Top 10 Dark Family Reveals on Who Do You Think You Are
#10: Courteney Cox
“Friends” star Courteney Cox set out to trace her mother’s English lineage. She doesn’t expect any spectacular revelations, so she’s surprised to find royal roots, including her 26-times great-grandfather William the Conqueror. Another one of Cox’s ancestors is her 18-times great-grandfather, Thomas de Berkeley. The English baron’s Gloucestershire home of Berkeley Castle served as a prison for the abdicated King Edward II in 1327. This is also where he died, and while some accounts credit natural causes, others believed he was killed. The historian shared the rumors detailing Edward’s gruesome death, though it’s believed that he was ultimately murdered via suffocation. Berkeley and Cox’s 19-times great-grandfather Roger Mortimer were put on trial. The former was acquitted while the latter was executed.
#9: Steve Buscemi
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Like others on this list, actor/filmmaker Steve Buscemi’s reason for digging into his genealogy is his mother. The Brooklyn native never met his grandmother Amanda Van Dine because she took her life when his mother was very young. In his search, he found that his great-great-grandfather Ralph Montgomery had a rough go of it. By 1860, he switched professions from a dentist to a grocer. Based on a discarded letter, this was also around the time he contemplated ending his own life. In 1861, he became a Union soldier in the Civil War, left his family, and later started a new one. Though Montgomery ultimately died of tuberculosis in 1878, Buscemi theorizes that generations of his family have suffered from depression.
#8: Jason Sudeikis
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“SNL” alum Jason Sudeikis set out to find the mysterious circumstances of his paternal grandfather Stanley’s death in 1948. He learned that Stanley married his wife Edna on September 25, 1945, abandoning her the same day, leaving behind his daughter and unborn son, Daniel, Jason’s father. He never supported them financially, and by 1947, they legally separated. Reading the fatal sidewalk accident report, Jason discovered that Stanley was unhoused at the time of his death. His ex-wife and uncle’s refusal to be involved suggested that he may have burned too many bridges with his substance use. Going back further, Stanley Sr. also abandoned his family. But the tragic irony is that Stanley Sr.’s father Joseph died while working to provide for his family.
#7: Marisa Tomei
For Marisa Tomei, this foray into genealogical research was intended to uncover the truth about her great-grandfather Francesco Leopoldo Bianchi’s death in 1910. The family story was that he was killed because of a misdeed, possibly for having an affair or getting into financial trouble. But as Tomei travels around Tuscany, she finds pieces that make up a different story. In 1911, a man named Terzilio Lazzereschi claimed he was attacked by Bianchi and shot him in self-defense. However, it was reported that the bullet entered the back of Bianchi’s head. Despite evidence suggesting murder, Lazzereschi was acquitted of “voluntary homicide.” The animosity between the men stemmed from a business deal gone wrong, not any philandering on Bianchi’s part as his family believed.
#6: Megan Mullally
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Like fellow actress Marissa Tomei, Megan Mullally grew up hearing stories about her relatives. Her grandfather was violent toward his sons, behavior that her father would later exhibit himself. Because of his emotional and verbal mistreatment throughout her childhood, Megan prepared to uncover some dark truths about her paternal ancestors. Through newspapers and court records, she finds that her great-great-grandfather Richard ‘Ira’ Mullally was charged and convicted of physically abusing his pregnant wife Elizabeth in 1859. After his death, Elizabeth married her second husband, James Venable, with whom she endured similar mistreatment. Even though Megan anticipated the outcome, she’s still saddened to learn about the troubling history of substance use disorders and violence involving the men on her father’s side.
#5: Chelsea Handler
Comedienne-author Chelsea Handler was raised Jewish, although her mother Rita was Mormon. Rita was born in Germany and lived there until her father Karl Stöker, a German soldier in WWII, brought the family to the United States. The big mystery was where Grandpa Karl’s loyalties lay, and Handler dreaded he might have had ties to the Nazis. In Germany, she tried to gauge his enthusiasm through his military records which showed that he was drafted and seemingly lacked ambition to advance rank. But one of the saddest parts of the episode sees Handler reading her grandmother Elizabeth’s tragic account of life in post-World War I Germany. She details the grim conditions, unemployment, extreme poverty, and scarcity of food.
#4: Jesse Tyler Ferguson
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“Modern Family” star Jesse Tyler Ferguson comes from a line of Jesse’s, including his paternal grandmother whom he was named after. She was named after her father Jesse Wheat Uppercue, a lawyer who was also seemingly a career criminal. The first piece of information Ferguson finds on his great-grandfather is an article about the 1872 death of Baltimore resident Amelia Wheat, Uppercue’s elderly aunt. He was arrested as a murder suspect but made it through two trials without a guilty verdict. Throughout his life, J.W. moved around the country, getting into more trouble including two arrests for embezzlement, all while going through three marriages that all ended in divorce. However, Ferguson’s happy to hear that the otherwise disappointing relative cared for his five children.
#3: Christina Applegate
Growing up, Christina Applegate didn’t know much, if anything, about her paternal grandparents. Sadly, her father Robert didn’t either. He was raised by his grandparents and only knew of rumors about how and when his mother died. On her genealogical journey, she finds that Lavina Shaw and Paul Applegate, her grandparents, went through a tumultuous divorce and custody battle in the 1940s. During the legal proceedings, a doctor reported that young Robert appeared to be malnourished, a discovery that visibly upsets Applegate. More shocking revelations are Paul’s alleged mistreatment of Lavina, as well as her struggles with chronic substance use which likely contributed to her early death. Though Robert is shocked to learn the details of his mother’s life, he finally has some closure.
#2: Regina King
Looking into her maternal ancestry, Regina King digs deeper into the life of her two times great-grandfather Moses Crosby, aka Moses Hughes, an educator and civil rights activist. While living in Alabama in 1868, an altercation with a white man got Moses’ name added to the local Ku Klux Klan’s black list, making him a target in the white community. One night, a group of KKK members broke into Moses’ home, and though he escaped, his wife Mary Meadow was shot and killed. Within days, he was charged with assault and attempted murder of the white man and received a two-year sentence. Moses endured many hardships but King admires his perseverance in the face of racism and injustices.
#1: Lisa Kudrow
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Since she was young, actress Lisa Kudrow, executive producer of “Who Do You Think You Are?,” heard tell of Belarusian Jewish family members’ devastating lives during the Holocaust. In season one of the series, she travels to the site of the 1942 Ilya massacre, where 750 to 900 Jewish villagers were killed, including her paternal great-grandmother Mera Mordechowichz. Kudrow knew about this horrific time in history and the tragic deaths of her ancestors and countless others. But being in Ilya and reading about the detailed atrocities that were committed decades before, she couldn’t help but get emotional.
What reveal did you think was the darkest? Have you uncovered anything shocking in your family’s history? Let us know in the comments below.
