Gwyneth Paltrow Who Do You Think You Are? USA

Academy award-winning Actress Gwyneth Paltrow

is one of America's leading movie stars.

She has appeared in dozens of films,

including Shakespeare In Love,

for which she won the coveted Best Actress Oscar.

Although she grew up in New York, Gwyneth spends much of her time in London

with her husband, Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay

and their two children.

She was born to a family with deep roots

in the entertainment business.

Her mother is actress Blythe Danner,

and her late father was producer-director Bruce Paltrow.

My dad was the love of my life

until he died.

My father really instilled in me...

the importance of unconditional love and support,

and to treat your family with love and respect,

because they're your family, and those are the ties that bind.

Of course there's stories that come through

that you never know if they were true or not.

It's hard to know the truth about your own parents, even when they're telling you

themselves, you know. Everything is subjective and you never really know what the facts are,

what the fiction is and how the two combine.

My mother's side of the family, the Danners,

were completely different to the Paltrows.

My mother's the kind of classic half-German WASP

and had some sort of Pennsylvania Dutch roots.

And then, on my father's side,

it's Jewish lineage from Eastern Europe.

I think it's the classic American story of...

many different backgrounds coming together.

Gwyneth is back in New York City.

She is beginning her journey with her mother's side of the family.

My mother at some point mentioned that somebody

on her father's side was from Barbados.

I am curious to find out who was from Barbados

and why they were there.

My mom thinks it might have been her grandmother Ida May

who came from Barbados, but I don't know.

Given my mom's deep German roots, it seems pretty unlikely.

My mother has just sent me...

these beautiful pictures of Ida May Danner.

Her father's mother.

She's very elegant-looking.

I'll go see if I can find any records of any kind

that prove that she did come from Barbados.

Gwyneth is starting her search at the New York Public Library

with Maira Liriano,

a librarian who's already been researching some records.

Welcome to the New York Public Library

-Stephen A Schwarzman building.

-Thanks for being here.

So my mother sent me these photographs

of her paternal grandmother...

OK.

..called Ida Danner.

I don't know anything about her, but my mother had said

that there was some connection to Barbados.

So I wondered if there was any information about her, basically.

We'll start off with an obituary for Ida...

-OK.

-..that appeared in a newspaper in Pennsylvania.

-OK.

-She passed away in February of 1967.

"Mrs Ida M Danner, 82, died Thursday evening

"at the Broomall Presbyterian Home.

"Mrs Danner was born..." Oh, born in Montgomery County.

So where is Montgomery County?

Montgomery County is in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.

Hmm. So she's not from Barbados?

-Interesting.

-But this is really helpful,

because we do get the name of her parents.

"Daughter of the late David T and Isabel Stout Yetter."

Gwyneth has discovered the story

about her mother's grandmother

coming from Barbados isn't true.

But learning the names of Ida's parents

may provide more information.

Maira was able to find Ida's mother Isabel

living in Pennsylvania on the 1910 census.

There she is.

She's the head of the house.

49.

The birthplace was in the West Indies.

Ooh. Her father and mother were both born in the West Indies.

So that gives us some clues.

It doesn't completely confirm what we want to know.

And so this happens to be Isabel's death certificate.

-OK.

-So she died in Pennsylvania.

-1914.

-OK, so full name, Rosemond Isabel Yetter.

She was a housekeeper.

She was born in Barbados, West Indies.

-That's cool.

-So this would definitely be our Barbados connection.

-OK.

-And she's working as a domestic servant.

-So she had to work.

-Right.

-She didn't come with money.

-She actually had to earn a living.

-Right.

Um...and is there a way to find out more

about her and...

or when she came to the... to America,

or what she was doing in Barbados, or...?

-Is there a way to figure that out?

-I think what we could try to find out

-is maybe when she came here.

-Uh-huh.

-And we'll look at passenger lists.

-OK.

Try first with Rosamond.

Rosamond.

-Stout.

-Stout. Right.

-There.

-OK. So one person comes up.

Roseman Stoud.

Or Rosemond Stout.

1868.

And she was born about 1850.

So she would be 18 when she came.

Rosemond Stout... Oh. She's coming with somebody.

-Martha Stout?

-Who's 27.

She's got an older sister.

-Aww.

-And they're heading to the United States.

-They're heading to the United States.

-This is a very unusual passenger list,

-because there's only two passengers on this.

-Oh!

Look at the top, and you'll get a little bit more information

about the ship itself.

This abbreviation stands for barque.

And that is, at the time, the 19th century,

that was a commercial sailing ship.

-OK.

-So they managed to get

onto this commercial ship...

-Strange.

-..that was heading to New York,

and, er, they were the only two passengers on it.

Wow. That's very adventurous.

-Yeah.

-I wouldn't let my two daughters

get onto a ship alone with a bunch of men

going to New York. Sailors.

So can we find out any more about why

they were leaving, or what the...?

For that, you'd have to go to Barbados to...

What a shame! Damn!

Especially after a day like today.

So Gwyneth is heading to Barbados,

on the trail of her great-great grandmother Rosemond Stout.

At 18 years old, she went to a foreign land

with only her sister by her side,

and that definitely takes guts.

I'm curious to get to

the bottom of this mystery. Why would she have left

this beautiful island in the first place?

In the late 1860s, at the time Gwyneth's great-great grandmother left for America,

Barbados was a British colony.

There had been English settlers on Barbados

since the early 17th century,

but it was with the introduction of the sugar crop in the 1640s

that the island's economy exploded.

To work the sugar plantations,

thousands of slaves were imported from West Africa

and Barbados became a major trading centre,

exporting sugar and other crops all over the world.

It's quite a lot to emigrate from somewhere

into the great unknown.

I think I would understand that drive,

or that quest for a better life.

To try to find out why her great-great grandmother Rosemond

left her homeland, Gwyneth is heading to

the Barbados Department of Archives. She's meeting genealogist

Dr Pat Stafford.

So they were going to the United States.

This is a shipping record. They went on a commercial ship. It wasn't a passenger ship.

Yeah, from 10th October in 1868.

-Mm-hmm.

-Which suggests she would have

-been born about 1850.

-Right.

-So let's look at this record book here.

-OK.

-Now, what is this?

-This is one of the many records

of everybody who was baptised on the island.

Wow. OK.

And see if you can find anybody called Rosemond Stout.

OK... Carter, Godard, Stout?

Stout, yes.

And this is... But the child who was baptised...

OK. Rosemond Isabel.

-And these are the parents.

-Samuel and Sarah Frances Stout.

And this column here, of course,

is her father's occupation.

Her father. "Merchant clerk."

Wow, OK.

What does that mean, a merchant clerk?

By the mid-1800s,

Barbados was a major centre of trade in the Caribbean.

And Bridgetown was the main hub for imported goods

and the export of commodities such as rum,

sugar and molasses.

Rosemond's father, Samuel Stout,

clerked for the port's merchants,

perhaps someday hoping to become

a full-fledged merchant himself.

This was quite a middle-class occupation.

So it was not the sort of profession

that one would assume that the children want to run away from home.

-OK.

-Something must have gone wrong within the family

for two young girls like this to move.

-So I have taken the liberty of looking up the burial records...

-OK.

..to find if, in fact, there was some kind of tragedy.

"Burials solemnised in the cathedral

"and parish church, 1864."

And again, if you'd like to read down the page...

-Yes.

-Again, you're looking in this...

Stout. Sarah Frances Stout.

-42 years.

-She died.

-So Sarah Frances died.

-Oh, dear!

"Widow of Sam Stout."

He was dead already.

So what you have here

are two girls...

Losing... They've lost their father already.

Now they've just lost their mother.

That's right. So...

God, she was only 42.

So...when your, um,

when your great-great grandmother was left an orphan, she was only 13 years old.

Oh, no!

That's so awful.

-That's so sad.

-So it does suggest...

-So she was left with her...

-That may have been...

-Yeah.

-..one of the reasons that they chose to leave the island.

-Yeah.

So, where do we go from here?

-I don't know.

-Right.

-You tell me.

Well, I can only tell you what the records say at this stage.

They don't really reveal anything else to me.

Oh, OK.

But, um, what I suggest you do

is talk to a historian who specialises

in this period of Barbadian history.

-OK, and this is somebody I can find here?

-Yes, I believe so.

-Don't send me back to New York!

-No, we're not sending you back to New York.

OK, good.

'I know my great-great grandmother'

was orphaned at a very young age.

She was 13.

And then she went to America when she was 18 and became a maid.

So I'm just wondering what happened.

I'm really curious to find out

why she left and...

just looking forward

to finding out the rest of the story, really.

To try to find out what would have driven her great-great grandmother

to board a commercial ship bound for the US,

Gwyneth is meeting Professor Pedro Welch,

an expert on 19th-century Barbados.

How are you?

-How are you?

-I'm Gwyneth.

-Yes. Pedro. Pedro Welch.

-Pedro, nice to meet you.

Come in.

So, Pedro, I was in New York

and I found this record

of my great-great grandmother.

She got on this boat and went to America.

So I was just wondering

if you might know

anything about the family, or...

or the time, or what happened, or what

life might have been like? Basically, anything you can tell me.

Um, certainly. It seems to me that you've got

quite a lot of information here to begin with.

-Right.

-Um, this document

you have here, um,

does something for us that many other documents don't do.

-OK.

-You have names.

You have ages. And you know something about the boat...

-Right.

-..that they're travelling in.

Uh, many of the boats that are used in the region

-are called barques or schooners.

-OK.

So we know something about the boat.

You know something about the conditions

that they will be travelling under.

For example, if you think of the kind of boat

that they would have travelled in,

these would have been used to transport salt

and, um, and colonial produce around the region.

And why would they have gone on a commercial boat?

Why would they have been the only two passengers on a commercial ship?

I think it is quiet possible that this was an option,

-um, that they chose because it was cheaper.

-Oh.

-Um...

But what leads them to travel on a ship in the first place?

Right, exactly. What is it?

-I think that part of it is an amalgam of several things.

-OK.

-Emancipation comes in 1834.

-OK.

-Um...

-How?

-It is conferred by an Act of British...

of the British Parliament.

-OK.

-What happens thereafter is that, um,

that many of the white population

-lose their positions. Their social positions.

-Oh.

-Um...

Her occupation. Um, I see that on the list here.

The occupation is given as seamstress.

That's certainly for her sister.

-And she's a milliner.

-Right.

These are occupations held largely by black women.

-Right.

-And these young ladies

-would not have had much of an opportunity after emancipation...

-Right.

The English settlers had imposed slavery

on black Barbadians for two centuries.

And although Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807,

the institution of slavery

continued within the British Empire until 1834.

By the time Rosemond Stout left Barbados,

emancipation had been in place for over 30 years.

With blacks integrated into the paid work force,

job opportunities for lower-middle-class white women

were in short supply,

and many were competing with the free black women,

who were often willing to work for lower wages.

And the other issue that faces particularly women is, um,

-the question of, who are you going to get married to?

-Right.

The female population is larger than the male population.

-OK.

-Proportionately. So that for an 18-year-old girl in this period,

her marriage prospects are limited.

-Right.

-Um...

-So she has no parents. She's competing with

all the other white women for few available men.

-And some black women as well.

-And some black women as well.

-Yes.

-And then she's also competing with all the young black women

for the milliner and seamstress jobs.

-Yes.

-So she decides...

to get on a boat and go to America.

-Yes.

-So...

-Because...

-She's quite, er...hardy.

-Quite feisty.

-Yeah, feisty.

-Oh, yes, yes, yes, um...

I trust that, um, that she's bequeathed

that same spirit.

Right.

I trust she has done that.

Thank you.

'It was interesting to learn kind of her circumstance,

'and the idea of...'

these people who you're so closely related to

having these kind of unbelievable experiences,

and I think it was very brave of her to leave with her older sister.

And I really like that, you know, chutzpah

and sense of, you know,

"No, I can make something of my life. I have that self belief."

Because I have the same self belief. And I've always credited my father with that,

because he said to me, "You can do whatever you want to do."

But it's interesting to see physical examples of family members

who've done that very thing.

Gwyneth is back in New York City

and is now searching into her father's side of the family.

She is beginning by investigating her grandfather Buster's family background.

My grandpa Buster was...

the most loving, effusive...

incredible grandfather.

But he was not close to his family at all.

And there was some real darkness there.

My grandfather would make comments about...

his upbringing and how it wasn't a house. It wasn't a home.

That his mother didn't take care of him.

That the children would be

sent home from school for being filthy.

But I never really pressed too much about what it was.

Gwyneth wants to find out more about Buster's mother

and the reasons for his unhappy childhood.

So she's visiting Buster's daughter,

her dad's sister, Aunt Fran.

-Hi!

-Hi.

I'm trying to find out more about Buster

and his childhood. I feel like anywhere

I was able to get was because of the love of him and my dad, you know?

He didn't talk that much about his family,

just in sort of like "I don't want to go there"

kind of a way. Right. So do you know things?

Yeah, he was, er,

-he was born in 1914.

-All right.

He grew up in Bayside, Queens.

Growing up, his household was not like mine

and not like yours.

Ida, his mother,

she didn't cook, she didn't clean.

Piles and piles of newspapers,

and...junk.

She was a hoarder.

She was a hoarder, basically.

-Er, but yet, she was very smart. She went to Hunter College.

-Really?

Uh, but she never made a meal. I think this...

This is Buster with all of his siblings and his parents.

-Is that Ida?

-That's Ida.

-Wow.

-And this is Mike.

Also real name is Meyer.

-My great-grandfather.

-Yes.

You do know that our name was actually Paltrovitch?

Yes, that, I did know.

So...I mean, I really don't know anything about her,

except that she sounded like she... had mental health problems.

I would like to know what happened to her

and where she was from and why she was crazy...

I do have one other thing.

The certificate of death of Ida.

Of Ida.

Let's see. Bronx.

"Name of father, Joseph Hyman."

So her maiden name is Hyman.

Ida Hyman. That's a terrible name.

Oh!

OK.

It's quite an interesting juxtaposition

that she was kind of a mess at home,

but she seems to have been going to college, and, you know,

this is like at the turn of the century, basically.

So it would be interesting to find out

who she was before she became a wife

and an ambivalent mother.

Gwyneth has arranged to meet Professor Deborah Dash Moore,

an expert on New York Jewish history,

who's been researching Ida's background.

I've brought you down here to the lower East side,

-which was the heart of the immigrant Jewish neighbourhood.

-Right.

And your great-grandmother grew up here. So we have here a police report.

I don't know whether... Can you make out the names?

-Hyman, there.

-Hyman, you got it. Keep going.

-Joseph Hyman, Rebekah, and Ida Hyman.

-That's her!

-OK.

-All right. Now, if you notice, where do they live?

-37 Allen.

-So here we are, on Allen.

-Oh!

-OK. Look around.

38...

-..37.

-There, that's it!

-And that's the building.

-Unbelievable.

-That's the building.

-That's where she grew up?

-That's where she grew up, yes.

-Wow.

I have a really neat document here to show you.

-But I think it's really cold out here.

-It's cold.

-We should go to a cafe to take a look at it.

-OK, that's a great idea.

-OK.

So I want to give you a sense of

what Ida achieved,

which is pretty impressive.

-And, in fact, we have here...

-1897.

Annual Report of The Normal College.

"A catalogue of students."

Normal College is what Hunter College was called.

-Oh.

-The goal is, er,

to have young women train to be public school teachers.

It didn't matter what your ethnic background was.

Um, that was very important,

because there certainly were,

er, colleges that didn't admit Jews.

She could be a poor Russian, Jewish immigrant and...

And get into the Normal College,

and have open to you these vistas.

The opportunity of a career. All these things within her reach.

-Yeah.

-Cos in New York City,

-teaching was the top career for a young women.

-Which is great.

So let's see where she is.

-There she is. Ida Hyman.

-Yeah.

"Average percent - 82."

-That's pretty good.

-Yeah, that's pretty good. That's correct.

-"Number of days present - 66."

-Mm-hmm.

"Number of days absent - 27."

-A lot of days.

-That's a lot of days.

So that's an indicator of something strange.

That's right. That's right.

She's obviously smart, but she's having problems making it to school.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, yeah.

Um, and, in fact,

if we check the following year, this is one of the registers.

OK.

It says, "Dis September 16th, 1898."

What does that mean?

She didn't graduate. She was discharged.

Ah. Kicked out?

Probably.

I wonder what was going on with her.

If we take a look here, we may begin to figure out

what may have been happening.

-OK.

-This is the 1900 census.

-Edith...

-Edith.

-Edith is also Ida.

-Oh, OK.

And who was the family?

Edith, Isaac...

-And...

-Joseph Hyman.

That's right.

So who was in the family ten years earlier?

So they were Joseph...

Rebecca, Isaac,

Samuel, Ida.

Right.

So we're missing someone. Someone has died.

-Uh-huh, or something.

-Or something.

In 1890, Ida was living with

her parents and two brothers.

But ten years later,

Ida's mother and one of her brothers

have disappeared from the census records.

So where's the mother?

-OK, so where's the mother?

-And we're missing Samuel.

And we're missing Samuel.

-Oh, dear.

-This is the mother.

-Oh, that's sad.

-Yeah, this is very sad.

-Cirrhosis of the liver.

She was an alcoholic.

Not necessarily.

You can get cirrhosis of the liver from other things as well.

"I hereby certify I attended deceased

"from February 10, 1897..."

1897?

That was just a year before Ida was discharged from college.

So that's probably why Ida was, um...

not at school so much.

I think so. I think that she had to help her mom.

-OK.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Oh...

-And...

Here, we find Samuel, Ida's brother.

Oh, dear.

It says 1897 as well.

That's right.

Just after the death of Rebecca, of his mom.

So his mom died...

She died in April, yeah.

-And he died in June.

-Yeah.

-Mm. That's a blow.

-So it's a real blow.

She's gone from seemingly having some kind of ambition

and going to college and heading towards a career to be a teacher,

and then her mother and older brother die.

And I feel like...

it caused, you know, sort of planted the seeds

for some resentment later in her life.

Just based on the type of mother she was

to my grandfather, and...

It's sad.

I've lost my father.

And, you know, the idea of... any more grief on top of that,

I just...I think it would break me in half.

So if she felt the way about her mother

that I felt about my father,

or she felt the way about her brother

that I feel about my brother, I mean, it's amazing that she was able to

ever get out of the house again.

So I'm very curious to find out

about the next stage of her life,

and why my grandfather had such an unhappy home.

Gwyneth is meeting Michael Lorenzini

at the New York Municipal Archives

to look for more records

that reference her great-grandmother Ida or her grandfather Buster,

whose given name was Arnold.

I want to find out about my grandfather's mother.

Kind of what her early adulthood was like and her marriage.

Michael is starting with the 1920 census,

the first one after Gwyneth's grandfather, Arnold, was born.

-It was originally Paltrovitch.

-OK.

Ah, there you go.

OK.

"Paltrowitz. Paltrowitz. Meyer, Edith.

"Harold, Ruth, Marion, Arnold P."

-There it is.

-And Dorothy.

If we look down at the ages, Harold's the oldest.

He's 16. So obviously, they've been together a while.

-Mm-hmm.

-Um...

So we could go back to the 1910 census

-and see if we can find the family there.

-OK.

Arnold wouldn't have been born yet. We could look for Meyer.

-His dad.

-Mm-hmm.

Um, but I think he seems like the only one who came up.

-"Meyer Paltrowitz. Wife..."

-Ida Paltrowitz.

"Harold Paltrowitz and Helen..."

Helen. She wasn't in the 1920 census.

So in 1920, Gwyneth's

great-grandparents, Ida and Meyer,

had five children.

But ten years earlier, in 1910,

they had a sixth child,

a daughter named Helen.

So I'm wondering what happened to Helen.

-Did she die too?

-That's probably what happened.

-We could pull the death certificate. This will have more information.

-OK.

Certificate 4129.

41...

..29.

Helen Paltrowitz.

Three years old.

Oh, that's terrible.

What does it say?

"Fractured..."

-"Shock fracture."

-Shock fracture.

"Ribs punctuated lung..."

"And run over..."

-By a wagon?

-By a wagon.

-Oh, my God. That's horrific.

Oh.

So because of the nature of this death,

um, there would be a coroner's inquest as well.

-Right.

-Because it's an accidental death.

-Right.

-So that may have more information.

-Right.

This is the notice of death.

"Deceased three years old.

"Was in street when wagon came along.

"Driver was driving slow. Driver didn't know anything about accident

"until attention was attracted by scream."

Oh...

"When he stopped, witness testified

"deceased went between front and rear wheel."

Oh, God.

That's...terrible.

That's like your worst nightmare.

As a mother, you just...

..do not want to read this.

Yeah, it's pretty... It's pretty horrific.

Even worse is if we look at Arnold's older sister.

Marion, she was seven-and-a-half in 1920.

-OK.

-So...

-This is her social security...

-Right.

..record,

which is going to actually have her birth date on it.

August 12th, 1912.

OK, so...Helen dies July 20th, 1912.

And she's born August 1912.

So my great-grandmother was pregnant...

when her older daughter died.

Yeah, just three weeks, gave birth three weeks later.

Wow.

That's devastating.

It makes me feel so bad for my great-grandmother.

I could only imagine that, you know,

it's the loss of her daughter that...

really...spun her out.

And the hormones of having the baby right away,

while still being in the depths of grief and depression

over the loss of a child

really made her incapable of caring for them.

I wish I could share this information with my grandfather.

He didn't have compassion for her at all,

and maybe this would have changed that.

I'm relieved to finally

have some resolution

to the dark stories I'd heard

about my grandpa Buster's mother.

And given how he was raised,

it's amazing how loving he was to his own family.

But it does make me wonder more

about his father Meyer's side of the family.

The only thing I know is that Meyer's father,

my great-great grandfather,

was a rabbi from eastern Europe named Simon.

There's a story in my family

that we came from generations of rabbis.

So I wonder if this is true,

if I have any great rabbis in my lineage.

I have a very spiritually curious soul,

and if it is true, it would be amazing.

To begin her research into her Jewish heritage

and to try to find out more about her great-grandfather Meyer's family background,

Gwyneth is heading out to Long Island to visit her cousin, Barbara Paltrow.

-Hi!

-Come in! I'm so glad to see you.

It's so good to see you. It's been such a long time.

-How are you? Really well. How are you?

-And those two gorgeous

-little babies?

-Amazing, great. I'll show you pictures before I go.

I want to see them. Come.

So this has been really interesting because

I've been finding out a lot about my grandpa Buster,

starting with his mother, so I know a lot more about her now.

But I don't know anything about Buster's father, Meyer.

Well, I didn't know your great-grandfather that well,

-but he did come to visit, and we...

-Is this him?

-This is him.

-This is Meyer?

-This is Meyer, and if you look on the back,

he has written a note which is partly cut off,

but that's in his hand.

"A likeness of myself which will be a souvenir.

"Love and regards to all, your brother, Meyer."

1909.

And was his father a rabbi?

Yes, Simon or Simcha Paltrowitz.

Also known as Paltrovitch. These names all had many pronunciations.

Right.

An Orthodox rabbi, imagine that.

-And where was his father a rabbi?

-He was from...

from the area that's on the border of Poland and Russia.

-Right.

-I have a couple of pictures...

to show you...

This is very old.

..taken on the occasion of the 50th wedding anniversary

of Simcha and his wife Zipporah

or Zippy, as I was told she was called, Zippy!

Zippy, that's so great!

What a great name.

So this is Meyer's father.

That's Meyer's father, yes.

So Meyer is my great-grandfather. This is my great-great grandfather.

-OK.

-It's hard to keep track of them!

An Orthodox rabbi. I had heard this, but I never really knew if it was true, or...

-Right. It really is amazing.

-Wow.

-Do you know any more about Simcha's...

-Predecessors?

-Yes.

I really don't know a great deal of that.

It'll be interesting to see what we find.

Yes, indeed!

Amazing.

'It was great to come out here and learn about...'

Simcha, my great-great grandfather.

It was very interesting to have it confirmed

that he was an Orthodox rabbi

and that his father before him, and on and on, all the predecessors were apparently these Orthodox rabbis.

So I'm very curious to find out who they were and when they came to America,

and kind of what they studied and wrote about, and so we'll see. We'll see what we learn.

Gwyneth's next stop is the Eldridge Street Synagogue in Lower Manhattan,

the first synagogue erected in New York

by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

The only rabbi I know of is my great-great grandfather,

Simcha, or Simon Paltrovitch, who emigrated from Eastern Europe.

But given the family stories I've heard,

I wonder if he's the only rabbi in my lineage.

Gwyneth is meeting Professor Glenn Dynner,

who specialises in Eastern European Jewish history.

-Well, we have some extraordinary documents here.

-OK.

-This is in Polish.

-OK.

-And it says...

-HE SPEAKS IN POLISH

"A promise of marriage."

Now, this is a betrothal between...

Can you read it at all?

No.

-Simon...

-OK.

-Szymon in Polish.

-OK.

..Paltrovitch.

-My great-great grandfather?

-Right.

-OK.

-OK.

And he's marrying somebody by the name of Czypa Levitinska.

The ceremony is presided over

by the rabbi of the Nowogrod district.

-What's Nowogrod?

-It's a small town,

-in the northeast of Poland.

-OK.

And in 1862, we have a signature by...

Her... Herve...

-Hirsch. Hirsch Pelterowicz.

-Hirsch Pelterowicz.

Simcha's father.

-And he's also the rabbi of Nowogrod.

-Wow. That is so cool.

-So now this tells us that we have another rabbi in the family.

-Right.

Gwyneth has discovered that

her third great-grandfather, Tzvi Hirsch,

was also a rabbi,

confirming one of the family stories.

There are two additional pieces of information

-which I think you'll find really interesting.

-OK.

-Now, I have here in my hands a memorial book...

-OK.

-..from the community of Nowogrod.

-Oh, my gosh.

-The vast majority of these communities were destroyed during the Holocaust.

-Right.

Nowogrod is no exception.

Yet the survivors,

or those who had left before the Holocaust,

would get together after the war

and they would write what is called a memorial book.

-Wow.

-And this is the memorial book that they came up with.

-And they mention Tzvi Hirsch.

-Really?

-Translation...

-Translation.

"The rabbis of Nowogrod were famous for their learnedness

"and personal qualities.

"The rabbi Reb Hershele was a great holy man

"and master of Kabbalah.

"Once, a great fire erupted outside the town.

"The fire approached the Jewish neighbourhood.

"A great panic ensued. However, Rabbi Hershele

"went out to the balcony of his house,

"waved his handkerchief towards the fire,

"and the fire was extinguished.

"Since then, they say, a fire that erupts in the town

"will not spread very much, for the blessing of R Hershele protects us."

Wow.

So that was my...

That was Simcha's father.

-That was Simcha's father.

-Tzvi Hirsch.

-Oh, my gosh.

And, um, he was... a master of Kabbalah.

-Wow.

-A miracle worker.

-This is kind of blowing my mind.

Because I study Kabbalah.

You can just feel how... his spirituality coming off the page.

And this is somebody very, very special,

very holy...

that you have in your family line.

-That's quite remarkable.

-Yeah.

OK? Would you like to see more?

Oh, gosh, yes. Like, there's more?

It gets better. The next thing I want to show you

is a book called Kettert Tzvi,

"The Crown of Tzvi."

-OK.

-This is a book that Simon wrote.

-And guess who he named it after?

-His father.

-Tzvi Hirsch.

-Tzvi Hirsch.

-His father.

-His father, OK.

Now, the reason why it's so interesting is...

there's a reflection

on his father in here.

-And I'll give you the translation.

-OK.

-OK?

-Cool.

"For my Lord and father, the genius of blessed memory,

"was always on call at his study house

"with legal discussions and cases that they brought before him.

"And they came from all the communities

"where people knew the reputation of my Lord and father.

"And they sought Torah from his mouth."

Oh. This is going to make me cry.

That's so sweet.

"..From his mouth,

"as from the mouth of one of the angels

"of Lord of Hosts."

That's so sweet.

You have a long line of people loving their fathers

in my family.

Just incredible reverence for his father.

That is amazing.

It's funny, because...

you... I mean, are you here

as, like, echoes of your own relationships?

You know, it's just, it's amazing to

see so many parallels that keep coming together

over...through all these different themes.

It's just...

That's very... That's amazing.

There are a lot of people who I want to talk to about this.

'I was amazed that Simcha, my great-great grandfather's father

'was this rabbi of great importance.

'And it was amazing for me to see Simcha

'write about his father'

the way that I would speak about my father.

And just the whole idea that...

you know, there is this energy in your ancestry.

It's more than just facts

and who was born where.

Even we got to see through my great-grandmother's side,

you know, in a much darker way,

this kind of depression being passed down.

Um, but on...

on the other side of the family, to see this amazing light coming through

and this amazing, you know,

quest for knowledge and spirituality,

and seeing both sides of the family in myself.

You know, it's just...amazing.

Now that her journey is over,

Gwyneth is back home to visit her mother, Blythe Danner,

and to share all she's learned about both sides of her family.

OK, so this is your grandmother.

Ida May Yetter.

-And you had heard that she was born in Barbados.

-Yeah, nobody knew more than that.

She wasn't.

Her mother was born in Barbados.

Wow.

This has been a really valuable experience,

in that I've come to understand all of these pieces of myself.

And that's very impactful to me.

One of the most interesting things about doing this

in general is, you see traits

-going through, you know?

-Right.

Like you'll see Grandpa's grandfather adoring his father.

And one of the things that I loved in Rosemond

was this, like, wildness and this drive

that she seemed to have. Like, "I'll leave this place,

"because I can't find a husband, I can't find a job.

"There's something better out there for me." That kind of self belief

that I think that I feel in myself,

and that I think you have.

It's cool, it was interesting to track...

to see those things in a really tangible way come down.

Yes, and that you have, to me, the wisdom of the rabbis

and the smarts of your dad, and...

I wish that I could have told Daddy all of this stuff,

because I think he would have been...

not only fascinated,

but I think he would have found it really illuminating.

-This was quite a journey, huh? It's pretty wonderful.

-Yeah.

-I'm so happy you had this opportunity.

-Yeah.

'The most interesting and important lesson that I've learned

'is that we need to take responsibility for all of our stories,

'and teach our children about where we come from in both the good ways and the bad,

'because the most meaningful thing about our histories

'is what we learn from them.'

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