Henry Lewis Gates hosts Faces of America on PBS

Sorry, I just got interested in it. Meryl Streep's forebears stretch back in the US to 1645, and were friends of Wm. Penn, none of which she knew (that branch were named Crispin). They began in Rhode Island and then moved to Pennsylvania under Penn's patronage. Stephen Colbert's ancestry is mostly Irish, but his earliest findable ancestors are Ledermans from Machstahl in the Alsatian Rhineland, and were Lutheran not RC. Ben Franklin spoke out strongly against the Germanization of Pennsylvania, anti-immigrant sentiments run back that far, and of course back to the dawn of human history.

Boy does Professor Gates come across differently than he has been portrayed.

Oh, and the earliest familial arrival in North America? Eva Longoria whose forebear had arrived, at age 11, in 1603.

Courtesy of his family history, Yo Yo Ma's ancestry goes back to the Ming Dynasty 15th Century. His 7th Great Uncle compiled the Ancestry in multiple volumes in 1720. Masses of family histories were lost during the Cultural Revolution, but the Ma family history had been stuffed into a wall and built over long before that period. When subsequent rebuilding occurred, they were discovered.

Chinese proverb, "It takes 3 generations of wealth to produce an artist or musician."

Rob