Finding Your Roots is back and delivering just as many jaw-dropping revelations as ever. The Season 11 premiere, “Larger than Life,” began with a genealogical study of actress Amanda Seyfried, which revealed that her father’s mysterious family history was filled with some serious scandal.
Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. revealed to the Emmy-winning actress that his team traced her paternal heritage back four generations to a man named John Peter Ebert, who’d been born in Germany in 1844 and immigrated to the United States, where he settled down in Allentown, Pennsylvania — just a few miles from where Seyfried grew up.
After initially working as a baker’s apprentice and then as a baker for a public home for the poor, he had his own shop by age 35 and shared four children with his wife, whose name, perhaps not coincidentally, was also Amanda.
As uplifting as his personal success story was, though, there was a dark twist in the life of Seyfried’s third great-grandfather: He was shot three times on the back steps of his shop, shortly after shutting down the lights.
“Poor Amanda and those kids… It’s weird. I don’t know him, but he’s family, and I’m just like, ‘How dare they. Find justice,’” Seyfried said in response to that revelation.
RelatedDo ‘Finding Your Roots’ Celeb Guests Give DNA? Questions Answered About the PBS Series
As they tend to do on this prized PBS original, things only got more complicated from there. The criminal investigations of John Ebert’s murder revealed he’d actually fathered an illegitimate son named Herbert, who soon became the prime suspect in the case. A newspaper clipping revealed that when the coroner asked Amanda Ebert why her husband left the poorhouse 25 years before, she simply couldn’t say the answer to that question — presumably out of shame.
Later, Herbert Ebert emerged with an alibi, revealing that he only learned of his true parentage thanks to the investigation and suspicion of him.
“Soap opera!” Seyfried exclaimed in response. “Oh, these poor people.”
Gates’ report then went on to show that the mother of Herbert was just 15 years old when she gave birth to him, which made the scandal even more unsettling, as she’d given the baby up for adoption and started a new life with her husband, who then found out about her secret as a result of the coverage.
“So, so twisted. To harbor that, to know you had this kid out in the world, horrible, hard,” Seyfried said. “It’s just gotta feel like a knife in the stomach being twisted every day.”
Perhaps making matters worse, all the secrets that were exposed were ultimately for naught, as the true murderer had nothing to do with Ebert’s family history. Instead, he was killed in an attempted robbery by a neighbor who had nothing to do with his secret love child, his mother, or his new widow.
For Seyfried, the story proved that he was “human” and made “choices” to protect his family, however wrong they might’ve been.
Things ended on a sunnier note for the actress, though, as Gates revealed that they were able to trace her parental lineage back all the way to the 16th century, even showing an ancient wedding certificate from her 10th great-grandfather and -mother.
“It makes me feel very grounded, a part of something,” she said of learning her ancestral heritage in the town of Grein, Germany, praising the team for giving her the “gift” of all of this very personal research and discoveries about her father’s family.
She also learned that on her mother’s side, her third great-grandfather Peter Friesell, was a soldier for the Union army during the Civil War who survived a guerilla attack and kept his musical interests alive, even despite hearing loss.
Seyfried also got emotional when seeing pictures of her third great-grandparents who immigrated to the U.S. via a small ship, saying she was “grateful” for the risk they took in transporting seven children across the seas to create a new life.
Finding Your Roots, Tuesdays, 8/7c, PBS
More Headlines:
‘Finding Your Roots’: Lea Solanga Makes an Emotional Discovery About Her Dad‘Will Trent’: Ramón Rodríguez Reveals Why Gina Rodriguez’s Marion Is the ‘Opposite’ of Angie‘Finding Your Roots’: Amanda Seyfried Discovers a Family History Filled With Murder & Scandal‘Jeopardy!’s Second Chance Player Zoe Grobman Addresses Daily Double Mispronunciation‘Chicago Med’ Midseason Premiere: Steven Weber Teases ‘Horror Movie’ as Archer Tries to Save Goodwin
