Finding Your Roots

GATES: I am Henry Louis Gates Jr., welcome to "Finding Your Roots."

In this episode, we'll meet actors, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, two stars who fell in love.

BELL: I made eye contact with him, and I was like, "Oh, weren't you at Shauna's birthday dinner?"

He was like, "Yeah."

And then there was like a little bit of lightning that there was like, "Oh, I didn't realize how cute you were."

SHEPARD: And then we started talking and I thought, "Well, how did I miss this?"

This is like the most charismatic human I've ever met in my life.

BELL: We had a ton of overlap.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: And I remember he went like this, I, I was chewing gum and he said, "Do you have any more gum?"

And I went like this, I was trying to be cute, and I was like, "Nope, only this."

And he took it out of my hands and put it in his mouth.

And I was like, "I'm picking up what you're putting down, sir."

GATES: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.

Genealogists comb through paper trails, stretching back hundreds of years.

BELL: Whoa.

GATES: While DNA experts utilize the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets that have lain hidden for generations.

SHEPARD: That's a little shocking.

BELL: I'm gonna cry.

GATES: And we've compiled it all into a Book of Life, a record of everything we found.

(laughing) SHEPARD: I wasn't expecting that.

BELL: Wrong side of history, friend.

SHEPARD: I think this is someone who wanted a little redemption.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I can relate.

GATES: Kristen and Dax have been together for almost 20 years, and they may think that they're as close as they can be, but in this episode, they're going to discover that they have far more in common than they even imagined and see each other more completely than ever before.

(theme music playing).

(book closes).

GATES: Kristen Bell has a golden touch.

Over the past two decades, she's become an icon and won fans of all ages, by crafting an array of indelible characters, starring in cult classics.

BELL: I love people.

I'm a people person.

GATES: Blockbuster film franchises.

BELL: I wish it could be like this all the time.

GATES: And prestige TV series.

BELL: I'm just a big beautiful, utterly perfect cartoon giraffe.

GATES: The common thread, Kristin has the ability to take any role, hero or villain, embrace it and make us laugh.

It's a talent she's been honing for as long as she can remember.

BELL: I think it started out with mimicking.

I have always been really auditorily sensitive, and so I would hear a chime from the television and just immediately mimic it.

Or the chime from a subway station or a bus or the tornado signal in our area and that kind of stuff, um, was al, almost like a tick, not like a diagnosable tick, but when I'd watch television, if I hear someone with an accent, I almost have to mumble it to myself.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: To hear those sounds fall out of me.

And so that, that started with me mimicking voices on the radio and from television.

And then I would do those for my parents, and they would giggle and then my body would kind of light up.

I felt, uh, it was A: a happy experience.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: And I also felt like a sense of purpose, and I was like, "Hmm, how can I morph this into something else?"

GATES: The answer to Kristen's question was not immediately obvious.

She grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, where acting for a living seemed like a far-fetched dream.

Nevertheless, Kristen ignored the odds.

She started taking voice lessons when she was a child, got an agent in grade school.

And when the time came for college, she chose the theater program at NYU with an eye fixed on Broadway.

BELL: I dreamed of New York.

The only thing I cared about was getting to New York as quickly as possible.

And then at NYU, you're not supposed to audition, you're supposed to study your craft.

And I was very focused on studying my craft, but I was also a rascal, so I was definitely auditioning all the time.

Um, and that's when I booked "Tom Sawyer," which was my first Broadway show.

GATES: How did your teachers react?

BELL: Look, they weren't thrilled, okay?

Um, neither were my parents, but I felt really confident.

I said to my teachers, "Are you or are you not training me to be a professional actor?"

I felt like that was a checkmate question, and they were.

But I said, "This is the, the chance."

And I said to my parents, "Yes, I will have to drop outta school," 'cause I dropped out my third, the beginning of my third year, but I said, "What I wanna do with my life, I don't have to have a degree for."

GATES: Did that work?

BELL: No, they still weren't thrilled.

No one was thrilled.

They were supportive.

GATES: Uh-huh.

BELL: But everyone was really hesitant, 'cause that's a big if, if you're about to get a degree and you say, "No, forget it.

I'm just gonna go start to work and see if I can be a struggling actor."

No one who cares about your well being is really like "Great job."

But thankfully, um, it worked out.

GATES: The decision of course worked out spectacularly.

Just three years later, Kristen was cast in the hit series, "Veronica Mars" and her days as a struggling actor were over.

She's been in the limelight ever since.

But for all she's accomplished in front on the camera, Kristen says her greatest success has occurred off screen, in her longstanding relationship with her husband, the actor, and comedian Dax Shepard.

BELL: Dax kind of opened my mind, my marriage opened my mind to that the world is so much more gray than you think it is, and there's so much more compassion to be had for the gray.

'Cause we're, we're all just monkeys passing the time before we die, right?

We're staying busy.

GATES: That's true, yeah.

BELL: And there's a lot of mistakes that are made, but mistakes don't have to be filled with guilt and shame.

They can be celebrated as learning experiences.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: And you can be honest about them, and I feel like I've become a lot more authentically me since I've met my husband, because he's been such a huge safety net of like, it's okay if you do things that you regret.

GATES: Right.

BELL: But most of all, what I think I've learned is that like, life can be, if you choose really about having fun with someone.

GATES: Oh, that's a wonderful thing to say.

BELL: Yeah, it can be like, look, we fight just as much as any other couple.

GATES: Sure.

BELL: But there's a trusting foundation underneath it that we've got each other.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: And I believe he'd say the same.

GATES: Turning from Kristen to Dax, it was easy to see why they're so well matched.

He shares her values, her Michigan background, and above all, just like Kristen, Dax is funny.

He can find humor in just about any situation.

But for Dax, it's a talent born of necessity.

His parents divorced when he was three years old, leaving him to be raised by a young mother in the face of some daunting challenges.

Jokes were a survival mechanism.

SHEPARD: There was some chaos in the house, a lot of stepdads, and so my role was, uh, attempting at least to regulate the energy in the room, so if I could say something pretty funny before things boiled over... GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: That, um, I know that I've been doing that for a long time.

GATES: So you were the peacemaker?

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: And you were trying to give everybody a gift.

SHEPARD: And ultimately give me a gift so that all held didn't break loose.

GATES: Dax's comic gift would propel his career leading him from the improv stage to starring roles on sitcoms and films.

Oh, I, I like money.

Wow, okay.

GATES: To his current role as the co-host and co-creator of "Armchair Expert," the extraordinarily successful podcast.

Dax's sense of humor would also serve him well, romantically.

He met Kristen at a low point in his life, but still had the presence of mind to be entertaining.

SHEPARD: I had broken up with a woman that morning, so I was not in the market for anything.

I was in fact, quite distracted by the breakup.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I, I do remember she was there because she was telling the story about getting, um, a 20% off Bed Bath and Beyond coupon in the mail and how ecstatic she was about that.

And I remember thinking, this is pretty adorable that this movie star is this excited about 20% off.

And then I learned maybe she was from Michigan at that time, and that made sense.

I'm like, "Okay, we're both frugal."

But there was no real connection, and then probably three weeks later, um, or two weeks later, I went to a Detroit Red Wings game playing the LA Kings here in LA, and she too went, 'cause she's obsessed with the Red Wings, and I was with a friend and we're, um, halftime, we're gonna get some concessions.

And he starts talking to her, they, they know each other and while they're talking, she says, "Hey, you were at Shauna's birthday party a couple weeks ago."

And I go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah."

And then we started talking and I thought, "Well, how did I miss this?"

This is like the most charismatic human I've ever met in my life.

And we started talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and, um, we have never, um, stopped talking or not been together for sev, almost 17 years now.

GATES: During their years together, Dax and Kristen have worked with each other on films, launched a business, and most significantly are raising two daughters an experience according to Dax, that has fundamentally transformed them both.

SHEPARD: My story prior to having kids was my father left and I was the victim.

And then about a year and a half into having our first daughter, I realized, "Oh no, he was the victim."

It's so much more powerful on this side than it, than it was on the child's side, being a parent is so special and meaningful.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: Kristen would say the same thing, we've been overly lucky in life, we've been to so many spectacular places and met spectacular people, and this is the single experience that I would not trade for anything in the world, this is the thing.

GATES: Dax and Kristen clearly share a profound bond.

And when we looked at their roots, we saw that their family trees also had a great deal in common.

Both have ancestors who were optimistic, even in the face of tremendous obstacles.

It was time to bring their stories to light.

I started with Kristen Bell and with her maternal grandfather, a man named Bernard Frygier.

Bernard was a beloved figure in Kristen's childhood, a source of immense affection, despite the fact that he'd endured a great deal of suffering.

BELL: He had a personality with us kids, the only side I saw of him was loving and joyful and playful and kind of ready for anything.

He would always let us like sit on his lap and we would watch TV together, read the "TV Guide."

He had a fake knee, he'd always let us trace his scar, he had a, his thumb ripped off and it looked like this, and he would let us sit there and play with it, like he was very loving.

But I remember hearing from my mom about, he had quite a bit happen to him during his lifetime.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: But I never saw that side of him.

He either bottled it up or worked through it in therapy and I don't think it's the latter.

GATES: Our researchers soon understood what Kristen meant, her grandfather's warmth, belied experiences that would've broken many people.

The story begins in the National Archives where we found Bernard joining the United States Army just months after Pearl Harbor.

BELL: Date of entry into active service March 27th, 1942.

Oh, wow, he was 22.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: At Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana.

Military, occupational specialty platoon sergeant.

GATES: What do you imagine that was like for your grandfather joining the army at such a dark time?

BELL: I would imagine he was terrified.

GATES: Hmm.

BELL: I think he was married to my grandmother at this point, and I imagine that I, I mean, because I would be terrified, but I don't, I don't know, I, I guess I would love to ask some of my family what his thoughts were about it.

Maybe he felt an honor and a duty to do it.

GATES: Did he ever talk about this stuff?

BELL: Mm-mm, not with, not with the kids, no, not with the grandkids.

I think he, he did later in his life to my mom and my aunt, um, but this is all new to me.

GATES: Bernard's service records tell a harrowing tale.

His battalion spent over 600 days in combat, many of them on the front lines fighting across Western Europe.

Reports filed by his officers detail, horrific conditions and extensive casualties.

But they also reveal that Bernard proved himself a hero by rescuing a wounded comrade in the heat of battle.

An act of bravery that earned him a silver star.

Did you know about that?

BELL: I knew, I didn't know specifics.

I knew that he had risked his life to save a couple people, and that's why he's got some metals hanging up.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: Um, but I didn't know the specifics.

GATES: On February 18th, 1944, your grandfather actually saved the life of a fellow soldier under heavy mortar and artillery fire.

BELL: That's very cool.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: I'm very proud of him.

GATES: Bernard himself was wounded in combat and was lucky to survive the war.

But as we dug deeper, we were struck by just how much he'd already survived before he even put on a uniform.

In the archives of Cleveland, Ohio, Bernard's hometown, we found a death certificate for his younger brother Joseph, who was killed in a car accident right in front of his family's home.

BELL: So this was my grandfather's little brother?

GATES: That's right, yes.

BELL: Yeah.

GATES: And he died at just five years old of a fractured skull.

BELL: Yeah.

GATES: It's heart wrenching.

BELL: Yeah.

GATES: How do you think it affected your grandfather?

BELL: I don't even know how I would begin to describe that, it's, it's horrific enough to think of seeing that happen to a stranger, let alone happen to another adult, let alone happen to another child when you're a child, I, I can't even begin to think of how he would've processed that.

I guess the, the string of his life seems to be a lot of these traumatic events leading him to be this very grateful person when he was older.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: But this is, it's a lot to take in.

GATES: In the wake of his brother's death, young Bernard suffered another loss, his father, a man named Frank Frygier abandoned the family.

Frank is Kristen's great-grandfather, and neither she nor any of her relatives knew where he went or what became of him.

His fate was simply a mystery.

But we solved it, revealing that Frank eventually moved in with his sister near Hackensack, New Jersey, where he worked as a porter and maintenance man at a local hospital before passing away in 1966, more than 30 years after he last saw his children.

At the time, your grandfather Bernard was 45 years old and living in Ohio 430 miles away.

Your mom was 13 years old.

BELL: Wow.

GATES: So she never met her grandfather.

BELL: Mm-mm.

GATES: What's it like to learn this?

BELL: You know, it seems like I, I don't, you know, just putting the pieces together.

If I'm looking at it from above, I think Joey's death really affected him.

And I think that stands to reason when you think about losing a child and how it can uproot your entire existence.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: That level of pain.

Parents aren't supposed to see their kids pass away before they do.

GATES: As it turns out, Frank had seen a great deal of suffering long before he lost his son.

He was born in 1889 in a village in Poland where his parents were farmers.

And in the Polish state archives, we found death records for four of his siblings, all of whom died before their third birthday.

We also saw that Frank's mother passed away when he was just 13 years old.

BELL: Heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy.

(sighs) GATES: What's it like to see that?

BELL: I mean, this is very informative and the deeper you go, the more you understand, you do that with characters that you're playing too, or any individual you try to have an interpersonal relationship with.

Now I kind of understand why Frank, you know, made a lot of decisions that might not have been on the up and up.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: Woo, oh, that's so sad.

GATES: We had one more detail to share regarding Kristen's great-grandfather.

The passenger log of a ship that arrived at Ellis Island in September of 1910.

On board was Frank, traveling on his own at the age of 21 years old, leaving his widowed father and his homeland behind forever.

BELL: Oh, wow.

GATES: What do you think that was like for Frank, saying goodbye to his father back home, not knowing if he'd ever see him again.

BELL: He must have been gutsy.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: I mean, I guess a lot of 21-year-old young men could be gutsy, uh, he clearly wanted to have a different life than his father.

Yeah, wow.

GATES: After all that we've learned about Frank.

BELL: Yeah.

GATES: What do you think Frank would've made of Kristen?

BELL: Well, I would hope that he would be able to see that the generational trauma has waned a little bit, and that unfortunately he got the short end of the stick, having to go through all of it.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: But it yielded some really happy results.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: With me and my life and my kids.

GATES: You wanna say "Poor guy."

BELL: Yeah, yeah, big time.

GATES: Yeah.

BELL: And I hope he'd be happy to know that we're happy now.

GATES: Like Kristen, Dax Shepard was about to see his mother's family trace back from the familiar figures of his childhood to ancestors who lived in a far more forbidding world.

The journey began in Sturgis, Michigan at a roadside motel once owned by Dax's maternal grandfather, a man named Joel LaBo growing up Dax spent many happy hours here.

It was a very fun place to get lost and snoop around and go into utility closets and look at the ice machine and all this stuff.

And my mother just adored my Pippi, we called him, um, very self-made, taught himself, uh, pipe fitting, built a pretty good business, saved money, got homes, flipped them, had rental things all to save up to buy this motel.

GATES: Wow.

SHEPARD: And that was really his legacy.

GATES: He Was an industrious dude.

SHEPARD: Incredibly hardworking, industrious man who also loved the opera and loved plays.

GATES: Oh yeah?

SHEPARD: And was pretty cosmopolitan.

GATES: Huh.

SHEPARD: It was his Frenchness, he was very proud of his Frenchness.

GATES: Monsieur LaBo.

SHEPARD: Yeah, totally.

GATES: We now begin to trace Joel's French roots, but it took us a very long time just to get out of Michigan.

Indeed, this branch of Dax's family tree has lived in his home state for over two centuries, starting with his fourth great-grandfather, a man named Alexis Cousineau.

Alexis was born in 1792, likely near Detroit and he lived through a time of tremendous upheaval.

When he was 20 tensions between the United States and England exploded into what became known as the War of 1812.

And Alexis volunteered to serve in a local militia, a decision he likely soon came to regret.

SHEPARD: "The 16th of August, 1812, he was captured a prisoner of war at the stockade at the River Raisin by one Captain Elliot, a British officer under the surrender by General Hall."

GATES: Your ancestor was captured, taken as a prisoner by the war.

SHEPARD: By the Brits, wow.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I had no idea.

GATES: Yeah, how about that?

SHEPARD: I have to rethink all my friendships with my English friends.

I've got an ax to grind now.

GATES: Alexis would be held prisoner for over a year, and then upon his release, he would face another ordeal, farming.

He settled near LaSalle, Michigan on what was then the American frontier.

To make a living he first had to clear his land out of dense forests and contend with fierce winters.

But in the end, he persevered.

Indeed Alexis lived to be roughly 80 years old, long enough even to be photographed, allowing Dax the chance to meet his ancestor face to face.

SHEPARD: Well, you know, what you see immediately is he's lost his teeth.

GATES: Right.

SHEPARD: Right, we don't have dentures yet.

GATES: No.

SHEPARD: You can vis, visibly see, the man probably doesn't have any teeth.

It was rough living back then.

GATES: Oh, yeah.

You see any resemblance to your mom?

SHEPARD: No, thank God.

I mean, this is a very old man with no teeth.

GATES: Uh, do you feel more connected to Michigan knowing... SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: ...That your family's lived there since the Garden of Eden?

SHEPARD: I'm, I'm deeply proud of being from Michigan.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: For whatever reason.

GATES: Uh-huh.

SHEPARD: I don't know, it's just peculiar, I love it.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: And, uh, yeah, I think it's really cool that a family member of mine's like one of the originals.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: The OMs, "Original Michigander."

(laughs).

GATES: Moving on from Alexis, we finally left Michigan and found ourselves in Velluire, a small town in western France.

Dax's ninth great-grandfather, a man named Toussaint Beaudry was baptized here in 1639.

And his family may well have lived in the area for centuries, but that was about to change.

In 1664, when Toussaint was 25 years old, he booked passage on a ship bound for Canada.

He was taking an extraordinary risk.

SHEPARD: Wow.

GATES: That's 44 years after the Mayflower.

SHEPARD: Oh my gosh.

I mean, Skip, you and I would not cross the Potomac on this boat.

Oh, I mean, can you imagine boarding that thing?

GATES: No.

SHEPARD: Oh my Lord.

GATES: I would've been terrified the whole time, plus seasick.

SHEPARD: And probably days with no wind that you're sitting there wondering if you'll ever resume your... Yeah, it's, it's mind blowing.

GATES: When Toussaint boarded his ship, France was a rigidly class-based society where he likely had few opportunities for advancement.

So almost certainly he came to the new world hoping to improve his life.

Unfortunately, those hopes would take time to materialize.

Two years after he arrived in Canada, we found Toussaint performing an unusual job.

He was employed as a domestic servant.

SHEPARD: Oh.

GATES: At a hospital in Montreal, and was working on the hospital small farm with 11 other men.

SHEPARD: Oh, wow.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: Working at a hospital.

GATES: Yes.

SHEPARD: Farming.

GATES: Farming.

SHEPARD: For the, you know, the patients, presumably.

GATES: Patients and the staff.

SHEPARD: Yeah, weird.

GATES: Do you think he found that work satisfying, worth the long, perilous journey across the Atlantic?

SHEPARD: Absolutely not, I.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: He most certainly got here and got that job and thought, "Well, I, I could have done this back in France."

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: And food was better.

GATES: Toussaint seems to have shared Dax's point of view, within a year he left his hospital job behind and found a new occupation, trading and transporting animal furs for export.

These furs were in huge demand in Europe.

So he was industrious, he wasn't content to stay in that field outside that hospital.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: He said there's gold in their woods.

SHEPARD: Yeah, yeah.

GATES: And I'm gonna shoot it and skin it.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: And that's what he did.

SHEPARD: Yeah, entrepreneurial.

GATES: Can you relate?

SHEPARD: Well, yeah and it certainly explains my Pippi's aptitude for business and entrepreneurship.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: And that work, Dax... SHEPARD: Forget it, forget it.

I'm looking at this just going, no way could I have done any of this?

GATES: We don't know how long Toussaint spent in the fur trade, there are no records to tell us.

But by 1672, he'd returned to Montreal, married a woman named Barbe Barbier and started a family.

Barbe is Dax's ninth great-grandmother, and she and Toussaint would have at least nine children together, but their happiness would not last.

SHEPARD: On 24, January, 1694, Barbe Barbier wife of Toussaint Beaudry was buried in our church in the presence of almost the entire parish.

GATES: Your ancestor died in childbirth in 1694, she was 40 years old.

SHEPARD: Wow.

GATES: The child was a, a boy named Simone, who was born three hours prior to her death, he died about eight months later.

SHEPARD: Oof.

GATES: What's it like to learn this?

SHEPARD: It's hard to imagine, you know, I often think about Lincoln having lost, what, two children while he's in the White House.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: I, I can only imagine the expectations were much different.

GATES: Oh yeah.

SHEPARD: I mean, this must have maybe even felt like he was one of the lucky ones if he only lost one of nine children.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: That was the brutal part of being alive then, I think.

GATES: Dax's ancestors would soon face another brutal blow, Toussaint himself would pass away just a year after his wife, leaving their children alone.

They likely struggled mightily just to survive, but somehow the family endured, and their descendants would eventually make another immense journey to Michigan, roughly 600 miles from Montreal and more than 3,000 miles from Toussaint's birthplace in France.

To see all this change your sense of yourself knowing that you have inherited all this amazing tradition and these experiences.

SHEPARD: Yeah, it has me, um, I don't know what this says about the power of story, but it has me, I want to go to the place in France.

GATES: Oh yeah.

SHEPARD: You know?

Yeah, I want to see it.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I wanna, I would like to sit there and think, "Boy, what would you imagine was on the other side of that Atlantic that you would leave here?

You must have a pretty active imagination."

(laughter).

GATES: We'd already traced Kristen Bell's maternal roots back to Poland, revealing her great-grandfather's tragic secrets.

Now turning to Kristen's paternal ancestry, we encountered a very different kind of secret.

The story begins in a place called Castleton in Liddesdale with a letter written in the year 1772.

It provides a detailed description of Kristen's seventh great-grandfather, a man named William Bell.

You ever hear of this brother?

BELL: No.

GATES: Well, please read what we've transcribed for you.

BELL: "The above mentioned William has always born a very good character, and so far as I have known or observed, very deservedly being always looked upon as a religiously well disposed, sober, honest, and industrious man.

A faithful and good worker, which cannot fail to recommend him to the favorable regard of every good man where he and his family may come."

GATES: What's it like to see that?

BELL: That's cool, 'cause he was a standup guy.

GATES: He was a standup guy.

BELL: We like hearing good reviews.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: We like good reviews, good resumes, we like hard workers.

Um, that's fun to know that other people recommended him with good character.

GATES: Ever hear of the Parish Castleton in Liddesdale?

BELL: No.

GATES: Where is it?

Take a guess.

BELL: Pennsylvania.

GATES: Pennsylvania?

That's a good guess.

Please turn the page.

BELL: You didn't gimme a reaction like I was, right?

(laughs).

No, oh!

GATES: Take a look at that map.

We've indicated the Parish on the map on the right, do you see where it's located?

BELL: Scotland, were Scots, were Scots.

GATES: Yes, Scotland.

Kristen has deep roots in what are called "The Borders," a rural region between Scotland and England.

But there's a reason that she knew nothing about these roots.

The letter we'd found was essentially a character reference written at her seventh great-grandfather's request, because William intended to move his family across the Atlantic.

The Bells were making arrangements to leave their home, please turn the page.

BELL: Bye-bye.

GATES: Kristen this map shows the place where your Bell ancestors first settled in North America, Argyle Township, see that?

BELL: Uh-huh.

GATES: It was a Scottish settlement on the Eastern Bank of the Hudson River in what is now upstate New York.

Did you know that your, that's where your family settled when they migrated from.

BELL: I did not.

GATES: The Bells arrived, we believe sometime around the summer of 1772.

BELL: Wow, that was a ripe time for America.

GATES: Kristen, of course, is correct.

The Bells landed in the colonies just three years before the outbreak of the American Revolution.

And records suggest that the family was running an inn on their property and Patriot forces seized a British fort in Ticonderoga, New York, less than 50 miles away, meaning that Kristen's ancestors were suddenly faced with a very big decision.

Which side did the Bells choose?

Your family very patriotic and rah-rah.

BELL: Maybe?

This is just a stab in the dark, but I feel like, uh, I feel like since they got here, they settled here, they're gonna go, "We're gonna go all in, we're gonna be Patriots."

GATES: Okay, please turn the page.

We're fast forward to 1787, this is an affidavit written on behalf of William Bell in 1787, four years after the Revolutionary War ended.

BELL: Wrong side of history, friend.

GATES: Would you please read the transcribed section?

BELL: "We, the Deponents doth testify and declare that we were personally acquainted with William Bell Sr. before and during the unhappy Dissensions in America.

And to the best of our knowledge and belief, know him to have been and is a loyal subject to the crown government of Great Britain.

Also are knowing to his, being employed in forwarding dispatches from his excellency, the commander in chief in Canada, to his excellency, the commander, commander in chief at New York during the unhappy Dissensions in America, whilst he resided in the United States, likewise, that he has suffered greatly, both in person and estate, on account of his loyalty to his majesty."

He was a spy?

GATES: He was a loyalist and a spy.

BELL: William, you tricky duck.

GATES: We do not have complete records of William's wartime experience, but according to scholars, he likely worked for the British by tracking the Patriot armies and reporting on their whereabouts.

He also likely served as a guide for British soldiers.

BELL: Some people picked the wrong side, maybe you didn't know any better.

Also, look, if you're looking back at 1776... GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: Did seem like a group of punks were trying to take over, like they were, you know, they were uprooting everything that anyone had ever known.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: Um, about any sort of hierarchy to create this country.

So it doesn't surprise me that people would've been like, "No, no, let's go with the norm.

Ask, ask the boss, King George."

GATES: William was not alone in choosing to side with the British crown.

It's estimated that one-fifth of everyone in the 13 colonies was a loyalist.

Nevertheless, Kristen's ancestor was putting himself in grave danger.

What do you think, successful spy?

Unsuccessful spy?

BELL: I'm gonna go unsuccessful.

GATES: Okay, please turn the page.

This is an excerpt from a book titled "Old Fort Edward" before 1800, and would you please read that transcribed section in the white box.

BELL: "On August 29th, 1780, Joseph Hawkins, Thomas Yarns and William Bell were apprehended by the order of three of the justices of the peace of Charlotte County.

A mittimus?

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: "Was made out and they were committed to the Albany Jail."

GATES: Your seventh great-grandfather was apprehended by the Patriots and imprisoned for helping the British.

BELL: They got him.

GATES: But William was lucky.

BELL: He was?

GATES: Yes.

BELL: Because usually snitches get stitches.

GATES: They could, yeah, he could have been hanged, but he wasn't.

BELL: Whew.

GATES: We don't know why but the Patriots decided to show William mercy, after being jailed for five months, he was released on the condition that he and his family move out of town.

Records show they resettled in British Canada where they would remain for generations.

Kristen had no idea she had any connection to Canada.

But given the circumstances, she wasn't surprised that her family had never discussed it.

And as we combed over this branch of her roots, we discovered something else the family had chosen to leave unmentioned.

Kristen's sixth great-grandfather, a man named Guysbert Sharp, was a slave owner.

Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, imagine that you had an ancestor who had owned another human being.

BELL: Absolutely.

GATES: Really?

BELL: Yeah, I'm familiar with the roots of this country.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: And there were a lot of bad decisions made.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: There were a lot of really, really poor decisions made, uh, that continued to be made for many, many, many years and have aftershocks to this day.

GATES: Right.

BELL: So I guess I would've been shocked if they hadn't.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: I would've been shocked and proud, but it's not shocking.

GATES: We had now traced Kristen back centuries meeting an array of characters.

Some highly complicated, I wondered what her family would make of it all.

What's the first thing you're going to tell Dax?

BELL: That my seventh great-grandfather was a spy.

GATES: What's the first thing you're gonna tell your children?

Because after all, your seventh is their eighth.

BELL: You think my children are gonna listen to me explain this book to them?

You have very, a very high opinion of my children.

They are not allowed to touch this until they're a little bit older and can sit down and listen to at least a paragraph that I'm ta, whatever I'm talking about.

But I will tell them in due time, and I think, I would hope that they'd be interested, but I will say, how I've changed is I'm now more interested in this.

And I think that feeling or that curiosity began with my desire to be on the show.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: As I entered my 40s and became an adult and was like, "What is my history?"

What collectively or individually, I wanna learn more?

Somehow as your mortality creeps up on you, you have the sense of yearning, of wanting to know what happened before.

But kids aren't built like that, at least I wasn't, and I don't think my kids are.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

BELL: So I don't think they'll be interested in this for a few years, but when they are, I'd be very excited to show it to them.

GATES: Turning back to Dax, we encountered a story that will likely fascinate his children if and when they finally are allowed to hear it.

It begins with Dax's father David Shepard, who passed away in 2012.

David married young, struggled to support his family and battled personal demons throughout his life, leaving his son to wrestle with fundamental questions about who he really was.

SHEPARD: He could be very alpha and fight a guy at a gas station and then he was, um, a very nonjudgmental, loving, uh, protector.

GATES: That's an unusual combination.

SHEPARD: Extremely.

GATES: Where do you think that came from?

SHEPARD: That's a great question.

I think probably it's who he, who, who he would've been if he could have been, I think his nature was probably really sweet.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: And I think he had the role of the, the, the "big guy" and, uh, and then as I think we'll learn, he's half Honchel and the Honchels were nuts.

GATES: Dax was not exaggerating.

His father was a son of a woman named Eulice Honchel and Eulice came from a very troubled family.

Two of her brothers, Calvin and Oliver Honchel were violent criminals, a fact that has long intrigued Dax.

Turning to the archives, we found more than a dozen newspaper articles about the brothers dating back to 1952, when a 17-year-old Oliver launched his first crime spree.

SHEPARD: "South Carolina policeman stopped Honchel and another man to check a 1951 license plate on their souped up automobile.

And in it, the trooper found burglary tools and a German sub machine gun."

(laughter).

Oh, here we go.

"Detroit Police also wanted Honchel for question on a number of burglaries."

Can I, this brings me such joy because I have done some digging on my own and I've read many news articles about the Honchels.

This is a new one.

GATES: Oh, really?

Oh, that's great.

SHEPARD: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GATES: That's great.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: That of course is your great Uncle Oliver.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: And great Uncle Oliver robbed a drugstore, then kidnapped the druggist.

When did you first hear about great Uncle Oliver?

SHEPARD: Oh, these stories flew around nonstop, and I met a lot of these people, like we went to Grandma Honchel's farm.

Cal Honchel was living there, he had been in and outta prison numerous times.

He had killed a man when he was young, shot a bunch of others.

Uh, so they were around, I would be up at the farm and Cal would be walking around in tighty whities with a pistol in his waistband.

GATES: Wow.

SHEPARD: So it was, it was bonkers, and it was around.

GATES: Amazing.

SHEPARD: Yeah and my dad was, you know, pretty scarred by growing up, and it gave him a certain take on the world.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: Which is like, there are jackals about.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: Like, be aware.

GATES: It's easy to understand how Dax's father felt, his uncles committed at least two murders, a kidnapping, two car thefts, multiple robberies, and spent many years behind bars.

All of which raised a compelling question.

You're dating Kristen, love of your life, when do you like... SHEPARD: Tell her about the Honchels?

GATES: There's something I need to tell you... SHEPARD: I have to be honest, she A: was amused by it as we are, like it is out of a Bonnie and Clyde movie.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: And I think she also felt like you've done alright, you've kind of tamped down, you're 12.5% Honchel and I only see it occasionally.

And now when our little ones go crazy, we go, "Oh, there's that Honchel flaring up."

GATES: We now set out to explore the Honchels deeper roots, Dax knew that the family had spent generations in Kentucky, and we identified the man who brought them there, Thomas Ingram, Jr. Thomas is Dax's fourth great-grandfather and records filed after his death contained some surprising details about his life.

SHEPARD: Thomas Ingram died on the 23rd December, 1862 and at his death owned 150 acres of land, which he held for 40 years.

GATES: Thomas died in Kentucky when he was about 96 years old.

SHEPARD: Whoa.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: Whoa, 96!

GATES: 96.

SHEPARD: That was almost probably a, a record.

GATES: You know what that means?

It means that he was alive for both the American Revolution and the Civil War.

SHEPARD: Oh, wow.

GATES: He witnessed a period of extraordinary change in American history.

What would you say to this guy if you could?

SHEPARD: "It's good you're going, you're not gonna wanna see what comes next."

(laughter).

GATES: He's gonna say... SHEPARD: I gotta be honest, if, you know, if I'm only forecasting from what I knew about Calvin Honchel and his brood... GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I don't have high hopes for anyone, I'm almost shocked he, this, there was in that line that was a landowner and made it to 96.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: So now, like the real mystery is like, when did it turn?

GATES: We don't know when or why this family turned, but as we look closer, we found a few more surprises for Dax.

Records showed Thomas Ingram was born in Delaware, a place that he had never associated with his roots.

They also show that Thomas ultimately owned land in Bath County, Kentucky, a place that Dax knows very well.

SHEPARD: Mm, I love this area of the country, uh, immensely.

I really, really like this area.

GATES: How do you imagine Thomas got from Delaware to Kentucky back then?

It was about 600 miles.

SHEPARD: Horse, you know?

Weeks on a horse.

GATES: Yeah, let's see.

Take a look at that map on your left.

Settlers to Kentucky generally took one of two major routes, either along the Ohio River outlined there in blue, you see that?

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: Or through the Cumberland gap indicated there in red.

SHEPARD: Yeah.

GATES: Now we don't know which route your ancestors took, a majority of the early pioneers took the Cumberland Gap route that's known as the "Wilderness Road."

SHEPARD: I'm sure you've driven through here.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: Yeah, this still in a car is, is harrowing.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: The whole Blue Ridge Parkway and all these mountains, I mean, it is that's, I, I can't imagine passing that.

Oh, that's an endeavor.

I mean, you're, you're, you're brave.

GATES: We believe that when Dax's fourth great-grandfather made this journey, he was accompanied by his father Thomas Ingram Sr. who arrived in Kentucky around the same time.

The two men were likely drawn by the promise of abundant land as both became farmers.

And as we poured over the records that they left behind, we saw that Thomas Sr. ran his farm with the labor of at least one enslaved person.

So your fifth great-grandfather was a slave owner.

SHEPARD: Wow, okay.

GATES: He Enslaved a black man named Peter.

Did you ever imagine that you had, uh, an ancestor who owned other people?

SHEPARD: You know, I wasn't terribly optimistic that we hadn't, given the, the Kentucky... GATES: Right.

SHEPARD: ...Uh, residence for so long.

Uh, that was certainly what people south of the Mason-Dixon did.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I was hopeful they hadn't because I thought of them as all poor, but, um, yeah, here we go.

GATES: How does it make you feel, what's it like to learn this?

SHEPARD: Well, I, I'm mixed right?

I, I, I, I have a, a popular opinion, probably an unfavorable one, which is like, one is it's abjectly horrible, you know, it's, I today can't comprehend it.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: It's, it's horrific.

But I also recognize, I don't understand, I just don't know, I don't understand what it was like, it's, I'm a little reticent, uh, well, this is dicey.

This is just, seems as, as crazy and, um, unfathomable to me as the losing multiple children.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: And just carry on.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: It just seems like, uh, not just another time period.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: But like another reality in another planet.

GATES: Oh, that's a good way to put it.

SHEPARD: I, I can't find purchase in the mindset.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: I can try to apply my current mindset to it and then I have a very easy verdict, which is that man was a psychopath.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: Um, but I guess I'm reticent to say that man was a psychopath, 'cause I, I don't know, I wasn't alive then.

GATES: Unfortunately, Thomas is not the only enslaver in Dax's family tree, we identified two other men on his father's side who also owned human beings.

And there may well have been more.

Even so, Dax accepted this part of his history with an appreciation for the fact that he'd been lucky enough to move past it.

SHEPARD: I mean, egotistically... GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: I could be sitting here and finding out that I had seven generations of royalty.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: And I might be going, "What the heck happened on my end?"

And I'm actually looking at this and I'm going, "Lucky me, man, I've got one of the best versions that this family's ever seen."

GATES: Oh, yeah, without a doubt.

SHEPARD: My God do I have a lot of gratitude... GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: ...Hearing this and evaluating my life.

GATES: But you got the good parts.

SHEPARD: Yeah, I did.

GATES: Yeah.

SHEPARD: And it's, um, yeah, it's made me kind of abundantly grateful.

GATES: The paper trail had run out for Dax and Kristen.

BELL: Whoa.

GATES: It was time to show them their full family trees.

SHEPARD: Oh my goodness.

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

Isn't that amazing?

(makes sound).

For each, it was a moment of awe.

SHEPARD: This is wild.

GATES: Offering the chance to see their shared families in an entirely new light.

BELL: It's wonderful to get context about the people that were here before you and to attempt to look at their choices if you can, with some compassion and some empathy.

SHEPARD: There's stuff to be proud of from here, and there's stuff to be ashamed of from here.

There's stuff to feel, you know, it's all right here.

GATES: Mm-hmm.

SHEPARD: But the best part is you haven't even met, the best part of this whole tree, is like below me... GATES: The two under, the two boxes under you.

SHEPARD: Yeah, I was smart, I went up and combined this whole stew with some premium Bell blood and ended up with some girls that far surpass any quality I have.

GATES: That's the end of our journey with Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell.

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