"I'm Henry Louis Gates Jr." "Welcome to finding your roots." "In this episode, we'll explore the family histories of comedian Tina Fey, author David Sedaris, and journalist George Stephanopoulos..." "Three people who've been profoundly shaped by their Greek heritage." "I grew up in a very Greek neighborhood, a lot of Greek immigrants." "And so there would be kind of family gatherings with a lot of Greeks and a lot of food." "When I was younger, we would recite the Greek national anthem and the American national anthem before all dinners." "You know, growing up, you live in this little Greek bubble, and so you get the idea that..." " ...the whole world is Greek." " Yeah." "To find their roots, we've used every tool available:" "genealogists combed through the paper trails our guests' ancestors left behind, while geneticists used the latest advances in DNA analysis to reveal secrets hundreds of years old." "And we've compiled everything we found into a book of life... a record of all of our discoveries." "Whoa!" "Boy!" "I'm as Greek as it gets!" "What!" "Come on!" "Gosh, I had no idea." "That touches me in a very real way." "Though Tina, David and George aren't related to each other through bloodlines, their roots are deeply interwoven." "Their family trees are filled with people both in Greece and in the United States, who risked their lives for freedom." "Americans of Greek descent are a vibrant part of our multinational culture." "In communities across the country, they regularly come together to celebrate their food, music and religion." "But very few Americans actually have Greek roots." "Less than one percent." "Let's start with Tina fey." "The face and voice of comedy for her generation," "Tina came to the nation's attention as the head writer for Saturday night live, the first woman to hold that position." "She then went on to create and star in the Emmy award-winning sitcom, 30 Rock." "She has a unique style–a style that she's honed over decades of practice." "I always felt like my job was to sort of just discern okay how do I see this issue and try to write a joke that is a form of telling the truth about what I see." "And that's just the basic thing of a great joke." "Just saying something that everyone, when they hear it, they go that's true and I haven't thought of it that way before." "Tina has loved comedy for as long as she can remember." "When she was young, she spent hours watching the Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore shows." "But she told me that her mother was also a major influence." "My mom has a very dry sense of humor." "Like, she's not out there like working for a laugh." "She's wry and I think anything that I would have of that, I get from her." "Tina's mother, Zenobia Xenakis, is also her connection to Greece." "Zenobia is the daughter of Greek immigrants." "And Tina was raised in the Greek enclave of upper Darby, Pennsylvania." "Her childhood was saturated with Greek culture." "Greek was spoken in the home and every Sunday was all about the Greek Orthodox Church." "This is the basement of Saint Demetrius Church in Upper Darby." "and you're in a..." "I'm in some kind of Hellenic garb here." "...Greek costume doing Greek Independence Day at Sunday School." "There you go." "We were very proud of our culture." "Like, "our food is delicious!" And "the music is good!"" "And all Greek American families have the imitation statues and things." " You mean a porcelain Parthenon?" " Yeah, things like that." "Was that part of your childhood?" "Did..." "You are descended from the greatest civilization in the history of the world, the smartest philosophers." "No." "It should have been talked about more." "While her Greek identity rarely makes its way into her comedy, Tina continues to honor and preserve Greek traditions." "She and her husband in 2001, chose to be married in a Greek wedding ceremony." "Tina gave her first born daughter the middle name Zenobia, in honor of her mother." "Her second daughter's name, Penelope, is as old as Homer's Odyssey." "That was so important to me because you have a kid and then you realize," ""Oh, I am an extension of a family line." So it does seem to make sense to look back for these names instead of you know pulling them out of the ether." "I was surprised when a woman I'd very much enjoyed talking to, described me as bonsai sized." "David Sedaris is America's most beloved humorist." "He's published half a dozen bestselling books and his readings have charmed audiences across the country for over a decade." "Several of the passengers around me laughed and I noted their faces." "Vowing that in the event of a crisis, I would not help lead them to an emergency exit." "Thank you." "David told me that he first learned to tell stories at the kitchen table, where he and his four siblings had to compete for center stage." "Let's say someone's telling a story about their school day, and it's boring." "Then you jump right in there." "So you learn to tell a story quickly and you learn to cut to the chase and you learn that you don't add a lot of detail that doesn't ultimately matter." " So this was writing school." " Yeah, yeah, it was." "David's father, Louis Sedaris, is the child of Greek immigrants, and he is extremely proud of his cultural heritage ...a pride that has provided a lot of raw material for David's jokes." "My father had a bumper sticker on his mirror in his bedroom that said, "Greeks are great."" "We would make such fun of that, you know, because it's like, who are you trying to convince?" "David first visited Greece as a teenager when he attended a summer camp and toured the ruins of Greece's glorious past while studying Greek history." "Since then he's been back several times." "To David, the defining characteristic of Greek culture is the value placed on family ties." "If you meet a Greek person, it's a matter of minutes before they say," ""My mother, my father, my sister, my brother." They are all up in their family." "Whereas you can meet an American and it can be months before they mention their siblings or their parents." "And I always find those the most interesting relationships." "Like, if I meet somebody that's what I want to hear about." "I want to hear about their family." "George Stephanopoulos is among the most prominent voices in America." "He's also one of our country's most prominent Greek Americans." "George told me that he's been interested in politics since he was a boy." "And that that interest, had always been tied to his Greek heritage." "In a sense, that's what launched his career." "There he is, Michael Dukakis." "How'd you end up working on Governor Michael Dukakis' 88th presidential campaign?" "Well look at that... a Greek American about my size, the same hair, same eyebrows, a democrat from Massachusetts." " How could I not work for him?" " Yeah, that's true." "But you know for Greeks this was a big deal I mean a" "Greek American really had a great shot at being president." "You had to be part of that." "After working for Dukakis, George became one of president bill Clinton's closest advisors." "Then he switched to journalism." "Where he's risen to the be the host of ABC's Good Morning America." "Through it all, George has consciously nurtured his Greek roots, proud that they stretch back to the birthplace of democracy." "I was brought up to be very proud of our tradition, and to know that it was an important part of our contribution to the United States." "And I loved the fact that my name was longer than anybody else's." "That was a badge of honor." "George was raised in a thriving Greek community in Cleveland, Ohio." "Greek culture was at the center of his family's life." "George's father, Haralambos, was a priest in the Greek orthodox church." "George's" "George's mother, Nikolitsa Chafos, was the communications director for the Greek Archdiocese." "In Greek orthodox church, it was the center of all life." "It was church, it was community center, it was welfare center, it was family." "It was sort of in the air we breathed." "George told me that one of the proudest moments of his childhood came in 1976 when at the age of nine, he was chosen to be an altar boy in a service conducted by Archbishop Ivakos the leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in America." "For many years George dreamed of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a priest himself." "Up until high school, I assumed and fully expected that's what I would do." " Really?" " Yeah, it was who I was." "It was, you know, it was what I knew." " Does faith continue to play a role in your life?" " Yeah, Absolutely." "It's important to me." "I'm raising my children Greek orthodox." "I love the structure and I love the roots." "But even though George values and respects his Greek roots, and has four Greek grandparents, he knows very little about his ancestors." "I lose track after my grandparents." "I don't know a lot about what had happened earlier on in Greece." "George is not alone." "Tina and David also told me that they know next to nothing about the Greek roots of their family trees..." "In fact, it's very very difficult to trace Greek ancestry." "I was surprised by this." "How could a people, descended from the source of western civilization, a people so rightly proud of their history and their culture, know so little about their own recent ancestors?" "The answer lies in Greek history." "Though ancient Greece gave rise to many of the key political ideals that shaped the course of western culture, the birthplace of democracy didn't remain a democracy for very long." "Beginning in the year 146 bc and continuing well into the 20th century," "Greece has been ravaged by foreign powers, and military dictatorships." "Romans, Turks, Germans, among others, occupied the country–raising villages, subjugating the population, and most recently, destroying the vital records that we all use to trace our families' history." "But not everything was lost." "I was astonished by how many ancestors we were able to recover for Tina, George and David, and how their families' destinies were shaped by the same key events in Greece's tumultuous history." "This is a set we built for a pilot that we shot." " Oh." " Last month?" "I started with Tina." "We met on the set of her new show–a sitcom that she's writing and directing for NBC." "Tina knew very little about her Greek ancestors." "She had been told that her grandmother, Vasiliki Kourelakos, had immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century." "But Vasiliki died when Tina was just a year old, and her story was not preserved." "Tina only knows her from old photographs." "I have a picture of my grandmother holding my infant mother." "And she's got like a fur coat and a beautiful ring." "And she seemed to be a stylish, elegant woman." "To learn more about her grandmother, I traveled to Ellis Island, where most Greek immigrants first entered the United States." "Deep in the Island's archives, we discovered a passenger list which showed that Tina's grandmother Vasiliki arrived in America on February 28th, 1921." "But that wasn't all: this list also revealed something quite unexpected." " "Vasiliki Kourelakos, age 20."" " Yeah, that's your grandmother, Vasiliki." "And can you see who paid her passage?" " "Passage paid by herself."" " Herself." "So your grandmother, Vasiliki, immigrated to the United States by herself at the age of 20." "Wow." "That's really cool." "I thought I was badass for moving to Chicago from Philadelphia at 21." "Vasiliki was clearly a brave soul, to travel alone to a foreign country where she didn't even speak the language." "We wanted to see what we could uncover about the family she left behind." "Vasiliki emigrated from the village of Petrina, in southern Greece." "So we started our research there." "Petrina is an ancient village nestled in the foothills of the Taygetus Mountains." "We sent our researchers to the local archives to see if we could uncover any trace of Vasiliki's family." "And we found a town register that allowed us to take Tina's family back another full generation." ""Napolean Kourelakos, peasant farmer and Stematina Stephanakos."" " Those are your great-grandparents." " Yeah." "You're looking at the names of your great-grandparents." " Wow." " How do you guys find these things?" "We had found Vasiliki's parents." "Given that so many Greek records have been destroyed we figured that we wouldn't be able to extend Tina's family tree any further." "But we continued to turn over every stone, and scour every archive." "And we got lucky." "We found the history of Petrina that contained a comprehensive genealogy of the residents of the village stretching back centuries." "We came across a history book entitled, "Petrina, from the 17th century."" "Wow, that's a find!" "And you won't believe what we found in that book." "Would you please turn the page." "Now, with the help of that book..." " Wow." " We traced this line of your family tree back all the way to your third great-grandfather," "Wow." " Stephanos Hirtoularis." "That's awesome." "And can you read where and when he was born?" ""Born about 1800..." in Kardamyla, Chios." " And have you ever heard of the Island of Chios?" " No, I don't think I have." "Chios is an island in the Aegean Sea that lies east of the Greek peninsula." "In the early 1800s, when Tina's ancestor Stefanos was growing up, Chios, and in fact almost all of Greece, was part of the Ottoman Empire." "a vast and powerful state founded and ruled by the Turkic people or as we know them today: the Turks." "Over the centuries, deep tensions developed between the Turks and their Greek subjects, fueled by religious and cultural differences." "The Turks considered the Greeks inferior people, and ruled them accordingly, giving them virtually no rights under Ottoman law." "But all that was about to change." "In 1821, the Greeks rose up and began the fight for independence." "In response to the rebellion, a fleet of ships packed with 40,000 Turks sailed to Stefanos' home Island of Chios." "What happened next would shock the world." "That's a painting of what is known as the Chios massacre." "That's brutal." "I mean this painting just shows the streets littered with dead bodies." "On the left page is a diary entry written by somebody who witnessed the massacre." ""The Turkish troops burn, enslave, massacre." "Horror dominates in the city, heartbreak in the countryside" "The roads are full of dead bodies." "The pasha's order is not to leave any Greek alive."" "Jesus..." "The Chios massacre raged for weeks." "When it was all over tens of thousands of Greeks had been slaughtered." "We wondered about the fate of Tina's third great grandfather–and once again, we found a key piece of information long buried in a local archive." "Oh, my goodness." ""After the massacre, Stephanos Hirtoularis moved from Chios to Petrina."" "He made it!" "Your third great-grandfather Stephanos survived the Chios massacre." "Wow." " It's miracle." " Yeah." "That's pretty amazing." "He then moved to Petrina, and that would explain how your family first ended up there." "Incredible." "The horrors of the Chios massacre made headlines across the globe." "Awakening the international community to the plight of the Greek people." "England, France, and Russia all rushed to support the revolutionary army." "With their help, the Greeks overthrew their oppressors." "By 1832, after nearly four hundred years of Ottoman rule, Greece became an independent nation." "In Petrina, we found a document listing the patriots from the village who joined the revolution." "The list contained a name I knew Tina would want to see." "This document was compiled in the year 1844." "And it listed the men who served with distinction in the Greek revolution." ""Stephanos Hirtoularis, bronze medal for military service."" "After surviving the massacre in his homeland, your third great-grandfather turned right around and joined the revolution." "And he fought so valiantly that he earned a medal." " That's great." " Just think," "Stephanos saw all of his neighbors killed." "He made it off this island of devastation." "He then risked his life, and he's victorious, and he gets a medal." "Tremendous." "Yeah." "I feel a renewed pride in this side of the family because I've never known any of this." " You descend from a patriot." " I descend from a patriot." "That's awesome." "Like Tina, David Sedaris had no idea that his ancestors had personally experienced terrible tragedy during the Greek revolution." "David's direct family connection to Greece was through his grandmother, Adamandia Thomakou, who came to live with David's family after her husband passed away." "But Amamandia spoke almost no English." "So although she lived in the Sedaris home while David was growing up, she remained something of an enigma." "Her room was like um..." "Greece." "You know, she had like, you had to step up because she had so many carpets on the floor of her room." "And it smelled like another country." "I remember when my grandmother first moved down with us we were in church." "The service was all in Greek and we really didn't understand what was being said." "My grandmother, obviously she was moved somehow by what the priest was saying." "So she goes to the aisle, she throws her cane down she crawls on her hands and knees..." " Wow." " she goes up the aisle, and she grabs the priest's feet, and is kissing, kissing his feet." "We were like, "Did you have to crawl?"" "You know, I mean, like, couldn't you have walked?" "Although David was never really able to hold a conversation with his grandmother, he did learn that both she and her husband–Heracles Sedaris–had been born in the Greek village of Apidia." "This turned out to be a crucial detail for our researchers." "They discovered that branches of the Sedaris family live in Apidia today, distant cousins whom David never knew he had." "They helped us trace their long lost cousin's family tree back further than I ever thought possible for a Greek person." " Take a look at this family tree." " Okay." "Start with you at the bottom... and then your father, your grandfather... going all the way up to your third great-grandfather Elias Sedaris, born about 1780 in Apidia." "Wow!" "1780." "Gosh." " Have you ever heard about Elias Sedaris?" " No." "Since Elias was born in 1780, he would have been 41 when the Greeks revolted against Turkish rule." "Tina Fey's family had been transformed by the war." "I wondered if David's family had also been touched by the fighting." "To find out, we turned to one of the only remaining sources of documents for this turbulent period in Greek history:" "the Greek military archives." "In a field report, we learned that soon after the revolt began, the Ottomans sent a general named Ibrahim Pasha to crush the Greek insurgents." "This report described the horrors of Ibrahim's campaign... but it also included a startling detail." ""The fire Ibrahim brought and brings each time he moves his troops... are wretched for someone to tell and hear." "Having burnt down all the villages, he settled in Apidia, where he spent the night."" "Ibrahim made his way to your ancestors' hometown." "Wow..." "When Ibrahim Pasha arrived in the hometown of David's third great-grandfather Elias, he showed no mercy." "Ibrahim decimated the village." "Many of Apidia's residents fled for their lives." "We wondered if David's third great-grandfather and his family survived the carnage." "Then we found something shocking." "David, this is a list of captives taken by Ibrahim Pasha from the region where your ancestors lived." ""Anastasoula, daughter of Elias Sedaris." "Age when captured: 20."" "Anastasoula Sedaris, your second great-grandaunt, was taken as a slave of Ibrahim Pasha in 1825." "Really?" "Gosh." "I would imagine that a girl that age at that time would have been married at 20 you know and maybe even had children." "I bet she was." "And to be torn away from them..." "I had no idea." "We tried to figure out what happened to David's second great-grand aunt, Anastoulou." "Unfortunately, the paper trail ran cold." "But we did find out that many of the women whom Pasha captured were sold as sex slaves." "So it's safe to assume that David's ancestor never saw her family again." "Your family not only sacrificed for Greek independence, they gave a daughter, literally." "To lose somebody by death, you know death that you know of is one thing." "But if they're brought off to become a slave amongst the people who you hate more than anything must be like a just a kind of an agony that just never dies." " Oh, my god." " That touches me in a very real way." "Just like my other guests, George Stephanopoulos knew little about his Greek ancestors." "But he did know something about the world they left behind." "When George was nine years old, he visited Saravali, the hometown of his maternal grandmother, Margarite Nicolopoulos." "George spent an entire summer in Saravali, living with his distant cousins." "I especially remember getting off the train, and seeing like thirty people greet us at the train, and they all looked like us." "And that's the first time you get that feeling of, "Wow, you're part of something a lot bigger."" "They grew these little, tiny grapes." "These, tiny, tiny, very sweet grapes." "And that was breakfast uh every morning." "Um, very hot, fresh bread out of the oven basically spread with very sweet, little, fresh grapes." " Oh man, that sounds good." " It was good." "But while George's cousins taught him their traditional family recipes, they didn't pass down any stories about the ancestors of his grandmother Margarite, so George was especially eager to learn about her family." "We turned to the local archives." "As is often the case in Greece, vital records only went back to the 1950's." "But thankfully, we were able to unearth a document that proved pivotal in reconstructing George's family tree." "We found these municipal rolls in the Greek state archives of Patras." "Wow, you guys do your homework." "They cover the town of Saravali, where your grandmother Margarite was born." "Can you tell me whose name that you see there?" ""Konstantinos Nicolopoulos." That must be her father." "Yeah, Konstantinos is Margarite's father and your great-grandfather." ""Children:" "Eleni, Ioannis, Theodoros, Marina, Michail, and Vasiliki."" "Now, those are your grandmother margarite's sibs, your great-aunts and uncles." "Wow." "Not long after George's grandmother Margarite left for the United" "States in 1931, life for her family would take a terrible turn." "With the outbreak of World War II, Nazi Germany invaded Greece." "The ensuing occupation was devastating." "The Germans quickly seized control of the country's food supply." "In just a few years, more than a quarter of a million Greeks died of starvation." "Have you heard any stories about what it was like for your family to live in Greece during World War II?" "Not too many, no." "I know it was tough." "And I think for a lot of Greeks, that was something they wanted to put behind them." "It turns out that George's ancestors had good reason to shut the door on their past." "In January of 1944," "German soldiers converged on their hometown of Saravali." "And this wasn't just a routine military operation;" "the Nazi had come with a very specific purpose." ""In January 1944, the Germans blockaded Saravali and arrested all the men of the village and threatened to kill them all together." "The Germans kept 16 people from their captives." "Among these 16 captives there were Kostis Nicolopoulos, Ioannis" "Nicolopoulos, Mihalis Nicolopoulos, Marina Nicolopoulos."" " You know who that Kostis is?" " Well, that's my great-grandfather." "That's your great-grandfather." "And these...that's his kids." "Yeah, he was taken captive by the Germans with several of his children." "Wow." "That's incredible." "It must have been terrifying for George's family to be held in a Nazi prison, knowing that at any moment they could be murdered." "I wondered: why had the Nazis targeted Saravali?" "And why had George's ancestors in particular been taken captive?" "It turns out that the region was a hotbed of resistance against the German occupation." "A place where Greeks conducted a persistent guerrilla war against the Nazis, ambushing patrols and bases, and bombing communication lines." "And we discovered that George's ancestors were among these heroic freedom fighters." "George, we found out that your family was deeply involved with the resistance." " They were patriots." " Wow!" "It makes me feel humble because I would hope I would do the same thing in their circumstance." "George's great-grandfather and his children were ultimately released from prison." "But their ordeal didn't end." "Residents of their hometown who had collaborated with the Nazis enacted vengeance." "Several months after your family was taken captive, a group of Greek collaborators burned down the homes of those who supported the resistance in Saravali." "So the Nicolopoulos family home was completely destroyed." "Wow." " It was burned down, by their own neighbors." " That's incredible." "Now, how could this story have disappeared?" "I don't know!" "It's hard to believe that something in some ways that recent could be lost." "Maybe sometimes the survivors of something painful just want to move on you know they just wanna walk away and wipe it away." "And this wasn't the only family story that had been lost." "As we continued to trace George's family on his mother's side, we discovered that like Tina Fey and David Sedaris," "George had an ancestor who had played a perilous role in the Greek war for independence." "George's fourth great-grandfather, Georgios Tsafoulias, was born in 1785 in the Village of Vytina, which lies in the mountains of southern Greece." "And when Georgios was growing up, these rugged mountains provided an ideal hideout for a legendary band of Greeks known as the Klephts." "To the Ottoman Turks who ruled over Greece, the Klephts were bandits who wreaked havoc." "But to the Greeks, they were Robin Hoods." "You ever hear of the Klephts?" "Yeah." "I remember hearing the word when I was growing up." "But were they bandits or were they protectors?" "Well, it depends." "If you were an Ottoman, they were bandits." "Right." "In 1804, when Georgios was just 19, the Turks decided that they had had enough of the Klephts, so they took action." "They assassinated one of the ringleaders of the band, a famous captain named Zacharias Pantelakos." "We discovered that this assassination would have a profound impact on George's ancestor." "Now, George, this is amazing." "We found this passage in the local history of Patras." "Could you please read the translated section?" ""Georgios Tsafoulias, fellow of Captain Zaharias fled in 1806, during the persecution of the Klephts."" "Your fourth great-grandfather, Georgios, was a comrade of Captain Zaharias, one of the most famous Klephts in all of Greek history." "George, that means your fourth great-grandfather, was a Klepht." " Wow, and that's why he had to run away." " Oh, yeah." "We don't know how long George's fourth great-grandfather was forced to live in hiding." "But by 1821, 15 years after Georgios had fled his hometown, the Klephts had regrouped." "They infiltrated the countryside, fanning the flames of the Greek war for independence." "And many would become leaders of the revolution." "Evidence suggests that George's ancestor played a crucial role." ""After the revolution, Georgios was to receive a national endowment."" "The national endowment was a piece of land awarded to Georgios for his service to the Greek nation." "That means that he served in the war for independence." " Wow." " It's kind of thrilling." "And it makes me proud to know that you know my family did the right thing when it counted." "We'd reunited Tina Fey, David Sedaris, and George" "Stephanopoulos with many of their long lost Greek ancestors, and discovered that all three of their families had made enormous sacrifices for the freedom of their homeland." "But like many Greek Americans, both Tina and David have roots that connect them to another part of Europe." "And it turns out that each of them has ancestors who also played a dramatic role in another struggle for independence." "We had traced the Greek side of Tina's family all the way back to her third great-grandfather," "Stefanos Hirtoularious, a decorated hero in the Greek revolution." "When we turned to Tina's father's side of the family, we were able to piece together a paper trail that led to London, England, all the way back to 1744." "Now, this is a baptismal record." " Look at that handwriting." " Wow." ""John Hewson, son of Peter and Catherine."" "Tina, you're looking at the document on which the name of your fifth great-grandfather is written." "He was born in England more than 30 years before the American revolution." "I had no idea we had any family in England." " Really?" " Yeah." "Please turn the page." "Oh...my...god..." "That is John Hewson, your fifth great-grandfather." " That looks so much like my dad." " Really?" "It...yes...that looks like my dad." "That's... my uh...that...yeah...yes... that's bananas." "I always would see that era of portrait in a museum and feel that it was sort of comical because they're so white and kind of britishy..." "You said, "Look at that ugly white man!"" ""Look at that pasty old white man." "Oh, wait, that's me!"" "As a young man, Tina's fifth great-grandfather John Hewson learned the art of textile manufacturing." "And he quickly rose through the ranks at London's leading producer of high end quilts." "Before long, Tina's ancestor took his business to the colony of Pennsylvania, at the invitation of one of its most notable citizens." "This is a letter dated July 25, 1773." "Would you please read the transcribed section?" ""This will be delivered to you by John Hewson and Nathaniel Norgrove, who are sober industrious young men." "I therefore recommend them to your civilities and advice, as they will be quite strangers there."" "So the person who wrote this letter is basically saying, "Look out for my man, John Hewson," right?" "Well, do you want to find out who wrote it?" "Turn the page." " What?" " Come on!" ""B. Franklin."" "Benjamin Franklin wrote that letter on behalf of your ancestor." "Wow." "And he was saying, "They're coming and just take care of them,"" "Take care of these people." "Wow, that's cool." "And he had to be a very busy man to be writing that letter at the time." "Oh, indeed." "This letter raised a lot of questions." "Why in the world would Benjamin Franklin himself write on behalf of Tina's ancestor?" "It turns out, that in the late 18th century America had almost no textile factories." "It was almost totally dependent on imports from England." "Benjamin Franklin recognized the importance of developing homegrown industry, so he recruited Tina's fifth great-grandfather." "In 1774, with Franklin smoothing the path, John Hewson opened a quilting factory in Kensington, Pennsylvania." "And he quickly established himself as the master quilter of the thirteen colonies." "Oh, beautiful." "That's a collage of your fifth great-grandfather's artwork." " Wow." " You see this?" " It hangs at the Met." " That's at the Met?" "Wow." "That's amazing" "Tina to this day, textile historians study your ancestor's work." " Wow." " I mean he's a big deal." " That's really cool." " Yeah." "I tried to make a quilt once." "I didn't finish." "So maybe you didn't get the quilting gene." "I didn't get it." "I didn't get it." "I didn't get the quilting gene." "By 1775, John Hewson had settled into his new life as the colonies' pre-eminent quilt maker." "But his adopted homeland was about to be turned upside down." "On April 19th of that year, battles between colonists and British troops erupted in Lexington and Concord, sparking the American revolution." "Since John Hewson had only recently immigrated from England, we wondered which side he took in the war." "So we scoured the revolutionary war records at the national archives, where we found our answer." ""Full name of soldier:" "Captain John Hewson."" "Captain John Hewson." "Your fifth great-grandfather created and led a militia of men who worked at his factory." "And they served as patriots in the fight against the British." " What?" "So many revolutionaries." " Yeah." "Doesn't it make it seem like we're not really doing anything important anymore?" "These people were really taking huge risks." "Like Tina, half of David's family is not of Greek origin, his mother's side." "We had traced his Greek ancestors on his father's side all the way back to David's third great grandfather, Elias Sedaris." "But the origins David's maternal ancestors had always remained a mystery." "David grew up with only a vague sense that they came from somewhere in the United Kingdom." "You know, England, Scotland, there was never really a location." "It was just, like, a tragic country where people couldn't handle their alcohol." "But when we began researching David's mother's side, we found that her family had been in this country for generations." "We followed one of her family lines back to Mansfield, Connecticut in the mid-18th century." "Now, David, we found this in the Mansfield, Connecticut in their town records." "Could you please read the transcribed section?" ""Nathan, son to Samuel Wood was born April 16 a.d. 1761."" "That is the actual record of the birth of your fourth great-grandfather." "Wow." "You have deep roots in American history." "That's absolutely fascinating to me." "I had no idea." "When David's fourth great-grandfather, Nathan, was born," "Mansfield was a sleepy rural town, home to a small population of farmers and millworkers." "But when Nathan was just 14, the colonies revolted." "Soon after the outbreak of the war, a ruthless British general William Tryon led his troops on a scorched earth campaign through Nathan's home state of Connecticut." "As Tryon's soldiers marched closer and closer to Mansfield, Nathan took a courageous step." "This is a payroll for Captain Nathan Wales' company in Colonel Latimer's regiment from the state of Connecticut." " Whose name do you see there?" " Nathan Wood." "Your fourth great-grandfather, Nathan Wood, joined the patriot army when he was sixteen years old." "Wow." "I have to say that the American revolution always felt so distant to me because I always thought my family wasn't even here yet." "I didn't..." "I had no idea." "Hoping to find out what Nathan did during the war, we pored through his military file." "We discovered that on October 7th, 1777, David's fourth great-grandfather fought in the battle of Saratoga." "The battle of Saratoga was extremely bloody, thousands died in close, hand to hand combat." "Nathan barely survived." ""He was wounded severely by the point of a bayonet a little below his naval and he killed three with the point of his bayonet in less than two minutes from the time he was wounded."" "Your fourth great-grandfather was wounded in combat." "He was stabbed in the stomach by a bayonet." "And he actually killed three soldiers while he was injured." "Can you imagine actually killing another human being?" "Not a stranger." "Um, no." "I mean doesn't that seem like that has to fundamentally change a person, to take someone's life." "David's ancestor was no doubt altered by his experience in the war, but thanks in part to his bravery, the patriots won the battle of Saratoga leading to the surrender of General Burgoyne's entire army." "The victory is often cited as the turning point in the war." "The moment when America first gained the upper hand in its struggle for freedom." "Does it make you feel proud to know that you have an ancestor who fought to make America possible?" "It's a fantastic feeling." "Well, you are now eligible to become a son of the American revolution." " Really?" " Yeah." "Would you like that?" "I think I would." "That wasn't all we were able to uncover on David's mother's side." "As we continued to follow the paper trail, we found that her more distant ancestors had indeed come from England." "In fact, we were able to trace them all the way back to the mid-16th century." "Take a look at this." "We were able to trace your mother's ancestors back to John Denyson, born about 1540." "Wow." "What's it like to see the names of all these ancestors stretching this far back in time?" "I've got to tell you, it's really kind of beautiful, just to read their names, because isn't that what you want?" "Just to be remembered in some way, you know even if it's going to be your name was read on a television show 500 years after you die." "I'll take it." "You know, I'll take that." "We had reached the end of the paper trail for all three of our guests." "And it was time to see what DNA analysis could reveal about their more distant ancestry." "Genetic genealogy allows us to look back more than five hundred years..." "And for people with Greek roots, this can be a fascinating experience, since Greece has long been a melting pot for people of both European and Middle Eastern backgrounds." "George Stephanopoulos–who is Greek on both sides of his family tree, was eager to see how this history played out in his DNA." "Woa!" "Boy, I'm as Greek as it gets!" "You are as Greek as it gets!" "You are 98.9 percent European, my brother." " This is surprising to me." " You're a white man." " Yeah." " You are." "I mean, I guess I sort of knew that but I didn't know it to this extent." "Tina fey was in for a different kind of surprise..." " You want to see what the results are?" " Yes!" "A hundred percent Chinese." "Turn the page." "Can you read the results?" " Oh, I am a little Asian." " Yes, six percent Asian." " Yes!" " I mean, that's incredible." "That is new information." "Tina's results are actually not unusual for a Greek person." "Her Asian DNA didn't originate in what we think of today as Asia." "It came from the Middle East and the Caucasus's." "For centuries, these parts of the world, like Greece, had been part of the Ottoman Empire." "Now, Tina, can you see what it says?" ""Three percent Caucasus" and three percent middle east." "It's likely that DNA from Turkish people entered into your family tree." "That's crazy." "And remember, your ancestral homeland of Chios is only 4 miles off the coast of Turkey." "So there were a lot of exchange of genes." "Yes." "Hopefully willingly." "Probably not always." "Pobably not." "Yeah." "Absolutely." "When we examined David's results, we found that he also had a small percentage of Asian DNA." "And when we broke down the source of his Asian ancestry, it led to a familiar part of the world." " Could you please turn the page?" " Wow, look at that." "What's it say?" "Four percent..." "Caucasus." "David, it's likely that you have multiple ancestors with distant ancestry from the Caucasus region." "And the Caucasus includes...guess what?" " Those Turks?" " The Turks." "The blood of my enemies flows in my veins?" "That four percent is my self-hatred ratio." "For each of our guests, we'd overcome huge gaps in the paper trail and found a way to unearth stories that had long been buried by war and family trauma." "I wish every Greek-American could take a similar journey." "For all too many, their family stories remain shrouded in mystery." "But even if their ancestors' stories have faded into the past," "Greek Americans continue to carry forward their ancient traditions." "The stories may have been lost." "But Greek heritage lives on." "I don't remember not being proud of being Greek." "Even if you don't know the stories, you know the feelings that are transmitted from generation to generation." "You're part of a... a large chain." "You're very small, but you're part of something very big." "When we started researching this program, I assumed we could trace David," "Tina, and George's ancestors all the way back to Plato and Aristotle." "Unfortunately, tragic historical events have intervened to make that impossible." "Nevertheless, every Greek-American is an inheritor of one of the world's greatest civilizations." "Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for three new guests on another episode of Finding Your Roots."