"Who Do You Think You Are? - Review"

'


Kim Cattrall is like many people who may not be interested in following their ancestry back to the Civil War or Revolutionary War, but rather want to know about one person in the family. Usually it is a mystery or has been a family secret. In Kim's case it was a mystery of 70 years ago when her grandfather abandoned his wife & three daughters. Kim's mother was the oldest daughter at age 8. They never saw or heard of him again. They did not even really know what he looked like. The 25 Feb 2011 episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" NBC TV show was one of the best in my opinion and Kim used a lot of genealogical methods to track down her missing grandfather.

Kim found that her grandfather married another woman less than one year after he had left his family. From this she was able to use city directories and church records to find where he had gone & to track down some living children of the second marriage. This was a very sad story as Kim's family lived a very rough childhood, while her grandfather & his second family lived quite well.

My wife had a mystery that plagued her all of her life, but when she was 42 years of age, we found her birth parents' names and found them in Evansville city directories the year of her birth. Then we simply followed them back until her father was living without his wife. Then we looked for a marriage application and found it that provided her maiden name with his & her parents' names. Then we checked the Browning Obituary microfilm for deaths and found both of her parents listing their surviving children. Back to the city directories tracking down my wife's siblings... then we made a phone call and connected with all of her sisters & brothers. From her siblings (all older than her, she was the baby of 7 kids) she learned of the circumstances of her adoption! What she wanted to know her entire life was now known.

If you missed this episode or any of the others of season one or two, go to NBC.com to view the entire episodes.

- Review written by JGWest