Gates: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr., welcome to Finding Your Roots.

In this episode, we'll meet comedian Andy Samberg and author George R.R.

Martin.

Two men whose lives have been marked by deep family mysteries... Do you think she kept that secret to herself her whole life?

Martin: I don't know, I know that people were pretty good at keeping secrets in those days.

Samberg: Even if we found out something horrific, it would still be exciting to just know.

Gates: To answer their questions we've used every tool available.

Genealogists helped stitch together the past from the paper trail their ancestors left behind... Samberg: What are the odds of that?!

Gates: While DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets buried deep in the past.

Martin: Ok, that's shocking.

Gates: And we've compiled it all into a book of life... Martin: It's uprooting my world here.

It doesn't make any sense here.

Gates: Yes.

Martin: I'm descended from mystery!

Gates: A record of all of our discoveries.

So you know what that means?

Samberg: That you maybe found my mother's birth family.

Gates: Andy and George grew up in families where secrets and social conventions obscured their ancestry behind thick veils.

In this episode, we're going to lift those veils.

Martin: That's pretty amazing.

Gates: Reconstructing their family trees, and showing them for the first time where their roots actually run.

(Theme music plays) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Gates: Beneath his calm, almost nerd-like exterior, Andy Samberg is a comedic cyclone.

Gates: An utterly compelling blend of goofy charm and surreal brilliance.

It's a talent that has catapulted him from viral videos... Samberg: Chroni-what-cles of Narnia.

Five felonies in one week.

Light em up Boyle.

Gates: To an Emmy-award winning sitcom.

And he's been honing that talent for as long as he can remember.

Stretching back to when he began watching the iconic show that would make him famous.

Man: Live from New York it's Saturday Night!

Samberg: My parents thought I was asleep.

I would sneak past their bedroom into our little, like, TV room that we had and I because I wanted to watch WWF Wrestling.

Gates: Right.

Samberg: And it was on once a month, and I didn't understand how to read the TV guide in the paper, so I just checked every Saturday at 11:30, and most weeks it was SNL, and by chance I was like, "Oh, I like this more than wrestling."

Gates: Oh that's great.

Samberg: There were a lot of references that would go over my head, um, but what I understood instinctively was that it was bananas, you know.

Gates: Yeah.

Samberg: That it was these adults putting a lot of energy, and time into a dumb idea with no purpose.

Gates: With no purpose... Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: And often no meaning.

Samberg: Yes.

Yes, which to me was like, yes finally.

Gates: While Saturday Night Live may have started out as a secret that Andy kept from his parents, it would soon become a shared pleasure... Church Lady: Well isn't that special.

Gates: And they would be the first people he called when he was cast on the show.

Samberg: I called, I remember they picked it up.

They said, hello.

I said mom, dad, they said yeah.

I said I got it and I had to hold the phone away because they were both like yaaaaah!

I could hear it echoing in the kitchen through the phone, um, and that made me feel very emotional for sure.

They were...they were over the moon.

Gates: Did they encourage you to... Did they ever discourage you let me put it this way, um, from pursuing an artistic profession?

Did they ever say you know, you're really funny but it's going to be a hard life?

Samberg: My father would say, you know, it doesn't happen for everybody.

Just, you know, being cautious, and he was correct.

I mean I've known a ton of people that were really funny that tried and it didn't go how they wanted it to go.

I think I have been incredibly fortunate and incredibly lucky in my career.

Gates: Yeah.

Samberg: But in general no.

You know, it was something that I was into so early that I think...they've never said this, but I would imagine they understood there was no stopping me from trying.

Gates: Andy is extremely affable.

I could have talked to him for hours about almost anything.

But unlike most of our guests, he'd come to me with a very specific request.

His mother Marjorie Samberg was adopted at birth.

And she's spent her whole life wondering about her biological parents.

She's tried to find them multiple times she even hired a private investigator.

Andy is hoping that we'll succeed where so many others had failed.

Samberg: It's something that I really wished for my mother, because I know that it would be something to give her peace about it, just to know.

Gates: How important is it to you?

Samberg: Well, my mother is basically the kindest person I've ever known and many people would corroborate that.

Um, and when I was asked about doing this the first call I made was to my mom, and I said, I know that you've always been curious, there's a chance they could figure this out.

I don't usually do stuff like this because I generally don't like putting too much personal stuff out there.

Gates: Right.

Samberg: And so I would absolutely not even consider it a little bit unless it's something you want to do.

Gates: And what'd she say?

Samberg: She said let me think about it and then she called me back pretty quickly after and said I think we should go for it.

Gates: So you think it's important to your mom.

Samberg: I know it is.

She's very, very hopeful to find out... She's been wanting to know for, you know, 60 plus years.

Gates: My second guest is one of the most beloved writers of our time: George R.R.

Martin, the creative force behind the phenomenally successful HBO series Game of Thrones.

Daenerys: Dracarys Gates: Over the course of five novels a mythical cycle collectively known as a song of ice and fire Martin has conjured a world of wonders.

Part Shakespeare, part Tolkein, filled with unforgettable characters, fantastical creatures, and intense conflict.

It's a staggering feat of imagination.

But the visionary who dreamed it all up comes from a surprisingly mundane place: a housing project in Bayonne, New Jersey where his horizons were extremely narrow.

Martin: So I lived on 1st Street and I went to school on 5th Street.

And those five blocks were pretty much the world, you know?

Gates: Yeah.

Martin: We had no car.

We were poor.

We never had a car in my entire life.

So we didn't go down to the Jersey Shore for vacations like other people did.

You know, maybe we got to Staten Island, like, once a year to go to the Staten Island zoo.

Even though I could see it, I could see it from my living room windows.

Uhm, there were ferries that went to and fro, I could see the Bayonne Bridge.

But we never went there.

Gates: Right.

Martin: But I was reading comic books and I was reading books.

And that's how I... I got outside of the five blocks I lived in, in Bayonne.

I couldn't go to Staten Island, it was too far away, but I could go to Mars.

Gates: Sure.

Martin: I could go to middle Earth.

I could go to all these incredible places, Gotham City and Metropolis, so... Gates: A time and space traveler, right?

Martin: Yeah a kid who lived very much in my imagination.

Gates: Reading wasn't the only thing that inspired George.

His imagination was also stirred by his paternal grandmother a woman named Grace Martin.

Grace was a fixture in George's childhood treating him with kindness when others found him shy, or simply strange.

Martin: My grandma Grace was the best grandmother, you know, a kid could ever...ever have.

Gates: Oh, yeah.

Martin: She had a jar to reward me to go to school.

So every day I went to school she put a penny in this jar... Gates: Oh, she did?

Martin: And I would get it when I graduated from, uh, grade school.

Gates: Oh, that's cool.

Martin: But if I was sick and missed school I didn't get a penny in the jar for that day.

In those days a penny actually meant something.

Gates: I know.

It's true.

Bazooka bubble gum.

Martin: So she was, ugh, she was really, really kind and good.

Gates: George's grandmother was also at the center of a mystery.

A mystery that shaped George's youth and has since colored his writing.

Grace lived with her mother and an elderly aunt because her husband Louis had abandoned her, leaving the family wondering who Louis actually was.

Martin: I met my grandpa Louis when I was a little kid, maybe three, four times, you know?

I have one real memory of him you know, throwing me up in the air and catching me, throwing me up in the air, which I found terrifying.

Uh, it was not a...a favorite memory here.

Uh, 'cause I wasn't quite sure he was going to catch me, you know.

This strange man who I've only seen three times is... Is tossing me around.

And of course, since he had left my grandma Grace he wasn't spoken about favorably in his family.

Gates: Right.

Martin: Or his family legends weren't told.

And, uh... Gates: So, Louis was not fondly remembered.

Martin: Not really.

Uhm, he married another woman except Grace never gave him a divorce.

She was a good catholic and didn't believe in divorce so no divorce for Louis so his whole other family was, you know, what in Game of Thrones we would call bastards.

Gates: Yeah, right.

Out of wedlock, correct?

Martin: Out of wedlock, yes.

But he had a whole other wife, uh, and he had children with her who also lived in Bayonne, but it's like we lived...we lived downtown and they lived uptown and, you know, that was like a different world.

Gates: So Game of Thrones is a nod to your father's branch of your family tree.

Martin: I don't know about that!

But, yeah!

Gates: George and Andy come from very different worlds yet they're bound by a common experience.

Both know nothing about entire lines of their ancestry, and both have grown accustomed to questions surrounding their roots that most of us never have to contemplate.

It was time to provide some answers.

We started with Andy... Now, your mom told us, that she's been actively searching for her birth parents since the '80s.

Has that search been painful for your family?

Samberg: Not particularly for the family.

I think each time she's tried, she's somewhere gotten her hopes up and then had to feel great disappointment.

But it hasn't been like this huge spike in the family every time it happens.

I think it's more something she's been going through personally.

Gates: Despite the many disappointments, Marjorie's efforts had yielded a few clues.

Most notably, a letter that she received from her adoption agency in 1989.

It describes Marjorie's biological mother but only in the vaguest of terms because, by law, the agency wasn't permitted to release any information that could allow someone to identify her, even her own daughter.

Samberg: "Our records indicate that you were born to a 24-year-old single Jewish woman.

She was German-born and when she was 16 years old immigrated to this country with her parents and two younger sisters."

Gates: On one hand, this letter gave your mom a lot of information about her birth mother, but on the other none of it was enough to determine her identity.

That had to be very frustrating.

I mean it's like a torture that they do.

Uh.

Samberg: I think she was glad to know anything, but yes, I think it's a half measure.

Gates: Well if this letter were correct it gives us three key pieces of information.

One, your biological grandmother was born in 1922 in Germany.

Two, she was Jewish, and three, she immigrated to the united states sometime around 1938 with two younger sisters.

Okay?

Samberg: Yes.

Gates: Now, that seems like a lot of information, but you want to take a guess as to how many Jewish people immigrated that year, this is easy.

Samberg: Right.

Gates: Wild guess.

Samberg: Three million.

Gates: 85,000.

That's like three million.

Samberg: So, I over-guessed.

Gates: Yeah.

Yeah, you did.

But that's like but that's like three million, you know.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: Then we've got a pool of 85,000... Samberg: Wait.

Let me guess again: 20 billion.

Gates: That's what it's like.

But still, even with that letter, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Samberg: Yes.

That's a lot of people.

Gates: We would never have been able to identify Marjorie's mother from the letter alone.

Fortunately, there was another piece of evidence.

In 2015, Marjorie attempted yet again to learn her parents' identity, she reached out to the agency that held her adoption records.

And received a second letter just as vague as the first but containing one significant new detail.

Would you please read the highlighted section?

Samberg: Yes.

"Your maternal birth grandfather had three sisters.

One was a very famous singer and musician and lived in India."

Gates: This is an interesting fact don't you think?

I mean it's very unusual.

Samberg: Yes.

Gates: So if you had to guess, second-guess, how many German-Jewish singers lived in India in the 1940s?

Samberg: For dramas sake, I'm gonna guess one?

I just have the market cornered.

Gates: No you have no clue.

So we reached out to an expert on India's Jewish community.

You don't think about India as having Jews.

Right?

Samberg: Right.

Gates: But they did.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: And this expert steered us towards something very interesting.

Would you please turn the page?

This is the 1943 obituary of a woman named Gerda Philipsborn, who...you can see her picture on the left.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: And it was published in a paper called "The Jewish Advocate of Bombay".

Samberg: I love that.

Gates: Would you please read the highlighted text?

Samberg: The Jewish advocate of Bombay is the greatest.

Gates: Bombay.

Samberg: Okay.

Sorry.

Uh.

"She was born as the child of a rich and well-known Jewish family in Berlin and was brought up in comfort and luxury, apparently destined to become a society girl.

She disappointed her parents by not following their wishes but by starting a musical career.

She became a first-class opera singer and had great success."

That feels like a clue.

Gates: This name, Gerda Philipsborn was indeed a very tangible clue.

It seemed that she was Marjorie's great aunt, which would mean that she had a brother who came to America in 1938 with three daughters and one of those daughters was Marjorie's mother.

That was our theory anyway, now we needed to see if we could prove it.

Gates: Could you please turn the page?

This is an immigration document for Gerda's brother: Artur Philipsborn.

Samberg: Uh-huh.

"United states of America petition for naturalization.

My full, true, and correct name is Artur Philipsborn."

Gates: That's Gerda's brother, and those are Gerda's three nieces.

They were named Nora, born in 1927, Renate, born in 1923, and Ellen born in 1922.

Now, do you remember what year your mom's birth mother was born?

Samberg: I'd have to go back.

You want to just tell me.

Gates: Yeah.

She was born remember, it said 1922.

Samberg: Yeah.

Ellen, born in 1922.

Gates: Right.

Samberg: Holy (bleep)!

Gates: The pieces of our puzzle were coming together.

Ellen Philipsborn appeared to be Andy's biological grandmother.

But to be certain, we had to turn to DNA.

This was a serious challenge.

Ellen died in 2007 and she has no living descendants that we know of.

But we discovered that her sister Renate had a daughter who was still alive.

She's Ellen's niece and if our theory is right, that would make her Marjorie's first cousin, and she would share roughly 12% of Marjorie's DNA.

Gates: Now, we're going to show you a graphic that compares your mother's DNA to that of Renate's daughter.

If they're closely related you're going to see lots of red.

Samberg: Okay.

Gates: If they're not then there'll be no red, and then we'll have to do something else, okay.

Samberg: Okay.

Okay.

Gates: All right.

Are you ready?

Samberg: I am.

Gates: Would you please turn the page?

Samberg: Is that a lot?

It's over 12%.

Gates: That's a lot of red.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: Your mother and Renate's daughter share about 13.5% of their DNA, which puts them solidly in the range of first cousins.

Samberg: Wow.

Gates: So you know what that means.

Samberg: That you maybe have found my mother's birth family.

Gates: Ellen Philipsborn is your mother's biological mother.

Samberg: Yeah.

Holy cow.

Gates: Could you please turn the page?

Samberg: Yes.

Gates: You're looking at your mother's mother.

Samberg: Wow.

Gates: That's Ellen Philipsborn.

Samberg: Wow.

Gates: How does it feel finally to know the name of your biological grandmother, and to see her face?

Samberg: It feels fantastic.

It's really cool.

Wow!

Gates: Now that we'd identified Andy's grandmother, we could research her life.

We were able to find photos of Ellen's parents, Andy's great-grandparents.

Allowing Andy to see their faces for the very first time.

We were also able to uncover one of Ellen's passions.

It turns out that she was a painter, who exhibited her work in art galleries.

But, in the end, the most surprising thing we learned about Ellen was her profession.

For more than three decades, she worked as a child psychologist providing an uncanny parallel to Andy's mother.

Samberg: That is so crazy.

That's my mother's entire life, she just worked with children.

Gates: That's astonishing.

Samberg: My mom is someone that always... Everyone describes, uh, as like a child whisperer, that she just knows how to deal with kids, she understands kids.

Gates: Mhmm.

Samberg: It's the thing she was drawn to, to her inexplicably.

I don't know if that's something that you can pass down genetically but it's certainly a crazy coincidence either way.

Gates: Crazy coincidence isn't it.

Samberg: Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

It's just...I don't know why that's just incredibly powerful to me.

Gates: So how are you feeling right now funny man?

Samberg: Super dramatic.

I mean no, this is huge, it's very overwhelming.

I mean, I can't lie, it feels fantastic, more than anything, to know that it's finally something my mom gets to know.

She's given us so much and I know it's one of very few things that's she's ever truly wanted in her life that she hasn't been able to attain, and... (Sigh).

This is incredible.

Gates: Much like Andy, George R.R.

Martin grew up with questions about an entire branch of his family tree.

But for George, the questions didn't stem from an adoption.

Their source was his father Raymond Martin, a man who simply didn't want to talk about his past, much less the lives of his ancestors.

In fact, one of the few stories that George could tell me about Raymond didn't involve his family at all.

It concerned Raymond's success as a gambler during World War II.

Martin: The odds in craps favor the no-better, the guy who bets that you're not going to make your point.

Gates: Right.

Martin: But psychologically, most people want to be yes-betters, they want to root for the guy, 'Yeah, make another seven, make your point, you know?'

Gates: Yeah.

Martin: Um, so my father was a consistent no-better and the odds favored him.

He came out of the army with like $10,000 in craps winnings.

Gates: Wow.

Wow.

Martin: And, uh, that was a hell of a lot of money in 1945, 1946.

Gates: Yeah!

Martin: But of course he was not educated and he was not sophisticated with money.

He hadn't had any in this life.

So he didn't, like, buy a house or invest this in anything.

He just had a hell of a party for three or four years.

And my father took a lot of cabs.

He never learned to drive.

Gates: Right.

Martin: He liked to drink.

He said, "I don't believe in drinking and driving, and I'm going to keep on drinking."

But Bayonne was a small place, only three miles, so he took cabs all around.

Gates: Right.

Martin: And there's one family legend that when he when he had all this money, you know, that he...he once, uh, wanted to go to a nightclub in Staten Island or something so he ordered two cabs.

He gave the first cab the address and sent it off empty, and then got in the second cab with my mother and said, "Follow that cab."

Just because he always wanted to say "follow that cab."

Gates: That's great.

That's great.

Martin: So that was, that was the kind of... But I never saw that side of my father, uh, you know.

He was... He worked all day.

He had a very hard job.

He came home, he ate dinner with us, he went down to the bar, uh, and even at the dinner table he was... Gates: Taciturn.

Martin: You know, yeah.

Uh, he didn't have... He didn't have a whole lot to say.

Gates: George told me that Raymond was especially reticent about his own father Louis Martin who abandoned his mother Grace when Raymond was a teenager.

As a result, George knows almost nothing about Louis.

He didn't even know when Louis and Grace separated, only that Louis left his wife for a younger woman and then dropped out of sight.

Was there any contact between your grandfather and father that you knew of?

Martin: I... I have memories of meeting grandpa Louis on a few occasions, but very few.

And, um, then it just stopped for a long, long time.

I seem to recall that when my father died, we got a call from someone from his other family but my Aunt Gladys, who was hot tempered, got on the phone and told them off and didn't want them to come by or, you know, do anything like that.

Gates: To try to find out details about Louis, we reached out to the family he started with that younger woman her name was Elizabeth Baker.

Louis and Elizabeth have at least six living grandchildren we located two of them, and with their help, we tried to connect George emotionally to the grandfather he never knew.

But George who was very close to his grandmother Grace seemed hesitant to make the connection.

Any idea who that is?

Martin: Uhhh... No, I'm... I'm floundering here.

Gates: That's Louis.

Martin: That's Louis.

And that's Elizabeth?

Gates: With Elizabeth.

Martin: Okay.

Gates: And then that's Louis with his children.

Martin: Well, he did well... I mean, I never met Elizabeth so I don't know anything about her.

But, uh, my Grandma Grace was a... Was a wonderful woman.

I mean, she was always warm and loving and kindly.

Gates: You see any family resemblances to your grandfather?

Martin: You know, he's bald here and I remember him being bald when he was throwing me in the air.

I'm not, so that didn't figure.

Gates: No, you're not.

Martin: I still have a lot of hair and my father did right up until he died.

So, uh, fortunately, we didn't get his baldness although that's probably lurking in the gene tree there somewhere.

Gates: Well, Louis' granddaughter Janine told us that she knew about her grandfather's other family, your family.

She told us that her mother even visited with your father and your aunt Gladys when she was a child.

Martin: Oh, okay.

Gates: Did you have any idea of that?

Martin: No.

Gates: She also told us that her grandmother, Elizabeth, had not known about Louis's previous marriage or children at first she only learned about them much later in life.

Martin: So he hid... Gates: He hid that fact.

Martin: He hid that fact from his... Okay, even though they were like six miles apart here.

Gates: You got it.

Isn't that amazing?

And when she found out about it, George, she forbade Louis from having any contact with Grace, Gladys, or Raymond.

Martin: Ok.

That's fascinating.

Gates: George told me that despite all of Louis' flaws, he did feel close to his grandfather in one fundamental way.

"Louis Martin," he knew, had been born "Luigi Mazuocola" in Italy, and had immigrated to America as a child.

George is proud of this aspect of his heritage and wanted to know more about it.

But just as we were about to send a researcher to Italy to look for records of his family we noticed something odd in George's DNA.

Do you think your fans have the remotest idea that you have Italian roots?

Martin: No.

I mean I haven't been shy about that.

I often say in interviews that George R.R.

Martin could be Georgio Mazzuoccolo if... Gates: I like that!

All right.

Let's see what we found out about your ancestry.

You ready?

Martin: Sure!

Gates: Please turn the page.

George, this is what's called an admixture test.

And it reveals your ancestry percentages over approximately the past 500 years roughly since the time of Columbus.

Martin: Wow.

Gates: Would you please read this chart.

Martin: British and Irish.

Well, okay, that's no surprise.

Boy, that's big there.

Gates: What percentage British and Irish?

Martin: 53.6%.

Gates: Keep going, George.

Martin: 15.6 broadly north... Gates: Keep going.

Look more closely.

You're what?

Martin: Wow.

22.4% Ashkenazi Jewish.

That's interesting.

Gates: This number was more than interesting, it was revelatory.

22.4% is roughly equivalent to what would be inherited from a grandparent of full Jewish ancestry.

But George wasn't aware that he had even one Jewish ancestor, and we had no evidence of any in his paper trail.

His mother's family were English and Irish his father's family German and Italian.

At least, that's what George thought, before we analyzed his DNA.

Martin: So I'm trying to figure this out here with what I know my family heritage.

It's not adding up here.

Gates: Mm-mmm.

Martin: Uh, where... Where is the Jewish coming in?

Gates: What's missing from that chart?

Martin: The Italians.

Gates: The Italians.

There's no Italian.

Martin: Okay, that's shocking!

Gates: As Louis' grandson, George should have been about 25% Italian, but the DNA was telling a dramatically different story.

Martin: So you're saying Louis was not my grandfather?!

Gates: We don't know.

We have to explore.

But we...I mean, if Louis is Italian and he's your biological grandfather that chart's got to be different.

It's just a scientific fact.

So, in order to be sure, we needed to perform more DNA testing on your relatives.

Martin: Oh, okay.

Gates: We returned to Louis' grandchildren and asked one of them, a man named Joel to take a DNA test for us.

We then compared Joel's genetic profile to George's looking to see what the two men shared.

At last: the moment of truth was at hand.

Now I'm going to show you a chart that illustrates what we found.

It's going to highlight in red any DNA that you share with Joel.

If Louis is your biological grandfather, then Joel should be your half first cousin, which means you should have about 6% of your DNA in common with each other, right?

Martin: Right.

Gates: You know, the brothers on the street say "DNA don't lie."

Martin: Right, right.

Yeah.

Gates: If you aren't related, you won't see any red at all.

Ready for the moment of truth?

Martin: Sure.

Gates: Turn that page.

You see any red on there?

Martin: So I'm not related to...to Louis.

Gates: We also checked Joel's admixture and he has a significant amount of Italian DNA which you do not.

Martin: But I love pizza.

That's why I have hair and Louis had no hair.

Does Joel have any hair?

Gates: George, I don't know how to put this to you more directly, but this leads us to conclude that Joel actually is the biological grandson of Louis Martin while you are not definitely not.

Instead, your biological grandfather was a man of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

Martin: It... It's uprooting my world here!

It doesn't make any sense here!

Gates: Yes!

Martin: So I'm descended from mystery!

Gates: "Mystery" is the word for it.

We were unable to learn any more about George's grandfather.

We don't know his name, we don't know where he came from.

And we don't know how he met George's grandmother Grace.

But his very existence raised a compelling question.

So who was cheating on whom?

Martin: Yeah!

Gates: You've always presumed that Louis cheated and left Grace.

Martin: Where it appears that Grace actually... Gates: Grace cheated on Louis.

Martin: Wow.

Okay.

Gates: Grace slept with some Jewish guy, man, that's why you are over 20% Jewish.

Isn't that amazing?

Martin: It's...pretty damn astonishing!

But, you know, I hardly knew the guy.

He's portrayed mostly as a villain in the family history but I guess he was not a villain after all.

Gates: There's one more thing I want to show you.

Something that we noticed when we back through your family photographic archives.

Would you please turn the page?

George, this is a picture of your father Raymond and his sister Gladys.

Have you ever seen that photo before?

Martin: I don't think so.

No.

Gates: Your aunt Gladys biologically is part Italian because Louis was her biological father, right?

Martin: Right.

Gates: So, keeping that in mind, you notice anything that you might not have noticed before?

When you look at that photograph?

Martin: Darker than Raymond.

Gates: Definitely.

The contrast in skin tone and hair color is quite striking when you go back and look through the filter of your DNA.

Martin: Right.

Gates: Gladys has thick black hair and a brown complexion, while Raymond is very fair with blonde-ish hair.

Martin: Ah.

Fascinating.

Gates: Now, based on your father and his strained relationship with his father, do you think either one knew that they were not biologically related?

That your father knew he wasn't Louis' son or that Louis knew that he wasn't your father's father?

Martin: I...I don't know.

That... Know people were pretty good at keeping secrets in those days.

Gates: Big time.

Martin: You know, the families went to extreme lengths to avoid anything that would dishonor the family, so who knows what steps were made to keep all of this secret.

Gates: Though we will continue our research it's possible that we'll never know the true identity of George's grandfather.

But that didn't appear to bother George.

If anything, it seemed to pull him closer to his beloved grandmother Grace.

Drawing his memories back to the house she shared with her mother and aunt and to the secret she seems to have harbored her entire life.

Martin: Grandma Grace, Aunt Barbery, they lived in that house until they died old women as spinsters and never had another man.

I mean maybe this Jewish guy loved Grace and wanted to marry her and... Gates: Could have.

Martin: I mean I'm a storyteller.

I'm spinning possibilities here, but, uh.

Gates: So, George, you know, if you're writing a script about what we would find on your family tree... Martin: No, I would not have guessed this.

Certainly this is a... This is a bombshell here.

I wish some of the people involved were still alive so I could ask them the story about this.

I've often thought of writing a book about you know, that house.

I haven't told half the stories of some of the people who lived there at various points.

Gates: That book just got more complicated.

Martin: Yes.

Samberg: And this is your mama.

Marjorie: Ah, yeah!

Gates: We had already introduced Andy Samberg to his biological grandmother: Ellen Philipsborn thus answering a question that had haunted his mother Marjorie for decades.

Samberg: It's so funny how this will always be such an important photo because it's the first time you ever saw her.

Marjorie: Yes, that's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

Gates: Now, we faced another question: who was Andy's biological grandfather?

There were no paper records at all to guide us.

So Cece Moore, our genetic genealogist began a painstaking process.

She compared Marjorie's DNA to the DNA held in publicly available databases, searching for matches, then building family trees to try and connect those matches.

We had tried this technique with George R.R.

Martin and we had struck out.

This time, a pattern emerged.

Many of Marjorie's matches came from families that all traced back to the same place.

Meaning that Andy's grandfather likely came from that place too.

Gates: You want to guess where that was?

Samberg: The guesses we've had just by looking at her face in the past were Israel or somewhere around there, or Italy.

Gates: Okay, would you please turn the page?

Samberg: Yes.

Gates: You know where that is?

Samberg: Sicily.

Gates: Yeah!

Samberg: Wow.

Not bad.

Gates: I almost fell off my chair!

Many of the family trees traced back to one town in western Sicily, the town of Alimena.

That means that your mother's father had to have Sicilian ancestry.

Samberg: Cool.

Gates: Yeah.

Samberg: I always liked Italians.

Gates: Once we realized that Andy's grandfather came from this tiny town, we began looking for a way to connect that town to Marjorie's mother Ellen.

We soon focused on a family named Maida.

Their roots stretched all around Alimena and several of them had immigrated from Italy to the United States well before Marjorie's birth, settling in Philadelphia.

This seemed promising.

There was just one problem.

Ellen wasn't living in Philadelphia when she became pregnant, she was a graduate student in Berkeley, California.

Was there any way to place the Maidas in Berkeley?

Now, Andy, this is from the military records of a man named Samuel Maida.

His birth name was Salvatore Maida like Salvatore people would say, but it's Salvatore, and he served in the United States Navy during World War II.

Would you please read the highlighted lines.

Samberg: Yes!

"Veterans compensation bureau.

Maida, Samuel."

What is this, ALFED?

Gates: Navel landing force equipment depot.

Samberg: Oh.

Oh.

Gates: And where is it.

Samberg: But more importantly, Albany, California.

Gates: Albany, California.

When?

Samberg: November 1944 through March 1946.

Oh boy.

For those who don't know, Albany is right next to Berkeley.

Gates: And what years are these?

'44 to '46.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: So when your mother was conceived in 1945 Salvatore Maida was in the same place as your grandmother Ellen.

Samberg: Oh boy.

Gates: But that doesn't make him your grandfather.

Samberg: Right.

Gates: In order to be certain, we needed to do more DNA testing.

Salvatore passed away in 1990, but he left four children behind and fortunately one of them, a man named Pietro Maida agreed to test for us.

Gates: So if our theory was right... Samberg: Okay.

Gates: He would be your mother's half-sibling.

Would you like to see the results?

Samberg: I think I'm good.

I'm going to take off.

Yes, I would love to.

Gates: Well, just like before, if you see lots of red, it means it's the close relative.

Little or no red means no match.

Samberg: Okay.

Gates: Would you please turn the page?

Samberg: That's a lot of red.

Whoa.

Gates: Pietro is your mother's half-brother.

Samberg: Wow.

Gates: And that means that your biological grandfather is Salvatore Maida.

Samberg: Yeah.

This is crazy.

Gates: Would you please turn the page?

That is your mother's father.

Samberg: I believe it.

Wow.

Gates: Do you see any resemblance to your mother?

Samberg: I do.

This is so intense.

And incredible.

Wow.

I like his glasses by the way.

Gates: Mmhmm.

Samberg: Not that different than the ones I'm wearing right now.

Gates: No.

Right.

Samberg: He liked a big frame.

Gates: It's genetic.

Samberg: To offset the nose.

He already had that move locked in.

Gates: Now that we'd identified Andy's grandfather, we could research his story, revealing a man every bit as compelling as Andy's grandmother.

We learned that after his military service, Salvatore moved to New York City where he was a metal worker and an active union member.

But that's not all he did... Take a guess at what they are.

Samberg: It looks like satellite stuff, but is it art?

Gates: Those are your grandfather's sculptures.

Samberg: Yeah, it's like sci-fi art.

I like it.

Gates: Yeah.

But this is incredible Andy.

He was an artist.

Samberg: Everyone in my family was an artist.

Gates: Both of your mother's parents were artists.

Samberg: Yeah.

What happened to me?

I'm just some hacky comedian.

Gates: Have you given any thought to how your grandparents might have met?

Samberg: I mean... Gates: A sailor.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: Remember, she's a graduate student.

Right.

Studying psych at Berkeley.

Samberg: He was a sailor in town looking for action probably.

I mean that's the standard version of that story.

Gates: As we dug more deeply, we realized that there might be more to Salvatore and Ellen than the standard story.

Salvatore's children told us that while he was in the navy, he took art classes at the California labor school a progressive enclave in San Francisco.

We found an oral history of the school that contained one very telling detail.

Samberg: "A lot of artwork came out of it, crafts work, the posters that were later done for the strikes and things like that.

Most of them were done by California Labor School artists, who were also working in the various unions, and it was very left, I mean it was a hangout I suppose.

Ellen Philipsborn was working there."

I know that this is, like, huge evidence about how they met but I'm just, I was really into him saying "I mean it was a hangout I suppose."

So nicely phrased.

Like, well, of course, they were there, it was a hangout.

Gates: Well they held classes about labor organizing; economics and they even had art classes like metalworking.

Samberg: Ah ha!

Did they?

Gates: So, your grandmother worked at the California labor school where your grandfather was attending classes.

Samberg: That is incredible.

Tough to imagine it's not how they met.

Gates: Well, we can't say for sure but that's our theory, and I think it's quite plausible.

Samberg: Yeah, it feels plausible to me as well.

Wow.

It's cool even just to suppose a story for them, you know.

Gates: Yeah.

But it's amazing if you think about it.

Think about your grandparents, two people from such remarkably different backgrounds.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: But because of them your mother was born and you were born.

Samberg: Yeah.

Born of Philipsborn.

That's just something that I say now.

Sorry.

Yeah, that's incredible.

Gates: Andy, what's it like to learn all this, if I may?

Samberg: I can't really put it into words.

I'm just overwhelmed with happiness for my mom.

I just keep coming back to that.

Because, by the way, this is a great story.

Gates: A fabulous story.

Samberg: Yeah, there's nothing... Like when you don't know there's infinite possibilities.

It could be something really awful and horrifying, and this is just a massive relief mixed with really exciting, and interesting, and cool.

I mean it was a big question mark in our family for our whole lives.

Gates: No more my brother.

Samberg: Yeah.

I love it.

Gates: We had now introduced Andy to both of his maternal grandparents, and shared significant information about their lives but our journey wasn't over yet.

By combing through Sicilian archives, we were able to take him back still another generation.

Andy, this is a marriage record from Nicosia from the year 1911.

It's written in Italian, so we've translated it for you.

Samberg: "The 10th of June 1911 appeared one Maida Gaetano."

Gates: Maida.

That's your family name.

Samberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Maida.

I've got to learn how to pronounce that.

Gates: Mmhmm.

Samberg: Maida Gaetano.

Gates: Yes.

Samberg: "Unmarried, age 32, blacksmith, born in Alimena, uh huh, resident in Villadoro and Trapani Calogera, unmarried age 17, peasant, daughter of Antonino and of Nasello Antonia."

Gates: Yes, very good.

Samberg: Perfect pronunciation.

Gates: Excellent.

Samberg: You can cut the air out of that in post.

Gates: This is the marriage record of your mother's biological grandparents.

Samberg: Wow.

Gates: Your great-grandparents.

What's it like to see their names on that document?

Samberg: It's cool.

Someday I'm going to be able to pronounce them.

Gates: Look at that photo.

Samberg: Is this them?

Gates: That's your great-grandparents.

Samberg: They look very happy.

Gates: You have deep, deep roots in Sicily.

Samberg: I love it.

I mean this is a great day for our family.

This is serious.

I thought I was going to be more upset.

I've just been smiling the whole time.

This is, like, incredible.

Gates: What did you think would be upsetting?

Samberg: Just finding out things about our family history that would be unsavory and would make us have to question our lineage.

Not that it would mean we were responsible for any of those things, but just, you know, you never want to find out things that your ancestors did that weren't in your estimation immoral, or uh... You want to feel like you're from good people.

Gates: Yeah.

Right.

Samberg: And if you're not it doesn't mean that you're not a good person, but... Gates: No.

Guilt is not inheritable.

Samberg: Exactly.

I just am glad that I... It's just like...it's clean.

It's all very clean.

Gates: That's true.

Samberg: Yeah.

Gates: That's true.

But when you walked in here you were a Jewish American.

Samberg: Mmhmm.

True.

Gates: Now will you say I'm an Italian Jewish American?

Samberg: Yeah, I guess so.

Gates: Mmhmm.

Samberg: Works for me.

Gates: That's a big change.

Samberg: It is.

Yeah, 39 years.

Gates: I want you to open this.

We were now reaching the end of our journey.

It was to time to give each of our guests their new family trees revealing everything we'd learned about their ancestry.

Martin: That's pretty amazing.

Gates: For George, an entire branch of what he had long assumed to be his family's heritage was gone replaced by a question mark, and an enduring mystery that he was more than willing to embrace.

Martin: I was such a mongrel from the beginning that I had friends who were all Irish, all Italian, who had that strong identity.

But I always knew, I was, I was not as Irish as the Irish kids.

I was not as Italian as the Italian kids, evidently not at all.

I just thought of myself in science-fiction terms as a human being and that's still how I identify with myself.

Hopefully the whole race will get there one of these days and we'll stop being so frightened about people who were born in a different part of the planet or descended from a different part of the planet.

Gates: That's one of the reasons I do this show.

Martin: Yes.

Gates: It's a message more urgent than ever.

Martin: That's right.

Gates: Andy's tree was almost the reverse of George's, where once on an entire side, there were nothing but question marks, now he could now see name after name after name.

Samberg: Oh my God.

That's incredible.

There's so many.

Gates: Yeah.

You know what the coolest thing is.

Samberg: Huh?

Gates: All these people were lost.

And they'll never be lost again.

Samberg: Wow this is great.

All of this is new.

Wow!

To have this is such an incredible asset for the family just to be able to truly tell them about their heritage.

That's about as serious as I've ever been on camera.

But I do mean it.

It's amazing.

Gates: What do you think your mom's going to think of all this?

Samberg: I think she's just going to be excited.

I mean it's going to start an entirely new chapter of her life.

Gates: Yeah.

Samberg: She can explore all of this now and we all can, and learn about it, and I can... I mean, I could never imagine what it feels like to not know who your birth parents are, and I similarly don't think I can understand what it feels like to find out who they were after 71 years.

Gates: Andy's words would prove to be prophetic.

His mother did indeed begin a new chapter of her life.

Just weeks after our interview, she and Andy met the family they'd been waiting so long to find.

Samberg: Hey, how are you?

Hi.

Gates: These are Marjorie's half-brothers who are also Andy's half-uncles.

Samberg: Delighted to meet you, it's such a pleasure.

Thanks for being so nice to my mom.

Gates: And a host of cousins.

Samberg: They were living in New York while she was growing up in New York.

Cousin: Yeah, at the exact same time.

Samberg: Which is bonkers.

Gates: They were all thrilled to learn that their family was bigger than they'd imagined, and delighted to share stories and images with their new relatives.

Marjorie: That's grandfather.

Samberg: Is that your dad?

Marjorie: Yes, that looks just like you!

I can't believe, isn't that something?

Samberg: That's so crazy.

I've definitely been enjoying showing pictures of him to my friends and stuff.

Marjorie: And what do they say?

Samberg: Yeah!

It looks exactly like you!

And then... Marjorie: This one.

Samberg: The coup de gras!

Marjorie: It certainly is.

Gates: Among Marjorie's many new photographs was a snapshot from the 1940s of Salvatore on a date with a young woman.

Salvatore's children had never known who this woman was until they recognized Ellen.

Samberg: And this photo... Proves everything.

Marjorie: Yes!

Samberg: There's a chance you were conceived the night this photo was taken.

Marjorie: That's very possible.

Samberg: Also very possible is that she is pregnant with you in this photograph.

Marjorie: Which I had not thought of at all but talking to relatives who knew the Philipsborns commented about the shape of her face, that her face is very full.

Samberg: Uh.

Huh.

In this particular photo it's more full than normal... Marjorie: Yes, they said she really didn't have a full face she was more lean-looking, so it's possible you're right that she was pregnant, because you know when you get pregnant you get fuller.

Samberg: Yeah.

It's so crazy.

There they are.

Gates: I think this photo is one of the most satisfying things that we've ever uncovered.

Visual evidence of a relationship which may have lasted for for months, or for weeks, or no more than this one evening, but which altered so many lives.

Group: New family picture!

Joe: Roy, can you squeeze in there on that side?

Stay where you are but turn your head towards me.

Samberg: Everyone welcome to our childhood.

Joe: Perfect.

Okay this is it.

Sister: Family!!!

Gates: That's the end of our journey with Andy Samberg and George R.R.

Martin.

Please join me next time as we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of Finding Your Roots.

Huffman: Oh, my God!

Narrator: Next time on "Finding your roots" "Desperate housewives" Felicity Huffman.

Huffman: How did you guys find this?

Narrator: "The Wires" Michael K. Williams.

Williams: It's very powerful.

Narrator: How their fathers figure.

Gates: What's it like to read that?

Narrator: Into a lost lineage.

Huffman: It makes me a little mad.

Williams: A little angry.

Narrator: Ancestry uncovered.

Huffman: This is amazing.

Gates: We are family.

Williams: Yes sir.

Gates: But papa was a rolling stone.

Williams: Yes sir.

Narrator: On the next, "Finding Your Roots"