Comments on: Who Do You Think You Are? Episode 3 – Lisa Kudrow

By: Deb Meyer

Deb Meyer — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:49:34 +0000

I came to these blogs hoping to hear some news that there will be MORE shows after this run ends. Please?

I subscribed to Ancestry a few years ago, thinking I would only need a summer of work to get what I wanted. Now I realize that it will take a LOT more digging, doumentation and travel to get the information. Each time I find a new clue, I call out a “ding, ding, ding!” and my husband has a laugh. Recently on Ancestry.com, I contacted a woman who had met the grandfather I never knew because he left the family over 65 years ago. It was incredibly powerful experience.

I love the idea that celebrities even care about the people who came before them. I appreciate the money that was spent to find pieces of their puzzles, which was probably MUCH less than most TV productions. Historians can’t be all that well-paid!

Bring us more episodes, Lisa, NBC and Ancestry!

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:22:03 +0000

In this world of uncertainty, bad news, tough times, I just can’t get down about a TV show that is so positive. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I don’t care if all of this wonderful TV is about famous people. Of course it is; otherwise, NBC and Ancestry.com would not have a big enough audience to support the program. And celebreties are people too. I just like the fact that, money and extreme resources aside, the show is exposing millions of people to the excitement of genealogy. Now, how can we convince NBC to keep this going beyond this first series of shows?

By: Shea (Keith) Thomas

Shea (Keith) Thomas — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:39:13 +0000

I’ve watched all 3 episodes and love the show. It inspired me to get back into my genealogy. Lisa Kudrow’s was amazing, but brought me to tears. I was happy that she found some relatives alive. Great job NBC and Ancestry.com Are they only going to be doing celebrities or are they going to so some of us regular people?

By: Heather Erickson

Heather Erickson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 20:37:48 +0000

Great comments everyone! It’s great to see so many of you enjoying the show as much as we are.

For those of you are interested in taking your own family history journey – similar to what the celebrities are experiencing – don’t forget to enter to win the Ultimate Family History Journey for $20,000 in travel money, expert help and an Ancestry.com World Deluxe subscription. This may be the chance you get to take that journey you’ve always wished for during your family history research! Enter now at http://www.ancestry.com/sweepstakes.

By: Dorothea Hesse Doar

Dorothea Hesse Doar — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:47:30 +0000

Lisa Kudrow’s episode 3/19/10 was moving. It certainly touched me. I have been/am still searching my grandparents and great-grandparents histories, my father’s from Germany and my mother from Latvia. My mother’s father told her he saw his parents slaughtered by soldiers in Latvia, which caused him to have a weak heart. He died at 39, having immigrated to the USA, settling in Cincinnati and leaving his widow to raise four young children, my mother being one of them. The show inspired me to pursue this story further.

By: Ed Donohue

Ed Donohue — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:34:20 +0000

I and many others have been struggling… daily.. for years, to find our “roots” and every time we get closer we have to pay another $150 or $50, etc, etc. etc… Yet, you take Millionaires and pay them More money to find their ancestors (who they probably wern’t that interested in personnaly, or they would have paid someone to do it beforehand.) It makes it discouraging to see such Royality treatment in the USA…. ‘the Rich get rich and the Poor get poorer’. But, Hey, it makes a great movie… Well, back to seeking the seemingly non existant records of poor Western Ireland famine immigrants ! (For those who haven’t earnestly been digging thru records at cemetaries, churches,etc, census, city records and internet$, please excuse my frustration… as the old-Youngest of Ten, I feel it’s an obligation to all the newer generations of our family) Ed D.

By: Heru Kurniawan

Heru Kurniawan — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 07:30:48 +0000

Dear Heather Erickson,
I am really like to read some articles in your site. I got a lot of information from you. So, I have bookmarked your site.
Excellent story, We have watched everyone of these stories and I was glad that a happy ending for her father..
Thanks a lot

By: Lysle Meyer

Lysle Meyer — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:46:19 +0000

I missed the first show but saw the 2nd and 3rd. I was so touched by the emotion shown in both shows and could relate to the discovery of hardships faced by ancestors. For me it was the realization that my great grandmother came in steerage from Scotland with a 1 year old and a baby under 1 year by herself to join my great grandfather who had come earlier. It shows the excitement of discovering what our ancestors endured for our sakes. The shows are an inspiration.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:43:13 +0000

What a wonderful show! While some seem to have sour grapes, I can attest that it is possible to have the same successes as the stars. For me, 13 years ago, I walked into a local Family History Center in the South. The sweet volunteer showed me how to use the IGI, and the result was a file with 600 of my GRANDPARENTS, all on my maternal grandfather’s family. A search of the Library Catalogue resulted in a book that outlined my paternal grandfather’s ancestry. Luckily half my ancestry is French Canadian. It took three years of searching church records on microfilm, but I was able to find over 2500 grandparents dating back to the early 1600s. Believe me when I say the volunteer and I were both doing the “happy dance”. Today, those same records are now available online (Drouin records). Thank you Ancestry for making more records available to more people, so travel may not be necessary. And thank you for a show that will inspire more people to search for their roots. They may have that “missing link” that someone else has been looking for.

By: Donna Owens

Donna Owens — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:44:14 +0000

I have been doing genealogy over 40 years and still got goose-bumps, cried and cheered when the ‘stars’ broke down brick-walls. We genealogists tend to be a nit-picky lot because we deal in facts, and ok, we do get emotional when we have a success. Instead we should look at the broader aim of the series…..get people who haven’t done genealogy interested. One doesn’t have to travel to exotic places to find information – start at home – wherever that is.