GATES: I'm Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
welcome to "Finding Your Roots."
In this episode, we'll meet Brendan Fraser and
Valerie Bertinelli...
Two actors who've spent years in front of the camera
are about to meet ancestors whose stories never saw
the light of day...
BERTINELLI: That sparked my curiosity because I'm like,
"What do I not know about my family?"
GATES: What's it like to read that, to think that is your
ancestor shooting another man?
FRASER: Imagine thinking this through.
This is what we're gonna do.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: We're gonna get a gun. We're going to ambush him.
They had a plan. They, that's, that's criminal.
GATES: To uncover their roots, we've used every tool available.
Genealogists combed through the paper trail their families
left behind...
BERTINELLI: I've never seen this.
This is amazing!
GATES: While DNA experts utilized the latest advances
in genetic analysis to reveal secrets hundreds of years old.
FRASER: Okay, what just happened?
(laughs)
GATES: And we've compiled it all into a book of life...
a record of all of our discoveries...
FRASER: It's history come alive.
GATES: And a window into the hidden past...
BERTINELLI: They kept so many secrets.
Who knows who knew what when.
FRASER: I feel like it's a historical, seismic shift
in the family.
I, I'm, I'm really astonished.
GATES: Brendan and Valerie both found fame when they were young,
and left their roots behind.
In this episode, we're going to recover what they lost
along the way, introducing them to ancestors whose
stories are every bit as dramatic as their own.
(theme music plays)
♪ ♪
(book closes)
♪ ♪
(chatter, cameras clicking)
GATES: Brendan Fraser is taking a victory lap.
The one-time Hollywood golden boy spent years
in a self-imposed exile...
Then re-emerged in 2022 to star in an independent film
called "The Whale",
in which he played a 600-pound recluse...
The performance won Brendan the Oscar for Best Actor,
and reignited his career.
But it wasn't the first time that he'd had to start over
from scratch...
When Brendan was 17,
he was living in Seattle with his parents,
and attending a school in Canada,
until a family crisis forced him to improvise.
FRASER: I, I couldn't pay the tuition. We didn't...
GATES: Mm-hmm...
FRASER: Our family didn't have my father's bursary with his
government job, and, and the rules changed...
GATES: Mm-hmm... FRASER: And I was crestfallen.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: But I picked up the yellow pages.
I remember having seen an, um, a public-access commercial
for a local school in Seattle called Cornish...
GATES: Mm-hmm...
FRASER: And, uh, it had ballerinas and people with
painting brushes and guys with turtlenecks and, you know,
acting and skull, you know, like that, and I went,
"Hang on."
That, I got the last audition that Labor Day weekend.
GATES: Hmm.
FRASER: And I had no idea that I would have been accepted,
but for the phone call I made the following weekend morning,
whether it was after that Labor Day weekend.
I didn't know if I'd been accepted...
GATES: Right.
FRASER: Because they hadn't gotten around to
shuffling the papers.
So, I called the office and said my name and,
and they said, you know, "Can I help you?"
I said, "I just wanna know,
what's the status of my application."
They went, "Uh, hang on."
And so, I heard the phone go and then somebody went
"Waah-waah-waah." And...
File cabinets opening and close, and somebody came back,
just going, "Oh, yeah. You're in."
"Um, can you be here at, like, you know, 9:00 for orientation?"
I'm like, what?
So, we were off to the races.
GATES: Brendan's "race" was run at a breathtaking pace.
After graduating from Cornish, he moved to Los Angeles...
And within just two years, he was a leading man.
A decade later, his star turn in "The Mummy" launched
a juggernaut franchise,
and made Brendan a pop culture icon...
But off-screen, Brendan was struggling,
both physically and emotionally, with the demands of his work.
He needed operations on his knees, his back,
and his vocal cords.
But most of all, Brendan needed a break...
FRASER: There was a lot of stunt work that I started doing.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: And I started taking more risks...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: Um, not the best creative ones, and it did
a number on joints in my body.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: And, uh, I realized I needed to, um, I needed to,
I needed to punch my card for a little while.
GATES: And get those parts replaced.
FRASER: Get them repaired.
Yeah. Get some work done on them.
And the good news is I did and, um, I got out of pain.
I was in pain that I didn't know I was in.
GATES: Oh. Until it stopped.
FRASER: Like a smoke alarm.
GATES: Right.
FRASER: You hear it, but your brain tunes it out.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: 'Cause you don't want to deal with it.
Why do you want to listen to that?
Why do you want to feel that way? You don't.
So your brain tunes it out until someone turns it off,
and then suddenly the silence is deafening, right?
GATES: Yeah. That's right.
FRASER: And you think I was walking around with that?
GATES: In the end, Brendan decided to step away from his
career for almost ten years, taking occasional small roles,
but largely disappearing from public view.
Then came "The Whale"...
Brendan's comeback was simultaneously shocking
and delightful,
eliciting rave reviews and an out-pouring of affection
that few actors can ever even dream of...
So, we know how the world feels about this moment.
But how do you feel? Relief, redemption, renewal?
FRASER: Um, anticipation. GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: Some, um, enthusiasm that I am not accustomed to
feeling because this is not the experience of
my professional life or has not been.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: Um, and, uh, it's been 30-something years since
I've been in the industry.
And I've met many, many people and, you know, people come and
go just like, you know, our friends.
And, um, to have the ability to see each other again now
and say, look, you know, we've grown a little older
but we're still here.
GATES: Right.
FRASER: It really feels good. GATES: I'm happy for you.
I mean, it's a new chapter for you.
FRASER: Yes.
GATES: My second guest is actor Valerie Bertinelli.
Like Brendan, Valerie knows what it's like
to live in the limelight.
When she was 11 years old, her family moved to Los Angeles,
where her mother was soon tasked with driving her
to auditions for television commercials.
Just four years later, Valerie landed a lead role on
"One Day at a Time",
a Norman Lear sitcom that became a huge hit,
and made her a household name.
But to hear Valerie tell it, acting never came easily,
and she almost ended her career before it began...
BERTINELLI: There's many times, after many interviews
that my mom, uh...
I would be, get in the car and go, "I'm not gonna get it
because, you know, they don't want me."
And my mom said, "Then let them. Don't do it."
'You don't have to do this.
You don't have to make yourself crazy."
Like she was the opposite of a stage mom.
She was like, "I don't feel like driving you," you know, so...
Because I would get mad at her.
She would take me out of Mr. Hamill's art class...
It was my favorite class in school...
and, um, take me to interviews.
And I, I'd be mad at her.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: She's not doing anything.
She's, like, just doing what I said I wanted to do.
GATES: Yeah, but maybe that was her strategy.
You know, she was psyching you out.
BERTINELLI: Maybe.
GATES: "Okay, you don't wanna do it? Okay."
And you go, "No, no, I didn't mean that."
BERTINELLI: Yeah, yeah.
GATES: Yeah. BERTINELLI: Yeah, maybe.
Well, when we moved to Oklahoma in 1975, um, I said,
"Well, I guess that's it. I'm not gonna be an actress.
I'm gonna move to Oklahoma and we'll see what happens there."
And I was 15. And my dad, uh, whatever...
It fell through, where he was working,
and we moved right back,
not just a few months later, and then I got the interview
for "One Day at a Time" and my whole life changed.
GATES: "One Day at a Time" is one of the most successful
shows in the history of television.
It ran for nine seasons, won Valerie two Golden Globes,
and launched her career,
leading to a string of roles in television movies and sitcoms.
But living your life in public is a daunting challenge, and,
after four decades of acting,
Valerie made a surprising decision.
She turned her focus to a more personal passion: cooking...
BERTINELLI: My manager, Marc, just suggested that, you know...
He, he knows how much I love cooking.
And he said, "You should do a cookbook."
GATES: Ah. BERTINELLI: "You'd love it."
And so I started to write a cookbook.
And I really did love it.
And I started, it started my brain, like,
really getting creative again.
GATES: Mmm.
BERTINELLI: And I was a big fan of Food Network.
It was on my TV all the time.
And, um, when I went there, I said,
"I'd love to do something."
They said, "How about an ITK?"
And I went, "What's an ITK?"
They said, "In the kitchen."
GATES: Mm.
BERTINELLI: And so, where I would cook on camera, like
Rachael Ray and Ina Garten and, you know, like,
I'd be able to do that.
I'm like, "Really? I can do that?"
GATES: Since that meeting, Valerie has hosted two shows
for the Food Network, winning two Emmys and earning a
legion of new fans.
Yet, for all she's accomplished,
Valerie considers her greatest successes to be private ones.
She's been open about struggles with her body image
and the pitfalls of celebrity culture.
And she's worked hard to nurture a positive self-image,
in a profession that can be brutally critical...
BERTINELLI: To get rid of the people in your life that have
said horrible things to you,
and, and, I'm talking about online too...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: It, it really makes a difference.
GATES: It does.
You can't read all the crap about yourself online.
BERTINELLI: No.
GATES: You, you'll lose your mind.
BERTINELLI: Yeah.
Although I have, lately, when someone says something
horrible to me, I'm like, "Oh, God, that poor person."
GATES: Aw, that's good.
BERTINELLI: How miserable must they be that they feel
comfortable enough to lash out at me and, and,
and say something horrible to me?
GATES: Mm.
BERTINELLI: So if I am a gift for them to be able to say
that, so they feel a little less pressure in their life
and they feel like they've gotten some nastiness out,
okay, 'cause I'm not... I don't receive that.
It's not for me.
GATES: Can we post the number of your therapist on the screen?
BERTINELLI: She's an amazing therapist.
GATES: Yes.
'Cause everybody in America needs to, needs to hear that.
BERTINELLI: Yes. It's not for you.
Don't receive it. It doesn't belong to you.
What someone else says about you, thinks about you,
the way they look at you, you, don't receive it.
GATES: Mm.
BERTINELLI: If it's negative, it doesn't belong to you.
If it's positive, take it in.
GATES: Right. BERTINELLI: You're allowed.
GATES: My two guests have been on professional rollercoasters,
riding waves of fame,
while battling to stay healthy, and happy.
In the process,
they've had little time to reflect on the past,
and both came to me with questions about their ancestors,
questions that had gone unasked and unanswered
for decades.
I started with Brendan Fraser.
He knew that his mother's roots lay in Ireland, but
beyond that, her family tree was a blank slate,
and Brendan was hoping that we would fill it in...
In the 1920 census for Pennsylvania, we found the
first of his Irish ancestors to be born in America:
a man named Patrick F. Devine.
Patrick is Brendan's great-grandfather, and he had
an unusual occupation:
in 1920, he worked as a salesman
for what was known as a "confectionary" dealer...
GATES: And you know what that means?
FRASER: Candy store?
GATES: He sold candies wholesale,
to businesses and markets.
Can you imagine?
FRASER: What?
GATES: Did you ever think you'd descended
from a candy salesman?
FRASER: My great-grandad? GATES: Yes.
FRASER: Was a candy salesman? GATES: He was a candy man.
FRASER: Yes! Do you know how much that explains?
GATES: Why? You, you like candy?
FRASER: Everybody does.
GATES: As it turns out, Patrick's job was an indication
of how much progress his family had made
in just one generation.
His father, the similarly named "Patrick Devine",
was born in Ireland around 1844.
And his application for American citizenship describes
a life that was far removed from the candy business...
FRASER: It says, "The petition of Patrick Devine respectfully
represents that he arrived in the United States before the
year 1853 being then under the age of 11 years.
That he has now arrived at the age of about 24 years."
He wrote this letter?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: This is his application?
GATES: This is...
You are looking at your great-great grandfather's
petition for naturalization.
FRASER: Wow. So when he arrived, he was just a little boy.
GATES: 11 years old. What's it like to see that?
FRASER: It, it's, uh, it's making me feel tingly all over.
GATES: According to this petition,
Patrick immigrated in 1853,
meaning that his childhood in Ireland
overlapped with what we now call the Great Famine,
a cataclysm that claimed the lives of approximately
one million people...
It's one of the worst famines in history,
and your ancestors were right there.
Did it ever occur to you...
FRASER: No.
GATES: That your family was caught up in the, potato famine?
FRASER: Of course, I, I wondered, I speculated from,
you know...
GATES: Mm-hmm..
FRASER: What I know of historical events, but...
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: This is why I wanted to come talk to you because
I wanted to know how they coincide with...
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: The, the families to give it context. So...
GATES: That's why you did not grow up in...
BOTH: Ireland.
FRASER: They, they, they fled the potato famine.
GATES: They fled and they came here.
Your great-great-grandfather Patrick likely crossed the
Atlantic with his family.
What do you think it was like for him to
leave his home behind,
knowing he'd likely never see it again?
FRASER: Heartbreaking. GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: It makes me think of how fleetingly childhood goes.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: And, and it hurts my heart.
GATES: Patrick's traumatic childhood in Ireland gave way
to a life in America that was by no means easy...
We found him in the 1870 census for Pennsylvania,
married to Brendan's great-great-grandmother,
a woman named Margaret Murphy,
and working as an engineer in a coal mine...
Meaning that he likely spent his days in darkness,
deep within in the earth...
GATES: What's it like to see that,
to think of him in that environment?
FRASER: It makes me feel, uh...
It makes me feel grateful that he would take a risk
in going to this very dangerous place to provide for himself and
his family and his loved ones.
It makes me feel, uh,
a great deal of admiration.
GATES: Brendan's sense of admiration was about to be
challenged as this story took an unexpected turn...
When Patrick arrived in Pennsylvania, Irish coal miners
were struggling in every area of their lives.
On the job, they faced low wages and unsafe working conditions.
At home, they often lacked clean water and social services.
And in public, Irish immigrants were tarred
by demeaning stereotypes,
and subject to discrimination and abuse.
Some turned to labor unions for help.
But, at the time, the labor movement was in its infancy,
and Pennsylvania coal country soon became an extraordinarily
violent place where miners battled their bosses,
and each other.
There were strikes, fights, even murders...
And Brendan's ancestor was in the thick of it all...
FRASER: "The night engineer of pumping engine was fired upon
by two men from door of engine house,
but was not injured.
The two former engineers,
James McBrearty and Patrick Devine...
had struck against a reduction of wages.
And the man fired at had taken one of their places."
Okay, what just happened?
(laughs)
GATES: It seems that your great-great-grandfather,
Patrick was fired from his job for striking.
And along with the former colleague,
he shot at the man who had replaced him.
Is this, uh, um, mode of behavior,
has it been passed down?
FRASER: Uh, maybe acting out impulsively, uh, but, um,
I try to get, you know, contain that and do it in an imaginary
way as an actor.
That's about the most I can do.
GATES: I have to ask you, man, what's it like to read that,
to think that is your ancestor shooting another man?
(laughs)
FRASER: Wow.
Like the, imagine thinking this through.
This is what we're gonna do.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: We're gonna get a gun. We're going to ambush him.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: They had a plan. They, that's, that's criminal.
GATES: Although many Irish miners were arrested during
these turbulent years and some were even executed,
it appears that no criminal case
was ever brought against Patrick.
So, we can only speculate about what he actually did,
and whether it was an isolated incident...
It could have been one of many.
FRASER: I was gonna wonder, like,
you know, if he did this once,
what, what are we not finding out about whatever
he got up to?
GATES: What do you make of your
great-great grandfather's actions?
FRASER: Um, well, I'm gonna gather that he was a very
strong-headed man, opinionated man, um,
believed in what was right and what was wrong.
Uh, had the, the, the wherewithal to stand up.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: Um...
GATES: You're proud of him?
FRASER: I don't, I don't, I mean, look,
it's a different time,
and I don't believe you should fire guns at people
to get what you need.
But, um, but then again, it's, it's,
it's not 1875 right now.
Um, it makes me think, I don't know,
did it really solve anything?
Did it, did it help?
Did it, did you, did he feel like he succeeded?
I, I don't know.
GATES: There's no way to answer Brendan's questions,
but in the years that followed,
the labor movement gained momentum,
and a relative peace descended on
Pennsylvania coal country.
Patrick seems to have benefited from this peace.
The 1900 census shows him working again in the mines,
meaning that somehow he got himself re-hired,
despite having fired shots at his replacement.
FRASER: Wow.
GATES: By the time that census had been recorded,
Patrick, your ancestor,
had likely been a coal miner for more than 30 years.
FRASER: Right.
GATES: As you can see, he and Margaret now had
eight children ranging in age from 9 to 30,
including your great-grandfather Patrick F. Devine,
through his employment in the mines,
your great-great-grandfather, an immigrant,
was able to reach one of the cornerstones
of the American dream.
He purchased his own home.
Isn't that amazing?
FRASER: This is where he lived.
GATES: Yeah.
And 107 years later, I'm looking at his descendant.
(laughs)
Isn't that cool?
FRASER: Yes.
Also, it feels like it's just,
it feels like it's just yesterday too.
I mean, it somehow, like I, somehow, I, I don't see the
difference of, um, what time has done.
I mean, they, they want the same things that people
basically want then as now...
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: Wow.
GATES: Much like Brendan, Valerie Bertinelli has an
ancestor who realized the American dream in a rather
unorthodox manner...
The story concerns her paternal grandfather,
a man named Nazzareno Bertinelli.
Nazzareno passed away when Valerie was a child,
following a debilitating illness,
and Valerie came to me with an array of questions
about the man she never really got to know...
BERTINELLI: He lived with us for the last few years
of his life.
And I just remember we had to be quiet.
We couldn't watch Saturday cartoons because Nono
would get upset with us.
GATES: Right.
BERTINELLI: So I would love to know more about...
I'm getting emotional, um... the young man.
What brought him to America?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: And what was his life like before?
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: I know that he has some secrets...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: That he left in Italy,
because we got, we saw some letters after my dad passed...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: That were in Italian.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: So I'm curious about Nazzareno's past.
GATES: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Well, let's see what we were able to find.
BERTINELLI: Oh my gosh.
GATES: Our search began in the archives of Scheggia,
a village in central Italy,
Nazzareno was born here in January of 1898.
His parents were farmers, and he likely would have become
a farmer himself, but for forces beyond his control...
BERTINELLI: "Last name and name.
Bertonelli, Nazzareno, 1, March 1917,
call to army and joined." What army?
GATES: In 1917, your grandfather was conscripted
into the Italian military at the age of 19.
BERTINELLI: Oh my goodness.
GATES: You know what was going on in the world?
BERTINELLI: No.
GATES: World War I.
(gasps).
He was conscripted to fight in World War I.
BERTINELLI: Whoa.
GATES: Nazzareno was assigned to an infantry regiment and
sent off to Italy's border with what was then known as
the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
It must have felt like he was marching to his death.
At the time, the armies of Austro-Hungary were routing
the Italians, and inflicting heavy casualties.
Nazzareno soon found himself on the Piave river,
where an Austro-Hungarian offensive sought to crush
the Italians once and for all.
A journal written by one of his fellow soldiers offers
a glimpse of what Nazzareno likely endured...
BERTINELLI: "All night I am in the canal waiting for the
enemy who until morning is not seen.
In the evening they attack damnably,
even with flamethrowers."
GATES: With flamethrowers.
On June 15th, at 3:00 in the morning, the Austro-Hungarian
forces opened fire on the Italians,
including your grandfather.
And you can see photos of the battle on your left.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
GATES: Your grandfather likely lost many of his friends.
BERTINELLI: Yeah.
GATES: Did your father ever tell you stories,
any of these stories?
BERTINELLI: Mmm-mmm.
GATES: We don't know what happened to Nazzareno
during the battle.
We only know that he survived.
And we suspect that he was surprised at the outcome...
learning from its defeats, the Italian army repulsed the
Austro-Hungarian assault, winning a major victory.
BERTINELLI: Nono was a part of that.
GATES: And Nono was a part of that.
(laughs)
Your grandfather and his comrades forced the
Austro-Hungarians back over the Piave River and the enemy
retreated and he was there.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
GATES: This battle became a source of pride for Italy as
a symbolic defense of their homeland.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
GATES: Valerie, how was his story lost?
I mean, he was a hero.
(sighs)
BERTINELLI: I don't, yeah.
I don't, I don't know how much he told my father.
Um, or by the time he came to America that it was just...
I don't know.
I don't know how old he was when he came to America,
but it's a shame 'cause my father did take pride in
a lot of things.
And I, I know that he loved his father and that's what
he would tell me.
"Please, he's not always been this way.
He's just in pain."
GATES: After the war, Nazzareno returned to his hometown.
Valerie knew that he would eventually immigrate to
America and marry her grandmother,
a woman named Angelina Crosa.
But the archives in Italy told us that Nazzareno
did something else first...
BERTINELLI: "Appeared, Nazzareno Bertonelli.
Bachelor, age 24, and Dominica."
GATES: Chelorani.
BERTINELLI: "Chelorani."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: "I have pronounced in the name of the law that
they are united in matrimony."
GATES: That is, yes.
BERTINELLI: Dominica. GATES: Uh-huh.
BERTINELLI: That was, whoa, wait!
GATES: Yes.
BERTINELLI: That's not Angelina.
GATES: Mmm-mm. No. BERTINELLI: Dominica.
GATES: This is a record of your grandfather marrying a
woman named Dominica Cellorani on September 14th, 1922,
about two years after he left the military.
This is your first time of hearing of Dominica?
BERTINELLI: Yeah.
GATES: We don't know how Nazzareno met his first wife,
or how they felt about each other...
But the relationship would not last long.
The next record we found for Valerie's grandfather was the
passenger list of a ship bound for New York City...
BERTINELLI: "Nazzareno Bertinelli, 24,
Married or single, single.
Final destination, Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Length of time alien intends to reside in the United States...
Always."
GATES: Always.
BERTINELLI: He was fleeing Italy.
GATES: Just one week after his marriage to Domenica.
BERTINELLI: Wait.
GATES: Just one week after...
BERTINELLI: What the... 1922? What? What the heck?
GATES: That's right. Look at that date.
BERTINELLI: What is he doing?
GATES: Just one week after he married Domenica,
Nazzareno left to emigrate to the United States.
BERTINELLI: Without taking her?
GATES: On his own. But that was common.
Often, people would go to the United States to
make enough money, and then send for the...
BERTINELLI: And send them. Okay, okay.
GATES: Right?
BERTINELLI: I'm gonna give him that benefit of the doubt.
GATES: Yes, but I want you to read, uh,
that statement again, and I'll tell you...
BERTINELLI: Oh, he says, "single."
GATES: Single.
So that's the first thing that we notice.
BERTINELLI: Dude.
GATES: Nazzareno seems to have immigrated in order to start a
completely new life,
and he was leaving more than a wife behind.
In the archives of his hometown,
we discovered that roughly seven months after
Nazzareno arrived in America,
his father Andrea took his place at the birth of a child
named Ernesto Bertinelli...
BERTINELLI: "Appeared Andrea Bertinelli, age 55,
resident in this municipality, who presents a baby boy.
He declares that the baby boy was born to Domenica."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: "Wife of Nazzareno."
GATES: That's right.
BERTINELLI: "The declarer has reported that the birth of the
baby boy, because he was present at the moment of the
childbirth of Domenica, instead of her husband,
who was away from home due to his job."
GATES: Due to his job.
BERTINELLI: So that's what he told her.
"I'm gonna go get some work."
GATES: That's right. And he's in America.
BERTINELLI: He's in Scranton.
GATES: And she in May has a baby.
Remember, he comes in October. So she's obviously pregnant.
She has a baby.
BERTINELLI: So seven months later.
GATES: Right.
And this is the birth record for your grandfather,
Nazzareno's son, Ernesto.
BERTINELLI: Ernesto. Wow.
GATES: Ernesto is your half-uncle,
your father's half-brother.
BERTINELLI: I wish I would've met him.
GATES: Ernesto died in Italy in 2004, when was he was
81 years old.
Though he repeatedly tried to connect to his American family
by writing the letters that Valerie found after her father
passed away, there's no evidence that he ever even
met his father...
Leaving Valerie to grapple with Nazzareno's actions.
BERTINELLI: I wonder if that ate at him and really, um,
bothered him, and...
GATES: It would've bothered me.
BERTINELLI: Yeah. GATES: It would've bothered you.
BERTINELLI: Yeah.
GATES: I mean, your wife is pregnant.
BERTINELLI: Yeah, I'm sad for the pain that
they went through, the, the sadness, the, the,
the feeling of not being lovable enough to keep
your father there.
Which isn't true, but yet that's what a child goes to
when a child is abandoned.
GATES: After arriving in America,
Valerie's grandfather found work in a
Pennsylvania coal mine.
As we'd seen with Brendan Fraser's ancestor,
this was a grueling way to make a living.
But for Nazzareno, it offered a higher standard of living
than he'd had in Italy.
And on December 20th, 1930, he cemented his transformation,
turning his back on his past one last time...
BERTINELLI: "Application for marriage license.
Nazzareno Bertinelli, 32.
Occupation: Miner.
Previous marriage or marriages? No."
GATES: No.
BERTINELLI: "Angelina Crosa, 22.
Occupation: Homemaker."
GATES: Your grandparents married eight years after your
grandfather married his first wife, Domenica.
We didn't find any divorce records for your grandfather.
BERTINELLI: No, they weren't divorced.
GATES: So, do you think your Grandmother knew that he had
been married previously and had a child?
BERTINELLI: No. I don't think she knew.
GATES: I don't think this was, made him the most desirable
bachelor floating around Scranton, Pennsylvania...
BERTINELLI: No. GATES: In 1930, you know?
BERTINELLI: Oooh!
They can't speak, but there's so many questions.
GATES: Nazzareno and Angelina were married for 37 years,
right up until Nazzareno's death in 1968.
They had three children together,
including Valerie's father,
and they raised them in stable home.
Even so, Valerie found herself struggling to reconcile
her grandfather's life in America
with all that he left behind in Italy...
BERTINELLI: I think what I really am doing in earnest
right now is to have no judgment...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: Cause I don't know what was going on...
GATES: No, we don't know. BERTINELLI: With Nazzareno.
I know that his life was incredibly difficult.
I don't know if Dominica brought him joy.
I don't know if Nazzareno brought Dominica joy.
GATES: Yup.
BERTINELLI: But they had a beautiful little boy,
Ernesto, who...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: Seems to me wanted to reach out and spread
some of his love.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: So, um... GATES: Yeah.
BERTINELLI: That all can't be bad.
GATES: No. It all can't be bad. That's a good way to put it.
BERTINELLI: Yeah.
GATES: Turning back to Brendan Fraser,
we uncover the story of another soldier
who left his past behind...
Growing up, Brendan had heard that his father's grandfather,
a man named Herman Drobesch,
had served in the artillery corps
of the German army during World War I.
But Brendan's efforts to learn more about Herman had all
come up empty.
And we soon saw why...
In 1913,
Herman married Brendan's great-grandmother in Essen,
a city in western Germany,
but the couple's marriage certificate shows
that neither of them were actually German.
Your great-grandfather, Herman was born in a place
called Saint Peter, while your great grandmother, Anna Maria,
was born in a place called Aibl.
Take a look on that map,
and we've indicated them on the left, right?
FRASER: Yes.
GATES: Saint Peter's a village in the southernmost Austrian
state of Carinthia.
Aibl is a municipality in the southeastern
Austrian state of Styria.
So, your great-grandparents were Austrian, not German.
Did you know that?
FRASER: No.
GATES: Yeah. They were Austrian.
FRASER: Oh. Wow. Okay. Go on.
GATES: Learning Herman's true birthplace
redirected our search,
giving us access to the military records that
Brendan had so wanted us to find...
Now, Brendan, we retrieved this document from the
Upper Austrian State Archives.
Would you please read the translated section?
FRASER: "Herman Drobesch, rank: Gunner.
Joined ranks October 1, 1908, to Cannon Battery Number One.
Presented for active service October 6, 1908.
Promoted to Senior Gunner October 6, 1909.
Promoted to Senior Gunner Telephonist...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: July 16, 1910.
Traits and temper of character: Calm and earnest."
(laughs)
GATES: Isn't that cool?
What's it like to see that?
FRASER: I was hopeful that this would be uncovered for me,
but um, I just, to look at it, really, as, as face value here.
Um, this is, like,
bringing the past to life before my eyes.
GATES: Herman's military file shows that he retired from
active duty on December 31st, 1911.
He moved to Germany just two years later,
likely in search of economic opportunities
that he couldn't find in rural Austria,
but he didn't stay in Germany for long.
In 1914, World War I erupted,
and Herman was called back
to serve the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
We believe that he ended up fighting against Russian
forces along what became known as the "Carpathian Front",
a series of brutal battles in the foothills of the
Carpathian mountains...
GATES: These are depictions of soldiers
on the Carpathian Front.
Was this how you pictured your ancestor
when you heard he served?
FRASER: Yeah, I, this was what I, this, when, when, when it
was artillery, I knew that it would be a lot of heavy lifting.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: Um, a lot of mach, you know, machine operation.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: But um, that it's frigidly cold and,
um, wow,
those look like bitter conditions to fight in.
GATES: The "bitter conditions" made the Carpathian Front
one of the deadliest battlegrounds of the entire war.
A killing zone in which many men simply froze to death.
All told, the Austrians suffered close to 800,000 casualties.
And the Russians are reported to have lost even more.
But as was typical in the war,
the Carpathian Front ended in stalemate.
And in 1916, Herman's unit was sent south to Italy,
where they would ultimately be defeated.
FRASER: Wow.
GATES: Can you imagine going through something like that?
FRASER: I can imagine anything, but I don't want to.
GATES: No.
What's it like to think of your great-grandfather,
a young man in his early 20s, from a small Austrian village,
fighting across Europe?
FRASER: Fighting Russians and Italians.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: It's so far removed from my own reality, but it,
it, it makes me feel like, in some ways,
I need to dry my eyes, you know?
GATES: Yeah.
And if he hadn't survived, poof, you wouldn't be here.
FRASER: Absolutely correct.
GATES: After the war, Herman moved his family to Canada.
It wasn't hard to understand why he wanted to leave Europe.
But in doing so, he left a great deal of family history behind.
Indeed, Brendan's roots in Austria stretch back over
300 years to the 1700s, and likely earlier.
What's more: our researchers discovered that many of
Brendan's Austrian ancestors, had something in common...
FRASER: "Occupation... Vintner?"
GATES: Vintner, buddy. You know what a vintner does?
FRASER: He makes lovely red wines.
GATES: Yeah.
FRASER: Lovely, juicy Beaujolais.
GATES: You got it.
You come from a long line of Austrians by name,
a continuous paper trail,
and a long line of Austrian winemakers.
It was a family tradition.
FRASER: Wow.
I wonder, I wonder, where did all this wine go?
GATES: Right.
FRASER: Uh...
GATES: Well, I wanna show you where it came from.
FRASER: Okay.
GATES: In Austria... Please turn the page.
FRASER: Okay.
GATES: Brendan, we found the three towns where your
ancestors were wine growers.
FRASER: What?
GATES: On that map in front of you, see...
You find them?
FRASER: Yes.
GATES: Find Feisternitz, Wutschenberg, and Sterglegg.
Your ancestors were making wine there as early as 1776.
FRASER: What?
GATES: This is the real deal.
We didn't make this up.
FRASER: Wow. Wow.
GATES: And this was the, the...
the space of continuity for your family.
Your ancestors stayed put in this one region for a
very long time.
FRASER: Wow.
GATES: It's amazing, and I bet your antecedents never
imagined anybody would ever leave.
They figured by the time they got to you...
FRASER: Yeah?
GATES: You'd be, like, stomping them grapes, too, baby.
FRASER: Yeah. Yeah.
GATES: What's it like to learn this?
FRASER: It makes me feel, um,
as if I'm connected to a place...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: And it, it makes me feel like there's a sense of
tradition and, um...
and, and pride and ownership and...
how much upkeep and care goes into
putting grapes into a bottle so that we can drink them.
(laughs)
And it... It... It makes me...
It makes me wonder at, um...
I mean, they had to be doing pretty well financially if
they were wine merchants, and...
GATES: Well, and they, and they, um,
kept it going down through the generations.
So, they must have...
FRASER: What did, what did they do with their fortunes I wonder?
GATES: They... I'm tempted to say they drank it away.
FRASER: They drank it away.
(laughs)
True Frasers.
GATES: We'd already explored Valerie Bertinelli's
paternal roots,
revealing the hardships faced by her grandfather Nazzareno.
Now, turning to Valerie's mother, Nancy Carvin,
we confronted hardships of a very different kind.
Nancy lost her own mother when she was just eight years old
and her father remarried soon after,
turning her world upside down...
BERTINELLI: She said everything changed when her mother died.
GATES: Hmm.
BERTINELLI: And she became miserable.
Such a young age to become miserable.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: Um, I remember so much joy when I was
eight years old.
Um, she said, um, she missed her.
She wished she had had her around.
Um, she thought she was absolutely beautiful.
I've never seen a picture of her.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: She thought she was the most beautiful woman
in the world.
Um, yeah.
My mom, uh, I felt my mom's yearning for her mother.
GATES: Oh, I can't imagine losing your mother when
you're eight years old.
BERTINELLI: Yeah. What a horrible way to grow up.
GATES: Her grandmother's early death effectively erased all
knowledge of her roots, but we were able to recover some of
what had been lost, tracing her family back three
generations to Valerie's great-great-grandfather...
GATES: Would you please read his name?
BERTINELLI: "William David Chambers."
GATES: And when was he born?
BERTINELLI: "16th of July, 1847,
1850, likely in Cecil County, Maryland."
GATES: And you've never heard of him?
And you've never heard of any of those ancestors
all the way up?
BERTINELLI: No.
GATES: What's, what's it like to see that?
BERTINELLI: It makes me miss my mother...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: 'Cause she would have loved this.
GATES: Yeah.
BERTINELLI: She would have really loved this.
She missed having...
I'm sorry.
She missed having a connection with her mother.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: Oh, my God.
I don't, she never even knew her grandfather's names.
GATES: Mmm. Hmm.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
Oh, Mom. I wish you could see this.
GATES: Valerie's mother would likely have especially enjoyed
seeing what was coming next...
We found her ancestor, William in the 1875 city directory for
Wilmington, Delaware,
working at a factory that made steel bolts for the railroads.
At the time, the railroad industry was booming, and
William's skills would have been in demand all across
the United States.
But William set his sights elsewhere...
BERTINELLI: "List or manifest of all the passengers taken
aboard the steam ship, City of Para"?
GATES: Uh-huh.
BERTINELLI: "At Rio de Janeiro"? GATES: Yes, that's right.
BERTINELLI: "Name, William Chambers.
Age 27 years old."
He went to Rio?
GATES: Your great-great- grandfather went to Brazil.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
(laughs)
Wow. Obrigado.
It's the one word I know in Portuguese.
GATES: Obrigado, that's right.
Here he is on a ship sailing back from Rio de Janeiro.
You've never heard anything at all about this?
BERTINELLI: No!
GATES: Any idea what he may have been doing in Brazil in
the 1870s?
BERTINELLI: No.
GATES: William was in Brazil for one simple reason: money.
He'd joined an expedition to work on a railroad designed
to transport rubber, then an extremely profitable crop,
out of the Amazon jungle.
Labor shortages in the region led the project's funders to
try to lure American workers to the site with promises of
high wages.
William heard the call,
and ended up in what sounds like a nightmare.
BERTINELLI: "The forest is so dense that a person straying
100 feet from a given point is often unable to find his way
back and liable to get lost and die in the woods.
The vines grow so thick around the trees that the forest top
in some places is a regular network.
And when you want to remove one particular tree, you were
often obliged to cut down seven or eight others."
GATES: Mmm.
BERTINELLI: What a job.
GATES: Can you imagine cutting through the Amazon by hand?
BERTINELLI: No.
GATES: I bet he woke up and said,
"What the hell am I doing here?" You know?
BERTINELLI: Right. It better be worth it.
GATES: William spent roughly seven months in Brazil.
During that time, he and his fellow workers managed to lay
only four miles of track,
and they paid an extraordinary price:
the Americans in his group suffered a
mortality rate of roughly 24%...
Meaning, one in four died.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
GATES: So your ancestor was very lucky to get back home alive.
What do you imagine William felt when he got off that ship
and stepped onto US land?
BERTINELLI: Thank God.
Uh, I'm sure he was so happy to be home.
GATES: What do you think he did next?
BERTINELLI: I have no idea.
GATES: Please turn the page.
Valerie, these are city directories and census documents
for Camden, New Jersey, between the years 1897 and 1905.
Now will you please read what all of these documents say
about William's various occupations?
BERTINELLI: He kept looking for work.
"Occupation, insurance."
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: "Occupation, superintendent Phila,
of Philadelphia?" I guess?
GATES: Yep.
BERTINELLI: "Business directory. Occupation, book agent.
Occupation, telephone worker. Occupation, real estate."
GATES: Yep.
BERTINELLI: He was a go-getter.
I guess one, I mean, either he was fired a lot or he just kept
trying to find something that he could do.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: Wow.
GATES: Now, as someone who's constantly trying new things,
Constantly reinventing herself...
BERTINELLI: Who are you talking about?
Wow, yeah.
GATES: Can you relate to your ancestor?
BERTINELLI: Absolutely.
I c, I can't even count all the jobs I've had since I was
12 years old, and I keep just doing new stuff.
Whatever interests me. It's, "Oh, this'll be fun."
GATES: Yeah!
BERTINELLI: "Let's do this." GATES: Mmm.
BERTINELLI: "Let's try this." GATES: How about that?
BERTINELLI: I'm like good old great-great-grandpa.
GATES: Valerie's connection to her ancestor was about
to deepen significantly:
another Camden business directory revealed that the
two shared more than just a talent for reinvention...
Valerie, would you please read the occupation
that your ancestor had in 1910?
BERTINELLI: Stop it! Wow!
(laughs)
He was a baker!
GATES: He was a baker.
BERTINELLI: He was a baker!
It goes down through my history.
GATES: You got it. He was a baker.
BERTINELLI: I'm, oh my God. He was a baker.
GATES: Yeah.
He was a baker, a professional baker.
How do you feel,
knowing that you and this guy shared a passion?
And how does it make you feel, having this unknown,
totally unknown branch of your family tree restored to you?
BERTINELLI: I'm grateful. I, I... I'm so grateful.
And I can't wait to share it with my family.
I mean, I wish Mom was here to hear it,
but I'm, I'm so grateful.
GATES: The paper trail had now run out for
Valerie and Brendan.
BERTINELLI: Whoa! Whoa!
GATES: It was time to show them their full family trees...
Now filled with ancestors
whose names they'd never heard before...
BERTINELLI: This is huge!
GATES: For each, it was a moment of wonder...
There's your mom. There's you at the bottom.
FRASER: Uh, there's me.
GATES: Providing a chance to reflect on the sacrifices made
by generation after generation,
to lay the groundwork for their own success.
BERTINELLI: What I really, really feel is their strength.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: I, I feel these are amazingly strong people
that went through a lot of hardships and,
and overcame a lot,
and didn't always believe in themselves...
GATES: Mm-hmm.
BERTINELLI: But that didn't stop them.
GATES: What are you going to tell your kids about this?
FRASER: Everything that I can remember.
GATES: What's the first thing,
the thing you remember most vividly right now?
(laughs)
FRASER: There's a candy salesman in the family.
There's a vintners line.
Um...
There's some pretty tough as nails guys
who fought on a frozen front.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: There's men who went down and
into a crack in the earth,
scraped the walls,
likely sickened their bodies,
took their lives in their very hands each and every day
they did that.
It...
It makes me feel that, um...
I think I need to have some gratitude.
GATES: Mm-hmm.
FRASER: For all the good things I...
I have going on in my life right now.
That's what it makes me think.
GATES: That's the end of our journey with Brendan Fraser
and Valerie Bertinelli...
Join me next time when we unlock
the secrets of the past
for new guests,
on another episode of
"Finding Your Roots."