Original subtitles

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♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: Who isn't curious about family history?

ANITRA HURT: There was a lot of people that, and you may feel this way, too,

that you just don't know.

Like, who is this person? Who is this person?

BYRON HURT: Where we came from.

Who our people are.

RENARD ROGERS: We know nothing.

We have to rely on some of our older family members

to really tell us what they remember.

I heard that they say he was a tall,

fair-skinned man with green eyes and red hair.

BYRON HURT: My family is on a quest.

So is this the only picture

that we have of Lee Hurt?

JANDRA BONNER: The only known picture.

BYRON HURT: We're hoping that DNA testing

can unlock secrets of the past.

BONNER: We're gonna have to find the common link

somewhere up in the generations.

That's one way-- how the DNA works.

BYRON HURT: Because, like so many families like ours,

our family tree is incomplete.

ROGERS: Before we started this ancestry research,

I didn't know anything about Lee Hurt.

We knew that he had a, a lot of kids.

(computer keys tapping)

BYRON HURT: Can science help us find answers...

FATIMAH JACKSON: DNA can tell you some of your family history,

but it's not all-encompassing.

BYRON HURT: ...and strengthen ourselves in the process?

"Lee and Liza's Family Tree,"

right now, on "NOVA."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: I come from a big family.

And when I say big, I mean really big.

(man exclaiming)

BYRON HURT: It's so big that we have

a national executive committee

with a president,

vice president, secretary,

a treasurer, and a financial secretary to help

keep our family organized.

We even have family by-laws.

(man exclaiming)

BYRON HURT: Back in 1984,

nearly four decades ago, my grandfather's brother

Dave Hurt, Jr., and his cousins

Rosie McGee and Helen Roberts

decided to organize the first-ever

Hurt-Waller family reunion.

At each of our reunions, we pay homage

to our oldest known patriarch and matriarch,

Lee Hurt and Eliza Waller,

who sit at the very top of our family tree.

They're kind of like our family's Adam and Eve.

(laughing)

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: Lee and Liza had 14 children,

and spawned a long line of descendants,

but other than that, we don't really know

that much about them.

Who are Lee and Liza?

And where did they come from?

Who are their parents?

Their parents' parents? And their parents' parents?

I'm Byron Hurt.

I'm a documentary filmmaker

and I'm a member of the Hurt-Waller family.

I've always been super-curious

about our family's origins beyond Lee and Liza.

Like so many families in America

who are searching for their ancestors,

our family tree is incomplete.

Many European Americans are able to discover

their family roots using public records

and genetic ancestry test kits.

But for African American families, like mine,

the path to learning family history

is much more challenging.

Since emancipation,

Black families torn apart during slavery

have had to work hard to reunite

and discover the truth about their past.

My family has no idea who Lee and Liza's ancestors are,

because unfortunately, we can't go back any further than 1863,

the year Lee Hurt was born.

So, my family has decided to take matters into our own hands.

After decades of organizing family reunions,

we've decided to turn to science

to learn more about Lee and Liza.

We've created an ancestry committee to find out more

about our history,

and we're using genetic ancestry tests

to see how far back we can go.

My family wants to know if DNA test kits

could help us learn more about our ancestry,

and even learn more about family members that we don't even know.

And who knows?

Maybe our journey could be helpful to other families.

We're not scientists,

and we don't know a whole lot about the science of DNA.

Look at that big chunk of DNA in the middle-- you see it?

BYRON HURT: But we have lots of questions,

and we're eager to learn. (people talking in background)

BYRON HURT: Science was my least favorite subject in high school.

I hated science.

So, when I was presented with this opportunity to make a film

about science to help our family learn more about our ancestry,

I was, like, "Me? Science?

What kind of film can I make about science?"

(people talking in background)

BYRON HURT: But then I thought of my two second cousins

Renard and Jandra, the leaders

of our family's DNA ancestry committee.

They're using a combination of oral history,

historical documents, and, yes,

science to uncover our family's roots.

♪ ♪

And they're hoping to do it

by our next family reunion in Macon, Georgia,

our first reunion since the pandemic.

(mouse clicking)

Our reunion is one year away,

and I asked Renard and Jandra if I could tag along

and document their journey

as they go

looking for Lee and Liza's family tree.

♪ ♪

(computer keys clicking)

There is no written history of our family's existence

before Lee Hurt's birth in 1863.

But as far as we know, based on oral history,

Lee Hurt settled

in Putnam County, Georgia, just a few years after the Civil War.

But how did he get there? We don't exactly know.

But there are a lot of family stories

passed down through the generations

about how Lee Hurt arrived in Eatonton, Georgia.

Uh, he rode in on a what, rode in on a...

A horse? Yeah, yeah. A mule or a donkey-- maybe it was a horse...

BYRON HURT: I heard a mule,

a donkey, a horse.

MAYA ALEXANDER: I heard he just, like,

showed up at, was it Milledgeville?

I heard, just, on a horse...

BYRON HURT: Yeah. ...at a bus stop, and then

ran into Liza and then had a whole village of children.

BYRON HURT: Have you heard any stories about, like,

how he got to Putnam County

or Baldwin County, anything?

I haven't-- we're still trying to piece that together.

I would be tickled pink if we could find out

exactly where Lee Hurt came from.

Oh, I wished I could talk to him.

I wished I could ask him a question.

I just got this feeling that he was a great man.

I heard that they say he was a tall,

fair-skinned man with green eyes and red hair.

They say he was a reddish-looking man.

My granddaddy,

he was big, heavy, dark skin.

I can see him now, sitting over there on the porch.

BYRON HURT: For years, our family

has relied on our reunions to help build out our family tree.

But so much of our older history is largely unknown.

Renard and Jandra are my big cousins.

I grew up with them on Long Island,

and both of their mothers are my great-aunts.

I always looked up to them as role models in our family.

ROGERS: Jandra and I are first cousins.

Uh, our mothers are sisters.

We both grew up in New York,

and so she was more like a sister to us,

'cause she was an only child in her family and we had four kids.

So she was at our house most of the time.

Jandra has been extremely critical in this process,

because she was much more familiar

with ancestry.com and some of the research tools

that we have used.

Before I was even interested in this, she was already doing it.

BONNER: I wanted to find more family members, actually.

But since we were looking for answers to Grandpa Lee,

then I kind of shifted to that.

And so just to try to see if we could find more of his ancestors

to see where he came from, that's the initial mystery.

BYRON HURT: Before the family reunions began,

our tree looked something like this--

a handwritten document created by my great-great-uncle

Bebe Hurt, one of Lee and Liza's sons.

And with so many of Lee and Liza's older grandchildren

now deceased, we can't ask them

important questions about our family's history.

My cousins Renard and Jandra suggested

that I visit with the elders in our family

to learn the story behind the reunions,

what they remember about Lee and Liza,

and how they feel about genetic ancestry research.

Out of respect for my elders,

it's only right that I start my journey

by visiting our two living family reunion co-founders,

Helen Roberts in Atlanta

and Lee and Liza's oldest grandchild,

Rosie McGee, in Chicago.

So tell me, how did our family reunions get started?

MAN: Excuse me, Mr. President.

ROBERTS: I got the phone call from cousin Dave.

(men laughing) ROBERTS: I didn't know him.

And he told me, "I have a nice cousin over here

from Chicago that you need to meet, Rosie."

He said, "Do you know her?"

Mm-hmm. I said, "No."

He said, "Well, it's a good time."

MCGEE: Helen came over,

and we were sitting at the table and we was having fun.

You know, we like to eat, too, though.

You know that, don't you? (Byron Hurt laughs)

And so we just started to talk,

and he asked me, who was, who,

what branch did I come off from?

I said, "Lee Hurt."

I said, "That's my father."

He said, "Oh, you come from the man

that had all the kids."

(laughing) I said, I said, "Yes."

And the first family reunion, down in Milledgeville... Mmm.

...I think we had about, like, 300...

There was a lot of people there.

About 307 people.

That was, that was the first one-- I was a 14-year-old boy.

14-year-old boy. And I was excited.

I mean, I can remember it like it was yesterday.

MCGEE: I took a busload from Chicago

down to Milledgeville, Georgia, for the family reunion.

Everybody just was happy that they had a chance

to meet cousins that you didn't know that you had.

How does it feel to be a founder

of the Hurt-Waller family reunion?

I feel good, that's why I made up my mind

to come on over here this morning

and get this out of the way. (both laughing)

(music playing, people cheering in background)

BYRON HURT: Since 1985,

we've had 18 family reunions, and I can't tell you what

the family reunions do for me

in terms of just feeling a sense of pride,

that you belong to this large family

that loves you, that cares about you.

And nothing feels better than knowing who your family is.

You feel a certain togetherness

and oneness with your people, your tribe.

And over the decades,

our reunions have allowed us to build out our family tree

from something like this in 1985

to this today.

But as I grew older

and started to learn more about Black history

and culture and identity, I wondered more and more

about our family tree.

Why did it stop at Lee and Liza?

I wished that I could go back further in time,

further in our family lineage,

but doing that kind of ancestry research

was so daunting and overwhelming.

And then, ads like this Ancestry commercial

gave way to new possibilities.

I was a little afraid.

I mean, as an African American,

I knew where my family tree might end up.

But I went on ancestry.com anyway,

and I found out my great-great- grandfather was born a slave.

He died a businessman.

BYRON HURT: Suddenly,

genetic research felt less intimidating

and more accessible to the average person.

Over the last ten to 15 years,

several companies with names like Ancestry

and 23andMe have emerged,

offering DNA tests to consumers.

Today, tens of millions of people in the U.S.

and around the world have signed up.

And there are growing databases

of DNA samples used to match folks up with their relatives.

But DNA can also be useful in ancestry research.

Your DNA contains within it a record of your ancestors,

because each of us gets one-half of our DNA from our father

and the other half from our mother.

So, I have a biological link to my parents,

and through them to their parents.

But it doesn't take many steps down the family tree

before the amount of DNA from an ancestor gets pretty diluted.

Lee and Liza are just two of my 16 great-great-grandparents,

so only about six percent of each of their DNA is in me.

We know that Lee and Liza

won't turn up in our DNA tests.

For that, we'd have to have their DNA, which we don't have.

Genetic ancestry DNA test kits can potentially help us

find others who share their DNA and may have information

about our family to share with us.

DNA is a powerful tool

for the personal information that it can reveal,

but not everyone is excited about it for just that reason--

like my cousin Rosie.

I don't think you should go any further.

This is our beginning, you know.

'Cause most time, you find something that

is not so pleasant. Mm-hmm.

When you dig back.

And I just feel that there's an old saying,

"Let sleeping dogs lie."

BYRON HURT: To have your DNA tested,

you have to pay for a test kit and submit your saliva,

which contains your genetic code.

Over-the-counter DNA testing commercials

caught the attention

of the Hurt-Waller national executive committee,

particularly my cousin Anitra Hurt,

the first woman president of our family.

(in interview): What is it like to be

the president of a family?

I feel like Kamala Harris.

(laughs) She's going to be the next, right?

Uh, it feels good.

So you created the ancestry committee.

Correct. Why?

There was a lot of people that,

and you may feel this way, too, that you just don't know.

Like, who is this person? Who is this person?

And we, it only, it stops at a certain point.

"Oh, I know my cousin, I know my uncle.

I know my great-uncle."

We don't know... Well, I don't know about you,

but I didn't know much more. Yeah.

So I just wanted to just dig deeper into the history,

and, um, that's when I formed the committee,

so we can see where it all started.

What are your thoughts about DNA... Mm-hmm.

...and, and what DNA can offer in terms

of helping us to find our family members?

Well, I think as long as what we're doing now

is picking people specifically from each branch,

is good, because, I mean, we, we're bound to find something

if we put the right people in place,

as far as whose DNA we're checking.

BYRON HURT: Anitra is starting with a family tree

that already has a large number of family members on it.

The fact that we have this amazing family tree at all

is thanks to devoted family members

like my cousin Annie Bishop, who, over the years,

preserved the history of our family.

So about a year before the reunion,

35 members of the Hurt-Waller family ordered tests

and sent in their saliva for analysis.

I'm hoping that the research that Jandra and Renard

are using in terms of DNA research

is really going to give them a big boost

in all of the research that they've done so far.

ROGERS: Before we started this ancestry research,

I didn't know anything about Lee Hurt.

We knew that he had a, a lot of kids,

and those are the ones we focused on.

We didn't really focus on Lee.

Did you know more about...

I didn't know much, much about Lee at all.

No, just that Lee Hurt was, uh,

an ambitious farmer.

ROGERS: I heard he was mulatto-- I did not know that

until we started doing some of the research.

I don't, still don't know if it's actually true,

because we're trying to figure out

what his mother and father's race was.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: According to our family's oral history,

Lee Hurt's father was a white man.

The term "mulatto" is used to describe people

of Black and white racial heritage.

It's a classification widely seen today as an old,

outdated, and offensive term.

What matters here is that during slavery,

white men routinely raped enslaved Black women,

who had no control over their bodies.

Lee could have been the product of rape,

causing shame and silence around his birth father.

What complicates this is the fact

that Black people during that time were not considered human.

Aside from slaveholder estate inventories,

census and other historical records were not kept

for the enslaved before 1870.

However, they were more accurately kept

for white people, especially white men.

So finding out who Lee's father is might be easier

if in fact he was a white man.

Finding Lee's father is critical to our search

to learn more about the Hurt side of our family.

Whenever we go to the family reunion, we see

Lee and Eliza at the top of the family tree... WOMAN: Yes.

...as if they appeared, you know,

like they, they were

our Adam and Eve. ROGERS: Adam and Eve.

(all laughing) Right? Just, like, they're like Adam and Eve, right?

At the top of the family tree,

and then everything came from them. Mm-hmm.

But when you really think about it, they had parents,

their parents had parents. WOMAN: Yeah.

And their history has been lost because of, you know, slavery.

We know nothing.

We have to rely

on some of our older family members

to really tell us what they remember.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: Andra Mae is the second-oldest living granddaughter

of Lee and Liza, and has never missed a family reunion.

I brought her back to her childhood home

in Eatonton, Georgia.

It's called a tag house, made mostly of old license plates,

and it still stands today.

She shared memories about her grandparents.

HARRELL: I am now 95.

Do you remember Lee and Liza? Yes.

What do you remember of them?

I remember they was happy peoples,

and you know they had to be happy-- they had 14 childrens.

Yeah, so... (laughs)

There have to be some love in there, you know?

What do you remember about

this house behind us?

HARRELL: So, we stayed here for a long time.

Grandma Liza, she would wear, like, dresses, kind of,

big, long dresses, and she'll mostly wear a, like,

a hood on her head.

And Grandpa, he would wear,

he liked to wear them big straw hats. Hm.

He didn't dress all up in suits.

Mm-hmm. He would wear, like,

you know, them high-back over, overalls.

Most all of them back then wore that. Overalls.

Them high-back overalls. Mm-hmm.

What do you think that Lee and Liza would think about

our Hurt-Waller family reunions, if they were alive today?

Oh, they would be proud-- they would.

'Cause it's, the Hurt and Waller family reunion

is the biggest one I heard of.

What do the family reunions mean to you, personally?

It mean everything-- I don't want to miss one.

So if I call you all, I need to go,

so somebody better make a way.

(chuckles): Okay, make a way for you to get there, huh?

Make a way for me to get there.

BYRON HURT: As I left Andra Mae, I wondered

if she ever thought she'd come back to her old home,

and that her family would be using science

to try to learn more about her grandparents Lee and Liza.

(computer keys tapping)

Our family's oral history has helped us

fill in a lot of details about our family tree,

but it can only take us so far.

Since Jandra has done a lot of the heavy lifting

when it comes to scouring public records, I wanted to learn more

about her research methods, so I traveled to the city

of Everman, Texas, where Jandra lives and does most of her work

uncovering details of the lives of Lee and Liza.

BYRON HURT: So is this the only picture

that we have of Lee Hurt?

BONNER: The only known picture.

For Grandpa Lee, I found property records

that he actually owned property.

I also found his marriage license to Ma Liza,

I found his information on the census,

and I found his death certificate.

BONNER: This is the reason for our journey,

this information right here that's blank. BYRON HURT: Mm-hmm.

Initially, I joined these sites to build out a family tree.

It's only recently that the DNA portion of it

has come into, you know, being an important part of it.

BONNER: I think at this point,

we've exhausted a lot of the public records.

That, that's the challenge, so we have to turn to DNA.

You know, that's, that's why we went that way,

in hopes that we can find a link.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: Given our history of ruptured families,

it's not surprising that many Black folks are turning to DNA

to try to put the pieces of our families back together.

Slavers captured and brought Africans

from the west coast of Africa to these shores in America.

Lee and Liza's ancestors were likely among them.

My cousins and I met up with Dr. Fatimah Jackson

on Tybee Island, near Savannah, Georgia.

Dr. Jackson, a biologist, is an expert on DNA research,

and fuses science with her knowledge of Black history.

(on camera): Lee Hurt eventually settled in Putnam County, Georgia, right?

JACKSON: Yes, and, and so the closest port is right here. BYRON HURT: Right.

Is it possible that Lee Hurt's ancestors

and Liza Waller's ancestors came through Tybee Island?

Very likely-- very likely.

I mean, again, we never know 100%,

but we can make a probability assessment.

And the most likely point of contact

would be a place like this island.

Why is it so difficult for us as a family... Sure.

...to learn the information that we need to learn

about Lee Hurt's parents, his grandparents... Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

...Liza Hurt's grandparents, great-grandparents...

Mm-hmm. ...and so on and so forth?

Well, our lives did not count

in the way that other people's lives counted. ROGERS: Mm-hmm.

You know, I mean, if, if we ever needed

a Black Lives Matter movement, it would've been

from our very inception on these shores.

Our lives didn't count.

Plus, we don't have the scientific record of Africa

that would allow us to make the, the bridges

that we know exist,

because we are an African people in North America.

BYRON HURT: The big DNA databases are mostly made up

of samples from people of European descent,

with a lot fewer DNA samples from Black people,

whether they are now living in Africa or the Americas.

The African database is not robust.

There's not a lot of information within the database,

because the way that genetic sequencing

and ancestry reconstruction works

is that you take an unknown sample-- say, your sample--

and then we try to match it

to samples that we have already identified.

If we can't match the unknown sample

to samples that we have already identified,

then we have a problem.

DNA can tell you some of your family history,

but it's not all-encompassing.

(computer keys tapping)

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: So, like many families,

our family has very complicated, complex family dynamics.

We have cousins marrying distant cousins,

we have multiple marriages that lead to double cousins,

we have offspring from those multiple marriages,

and we have children

that are the result of secret relationships.

In Eatonton, many of those complicated family relationships

happened right here within this tight-knit community.

These family dynamics are often hard to track,

and can make your head spin.

This is where my family's story gets very complicated.

Renard and Jandra connected with Germaine Mullins.

Germaine is connected to our family, but through marriage.

Germaine found information about

Lee Hurt's family background through her own family research

on familysearch.com. (mouse clicks)

Her research turned up a man named Spencer Hirt,

spelled with an I, not a U, like our name is spelled.

As a result, Germaine became aware

of a woman named Cheyenne Hirt-Lee,

who showed up on her family tree.

Germaine told Renard about Cheyenne,

who was also researching her paternal family tree.

It appears that Cheyenne's family may be connected

to our family through Spencer Hirt.

Could DNA prove a connection

between Spencer Hirt and Lee Hurt?

If so, that could open the door

to finding more information about our shared ancestors.

HIRT-LEE: One night, I was on Facebook

and I got a message from Renard, and he said...

You know, it was this long message, and he was, like,

"Do you know who Spencer Hirt is?" (chuckles)

And, you know, "We're trying to trace our descendant."

And I was, like, "Spencer Hirt-- Spencer Hirt."

And I looked in my phone

and I had a picture of Spencer Hirt in my phone.

And I sent him this, and I said,

"I think I know who Spencer Hirt is."

BYRON HURT: Is that him? HIRT-LEE: That's it.

What do we need to know

to determine, concretely,

that these two men here are in fact brothers?

BONNER: We're gonna have to find the common link

somewhere up in the generations. Mm-hmm.

That's one way-- how the DNA works.

Mm-hmm. We have to find that connection through the relatives.

If we can find some descendants

in certain lines, then we can reach out for the DNA. Okay.

I know the answer is out there.

Okay. It's just waiting to be discovered.

Got you, so, you're... BONNER: I'm hopeful that there is a connection

between Lee and Spencer Hirt,

because we don't know that much about Lee Hurt.

And, hopefully, if we can find out

that Lee and Spencer are related,

we can find out who his parents potentially are.

I'm hoping that we will be able

to find the connection before the reunion.

We really want to be able to present

what we've found so far to our family at the family reunion.

And, but again, until we get the DNA results back,

and until we get the DNA results back specifically

of who we think are the descendants of Spencer Hirt,

we won't know for sure.

So, we know that Spencer Hirt

and Lee Hurt grew up in close proximity to each other.

They were born around the same time.

They were around the same age.

And so the question that we have is,

were they full brothers, half-brothers, or neither?

In order to find out,

we can use the DNA of living descendants.

An important key to the piece of the puzzle

is in our sex chromosomes.

Each person's DNA is contained in chromosomes.

And, typically, each person has 23 pairs.

The 23rd of those pairs is called the sex chromosomes,

and there are two types, X and Y.

Biological females have two X chromosomes paired together,

while biological males have an X and a Y.

That Y chromosome is passed down

through the male line from father to son to grandson,

and so forth.

And it doesn't change very much over the generations.

If we compare a Y chromosome

from a male-line descendant of Lee, like me,

and the Y chromosome of a male-line descendant of Spencer,

and we find huge similarities,

that could mean that Spencer and Lee had the same father.

Finding Cheyenne Hirt-Lee was critical,

because her dad is a male-line descendant of Spencer Hirt.

If DNA testing confirms that Spencer and Lee were brothers,

we could find out more information

about the origins of Lee Hurt.

But first, we wanted to find out

if Cheyenne is related to our side of the family at all.

This is a pretty big milestone, potentially,

in terms of learning more information about Lee Hurt.

ROGERS: We may have found

a sibling of Lee Hurt, and his name is Spencer Hirt.

He was born around the same time,

right around the same place,

but that's all we know at this point.

What, what's key to me is the fact that

the roadblock that we have been hitting

year after year will be removed.

And the fact that DNA is a large part of it,

because we have someone

who potentially can be blood-related,

that's just huge.

So, how are you feeling, cousin?

Are you, are you... How do you feel?

Right now, how do you feel? Man, I...

I'm, I'm just, I'm just excited.

I'm a little nervous, you know,

because I really want there to be a connection.

I'll be disappointed, in a way,

but at least we'll know

if, if it turns out that they're not related.

Hi, guys. (others greeting)

How you doing? Good to see you!

All right. Good seeing you again.

BYRON HURT: So, Cheyenne,

how are you feeling right now?

I mean, you've kind of been on your own journey

to figure out more about your family.

Um, how do you feel knowing that, you know,

there could be a possible connection

between your side of the family,

or your family, and our family?

I'm excited, um, I'm nervous.

Um, you know, I never thought that,

from my tree, that there were so many branches

that I didn't even know existed.

So, to find you guys, and you guys find me, just excited.

BONNER: We're looking at my personal family tree under Hurt-Waller.

(mouse clicks)

It says "no matches found."

Mm-hmm.

ROGERS: Oh, that's all of them.

BONNER: Mm-hmm-- mm-hmm.

So this is not looking very promising.

BYRON HURT (voiceover): The ancestry DNA results

showed no connection between Cheyenne and our family.

HIRT-LEE: I feel that it's too much of a coincidence,

you know, that our ancestors were in Eatonton.

I'm kind of disappointed. (others murmur)

BYRON HURT (voiceover): But Renard noticed a name

on Cheyenne's family tree that gave some hope

that there was a connection

between Spencer Hirt and Lee Hurt:

Helen Hurt Gatewood.

ROGERS: Look, notice how she spells it, too, that's interesting.

H-U-R-T.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT (voiceover): The DNA confirmed

that Cheyenne and her dad, Michael,

are cousins to Helen.

DNA tests also confirmed that Helen Hurt Gatewood

is cousins with Renard Rogers, Hugh Hurt,

and Jennifer Hurt Perillo,

who are all descendants of Lee Hurt.

ROGERS: If we look at, uh, Helen's lineage,

her great-great-grandfather is Spencer Hirt.

So, that is a big deal.

I'm connected to Helen, and two of my other cousins

are connected to Helen that are on the Lee Hurt side.

So, that means that, Lee-- we are related somehow.

So, that established a, the first real connection

between the Lee Hurt line and the Spencer Hirt line.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: My family typically focuses

on the Hurt side of the family.

But what about the Waller side?

Jandra and Renard came across census records

that show two different mothers

for Liza Waller and her siblings,

one named Matilda and the other named Dilsey--

another conundrum left by inadequate family records.

Mary Waller Brown is on the ancestry committee,

and has been doing research on the Wallers for many years.

We went to visit Mary in her home in San Antonio

to settle the question:

Is Liza's biological mother Matilda or Dilsey?

BYRON HURT: Hey, hey, hey! Hey! Who is that? Who do I see there?

Hey! Finally.

Good-looking lady!

In the flesh.

ROGERS (voiceover): Mary Brown

is the first Waller

that I actually knew about.

And it was because Mary Waller had done research herself

on the Waller side of the family,

we were able to get a copy of what she had documented.

It turned into a kind of a book that she had done,

and so we contacted her

to find out what she knew about the Wallers,

because we found, thought that,

because she had done that book,

that she would know a lot about Eliza Waller.

So you are a Waller?

I was born a Waller.

Do you remember hearing any stories about Liza at all?

Not at all.

I would love to know more about her.

I'm very interested in family and, you know, who we are.

BYRON HURT: Do you know the name of Liza's mother?

From the information that I've researched and found,

um, I've found it to be Desler.

But there have been some questions

that maybe it was Matilda.

I don't know if Matilda is one and the same

or two different people, I don't know.

I did a book on the Hurt-Waller side of the family.

And, uh, I did a lot of research

through ancestry.com.

And I did a lot of clarification and verification

through my mother, Louise Waller,

and my sister, Ruby Waller Ingram.

So do you think that Matilda and Dilsey

are the same person, the same woman?

Me, myself, yes, I do.

You think they're the same person? I do.

We have a lot of documentation on Dilsey.

We don't have a lot of documentation on, on Matilda.

Matilda, the documentation we do have,

she was born in 1845.

And, uh, Dilsey was born in 1855.

Those are the, those are the two documents

that we have that show that.

So, how can we find out for sure?

I mean, can DNA help us find this out or what?

BONNER: Possibly it can, if we know, um,

who, um, brothers and sisters of Matilda.

If we could ever find her, you know,

her maiden name and research that.

ROGERS: I wish we could truly find something more

on Matilda, and we're gonna find it,

one way or the other.

We'll keep looking, because she did exist.

The discrepancy between Matilda and Dilsey

is, uh, it's one that's very challenging, uh,

to Renard and I and the rest of the committee.

I don't think DNA can help with that part of it.

But I think a record-- if I can, if I can find one,

we can settle it once and for all.

It very well could be understood

that Dilsey and Matilda are the same person,

because we know, through all of our research,

that there's a lot of nicknames being used for different people.

Matilda, we can't find anything on.

And that, that is frustrating,

'cause we don't really know who she is.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: While Jandra, Renard, and Mary

were trying to solve the Matilda and Dilsey mystery,

they also needed clues about Lee Hurt's life in Eatonton.

So I reached out to a local

Georgia librarian and information science scholar,

Dr. Shaundra Walker,

who uncovered historical documents

that provide a snapshot of Lee's world in the late 1800s.

So, I first found Lee Hurt in the 1880s.

Um, I found him in the property tax digest,

and here's the example of that record here.

You can see.

WALKER: When we first find Lee Hurt in the census records,

we see that he does not own any land.

He's kind of sort of out here

making a life for himself the best that he can.

As he progresses through the census,

it is clear that he is gaining property.

He moves from being a renter to an owner.

To be a land-owning Black man in this community at that time,

I think, is a very noteworthy accomplishment,

and one for which Lee and Liza's descendants

should be very proud.

BYRON HURT: Dr. Walker had some new discoveries about Lee Hurt,

so I had to connect her to Renard and Jandra.

So, Dr. Walker,

what have you learned about our family?

I suspect that Lee Hurt's mother

was a Waller.

(gasps) So, yes,

and I'll tell, I'll explain to you why.

So, I believe that you

already have a copy of, uh, Lee Hurt's death certificate.

I know where you're going. Right.

Death certificates are very, very important.

Um, in the State of Georgia,

death certificates don't start to be recorded

throughout the state until about 1919,

which, fortunately for African Americans,

as we know, they're not gonna show up

on any, uh, genealogical records until about 1870, consistently.

That's the first census where you find

African Americans listed by name.

And so that death record,

in listing the deceased person's father, mother,

their birth place, their approximate age,

it gives us a lot of information

that sort of breaks that wall before 1870.

Another vital piece of information

from the death record is going to be the informant.

I know that there is, um, some suspicion

that perhaps, uh, Jim Hurt,

who was the informant, uh, for the death certificate,

may have not understood the questions.

BONNER: Right. WALKER: Um, particularly,

there's a question on here about who,

what Lee Hurt's mother's maiden name was. BONNER: Right.

And he put Waller. Waller.

Which is also his mother's maiden name. Mother's...

Mm-hmm. So, it could be easy to believe that

that was just a simple mistake,

perhaps he didn't understand the question.

The death certificate for Lee Hurt is challenging.

Um, we know that the informant was his son.

And I think there are some questions

about how the informant responded to those questions.

Um, one of the key pieces of information that is there

is a last name for Lee, for Lee Hurt's mother.

Or that is at least what the certificate

was intended to capture.

And the last name of "Waller" is provided.

For the father, um, no information is, is provided.

I think that it's likely-- um, it is possible, I will say--

that Lee and Liza were both Wallers,

but whether or not they were, uh, actually related

is questionable.

I did a little research,

and one of the things that I found,

I think it was in the 1900 census--

and this is the same one

where Spencer and Lee are living...

BONNER: Together. ...very close to each other,

one house over. Yeah, okay, okay.

You'll notice that there is a cousin

in the house in 1910. ROGERS: Napier-- Napier.

BONNER: William Napier. William Napier.

Right. So, what I was able to find

was William Napier's mother's name.

ROGERS: Mm-hmm. BONNER: Okay.

William Napier's mother's name

was Clarissa Waller.

I suspect strongly that William Napier and Lee Hurt

are cousins through their mothers.

We know definitively

that William Napier's mother

was Clarissa Waller Napier.

So we have that Waller name, uh, definitively.

We know that from her marriage certificate,

and we also know that from her death certificate.

And so, from there, we can take the information

that is on Lee Hurt's, um, death certificate,

if we accept it as correct, which, which I do,

then that firms up the relationship

between William Napier and Lee Hurt,

because the mothers share the same last name.

BYRON HURT: Renard? Renard? Yes.

I want you to be fully expressed here, okay? (chuckles)

Okay. How, how are you feeling about this, this information

that you are hearing?

I'm not sure where you're, why you're jumping

to, uh, the death certificate relative to the Waller name.

I'm just presenting another...

No, I understand. ...alternative.

Yeah. And I think what makes me feel very strongly

about that connection is the fact

that William Napier's mother is also a Waller.

To me, that's too much of a coincidence.

Dr. Walker revealed the theory

that Lee might be the cousins of Eliza.

That completely threw me off.

I did not want to believe that.

Um, I still don't know that I want to believe that.

And it's, it's really kind of, um,

really thrown me off,

because we were on a completely different track.

I wasn't really surprised when Dr. Walker shared

that Lee and Liza may be cousins.

Um, I know I learned about, a lot in this process

about the mobility, um, of, of people in general,

in particular, a woman.

And so, oftentimes,

they just knew who was in and around their area.

And so, you know, you're gonna love somebody.

And so sometimes that happens.

It has happened.

Did you come across anything on Spencer Hirt?

Or any relationship with Lee Hurt?

So, like you, I suspect that there is a connection

between Spencer and Lee.

Um, I don't think it's a coincidence.

Um, I was unable to find Spencer or Lee in 1870 or 1880.

But I believe I heard one of you say you were able to find...

Based on the research that we have done so far,

we have found Spencer Hirt has a father named Spencer.

He was a white slave owner.

So we do know that.

And so, if we can find the father, uh,

and potentially, we could potentially find the mother.

If we could just connect, uh, Spencer to Lee,

then probably Spencer, the father,

may also be Lee's father.

(computer keys tapping)

BYRON HURT: With the family reunion in Macon, Georgia,

just one month away, time is running out.

Renard and Jandra met up in Denver to do their final prep

for their presentation to the family.

ROGERS: We, we have to narrow this down.

And again, how we present it at the reunion

is gonna be important, because we'll be mixing everybody up

and making it too complex.

We've got to figure out...

Got to make it simple. ...what is the connection?

Right.

I'm really looking forward to presenting information

to the family, because we have found out

so much information about our family.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: It turns out that

Helen Hurt Gatewood has two brothers,

Harold and Charles Hurt,

who agreed to provide DNA samples.

Since they are male-line descendants of Spencer Hirt,

if their Y chromosomes match our side of the family,

that would be strong evidence

that Lee and Spencer had the same father.

Unfortunately, the Y chromosomes did not match.

But the DNA samples confirmed that Harold and Charles

are both somehow related to Renard and me,

so there is a relationship

between Lee Hurt and Spencer Hirt descendants.

It's not exactly what we wanted,

you know, the end result of being able

to tell them where Grandpa Lee came from, who his parents are.

But we have broadened our family connections,

in particular on the Waller side.

And we have so many cousins

that are right there in Milledgeville and Eatonton

that grew up with each other

that did not know that they were related.

We have never had an ancestry presentation

at our family reunion

that will help us understand our family's roots.

And so I'm really looking forward

to Renard's presentation,

because I think our family is gonna be really impressed

with all of the research and hard work

that they've put into learning more about Lee and Liza.

♪ ♪

Despite the lingering effects of the pandemic

and a smaller-than-usual turnout,

the reunion is finally upon us.

HARRELL: It's great to be back.

I was feeling bad.

I thought once I wouldn't be back.

But I thank the good Lord.

MAN: Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to Macon.

MUSEUM GUIDE: Welcome, everyone, to the Tubman Museum.

Where's everybody from?

MONIQUE WILLIAMS: You cannot chart your own path and know where you're going

if you don't know where you came from.

And the fact that we've taken this whole

cookout, dance,

fellowship thing to a deeper level, and really digging deep

to find out where we came from,

is totally necessary

for us to continue to identify

as who we are, as being a very strong and resilient people.

BYRON HURT: After one year of research,

it was time for Renard to present

the ancestry committee's findings

to the family.

ROGERS: We had several DNA family members

volunteer their DNA.

Bottom line, this is what we found.

Lee Hurt, we couldn't confirm his parents.

Unfortunately, that kind of made,

took us back to square one.

I was very excited about presenting

what we did have for the family reunion.

Most of the people in the family

don't know half the things or one-quarter of the things

that we learned

that we were able to present at the reunion.

(at reunion): We can connect Lee Hurt descendants

to Spencer Hirt descendants.

If I flip to the Eliza Waller side, that's totally different.

Eliza's name, uh, father's name was Wade.

Her mother's name was Matilda.

Matilda looks like she may have died early,

after, uh, an early childbirth of Eliza's sister.

So Eliza was raised by Dilsey Clements Waller.

BYRON HURT: When Dr. Jackson got up to present to our family,

it was like a breakthrough moment at our family reunion.

It was really incredible to see Dr. Jackson

walk into the room, walk up to that microphone,

and bless our family with so much information

about family research, ancestry, DNA research.

My comments will be within the, the larger context

of genetic work in what we call Legacy African Americans.

So the difficulty that your family is experiencing

in retracing their family origins

is the result of a number of factors.

Uh, first of all is the status of a reference database.

The second is that the historical reconstruction

of Africa is rather limited.

We refer to colonial names like Nigeria

and contemporary Ghana and Sierra Leone,

but those are not historical names.

JACKSON: We, as Legacy African Americans,

when we send our DNA sample in to these commercial companies,

they almost always tell us,

"You know, you're Nigerian." (laughs)

Nothing wrong with being Nigerian,

but it kind of diminishes

the high rates of variability and diversity in Africa.

It gives us a, a kind of a false sense

of what was going on in Africa.

Most of you all's DNA looks like this.

This is a Legacy African American woman.

(voiceover): The reference genomic database is currently non-representative.

That's why many agencies and companies

are trying to rectify the deficiencies

in the African reference genomic database.

BYRON HURT: There are some very legitimate trust issues

and even fear that prevent Black people

from taking genetic ancestry tests

and submitting them to big companies.

Many of those concerns

are based on a history of racism in science.

But if we want to have the ability

to trace our ancestry beyond the mid-19th century,

contributing to the DNA databases

could help us increase our chances of doing so.

JACKSON: Everything hinges

on who we are.

So what you all are doing

in terms of identifying your relatives

is absolutely essential

for beginning to reconstruct our origins.

What's been successful about this project

is that we've learned so much more about our family

in and of itself.

For all Black families trying to research

their ancestry, they will find

that the records are generally very incomplete.

BYRON HURT: DNA is so important to help families come together

and to help families discover, uh, their ancestry.

It's critical.

But I also realize that DNA alone,

for Black people, is not the only solution,

because it can only do so much.

So we need a combination of historical documents,

oral history, and DNA to learn more about our family's history.

For those wanting to start out on this,

I would say ask, ask, ask your elders questions.

We lose so much information when a loved one passes on.

Um, look to family books, um, Bibles, um, death certificates.

You know, maintain all those type of personal records

that you can get, and then just, just start the journey.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: Both Lee and Liza

are buried in Wood's Place Cemetery,

right off of Milledgeville Highway in Eatonton, Georgia,

but only Liza's grave is marked.

I brought family members on all sides to Wood's Place

to visit Lee and Liza.

Many had never been there before,

and some did not even know that Lee and Liza were buried there.

Just by show of hands, how many of us are Hurts?

Okay, how many of us are Wallers?

(laughing) Okay.

So we're both Hurts and Wallers here.

And we're here to, to pay our respect

to Liza Waller and to Lee Hurt.

Um, and we, we know, based on Lee Hurt's death certificate,

that he is buried here somewhere.

We don't know exactly where.

But I'm, I'm curious to know,

what does it feel like to be at Liza's,

you know, resting place?

It's an honor to be here

at Grandma Liza and Grandpa Lee's resting place.

You know, I've passed by this area many times,

and I didn't realize that they were buried here.

Is there anything that you would like to ask Liza?

I wished I could ask Grandma Liza,

"Where is Grandpa Lee?"

I know she would know where he's at.

So I would ask her, "Where is he? Where's he buried out here?"

ROGERS: I wouldn't even think about coming here,

because I didn't know where they were buried.

I didn't view that as part of the ancestry research at first.

But it is so realistic.

It makes it so real to be here at Eliza's gravesite.

We can actually see the headstone,

and that makes it very significant,

more significant for me than I thought it, it would ever be.

♪ ♪

BYRON HURT: This has been an incredible journey

for me to document my family members

working together to learn more about our family ancestry.

There's no real payoff

for Renard and Jandra and the ancestry committee

for doing this work.

The reward is sharing with our family

new information about our ancestry,

and I think that that's one of the most

loving things that family members can do for their family.

Our family is gonna continue on with this process.

They're gonna continue digging and uncovering

as much as we can,

so that we can provide our younger generation

with history that's gonna give them real solid roots.

So, our family tree is strong,

but we're getting stronger and stronger

with every passing family reunion

because we have committed family members

who are dedicated to learning more about who we are.

♪ ♪

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