In what is perhaps the most widespread exposure since Alex Haley's Roots, millions of Americans are expected to become acquainted with family history through a 10-part mini-series produced by KBYU-TV.
"Ancestors" premieres this month over the Public Broadcasting Service, of which the BYU television station in Provo, Utah, is a member. (Viewers should check newspaper listings to see if and when local PBS stations are airing the series.)It is the first national documentary television series about genealogy and family history. "Roots," the TV mini-series presented in the 1970s, was a drama based on Alex Haley's novel of the same title and drawn from his own experience with family history.
In its 10 half-hour episodes, "Ancestors" presents stories of people whose lives have been changed through family history research. It also gives instruction on how to get involved in searching one's own ancestral lineage and stories.
Nearly 10 years in the making, the series has a potential viewership of 89 million households, according to executive producer Sterling Van Wagenen. He said 340 PBS stations have agreed to show the series, covering every market in the United States. It will be shown four times in each market over the next three years, he said.
"It is very much aimed at the novice," said KBYU's Diena Simmons, who handles outreach and promotion. "Each episode combines what we think are moving and powerful stories of people involved in family history with how-to instruction. We try to match up each story with a specific research principle."
The series is also directed primarily toward viewers who are not members of the Church, although the producers drew heavily on the technical expertise of the staffs of the Church Family History Department and Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Nearly all of the people profiled or interviewed in the series are from outside of the Church. An exception is Garry Bryant of the Deseret News photography staff, a member of the Farmington 15th Ward, Farmington Utah North Stake. In the program he tells of being in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War era. He felt depressed and ashamed of his service. Then, after his discharge, he became involved in family history through the influence of his grandmother. Learning that he had 25 ancestors who fought in American wars and knowing of their sacrifices changed his attitude about patriotism and his own military service.
An intense, almost driving desire to connect with the past motivates many people to discover their ancestry, whether or not their motive is based on religious belief, said Jim and Terry Willard, the husband-wife team that hosts the series.
Not members of the Church, they were recruited for the program by executive producers Sterling VanWagenen and Thomas J. Lefler, who found them at the sesquicentennial celebration of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in July 1995. (Alex Haley, who was a co-producer of the series in its early stages, was to have been host, but he died in 1992.)
In a Church News interview, Mrs. Willard said that through researching her roots, she knows why certain family traditions have been passed down through the generations - eating certain foods at Christmas time, or rolling back the carpet at home to dance, for example.
Husband Jim said that early immigrants to the United States often distanced themselves from their ethnicity in order to fit into the fabric of America.
"So there are throughout the United States millions of their grandchildren who are just now finding out that it's not bad to be of French-Canadian descent or German descent or Russian descent. They're trying to reconnect with the past, and genealogy and family history is the only way you can do that.
"When people we teach find their grandfather's name on a ship's manifest coming into New York harbor in 1886, or something like that, they just start to cry. All of a sudden they're connected to who they really are."
The Willards draw a distinction between genealogy and family history.
"When we used to tell our family and friends that we did genealogy, they thought it was kind of a stuffy, blue-blood type hobby," Mrs. Willard explained. "But if you couch it in terms of family history, you convey the idea that we're trying to find out who these people are."
To the Willards, the word genealogy pertains to pedigrees and charts, but family history is an endeavor to discover the personalities behind the names.
A history scholar, Mr. Willard said history "is what connects us today with our past. But it connects us with our total past. Family history and genealogy, on the other hand, connect us to our personal past. It makes the big picture of history that much more meaningful when you realize that we actually have relatives who were living during a given historical period, and they fit into that big picture, that we kind of know something about, but it was never before brought down to the personal level, because we had never been able to connect it."
To that end, KBYU and PBS are endeavoring to help viewers take the step into actively searching their roots. A Viewer's Guide, a Teacher's Guide and a companion volume, ANCESTORS: A Beginner's Guide to Family History and Genealogy are published in connection with the series. Watch this program for ordering information.
