Oh, man.

Wow.

Wow.

Gates: They just kicked them out.

Without kin or property, they faced a very uncertain difficult future and were viewed by the authorities as potential criminals.

Talk about creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

Meloni: At twelve years old?

Gates: At twelve years old.

Meloni: That's the school of hard knocks.

Gates: Oh, yeah.

Do you think Enrico could ever possibly imagine a future in America when he was growing up?

I mean, he was at the bottom of, of the social structure.

Meloni: Yeah.

And-and I think that, you know, you see something like that, and I'm sure almost everyone must react this way, in that all of sudden you go, "Oh, I owe you a debt."

Yeah.

I think that's, I think that's what the feelings are.

Yeah.

Gates: Yeah.

"For not allowing yourself to be crushed."

Meloni: Yeah.

There you are.

And, you know, not using it as an excuse... Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: Which, you know, is just so easy to do.

Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: You know?

And I, I would expect, especially in that time, which is you know, "I'm abandoned."

Then Velva.

I mean, "What the hell am I doing in Velva?"

You know, I, you know, "I don't deserve things.

I was abandoned for a reason."

Gates: Right.

Meloni: No, no, no.

Gates: And he's going to raise a son who is going to become a doctor.

Meloni: Yeah.

What a journey.

Gates: From a foundling wheel... Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: Through two doctors, and, you know, a superstar on TV, I mean, that's an amazing journey.

You can't make that up.

Meloni: No.

Only in America.

Gates: Is there anything you wanted to know about your family tree?

Like Christopher, Tony Shalhoub descends from an orphaned child.

His own father, Joseph Shalhoub, lost both his parents during World War I, before he was six years old.

Tony has long wondered about the circumstances of the tragedy because the story of his grandparents wasn't passed on... In 2018, he even traveled to Lebanon, where the Shalhoub family lived, only to come away with his questions intact.

Shalhoub: We wanted to see the village, and then we were told that we could actually see the house... Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: That he was born into.

Uh, we went in.

It was incredibly moving to see this place.

Gates: Oh, I'm sure.

Shalhoub: But what I was really hoping was, to find out was what happened to these people.

Because we don't know.

Gates: The answer to Tony's questions lies in the tortured history of his ancestral homeland.

His grandparents, Milhelm and Mariam Shalhoub were born in the late 19th century in what was known as "Mount Lebanon" the region was then part of the Ottoman Empire a massive, multi-ethnic state that stretched across sections of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East for more than four hundred years.

Milhelm was a farmer and seemingly prosperous.

But, in 1914, World War I broke out and the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany.

Soon, all Ottoman males between the ages of twenty and forty-five were subject to conscription.

Milhelm was forty-four years old-with at least five children at home, but he found himself in the army, likely serving in what was called a labor battalion.

Shalhoub: I did not know that.

Unbelievable.

And also at this age.

That's not what you think of as the age of a, of a man, you know, starting into a, into a military... Gates: No.

No.

Shalhoub: So there weren't any, uh, exemptions, even for men who had a lot of, you know, a lot of children to support, and to... They didn't care.

Gates: Please!

No.

If, if he made it, he was one year shy of the limit.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: Remember, he was forty-four when he was drafted, when he was conscripted, and the upper limit was forty-five.

Shalhoub: Yes, I see.

So it didn't matter what your status was or how many children, whatever.

It didn't matter.

Gates: Remember how long I said that empire existed?

Four hundred years.

It was about to come to an end, man.

It was, the rubber hit the road.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

It was desperation time.

Gates: The, the, the stuff was in the fan so it didn't matter, you know?

Shalhoub: Yeah, I see.

I see.

Gates: We do not know where Tony's grandfather served.

His military records have been lost.

But we do know that Ottoman troops saw combat across the Middle East and southern Europe and we know they suffered terribly, often lacking supplies and proper clothing in winter.

In fact, it's estimated that nearly 800,000 Ottoman soldiers fell victim to disease, cold, and starvation.

Tony's grandfather was one of those casualties.

Shalhoub: Unbelievable.

Gates: And you never heard that your grandfather had died in the army?

Shalhoub: No.

Gates: Their father goes off to war, never returns.

You know, they never see him again.

Shalhoub: It's upsetting, it's disturbing, how devastating that must have been for these young kids.

Gates: Oh, yeah.

Shalhoub: And, uh and for, obviously for my grandmother, for having all of a sudden, you know, all of this responsibility on her shoulders.

Gates: Tony was right to worry about his grandmother.

Mariam faced a terrifying ordeal of her own.

In March of 1915, a locust plague descended on the Middle East, destroying more than 60% of Mount Lebanon's summer crops.

Soon the region was ravaged by famine and disease.

Newspapers from the era describe scenes of immense suffering.

(Sighs).

Shalhoub: "Towards spring, cases of starvation began to be known.

It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones, or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found.

The priest of a mountain village had come down to another village to beg some men to help him bury the dead that were lying about in the streets."

(Sighs).

Gates: It's estimated that between 1915 and 1918, one-third, Tony, to one-half of Mount Lebanon's residents died.

Shalhoub: Really?

One-third to one-half?

Gates: It was the highest civilian death toll in all of World War I. Shalhoub: Really?

Gates: It's as if, not as if, it, half of the people that they knew in 1914 were dead by 1918.

Shalhoub: That's just unfathomable.

Gates: For almost three years, Tony's grandmother struggled mightily to keep herself and her children safe amidst this chaos... but in the end, it wasn't enough... Mariam passed away in January of 1918, likely from malaria or typhus... Shalhoub: Oh, boy.

Gates: And those are some of the victims.

Shalhoub: Victims, yeah.

Gates: On the left.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

This is what that looks like?

Gates: That's what that looks like.

(Sighs) Gates: This is the world that greeted your father on his sixth birthday.

Shalhoub: Wow.

Gates: But did he ever talk about it?

Shalhoub: No, not... Gates: No.

Shalhoub: Not really.

I mean, he talked about the fact that, you know, his mother was beautiful and... Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: But no, he didn't talk about what it was like to become an orphan like that.

Yeah.

Gates: Now without parents, Tony's father and his siblings turned to their older sister-Sophie-to keep them alive... Sophie was still a teenager and it's hard to believe that even she thought she could meet the challenge.

Her plight is captured in a series of letters that she wrote to relatives who had immigrated to the United States, begging them for help... Shalhoub: "Dear sister, we received your letter and are overjoyed to hear from you and we also received the money you sent us for which we are grateful.

But dear sister, I have suffered so much and still have to worry with three younger ones dependent on me.

I have often longed to die, and if you love me you will pray for me to die, too, as my hair has turned gray, and my heart is dead within me after a long time.

We dare not sleep at night for fear.

September 22, 1919."

(Sighs).

Gates: Sophie was sixteen years old when she wrote that letter.

Shalhoub: Yes.

The story, as I, as I heard it, was that when my grandmother died, these four children were put with an uncle.

I'm not sure, but he was a relative, close, you know, lived close by, took care of them, but then he died.

And so there was, there just was no bench there at all.

Gates: No.

"It's on you, Sophie."

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: Against all odds, Sophie somehow persevered.

She got her siblings out of Mount Lebanon to France-where they sailed to New York, hoping to join their relatives in Wisconsin... The entire journey took over three months.

But Sophie's incredible accomplishment is crystallized in a single record: the passenger list for the ship that brought the orphans from France to New York City, arriving on August 4, 1920... How old does it say she is?

Shalhoub: Oh, twenty-eight.

That's not right.

Gates: No.

Shalhoub: She's only seventeen.

Gates: Right.

She exaggerated her age.

Why do you think she did?

Shalhoub: Oh, so that she could sort of sell the idea that she was the guardian and she was adult enough and responsible enough.

Gates: We're just guessing, but we think so.

Shalhoub: And she probably could pull it off, because she was, of her, of all that she had been through.

Gates: Yeah.

And remember, all her hair was gray.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: But we believe that it could be because she had been tipped off that minors traveling alone might be turned away and she was underage.

Shalhoub: Right, right.

Oh, that's so good.

Gates: And rather than say "seventeen," she goes, "Uh, twenty-eight."

Shalhoub: She was, she was a hero.

Gates: After passing through Ellis Island, Sophie traveled with her siblings from New York to Wisconsin, where eventually she would marry and have a large family of her own.

Tony knew her well when she was an adult, but retracing the journey that she and his father had taken as children compelled him to re-imagine them both.

Does it make you think of your father any differently?

Shalhoub: Absolutely.

It makes me think of all of them differently.

Especially Sophie, because Sophie, you know, there was a, sort of a, you know, a gentleness and a softness about her.

Motherly and, you know, warm and loving and squishy and, you know.

And, but, boy, at her core, in her spine, it was steel.

Gates: Yeah!

Yeah.

Well, now you know how and where that steel was forged.

Shalhoub: Yes.

It's, it's, it's humbling.

Gates: You know what fascinates me, Tony?

There are different kinds of survivors, obviously.

One kind would be telling this story every day.

You know, that would be living the trauma over and over again.

"Don't you leave that food on your plate."

They did the opposite... They just never talked about it.

Shalhoub: Very good point.

Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: They did not shine a light on themselves.

Gates: No.

Or try to make you all inherit the sense of, of fragility, fear, um, or responsibility somehow for them.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

They, they shielded us from, from all of that.

Absolutely.

Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: I see them as sort of, in my mind they're stars, really.

You know, they're like rock stars.

Gates: We had already taken Christopher Meloni's paternal roots back to his great-grandfather Enrico who came to the United States from Italy to seek a better life.

Now we had a very different kind of immigration story to tell... Christopher knew that his mother Marie, whose maiden name was "Chagnon" had deep roots in French Canada.

And the maternal branches of his family tree are indeed filled with people who lived for centuries in Quebec's Catholic communities... But looking closer at one of these branches, we noticed something surprising.

Christopher's sixth great-grandfather, a man named Mathias Farnsworth, was born in 1690.

Not in Canada, but in Groton, Massachusetts... back when Massachusetts was an English colony, dominated by the Puritans!

Gates: Now, when you studied the history of the Puritans and the Pilgrims, did you have any idea that any part of your lineage could be connected to any of these people?

Meloni: No way.

No way.

Gates: You've never heard of these people?

Meloni: No.

Look, let me just say this... Just to have the name Farnsworth identified with me is fascinating.

Gates: That's true.

That is true.

Meloni: I don't, I don't feel like a Farnsworth.

I don't know what that means.

Gates: Whether he "feels" like it or not, Christopher is very much a Farnsworth, with deep roots in colonial Massachusetts and, before that, in England, but this raised a question.

How did the family end up in French Canada?

The answer lies in a series of wars fought between French and British forces in North America around the turn of the 18th century.

Christopher's sixth great-grandfather was captured during one of these wars when Native Americans who were allied with the French raided his home town and carried him north, as a hostage... At the time, he was roughly fourteen.

Meloni: What?

Gates: He was about fourteen years old, torn from his family and he ended up nearly 300 miles away, as a prisoner of war.

Meloni: Wow.

Wow.

Gates: Can you imagine a fourteen-year-old kid?

Meloni: What a world.

That's all I have to say.

I mean, how do you?

Wow.

That's just crazy.

Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: You know, the stakes were so high back then.

Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: That is what, I think, as you turn these pages, you know, that's, that's the first thing I reflect upon.

Gates: Yeah, you know, this is, like, not goodbye for the summer.

This was goodbye.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: Mathias almost certainly never saw his family again.

Instead, he and several hundred other prisoners, were force-marched to Canada.

But once across the border, his luck changed.

In 1711, roughly seven years after his capture, we found him Mathias listed in the records of a Catholic mission on the outskirts of what is now Montreal... Meloni: Wow.

Gates: After Mathias was taken to Canada, he was purchased, or ransomed, as they called it, by a group of Roman Catholic priests.

Meloni: Wow.

Gates: And remember, he's probably a Puritan in the first place.

Talk about how life can turn on a dime.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: You know?

Meloni: And then they became Catholic.

Gates: Yeah.

I don't think that there's a lot of choice, you know... Meloni: Right?

Gates: When the priests got ahold of you.

Meloni: Wow.

This is heavy, man... Gates: Christopher's ancestor not only adopted a new religion, he also took a new name, changing from "Mathias Farnsworth" to "Claude-Mathias Phaneuf."

We don't know if the switch was made of his own volition, or at the urging of the priests who had purchased his freedom.

Regardless, it would prove rewarding.

Meloni: "Land concession to Claude-Mathias, to provide the said Claude-Mathias, an advantageous settlement in this country presuming he will establish himself in this country and live in a Christian manner."

Gates: After Mathias was ransomed from the Native Americans, the priests granted him land to start a new life.

And that's the land grant.

Isn't that amazing to see that?

Meloni: Now, do we have any history about why they, they did this?

You know, do we understand any kind of reasoning behind it?

Gates: They're trying to build up their colony.

Meloni: Right.

Gates: You know, none, none of these.

Meloni: "We need bodies up here."

Yeah.

Gates: Yeah.

We need bodies, and-and the people were settling in.

It was cold and it's very difficult.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: There your ancestor went from being a captive to a landowner in Canada.

And on the left is a map and illustration.

That is your ancestor's property.

Meloni: Wow.

The isle of Montreal.

So, he got a slice up in the northeast corner.

Wow.

Gates: Yeah.

Meloni: Talk about being saved.

Gates: "Claude Mathias Phaneuf" built a life for himself in Canada beyond any expectation... He married, had at least nine children, worked his land and lived to the end of his days near Montreal, dying in August of 1773 at the age of eighty-three years old.

Meloni: That's amazing.

Gates: What do you make of this incredible story?

Meloni: What a journey.

Gates: Christopher, you descend from two kinds of foundlings.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: One left in a foundling wheel, the other taken from his family, held captive by Native Americans, then ransomed by priests and completely reinvents his identity including changing his name.

A remarkable family story.

Meloni: Yeah.

Gates: We had already seen how Tony Shalhoub's father Joseph came to the United States.

Now it was time to look at the family he discovered when he arrived.

Joseph had a number of relatives, both close and distant, around Green Bay, Wisconsin and he and his siblings were scattered among them.

In the process, young Joseph met his future wife, Tony's mother, Helen Seroogy.

Shalhoub: No one family could take them all... Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: So they were divided up.

Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: You know, one would go with this family or this uncle or this person.

And my father and-and sometimes those weren't permanent situations.

They would get shuffled around a bit.

Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: My father I know lived with my mother and his and her parents for a while.

Gates: Mm-hmm.

Shalhoub: My mother always told us the story about, uh, she was ten when he arrived.

He was eight.

And he got off the train or whatever there, and she saw him and, you know, said, told us that she, you know, sent up a prayer.

"Thank, thank you, God, for sending Joe for me to marry."

And then, you know, twenty-odd years later she, she hooked him.

Gates: Tony's mother was not an immigrant, she was born in Wisconsin, her grandfather, Tony's great-grandfather, Rookus Seroogy, had brought the family to America from Mount Lebanon in the 1890s.

Tony knows a great deal about this part of his ancestry, but he had no idea why they'd settled in Wisconsin, a place with very few Middle Eastern immigrants at the time.

We found an explanation in an interview given by one of Tony's relatives to a Green Bay newspaper... Shalhoub: "The family set out from Ellis Island in 1893, hoping to settle in California."

Didn't make it.

"As they reached Chicago, word of good jobs to be had in Wisconsin lured the family toward Green Bay.

What was planned to be a short stay to bolster their finances."

Oh, I see.

They were just stopping to, to make some cash and move on.

Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: "What was planned to be a short stay to bolster their finances grew to a year, then two."

Then 150.

"When the couple's first daughter, Ida, was born, Rookus decided to settle in De Pere."

Gates: Isn't that great?

Shalhoub: Fantastic.

Gates: Had you ever heard that story?

Shalhoub: I don't think so.

No.

Gates: Soon after settling in Wisconsin, Rookus became a peddler, selling merchandise to the homesteads around Green Bay.

Peddling was a common occupation for immigrants across America's frontier, supplying much needed goods to places that had few stores.

But that doesn't mean that the peddlers themselves were welcome... Indeed, we found articles in local Wisconsin newspapers in which Middle Eastern peddlers were compared to vermin, accused of dragging down American society because they were, supposedly, averse to manual labor.

Shalhoub: "Throughout the south and west they are a pest."

(Scoffs).

Okay.

"They do not till the land and indeed, they are not producers in any respect."

Wow that's... "the immigration problem."

Wow.

Things have not changed one bit.

Gates: 1898.

The plot's the same, the actors just change.

You know?

Shalhoub: Unbelievable.

Gates: Think about that.

Shalhoub: What's interesting is that the people who were writing this and having the "problem" with these immigrants were immigrants before them.

Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: And then they just decided one day... Gates: "We're Americans."

Shalhoub: "We're in, they're not."

Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: Unbelievable.

"They do not till the land."

Gates: "They do not till the land."

So they're not like us.

Shalhoub: Incredible.

Gates: Fortunately, Tony's ancestors had the last laugh... In the 1900 census, Rookus and his family were living in a rental home, but upon his death in 1914, records show something quite surprising, Rookus owned nine lots of land in the city of Green Bay... Shalhoub: That is some pretty fancy peddling, isn't it?

Gates: After being compared to a, a rat, you know?

A rodent, a pest.

Shalhoub: Amazing.

This is a real success story.

Gates: This is the ultimate American immigration success story.

Shalhoub: Absolutely.

Gates: Your ancestor went from peddling dry goods to owning property that he could pass down to his children within fourteen years.

Shalhoub: And he didn't till a lick of soil.

How about that?

Gates: Rookus' success laid the groundwork for generations to come, helping to provide the stability that would allow Tony's father to find a welcoming home in America.

But that stability concealed yet one more tragic story.

Tracing the ancestry of Tony's maternal grandmother, we came to a man named Abdul Neimy, he's Tony's great-great-grandfather.

We found his son living in Wisconsin in the 1890's along with a wife and children, but Abdul was not with them, as it seems he'd met a terrible fate... Shalhoub: "Ferris Neimy, an Arabian peddler of rugs in Appleton, has just received news of the murder of his father, Abdul Neimy, in Armenia, November 15, during the sacking of an Armenian village and massacre of the inhabitants by Kurds and Turkish soldiers."

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

This is insane.

(Sighs) Gates: Have you ever heard that name before?

Abdul?

Shalhoub: No.

I did not know that.

My grandmother certainly didn't talk about that to us.

But it's amazing what these people kept inside or felt was necessary to, you know, to spare us.

Gates: Right.

Shalhoub: That's shocking.

Gates: Abdul died in 1895, in a region of the Ottoman Empire which was then part of Armenia, at the time, Armenian nationalists, were pressing for political reforms and the Ottoman state decided to make an example of them.

An estimated 150,000 people died in massacres that made international headlines.

Indeed, if the press is to be believed, Tony's ancestor appears to have perished in a particularly gruesome way... Shalhoub: "He was crucified."

This, this is, this can't be real.

"He was crucified, being nailed hand and foot to a cross and left to suffer many hours before being finally dispatched by a lance thrust.

Particulars reached his son in Appleton by letter from a relative who escaped."

Is this possible?

That they were, at this time?

This was in 1895?

Gates: Well, the article was written during the era of yellow journalism, where newspapers often sensationalized or exaggerated stories to improve circulation, right?

And at the time, there was a major bias in American newspapers against the Ottomans because they were Muslim.

So it's possible the story was exaggerated.

Shalhoub: Sensationalized.

Gates: It's possible.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: We don't know.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: But the bottom line is a member of your family.

Shalhoub: Yeah, was somehow butchered and... Gates: Yeah.

Shalhoub: I mean it's, it's the human story.

We're just, you know, we're all survivors of various kinds of tragic, awful... Unimaginable, yeah.

Gates: Unimaginably horrible things that people have done to our ancestors.

(Sighs).

Shalhoub: It's, it's a lot to absorb.

Gates: It is.

Shalhoub: Yeah.

Gates: What's it like to learn this?

Shalhoub: It's interesting because we want to think of ourselves as, as the, you know, kind of the masters of what we do and what we accomplish, and really we're just sort of playing this thing out that was set in motion a long time ago.

That's how it feels.

And I feel fortunate that this certain, these certain, uh, these groups of people and individuals intersected and, uh, you know, had the good idea to, to come together and, uh and sort of bestow on me, you know, what I, what I have.

I feel incredibly fortunate.

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

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

We began with an admixture test.

Which reveals a person's ancestry over approximately the last 500 years.

For each, the results mirrored what we'd seen in the paper trail.

Shalhoub: Wow.

100% Middle Eastern.

This is the first time I've ever got 100 on anything.

Gates: But there were surprises still to come... When we compared my guests DNA to that of other people who have been in the series, we found significant matches for both... evidence within their own chromosomes of distant cousins who they didn't know they had.

Shalhoub: It's Tina Fey!

Incredible.

Gates: You share an identical stretch of DNA on your twenty-second chromosome.

Shalhoub: Do we know how far back that goes?

We don't know.

Gates: No, but Tina's mother is Greek and Greeks have been part of the eastern Mediterranean world for a very long time.

Shalhoub: Incredible.

Tina Fey.

I love it.

Gates: Turn that page and meet your cousin.

Meloni: Yeah, baby!

My girl!

Gates: You and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Meloni: Madam Speaker.

Wow.

Gates: You share a small segment of identical DNA on your eighteenth chromosomes, which means you have distant shared ancestors.

Meloni: Man, you are making me so happy.

You have no idea.

Gates: That's the end of our search for the ancestors of Christopher Meloni and Tony Shalhoub.

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