Friday night is the season three premiere of NBC's “Who Do You Think You Are?” The series follows celebrities as they uncover their family history. We decided do the same thing with Tim!
The Wisconsin Historical Society was able to track Tim's family history back 10 generations and that was just the beginning.
Tim found out his family has a long history dating back to a relative who fought in the revolutionary war.
Starting is easy.
“You start with names, dates, and places,” said Lori Bessler with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Tim is going through old family pictures with his mom.
“This is a picture of me and grandmom when I graduated high school,” said Tim's mom Joan.
Tim and Joan are looking for clues and gathering names and dates.
“Each one of these people have a story to tell,” said Bessler.
Anything to help them link all of this to their ancestors.
“It's a big puzzle, it starts out as a puzzle then it becomes more personal as you see the stories and connections that you make,” added Bessler.
Lori has been following family bloodlines since the fourth grade. Today, she's giving Tim, Tim's dad Dave, and his sister Jill a peek into their family history
“Our collection is phenomenal, it's one of the top five genealogical collections in the country,”
Here's what she found: almost all of Tim's relatives were born and raised in the Philadelphia area.
“And I was amazed to see how many people were still in Philadelphia, you know generations back,” said Bessler.
Lori followed one line of Tim's family tree all the way back to the Revolutionary War. She linked it through his great-grandfather Nathan Benner. Nathan left Tim's family for reasons unknown.
“It's kinda strange to find something about a grandfather I never even knew and a guy I kind of hold in disdain in a sense because I feel he abandoned my grandmother and my mom,” said Dave Elliott, Tim's dad.
“It's an emotional journey, it's emotional for me and I'm not even blood to you guys!” said Bessler.
Then there's this. It's a copy of the passenger list from the S.S. California on March 5, 1910. The passenger ship sailed from Glasgow, Scotland to the Port of Philadelphia. First on the list, Tim's great-great grandfather Robert Elliott.
“Which is huge to have the kind of link to the old country,” said Bessler.
The Wisconsin Historical Society can trace your family history too.
“We will help people go from step to step, you can come here we have reference librarians who do this all day with people,”
They'll give you the tools all you need is the desire to dig up the past.
NBC's “Who Do You Think You Are?” premieres Friday night at 7 pm. They'll be looking into actor Martin Sheen's family history.
If you want to learn how to trace your family history, the Wisconsin Historical Society offers classes and workshops held in the spring and fall.
Visit http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/genealogy/ for more information!
