S10.E04: Buried Secrets [Ed O'Neill and Sammy Hagar]

[iMonrey]

Episode premiere on PBS: 8 p.m. ET, January 3, 2024 

Preview: https://www.pbs.org/video/buried-secrets-preview/

This was a fairly interesting episode. The story of Ed O'Neill's grandfather was pretty sad.

But it was an example of something I've always had an issue with. They tend to gloss over/skim the connections to the ancestor they want to tell a story about. For instance, the first segment for Sammy Hagar focused on a story about his mother's mother's father's older brother. Not even a direct ancestor. 

And Ed O'Neill's second segment was about his 5x great grandmother, Bridget. But Ed was descended from Bridget's daughter, Ellen Tyrrell. And the obituary they showed for Bridget listed only two sons plus 15 nieces and nephews. It didn't say she was survived by two sons, it said she had two sons. Where's the story about Ellen?

This show has a tendency to default to stories about the Civil War and the Revolutionary War. Probably because there were very good records kept with both and it's easy to find names and dates and connect them to locations and battles. But it seems to me there have to be interesting stories between 1865 and now. 

[Mermaid Under]

I know when facts are thin this show will make leaps, based on what they have, but saying that Hagar's ancestor moved in with his mother and left his wife because she had an affair with a Belcher seemed a stretch.  Another likely story - maybe the husband was just a big old Mama's boy, and that is what destroyed his marriage, and the Belcher DNA entered the family at some other point.

Would Sammy Hagar have a chance in show business as Sammy Belcher?

 

Edited January 25 by Mermaid Under

[Salacious Kitty]

In the first census record they showed (1840, IIRC), Sammy's ancestor was 5. They didn't show a census prior to that to show if the "father" was living in the home with the older children. It would have been more convincing had they shown this, even if they didn't have more of a paper trail. 

Edited January 25 by Salacious Kitty

[Yeah No]

Well, one thing I realized from this episode is that I like Ed O'Neill and Sammy Hagar more than I thought I did.

[shapeshifter]

Just watched this one. 

On 1/24/2024 at 10:24 PM, Yeah No said:

Well, one thing I realized from this episode is that I like Ed O'Neill and Sammy Hagar more than I thought I did.

Yes, both Ed O'Neill and Sammy Hagar have warm personalities, which they probably subconsciously cultivated as a means of getting along in the world without having come from respected families or affluence.

Here are their DNA admixtures.
I guess I missed (if it was mentioned?) that Ed O'Neill was 100% Irish. Isn't Stephen Colbert too? Or is that Jimmy Fallon? Or both?

 

[PRgal]

Did anyone notice that Ed O’Neill said his ancestor, at 17, was just a year older than his daughter when he went off to fight in the Civil War?  Ed’s kids are both in their 20s, aren’t they?  

[shapeshifter]

9 hours ago, PRgal said:

Did anyone notice that Ed O’Neill said his ancestor, at 17, was just a year older than his daughter when he went off to fight in the Civil War?  Ed’s kids are both in their 20s, aren’t they?  

Google’s top 3 results seem to verify that his youngest daughter was born in 2006. They probably do the show interviews months before airing.

I thought, given Ed O’Neill’s age (77), he would’ve said something about 18-year-olds being drafted to fight a war in Vietnam when he was graduating from high school.

[iMonrey]

18 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I guess I missed (if it was mentioned?) that Ed O'Neill was 100% Irish. Isn't Stephen Colbert too? Or is that Jimmy Fallon? Or both?

Conan O'Brien is 100% Irish. Which means, as he himself often puts it, he's "inbred."

[Lugal]

It was interesting for Ed's ancestor that fought in the civil war at 17 neither he nor Henry mentioned the money.  I have records and letters from my ancestors that served and the money was a big motivator.  I saw on the document they showed briefly on screen, it looked like he was paid $25.

On 1/24/2024 at 6:26 PM, Salacious Kitty said:

In the first census record they showed (1840, IIRC), Sammy's ancestor was 5. They didn't show a census prior to that to show if the "father" was living in the home with the older children. It would have been more convincing had they shown this, even if they didn't have more of a paper trail.

It was 1850, which was the first census to show the names of everyone living there.  Before that, the censuses just showed the head of household and tallies for the rest of the people there by age, gender and free/slave status.  They could make a rough guess by ages and gender, but that would be the best they could do.