"Roots: Our Journeys Home" - Anthony Bourdain

So CNN decided to jump into the genealogy program pond also.  It began a theme week of programs featuring family history journeys, Roots:  Our Journeys Home, on October 12 with Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown.  The idea is that hosts of several of their regular programs will take some kind of genealogical journey and learn about their roots.  Instead of creating a stand-alone program, the family history apparently will be integrated into the existing programs.

If the genealogical search in Parts Unknown is comparable to what will happen in the other programs, I'd say there's not much worth watching.  The promo material from the CNN Web site said that we would see an "investigation into the puzzling history of the Bourdain’s great, great, great, grandfather, Paraguayan émigré Jean Bourdain" (let's ignore the poor editing, shall we?).  Unfortunately, the amount of time devoted to Bourdain's family history was less than ten minutes (and possibly as low as five minutes) of the one-hour episode.

Bourdain already knew that his great-great-great-grandfather, Jean Bourdain, had immigrated to South America from France sometime during the 1850's and had disappeared by the 1880's.  Jean went to Argentina first and then to Paraguay, and after that the family didn't know what had happened to him or when or how he died.  Bourdain said he really wanted to know how his third-great-grandfather had died and where he was buried.

We learned quite a bit about the history and food of Paraguay, which is what the program normally is about anyway.  (Because I'm a language geek, one of the most interesting factoids for me was that Paraguay is the only country in South America to have an indigenous language as an official language.)  But what did we learn about Jean Bourdain?

There was a French colony in the Paraguayan jungle called Nouveau Bordeaux (actually Nouvelle Bourdeaux).  Bourdain and a guide visited what is left of the colony, but they didn't actually say there was evidence that Jean Bourdain went there.  It seemed that only three documents were found that mentioned Jean Bourdain:

• something that appeared to be a letter that said Jean's son, also named Jean, had gone to Montevideo, Uruguay in 1860 to work with his uncle in the hat business
• information from somewhere that said Jean the elder had come with 200 boxes of "fireworks" (which generated a discussion of whether they really were fireworks, which the locals couldn't have afforded, or if the word was a euphemism for weapons and Jean was actually a gun-runner of some sort)
• an 1858 death record for Jean the elder that did not give a cause of death

The researchers were able to determine in which cemetery Jean was interred but could not find his grave.  Bourdain walked around the Recoleta Cemetery in Asunción, found nothing, and looked disappointed.  The researcher told Bourdain that it was likely that something else had been built over whatever grave Jean Bourdain had.

And that was it.  Not a very impressive beginning, in my opinion.  And I'm left wondering why the family didn't know when Jean the elder had died, since Jean the younger didn't leave the area until two years later.

I'll still try to watch some of the programs scheduled for later in the week.  I am pretty sure I'll miss every episode of New Day; 6:00 a.m. makes it way too early for me, whether it's Eastern or Pacific Time.  It's a shame, because Chris Cuomo's story sounds interesting, and I'm wondering if the Spinozas from whom John Berman descended were Sephardic Jews.  But I've already put the programs that air later in the day on my schedule.  I am particularly looking forward to the journeys of Wolf Blitzer and Sanjay Gupta.  And maybe I can catch the others later On Demand.

Finding Relatives in Probate Files

I wrote yesterday about the new presentation on probate records I recently created.  Probate is the process of validating someone's will and distributing his belongings according to his wishes, or showing there is no will (or no valid will) and dividing the belongings according to the applicable laws in that place and time.  Probate files can be fantastic sources of family information.  I always try to get every record I can find in my research, but sometimes the reason that finally prompts me to spend the money on a probate file may be unusual.  The reasons I ordered two of the most informative probate files I have received was less for the normal genealogical ones than to find out if someone's story was true.

In the first situation, I had been told by more than one relative that my grandfather's older sister was not a very likeable person.  In particular, my grandmother told me that when her father-in-law (my great-grandfather) died, he left only $1 to this sister and the rest of his estate to the other siblings.  I had been curious about the truth of this story for several years, but Kings County (Brooklyn), New York wanted $70 (!) for a copy of the probate file, and that was a tidy sum for me ten years ago.  But I saved my pennies and finallly splurged on the order.

When I received the packet, the first thing I read was the will.  I discovered that my grandmother had exaggerated a little, but the story was substantially true.  In the first section of the will, my great-grandfather left bequests of several hundred dollars to five of his six children, but to Sarah he left only $25.  The next section consisted of bequests to many social and benevolent organizations.  He also left some money to be spent on a new tombstone for his own father's grave in Kamenets-Litovsk, Poland, which was valuable information.  The last section of the will stated that the remainder of the estate was to be divided equally among all of his children — except Sarah.  So it was true — even he didn't like her.

In addition to learning that the story was true and where my great-great-grandfather was buried, the other valuable information came from when the will was actually probated, or proven, and the assets distributed.  One of the bequests in the will had been to my great-grandfather's sister, still in Europe.  I didn't have her correct name prior to this (my great-aunt was wrong on both first and married names).  Unfortunately, she predeceased him, because she stayed in Europe during World War II and perished during the Holocaust.  Her inheritance was divided among her six surviving children, who were listed by name with their addresses, four in Israel and two in Buenos Aires, Argentina (which also finally gave me names for the "cousins in South America" I had heard about from my mother and a cousin).  After all these years I'm still trying to find information about the South American cousins, but I have managed to obtain contact information for two of the cousins who went to Israel.

The second probate file that gave me a huge boon was for my stepsons' grandfather.  I had been told that each of his children should have had an inheritance of about $2 million, but one daughter kept filing against the estate saying that she didn't owe for a loan she had received from her father, and all the attorneys' fees ate into the estate to the extent that everyone received only $200,000 instead.  I decided I wanted to know if that story was true, so I requested the file from Los Angeles County.  (That was entertaining in and of itself, as the file ended up being more than 600 pages and the order was processed in about five stages.)

Again, the basic gist of the story was true.  The sister in question did make multiple claims that she did not owe for the loan.  The executor made a counterclaim each time.  Lots of paperwork, lots of hours racked up by attorneys.  She ended up having to pay the money back into the estate, but the process had to have whittled the estate down.  I don't know if the value of the inheritances would really have equaled $12 million, but the estate included many properties around the Los Angeles area, so it's plausible.

But the true gold in the file was, again, the list of heirs with addresses.  I had been trying to track down the half-sister in the family with no success.  There she was in the list, with her address.  (Everyone's children were listed also!)  Surprisingly, the address was only half an hour from where I was living.  Even more surprising, she still lived there, although the probate file was 24 years old!  I showed up at her door one day and introduced myself.  We had a lovely three-hour talk, and the information she gave me helped me track down the famous Hollywood cousins in the family.

Not everyone has intriguing stories to try to prove, but probate files can help almost everyone by supplying names, family relationships, and more.  If you haven't used them yet in your research, order one soon.  Look for probate records at the county level, at the superior court in most states.