Gates: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Welcome to Finding Your Roots.

In this episode, we'll meet Christiane Amanpour, Ann Curry, and Lisa Ling... Three journalists who have criss-crossed the globe to cover the most important events of our time, all the while leaving fundamental questions about their own families unanswered.

Ling: My mom had this other life, a life that I really don't know that much about.

Amanpour: My dad didn't talk much about it and I couldn't pull more out of him.

I tried many times and honestly he would tell me I was being a pain in his neck.

Curry: This is the one mystery, beyond all others in my family... I long to know who his father was.

Gates: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.

Genealogists helped stitch together the past from the paper trail their ancestors left behind while DNA experts utilized the latest advances in genetic analysis to reveal secrets hundreds of years old... Ann Curry's book of life.

And we've compiled it all into a book of life.

Ling: Just unbelievable.

Gates: A record of all of our discoveries.

Amanpour: No.

C'mon!

I can't believe you found this!

Curry: Are you serious?

Gates: Yes.

Curry: Oh my goodness, scandal!

Gates: My three guests have spent their lives tracking down stories that might never have been told without their efforts.

Now, the tables are about to be turned.

In this episode, they'll meet people from their own families whose names they don't know... from places they've never been... with stories that even they could not have imagined.

(Theme music plays) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Amanpour: Tonight... Gates: Christiane Amanpour is one of the defining journalists of our era.

She came to fame in the early 1990s immersing herself in warzones and hotspots throughout the globe.

Amanpour: Fighting is at its most intense right now.

Gates: Deftly mixing fearless reporting with humanitarian passion.

If there's a crisis tomorrow, I count on Christiane to be there to cover it.

So I was surprised to learn that her own story begins in a place of tranquility.

Her mother was English, her father Iranian, she was raised in Tehran and London and to hear her tell it, her childhood home was idyllic.

Amanpour: When I look back, you know, nothing is perfect but it was as close to perfect as a childhood that I can imagine.

You know, to grow up in a patriarchal society with a mom who was very much as in many households, you know, the mover and the shaker, the ruler of the house and to know that my father was fine with that and to see that my mother, a Catholic, married to my father, a Muslim, it worked.

Gates: That is a miracle.

Amanpour: But I grew up, you know, by osmosis realizing that there's no difference between ethnicities, cultures, religions, and that has informed my whole adulthood.

Gates: Unfortunately, Christiane's adulthood has also been informed by forces beyond the bounds of her parent's influence.

Starting in 1978, when just out of high school she watched a revolution engulf Iran.

Within a year, the country became an Islamic republic, startling the world and fundamentally altering the course of Christiane's life.

Amanpour: It was a complete shock to the system.

Everything you were brought up to believe was suddenly wrong.

Everything you thought was right was topsy-turvy.

All the people you thought were heroes were now villains.

And I do remember anti-revolutionaries, from the previous regime, who were executed.

My family knew almost all of them.

And I had to deal with that but at the same time I realized, whoa, this is an incredible story and the images are incredible and the feelings are incredible and the politics are scary.

And out of that I thought I wanted to tell these stories.

And that led me to journalism and that led me to the United States because at the time of course the United States was the place to be if you wanted to make it in the world.

Gates: Christiane ended up at the University of Rhode Island, where she graduated summa cum laude.

But she soon found that her education and her ambition could only take her so far.

Amanpour: If you looked at female correspondents on American television in 1983, they were mostly blonde.

Gates: That's true.

Amanpour: And blue eyed with Midwestern accents.

I didn't fit in.

Very fortunately there was this genius called Ted Turner who had started CNN about three years earlier.

So, I was hired at a very rock bottom entry level position and it was just the most incredible experience of my life.

Gates: Your timing was perfect.

You were perfect for it.

You were international cosmopolitan and... That's what it was aiming to be.

Amanpour: And it was perfect for me.

I loved it and I love it.

It's home.

Gates: My second guest is Ann Curry, a twenty-five year veteran of NBC News, now running her own production company.

Like Christiane, Ann scaled the summits of journalism against steep odds at a time when women were actively discouraged from joining the profession... Curry: I started off as an intern running the cameras.

Eventually I worked my way up and I was offered a job to be a reporter, and one of the men in the newsroom pulled me aside into a room and said, you know, Ann, you're making a big mistake if you decide to take this job as a reporter because women have no news judgement, and you can't carry the camera so I highly recommend you don't take this job.

Gates: Oh, my God.

Curry: And I remember thinking, you know, he just doesn't know.

He doesn't know me, he doesn't know women, and so, that cinched it for me.

I took the job.

And I worked really hard.

The Oregon state police has announced... Not just for me, but for the women that were coming behind me.

We'll have details at 6.

I'm Ann Curry... I see a bridge down over there!

Gates: Ann told me that her self-confidence her steely determination to press on in the face of such hostility had been forged in her childhood home.

Her mother is Japanese.

Her father was an American soldier stationed in Japan after the second world war.

The couple had to overcome a great deal of prejudice.

And their strength helped their daughter to find her own way.

Curry: I didn't know anybody who looked like me.

I was by myself.

Gates: Right.

Curry: What allowed me to stand up was my dad telling me don't ever let anyone make you choose, and if you have to choose my big American white guy father would say choose your Japanese side because he wanted me to be proud of all of what I was and...and he knew the pressure in the world that I was living in would be for me to choose my white side.

Gates: What a special man... Curry: He was.

Gates: Ann's father also steered her towards her career, heading a household that encouraged discipline, debate and independent thinking even at the price of a peaceful meal... Curry: My father would watch the news, and then at the dinner table he'd be like this, Skip.

He'd...we'd be eating and at some point, dad would go: "what's wrong with those Vietnam War protesters anyway?

Don't they know it's my country, right or wrong?"

And I'd be going, Well, Dad, and I would say, "What are we doing in Vietnam, I mean what are we doing?"

He goes, "I can't believe I'm hearing those words out of the mouth of my own daughter" and this big debate would begin.

Sometimes it would get so almost acrimonious that my brothers and sister would pick up their plates and go eat somewhere else, in their rooms, in the living room.

But Dad and I would really debate the events of the day and then...and he cared and I cared... And he was a conservative military guy, he would say, Well, Ann, I don't always agree with you, but I'd still vote for you for president.

Gates: My third guest is Lisa Ling.

After almost two decades in front of the camera, Lisa is not only one of America's leading broadcast journalists, she is also one the most celebrated Chinese Americans.

But growing up, she didn't see her ancestry as anything to celebrate at all.

Ling: I spent the first seventeen years of my life being very ashamed of being Chinese American, because I looked different.

My house smelled different.

My house always smelled like Chinese food.

Gates: Which sounds like a fantasy to me.

Ling: It was pretty great in retrospect.

But you know, I think when you're, when you're a kid, you don't want to stand out.

You want to be like everyone else... And I was teased mercilessly.

Gates: How?

Ling: Um, uh, people would call me "Risa Ring."

Gates: That's horrible.

Ling: Ridiculous childhood taunts.

And I did go home crying many a night.

Gates: Sadly, Lisa's home offered little comfort.

Her parents' marriage was troubled even before she was born, they divorced when she was seven.

Amidst the upheaval, Lisa took inspiration wherever she could find it.

Announcer: This is the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and Connie Chung.

Chung: Tonight, the president and his aides are trying to chart a new course.

Ling: That's what I wanted to be.

I wanted to be the next Connie Chung.

Gates: Oh, interesting.

Ling: Yeah, she was the only one on television who looked remotely like me.

The TV was always on in my house, so... Gates: Yeah, mine too.

Ling: I thought, yeah, if I could get on TV, maybe I can have a better life one day.

Um, but because there was no one who looked like me on any of those shows that I watched, I never thought I could do it.

Um, and because Connie Chung was a journalist, I thought, "That's something I might be able to do."

Gates: Lisa's intuition would prove correct to a spectacular degree.

Ling: Top story, the first casualties of Operation: Restore Hope... Gates: Journalism was her true calling.

She has moved fluidly between the anchor's desk and the field... Ling: We're going to show the world what life is like inside North Korea.

Gates: Covering some of the most seminal stories of our time with an eye for intimate detail.

And by finding her way in her profession, she's not only found a better life, she's also experienced a deep sense of fulfillment.

Ling: You know, I think that because I felt like a bit of an outsider as a kid growing up, when I did get the opportunity to know more about people who are different than me, I, I recognize that I not only became smarter as a result, I became a better person.

And I've been lucky enough to, been able to make a career out of it.

Gates: Lisa, Ann, and Christiane all share the same occupation, but they also share something deeper.

They have been telling other people's stories for decades while knowing little about their own ancestors.

It was time to do some reporting to the reporters.

I started with Christiane.

Her parents met in Iran in the 1950s because her mother a young Englishwoman appears to have been determined to expand her horizons.

Amanpour: She was quite a rebel my mother and she really did blow the paradigm apart.

I mean she left England when she was something like twenty-one, and drove a car for friends of her parents all the way from England to Persia.

Gates: That's amazing.

I wouldn't let my daughters do that now.

I couldn't stop them but you know... Amanpour: It's crazy when you think about it.

And the last part was over the Turkish border and at the time Turkey was considered incredibly dangerous, those parts along the border.

It was gangs of kidnappers and smugglers and this and that, and how they got through it I don't know but they did.

Gates: But she did.

Amanpour: She arrived safe and sound in Tehran.

Gates: That's amazing.

Christiane's mother was not the only bold spirit in her family.

Turning back one generation, we found another: Christiane's grandfather a man named John Hill.

John was a veteran of the first world war and an inspiration to Christiane, even though he rarely spoke about his experiences.

Amanpour: My grandfather was very, very important in my life.

I always looked up to him, and I always was interested to know more about him but he didn't talk much.

Gates: Did he ever talk about World War I?

Amanpour: A little bit.

What we understood was he had some role on some Navy boat thing but we're never quite clear about what exactly it was.

Gates: Well let's see what we found out.

Would you please turn the page?

Amanpour: It's so exciting.

Gates: Look at that.

Amanpour: "World War I award record, 1919."

He got awarded?

Gates: Yes!

Amanpour: A marine ribbon issued?

1, 2, 3, 4!

Gates: That's right.

Amanpour: That is intense.

That is seriously unbelievable.

Gates: Records revealed that Christiane's grandfather, John volunteered for the Merchant Marines when he was just seventeen years old.

He ended up on an oil tanker braving German submarines to supply much-needed fuel to Allied troops in Europe.

It was a dangerous assignment.

By the end of the war, England had lost over 14,000 merchant crewmen.

So this was no picnic.

Amanpour: Wow.

That is seriously intense.

I didn't know that.

Gates: Now we can begin perhaps to understand why he didn't sit around regaling you with stories.

Amanpour: Yup, yup.

Gates: Can you imagine?

Amanpour: That is really something.

You know what, we really didn't know that.

Honestly we thought he was like rowing a boat.

Gates: And so he never said... Amanpour: No.

Not to us.

Not to me.

I never heard those stories.

Wow.

Wow.

What a discovery.

Gates: It was easy to see why Christiane was so enamored of her grandfather: he had taken serious risks and seen the wider world.

But as we unearthed his roots, expecting to find more ancestors like him, we discovered something quite different... A family of modest ambitions, firmly rooted in England, epitomized by John's father Christiane's great-grandfather who spent years working his way up from being a clerk to becoming the manager... of a grocery store.

Amanpour: That is incredible.

It's beautiful actually.

It's the ultimate middle class dream, right.

Gates: It is.

Yeah.

And to move up, get a promotion.

Amanpour: Yeah.

It's gorgeous.

I love it.

Gates: Now you're famous for covering wars and disasters all over, you know, have disaster will report.

Amanpour: Yes.

Yes.

Gates: Amanpour's motto.

You've been everywhere.

Yet here, just three generations back your great-grandfather lived his life managing a grocery store.

What do you make of that?

Amanpour: I would have loved to have been there and gone to that grocery store.

Sometimes I dream about a quiet life.

Gates: Oh, yeah, right.

Amanpour: I do.

Gates: Ain't going to happen.

You would go out of your mind.

Are you kidding?

Amanpour: I always said that, you know, if things go belly up... Gates: You would cause a war.

Amanpour: I'd cause a war.

If things go belly up for me I'd like to have a, you know, a bakery... Gates: Really?

Yeah right.

Amanpour: But I can't cook.

Gates: Christiane's dream of a bakery may be on hold for now, but it is very much in keeping with the world of her ancestors.

Combing through records from southern England, we found that her family spent generations working as coopers, who make barrels for pubs, as groomsmen in horse stables, and as day laborers.

All together in documents stretching back to the mid-1700s we uncovered progress that was steady, but very slow.

Would you please look at the highlighted signature section of this document and what do you see next to their names?

Amanpour: X's.

Gates: X's.

Amanpour: Yeah.

Gates: And you know what that means.

Amanpour: Does that mean they couldn't write?

Gates: They were illiterate.

Amanpour: I'm a little bit stunned but maybe not, you know, because it's laborer, cooper, groom.

Maybe, maybe that's just the way it was for them and their family then.

Gates: That's true.

Your mother's family comes from a long line of solid working class people.

And remember, this is before Dickens.

Amanpour: Before Dickens.

When you put it that way that's...it is incredible.

But that is interesting.

That gives me pause for thought.

Gates: Yeah.

Amanpour: That they weren't educated, that they couldn't read or write.

Gates: Yes.

Amanpour: Which makes me realize how incredibly well they did carrying on and my grandfather himself.

Gates: But when you walked in here... Amanpour: I didn't know.

Gates: Could you have imagined?

Amanpour: No.

No, no, no.

Gates: What did you imagine?

Amanpour: To be honest with you I didn't really imagine much.

I figured I hadn't been told much about them.

But I'm proud that they're my ancestors.

Gates: Right.

Amanpour: Very cool.

Very nice.

Gates: Like Christiane, Lisa Ling knows little about her maternal roots.

Her mother Meiyan Wang came to the United States from Taiwan in 1968 as a twenty-one-year-old student she never moved back.

Her childhood had been deeply unhappy and, in hindsight, Lisa believes she was looking for an escape.

Ling: My mom, you know, she's been through a lot in her life.

But, but she doesn't communicate her feelings as much as I would like her to, and I think as much as she should.

You know, she holds a lot inside.

And I think she had a lot of demons that she left behind.

Gates: I wanted to help Lisa better understand her mother's painful past.

I soon found that its source was no mystery.

It flowed from her father, Lisa's grandfather a man named Jie De Wang.

Jie De Wang made his living, in part, by running a brothel in the city of Tainan.

Did you ever meet him?

Ling: I never met him.

Gates: Hmm.

What have you heard about him?

Ling: All I know is that my grandfather was known as "The Black Dragon."

Gates: Why?

Ling: I think he was involved in the sort of underbelly of Tainan he might have been akin to a gangster at the time, is what I've heard... Had a brothel... Was very promiscuous, despite having three wives, had a lot of kids.

Gates: Nineteen children by three wives.

Ling: Yes, and my mom didn't have much of a relationship with him.

She would talk about how, because there were so many kids, he would every now and then come out, come around and pat her on the head and give her some money.

And that was the extent... Gates: Oh, that's so sad.

Ling: Of the affection she received from her father.

Gates: Lisa had heard many stories about her grandfather's escapades.

But when we turned to his roots, the stories became scarce.

She told me that she knew almost nothing about his ancestry.

That was about to change.

I want you to look at this very carefully.

Have you ever seen that before?

Ling: No.

Gates: Lisa, this is your family's tomb.

Ling: Wow.

Wow.

In Tainan.

Gates: Mmm-hmm.

Ling: Wow.

That's a, a pretty impressive-looking structure.

Gates: There are two generations of your family buried in that tomb.

Your grandfather and your great-grandfather.

Ling: Unbelievable.

Gates: Lisa had never imagined that her grandfather came from a wealthy family and she wondered how her ancestors had afforded such a tomb.

We can't say for certain but we have a theory.

It arises from an unusual detail etched on the tomb itself the name of Lisa's grandfather's older brother, Shin Yu Tsai.

This stood out because her grandfather's surname was Wang.

Have you ever heard this name before, Tsai?

Ling: Never.

Never.

Gates: Have any idea why two brothers have two different surnames, Wang and Tsai?

Ling: No clue.

Gates: Well, let's see.

Would you please turn the page?

Lisa, you're looking at the household register for your great-grandfather, Jian Wong.

Would you please read the translated section?

Ling: "On the 2nd day of the 8th month, Jian... Is married and entered into the Tsai family registry."

Gates: "Married and entered into the Tsai family."

Any idea what's going on here?

Ling: No idea!

Gates: This record turned out to be the key to understanding Lisa's mother's family... It revealed that Lisa's great-grandfather Jian Wang had engaged in a type of marriage in which a man joins his wife's household.

Under the terms of this arrangement, Jian's first son became a Tsai while his second son carried on his name... Your grandfather was a second son, that's why he and your mother were Wangs, not Tsais.

Ling: That's so interesting.

Gates: And while this was an accepted form of union, it wasn't an honorable one, and those who did it often lost some social status which makes sense in a deeply, densely patriarchal society.

Ling: Patriarchal, yeah.

Fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating.

Gates: And we don't know why, but the most likely reason is that he came from a very poor family.

Ling: So, the Tsai family was actually the wealthy family.

Gates: Yeah, compared to the Wangs, at that time.

Ling: You know, I always wondered why my grandfather was so philanderous, and why he treated women the way he did, and I wonder if his own father, who was married into a woman's family, may have felt some insecurity about that.

Gates: So, maybe he's compensating.

Ling: Maybe.

Gates: The Black Dragon, you know?

Ling: Maybe.

Gates: "Who's the man now, 19 kids, three wives?"

Ling: Exactly.

Exactly.

Gates: Yeah, could be.

Ling: I, I wonder.

It, it says a lot about who my mom is, and and it fills in, uh, a number of sort of missing pieces for me.

Gates: My next guest is Ann Curry.

Unlike Lisa and Christiane, Ann came to me with a very specific question.

Her father Robert never knew the identity of his own father.

It's a mystery that vexed him his entire life.

The only clue he could ever uncover was his birth certificate, which listed a last name for his father, but no first name.

And that wasn't enough.

Curry: On his birth certificate he told me there was a name and I'm not sure if he remembered it well, but he told me it was Wright, W-R-I-G-H-T, but he said I'm not sure that, that, no one ever said to him that his father's name was Wright, so he only saw it from his birth certificate.

And, as my dad grew older it was something that I tried in my...you know in ways that I was unsuccessful in, trying to figure it out.

So he went to his grave not knowing who his father was, and so it caused him a great deal of pain.

He felt that pain, and I think this is... This is the one mystery that, beyond all others in my family history, I want to know.

Gates: With no records to guide us, we had only one tool at our disposal: DNA.

Cece Moore, our genetic genealogist compared Ann's DNA profile to the profiles held in all available databases, looking for close matches.

Cece soon discovered that Ann was genetically tied to many people who had the surname "Hill" but we couldn't locate anyone with that surname on Ann's family tree.

Digging deeper, based on the strength of the matches, we realized that one particular member of this family, a woman named Margaret Hill seemed to be Ann's direct ancestor.

Curry: Margaret.

Gates: Margaret.

So here's something very interesting.

Margaret, Ann, married a man named David and you have very strong matches to many people who have David's surname in their family trees.

So we know that you descend from Margaret and David.

Curry: Wow.

Gates: And you want to guess what David's surname was?

Curry: No idea.

Gates: Please turn the page.

Curry: Okay... Wright!

Wright.

The name that was on the birth certificate.

Oh, my gosh.

Gates: Bingo.

Curry: Wow.

It is Wright.

Gates: You are a Wright.

Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Gates: Now we were confident that this couple, Margaret and David Wright belonged somewhere on Ann's family tree.

In fact, we suspected that their son a man named Charles Earl Wright was likely Ann's missing grandfather.

But to be certain, we needed to do more DNA testing.

Charles passed away in 1940, but we located two of his living descendants and they agreed to test for us.

Let's see what we found.

Curry: Oh my gosh.

Okay.

I'm not sure I'm ready for this, but okay, 'cuz this is... I...I can't tell you my... How much my dad wanted this moment.

Gates: Please turn the page.

Curry: Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh.

Gates: Here are the results from the descendants of Charles Wright that we tested.

Can you please tell me how much DNA you share with each of them?

Curry: Ann versus Wright descendant number one, shared DNA 7%.

Gates: That's right.

Curry: Ann versus Wright descendant number two, shared DNA 7.5%.

Gates: Ann, that means that both of these testers share enough DNA with you to be your half first cousins, and there's only one explanation for that result.

The three of you all share a grandfather.

Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness.

Wow.

Gates: And so, you know what that means?

Curry: That means you know who it is.

Gates: We have found the identity of your father's father.

Curry: Oh, my God.

Gates: Your father's father was Charles Earl Wright.

Curry: Oh, boy.

That's wonderful to know.

Thank you so much.

It's a... It's a... I'm, you know...uh, I... I think all...all...all my brothers and sisters will be glad and... And I have a feeling that uh, we're gonna have a party at his gravesite telling him that.

Yeah.

Gates: There are no known photographs of Ann's grandfather and we have no idea how he met Ann's grandmother.

Much of what we could learn about him came from the records of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, where he worked as a laborer in the 1920s.

These records reveal that when Ann's father was conceived, Charles was a widower with three children.

It seems to have been a challenging time in his life.

Just months earlier, he'd been fined for public drunkeness.

Curry: Wow... Gates: Charles was a single father raising three children, and that couldn't have been easy.

Curry: And three months later about my... My dad was conceived.

Gates: That's right.

Curry: Right.

So he was going through... So yes, uh-huh.

Gates: You know, maybe it was a one-night stand, maybe it was something more.

Curry: Wow.

Gates: What do you think your father would've said if he knew he had siblings.

Curry: He would've run to them with open arms.

It was hard for him to be the only child.

He...he loved family and maybe that's one reason why he had himself five children, he wanted a big family.

He would've run to them.

Gates: Shortly after Ann's father was born, Charles Wright married again and remained in Pueblo, Colorado, living very near to his son, though never, it seems, acknowledging their relationship.

He was so close.

Curry: What's unfortunate is that at the time there were so many taboos, I would guess, that prevented them uh, from being able to...to meet.

And my dad wouldn't have cared.

He wouldn't have cared.

Gates: Of course not.

It's his dad.

Curry: He would've wanted his father.

You know?

Gates: Sure.

What's it like to meet your father's father?

Curry: Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

I thought this would... I thought I would die not knowing.

And it would've been a sadness for me not to know.

It's I mean; this is a mystery that has been what ninety years old?

This mystery has been a long mystery and now it's not.

Now we know.

Gates: We had already taken Christiane Amanpour back six generations on her maternal line, revealing how her mother's roots ran deep in southern England.

Turning to the paternal branches of her tree, we found ourselves in a very different place: Tehran, the capital city of Iran, where her father Mohammad was born in 1914.

Raised in a wealthy family, Mohammad never focused on his career much to the dismay of his daughter.

Amanpour: I do think I'm different than my father in that I had a bigger ambition, that I was much more, you know, self-motivated to achieve and to work up the ladder of professional endeavor.

You know.

When I said to him, "Daddy, but why didn't you do this or why didn't you do that and you were so well educated and you were so well connected?"

He would say, "I just wanted to be free."

Gates: I soon came to understand why Christiane's father craved peace of mind: our research into his roots uncovered one tragic story after another.

The first concerned his uncle Seyyed Ataollah who was murdered in the early 1900s during a period of rebellion against the King of Iran.

His killing it seems, was ordered by a prominent landowner, a man whom the family likely knew.

Do you have any idea who that is?

Amanpour: Nope.

Gates: That's Qavam ol-Molk.

And somehow your grand-uncle locked horns with this guy and according to our researchers, your grand-uncle was likely killed at his behest.

Amanpour: That's incredible.

Gates: What's it like to see that guy?

Amanpour: It's so, so strange.

It's like I think I'm in a dream.

It just flashes forward to the year of the uprising against the Shah in 1978.

Gates: Yeah.

Amanpour: We went to a place where there was a bust of the Shah.

My sister went up to the bust of this Shah and tweaked his nose.

Gates: No.

Amanpour: My father... Gates: Went crazy.

Amanpour: Literally got her and slapped her.

Gates: Oh, my God.

Amanpour: Because he did it so that all the other people who may be watching would see so they didn't think that we were anti-Shah.

Gates: Right.

Amanpour: I wonder if that comes from this.

Gates: Christiane's question seemed reasonable we knew that her father's family had been completely transformed by this murder.

With his brother dead, Christiane's grandfather traveled from his hometown of Shiraz to the royal court in Tehran, seeking compensation for his loss, a form of justice known as blood money.

Are you familiar with the concept of blood-money?

Amanpour: Yes.

Gates: Your grandfather likely went to Tehran seeking blood-money.

But that's not what he ended up with.

According to our research, rather than receiving blood-money, your grandfather was assigned courtly pay and a title, Sadr ol-Aman which was a title given to clerics.

Amanpour: To shut him up.

Gates: Or to assuage his ire at this unjust thing that had happened to his brother.

Amanpour: That's incredible.

Gates: So he said, "I demand retribution."

They go, "Okay."

They gave him a title.

Amanpour: That's pretty amazing.

Gates: But that's how your family got from Shiraz to Tehran.

Amanpour: Right.

Gates: It was this horrible tragedy in their family.

Amanpour: Yeah.

I had no idea.

Gates: As it turns out, we were just beginning to explore this side of Christiane's family and there would be many more surprises and more tragedies to come.

Turning to her father's mother's line, we introduced her to her 4th great-grandfather a man named Mirza Taghi.

In the 1840s, Mirza became the governor of the province of Isfahan.

But he didn't rule for long.

He was assassinated during a power struggle and would be remembered as a martyr.

Amanpour: Wow.

Gates: The martyred Taghi-Khan.

Amanpour: That's a very bloody... Gates: Very bloody.

Amanpour: History.

Gates: Yes.

History is bloody.

Amanpour: But mine is.

Gates: Yours is.

Amanpour: Everybody is being assassinated.

Gates: People are being... Amanpour: Killing.

Gates: Being killed... Did you know he was a governor?

Amanpour: No.

I did not.

A governor of Isfahan.

Isfahan is the second city of Iran.

Gates: Yeah.

Amanpour: You know they say "Isfahan, nesf-e jahan, Isfahan, half the world."

Gates: Oh really.

Yeah.

Well your ancestor was the governor of half the world.

Amanpour: That is incredible.

Gates: And you had no idea?

Amanpour: I had no idea.

What is wrong with my dad that he never told us anything?

Gates: You know, my mother used to say to my brother, "But you come from people!"

Your father never did that?

Amanpour: Nope.

Gates: Wow.

You have a very distinguished family tree.

Amanpour: Yeah.

It does make me literally gob-smacked.

Gates: Mhmm.

I can see.

Amanpour: It really does.

I mean who knew and particularly for somebody who could never get a story out of her dad.

Gates: Why do you think?

Amanpour: I don't know.

He kept saying to my sisters and me, "Ah, you keep asking questions.

You want to know too much."

I don't know why.

We couldn't drag all this out of him.

Gates: Yeah.

Amanpour: So now you have.

Gates: We had taken Lisa Ling back three generations on her mother's side, illuminating her maternal grandfather's conflicted life.

Turning to her paternal roots, we found a very different kind of story.

A story not of family secrets but rather, of a family in terrible danger.

In December of 1941, Japan invaded Hong Kong.

Lisa's father was five years old.

He and his younger sister along with their mother soon found themselves trapped inside the city.

About to experience the full horrors of war.

Ling: My dad's not very tall, but his father was six-one.

Gates: Oh, wow.

Ling: And he is convinced that the reason why he's so small in comparison, uh, is because he was so malnourished during the war.

Gates: He's probably right.

Ling: Yeah, he said he went days without eating sometimes, or just eating rice.

Gates: The family's troubles were compounded by the fact that when the Japanese invaded, Lisa's grandfather was working in Southeast Asia, over a thousand miles away.

This meant that Lisa's grandmother a woman named Lien Chin Chong was on her own as Hong Kong devolved into chaos.

There were executions, food shortages, even cannibalism.

Lien realized that to survive, she would have to flee.

So she packed up her children and abandoned the city on foot.

Years later, she would recount her experience in a harrowing memoir.

Ling: "We had already marched three days, putting in about fifteen miles each day...my shoes were in terrible condition with the soles worn through.

Broken blisters on my feet caused much pain and discomfort.

After each rest I had to clench my teeth in order to hoist myself up from the bench to start walking again."

That's my grandma's book that she wrote.

Gates: Yeah.

Ling: That I haven't looked at for decades and decades.

And I was much younger when I actually read this book, so now at forty-four... Gates: Oh... Ling: Thinking about how young she was and my little dad.

Gates: You see that map over there?

Ling: Yeah.

Gates: That's where they were.

You can see how they made their way.

Ling: I had no idea that they went into China.

Gates: Hmm.

Ling: I, I had no idea.

I can't even imagine how she was able to do it.

Gates: Oh my God, it's impossible.

Ling: She really, I think, um, carried her family on her back.

Gates: When the war ended, Lisa's grandparents found each other then settled in the city of Nanjing.

But the family's struggles weren't over.

Peacetime re-ignited a civil war in China.

A conflict that would claim over two million lives.

So once again, the Lings took flight.

In 1947, Lisa's grandfather found a job in America and the following year, he sent for his wife and children.

We found their journey recorded in a passenger list.

Ling: "Chong, Lien Chin, age: 38, female.

Ling, Chung Chieh, age: 10, female.

Ling, Chung Teh," my dad, "age 11, male."

Gates: That eleven-year-old boy is your father.

Here he is arriving in the United States for the first time with his sister and his mother, your grandmother.

Ling: What an amazing photograph.

Gates: Isn't that amazing?

Ling: Just thinking about what those eyes had seen before taking this picture.

Gates: Survivors.

Big-time.

Ling: Yeah.

Gates: Lisa's family has flourished in America.

But in the chaos of their flight, many of their families stories got lost.

We were able to restore them, tracing her roots back twelve generations to the mid-1500s!

Along the way, we encountered one story that was especially compelling.

Lisa's sixth great-grandfather was a man named Hao Ling.

In his youth, Hao attempted to climb China's bureaucratic ladder but failed.

He was unable to pass what was known as a provincial exam.

So he was given a minor government position in a distant province.

Hao seemed destined for obscurity until fate intervened.

In the autumn of 1761, the Yellow River overflowed thrusting Hao into the spotlight.

This is an account of the great flood of 1761, and Hao was responsible for the safety of the townspeople.

Ling: "Hao ordered that the able-bodied men of the town move basket after basket of soil, as well as padded quilts, trousers and jackets from pawn shop storehouses to seal the leaks in the town walls."

Gates: So, you think this was enough to hold the floodwaters back?

Ling: I can't imagine it would've been.

Gates: It was.

The town was saved.

And guess who was the hero?

Hao.

Ling: Grandpa, Grandpa Hao.

Gates: He's the hero.

Isn't that amazing?

Ling: Amazing.

So, he's in their history books?

Gates: Yeah, he's in the history books, 'cause he saved the town with his ingenious method.

Ling: Trousers and jackets from pawn shops.

So, who needed to pass the exam?

Gates: Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Ling: Amazing.

Gates: Hao's heroism did not go unnoticed.

According to Lisa's family and supported by records at the Imperial Academy in Beijing the almost fifty-year-old bureaucrat would soon see his lifelong dream come true.

Now, the local residents, according to your family's lore, were so thankful that they wanted to give your sixth-great- grandfather a gift.

And he came up with an ingenious idea.

Hao asks his thankful friends to help him take the provincial exam.

Ling: Hao... Gates: In their province.

Ling: Wow.

And of course, he passed it.

Gates: And he passed it.

Ling: Oh my goodness, that's amazing.

Gates: I wonder who graded that exam, said, "You gotta let Hao, Hao's our boy, he gotta pass the exam."

Ling: That is pretty clever.

Gates: Isn't that amazing?

Ling: Yes.

Gates: He not only passed, he got the fifth-highest marks that whole year.

Ling: You know, you save, you save a town from the Yellow River... Gates: Yeah.

Ling: You pass the exam.

Gates: Yeah.

That's the way it is.

That's a good system, I like that.

Ling: I like it.

Gates: We had already introduced Ann Curry to the grandfather she never knew using DNA to reveal that her father was the son of a man named Charles Wright.

Charles seems to have led a difficult life working as a laborer in Colorado.

Trying to raise his children on his own, and struggling on at least one occasion with alcohol.

Searching for his ancestry, we discovered that his father David or "Dick" Wright seems to have shared his struggles.

His story begins with a newspaper article from the year 1899.

Curry: "Down at Durango a few days ago, one Dick Wright filled up on tanglefoot and proceeded to run the town to his own ideas and in the fracas beat up one Dr.

Winters with a six-shooter."

Gates: "Tanglefoot" is a slang term for cheap whiskey.

Curry: Oh, apparently this runs in the family.

Gates: There you go.

Curry: Wow.

Gates: Your ancestor pistol-whipped a man and broke his jaw.

Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Gates: Did you ever think you'd have a guy like Dick in your family tree?

Curry: No, I mean this... And it was in Durango.

I mean we're talking cowboy world, right?

Wow.

Gates: Now according to this article, Durango's marshal said the only way to disarm your great-grandfather would be to kill him, and they were old friends so he resigned instead.

Curry: So somehow they liked Dick Wright?

Gates: Well, three months later in October, 1899 your ancestor was arrested by an under-sheriff at a dance hall on "Easy" Street in Telluride.

Curry: You got...are... Are you make...this... You can't make this up.

Gates: No.

Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Gates: And it wasn't the first time your ancestor got in trouble with the law.

We found articles about him beating up a man over a horse race the previous summer of 1898.

Curry: Wow.

Gates: That's your great-grandfather.

He was a character.

Curry: Yes.

Don't mess with Curry or Wright.

Gates: We have no images of David Wright and only the barest sense of the details of his biography.

But turning to his wife, we found much more, including a wealth of stories concerning her parents, a couple named Margaret and William Hill.

They are Ann's great-great grandparents, and seem to have been a quintessential frontier family.

Would you please turn the page?

Curry: Yeah.

Well, who are these people?

Gates: You are looking at your great-great-grandparents, William Henry Hill and Margaret Ann Casey.

Curry: Good Lord.

Well, hello, you.

I can actually see my dad in this face.

Gates: I was gonna say do you... You see any resemblance?

Curry: I can see... I can see there's a kind of gentleness in his eyes.

That's very much like my dad.

Wow.

He would've been thrilled.

Look at that and look at her.

Gates: Look at Margaret.

Curry: Wow.

You can see they've had a hard life.

Gates: Ann is right.

Her great-great grandparents almost certainly endured a great deal of hardship.

Margaret was born in Ireland around 1840 and came to the United States with her mother as a child likely fleeing the infamous potato famine.

William was a laborer from England born in the early 1830s.

William likely immigrated in search of economic opportunities he couldn't find in his homeland.

They met in America started a family, and then made a fateful decision.

Curry: "On the 19th day of September AD, 1866, William H. Hill, a native of Great Britain, was duly admitted to citizenship of the United States of America and is therefore entitled to all the rights and privileges of a naturalized citizen."

Wow, look at that, handwritten.

Look at that.

1866.

Gates: That describes the moment that your great-great-grandfather became an American citizen.

What's it like to see that?

Curry: Wow!

You know, so much of my work has been about, you know, people caught in these moments in history trying to survive.

There's a there's a feeling of connection I'm feeling to this.

Wow.

Gates: William became an American citizen while living in Toledo, Iowa.

So Ann wanted to know how the family ended up in Colorado.

The answer lay in the national archives where we found what's known as a "homestead affidavit" describing the settlement of a piece of land that connects Ann with one of the most iconic periods in American history.

Curry: "Settlement was commenced 28th July 1887 that my improvements consist of a corral for 75 cattle, a log house, a wagon shed, new log stable for four horses, and one and a half acres cleared, and that the value of the same is 200 dollars."

Gates: And there's a signature there.

Can you see who signed it?

Curry: Oh, my goodness, William H. Hill!

Gates: Your ancestors were homesteaders.

Curry: My great-great- grandfather.

Gates: Yes.

Curry: Unbelievable.

That...he had a nice... He had nice penmanship.

Well done, wow.

Gates: You see that red area?

Curry: Yeah.

Gates: That is where your great-great-grandfather's land was.

Curry: Wow, he had a... Gates: He had 160 acres.

Curry: Wow!

Gates: It is in Mueller State Park.

Curry: What?!

That's great.

Look at that.

I could actually go there.

I could actually go take a drive and find it.

Gates: What's it like to see that?

Curry: It's a place where your people were, people you didn't even know existed.

Gates: Your people were part of the westward expansion of the United States.

Curry: Hmm, look at that.

Holy cow.

So when people say, what are you anyway?

I can say, well, I'm a double-barrelled American!

Gates: Big time.

Does it change the way you think about the history of America?

Curry: Well, now I can actually pinpoint my family, people in my family and how they were influenced by history.

Gates: Absolutely.

And how they made history.

Curry: Mmm-hmm.

And how they survived.

Gates: We had reached the end of the journey for Ann, Lisa, and Christiane.

The paper trail had run out, it was time to show them their full family trees.

Ling: Oh my God.

Curry: Oh, my goodness.

Gates: Now populated with family members whose names they'd never heard before.

Amanpour: Incredible!

This is absolutely beautiful.

It's beautiful.

Gates: Looking back, each now more fully understood how they themselves fit into a much larger, and still evolving story.

Curry: It connects you, doesn't it?

Gates: It does.

Curry: It sees that we are all part of this human flow, surviving one great challenge after another.

Amanpour: What I would like to do is share this with my sisters, with my son, with my cousins so that they too know exactly where we come from and they won't have to wonder anymore.

Ling: You know, I said as a kid, I really, I hated being Chinese, Skip, because I felt, you know, I was so different, you know, and I, I felt no connection whatsoever to China.

I'd never been there.

I didn't speak the language.

And so, to know that my roots there are so strong.

And, and even though I didn't know their stories really until today, like, they have been part of, of my story, and they live with me.

Gates: Yeah.

Ling: And now that I do know them, it makes me feel even stronger.

Gates: That's the end of our journey through the family trees of Ann Curry, Lisa Ling, and Christiane Amanpour.

Join me next time when we unlock the secrets of the past for new guests on another episode of Finding Your Roots.

Tomei: Royal chancellor.

Gates: Royal chancellor.

Tomei: Just what a girl wants to hear.

Narrator: Next time on "Finding Your Roots" author executive, Sheryl Sandberg.

Sandberg: There is something about family.

Narrator: Comedian activist, Kal Penn.

Penn: Having those stronger roots makes me feel more American.

Narrator: And actor, Marisa Tomei.

Tomei: She liked to laugh a lot.

Narrator: Family history... Penn: That feels really empowering.

Narrator: Lost.

Tomei: No friends, no address, no money.

Narrator: On the journey to America.

Sandberg: These are my people.

On the next "Finding Your Roots"