“It sounds like a movie scene I’d write,” says filmmaker John Waters about the fate of his great-grandfather. He and actor Glenn Close hear stories of their family histories on an episode of Finding Your Roots called “To the Manor Born.”
Waters, while aware of his mother’s wealthy Whitaker family in Maryland, knew nothing of what he calls their “twisted history.” On the paternal side of his family tree, the director learns of an ancestor who served in the Revolutionary War.
Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of Finding Your Roots, tells Glenn Close about her descent from John Strong and Abigail Ford who lived in Northampton, Mass. in the mid-1600s. “John and Abigail’s descendants are estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands,” says Gates, who surprises the Golden Globe-winning actor by naming two of her famous cousins who are among that number.
Finding Your Roots airs on PBS on Tues., January 19, at 8 p.m. (ET).
Photo: Courtesy of McGee Media