Xander: I believe that things happen for a reason.

Will: I always talked about how I wanted to be connected to my ancestors.

- I am so stunned.

PJ: When we began this, I always thought finding out about your family was sort of like a novelty.

Kerry: Wow, I've never known those names.

PJ: But if you go through this process, it changes your perspective of who you are.

Tara: That was really cool.

[chuckles] Will: I'm really excited to see if I can learn from my ancestors.

Emily: This is one of the most profound experiences of my life.

Sean: [laughs] Crazy.

Will: I really felt like I was close to my great-grandpa, like right next to him.

Dr. McCool: We're gonna have to go back a long ways probably.

Will: That is incredible.

Dr. McCool: And whatever information is out there, we'll find.

Emily: Oh, my gosh.

♪♪ [whoosh] [indistinct announcements] John F. Kennedy: Let the word go forth from this time and place that the torch has been passed to a new generation.

PJ: I really never thought that finding out about your ancestry could change you the way it's changed me.

♪♪ [old projector sounds] ♪♪ ♪♪ Tara: I'm Tara Bishop.

I'm a mother of two and a nurse.

And a few years ago I got really ill with viral meningitis and have a lot of health consequences because of that.

So I was looking to learn more about how I can deal with the lifelong problems I'm going to have by finding out more about my family history.

I felt like I had so much to offer before I got ill and...

It was a very difficult situation and um, I never came out of the hospital the same.

I didn't feel too good about myself.

I basically went from super mom, super woman, to feeling like I couldn't provide at all for my family.

Christine: And this is your great-grandfather.

Tara: Insha.

Christine: He was a writer.

He was a writer and a publisher and a very wealthy man.

- Do we know anything about how he rose to that position?

Christine: No.

- So we don't know much, really.

Christine: The oldest sister is still alive, and she knows so much family history because she lived it.

And she's living in New York with her daughter, and all her grandchildren are there.

There's a lot of information there.

There's a lot of cousins that are in New York as well.

They could give you good information.

Nassar: Hello Tara, how are you?

Tara: Good, how are you?

Nasser: Really a great pleasure.

[kiss] Tara: Nice to meet you.

Tara: Oh wow.

Tara: I know my grandparents lived through a tragic situation.

They lived during the war between Pakistan and India.

I'd like to learn how did they deal with all that and then try to apply that into how I'm gonna deal with the health issues for the rest of my life.

♪♪ Rehan: Hindu people wanted Muslim people to leave Jammu.

So they were killing Muslim people.

My dad wasn't gonna stay there and when they were starting killing people then my dad decided to move.

We were at the station, and what they were doing, they were taking people far away, the buses-- [horn blares] and the train, they were killing them, butchering them.

Tara: Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.

Rehan: And the word came out later on, Don't take a train anymore.

Tara: How did it affect them?

Rehan: My father left his house there, his friends there.

He left his job, his life.

He, there was for many, many years, emotional thing.

His very close friends were Hindus, his very close friends were Sikhs, his friends were Muslim.

Some of his friends stayed there, so he had to start all over again.

There was very-- Tara: So there was a lot of loss.

Rehan: A lot of emotional loss, property loss, physical loss, psychological loss.

Why Hindu people killing Muslim people, Muslim killing Hindu people.

One time they were like very, very best friends.

It was one of the saddest moments of my father's life.

♪♪ Tara: That drive to be a good person, I didn't realize it was all the way back to my great-grandfather.

That is so important in life that no matter what happens, the way you react to situations says more about you than anything, than anyone else could say about you.

♪♪ It's almost a year ago we went to New York, and I met a lot of family that I didn't know about, reconnected with family that I hadn't been in connection with.

And I have learned so much in this last year.

Even though I'm not Muslim, I've read the Qur'an, I've talked to many of my relatives about their beliefs and what certain things mean in the Qur'an.

Several thousand people in Pakistan have seen the Generations Project episode that we did last time.

And my relatives have asked if we could start a charitable organization to help educate children, and that is getting going.

And so that's just amazing that something that I did over here could affect so many people over there.

Learning more about what my family went through has helped me grow just tremendously.

♪♪ Emily: I'm Emily Potter and I talk to my ancestors.

I could always feel that they are real and so I wanted to explore my family history to see if it was real and if I wasn't crazy and if I really am not alone because I really could hear them.

♪♪ Imagine being in a room with just yourself, and then all of a sudden, it feels like someone just came in behind you.

And you can’t see them, but you can feel their presence, and then just imagine starting to just ask them a question about something.

And that's kind of the way it is for me when I talk to my ancestors.

I am really afraid that people might actually think I'm crazy.

I'm scared of that.

I'd like to go on a Generations Project journey to see if my impressions that I receive from my ancestors actually do match up with historical fact.

♪♪ "Charles McCarthy is well known in St. Peter.

In fact, known in the city as quite a character--" [chuckles] "as he rarely ever visited our city "without leaving as full as a tick.

"He was in St. Peter December 7th "and of course got full and started for home.

"It was a cold night and on the way, "Charlie fell asleep, "and the team wandered from the road "and mired in a slough.

"And when Charlie came to his senses "both his feet and legs were badly frozen "almost to the knees ... "on Sunday last, Dr. Schultz amputated both feet ... "The wages of sin has made him, if he lives, a pitiful cripple for life..." Who is this writer?

[chuckles] "to our mind a condition worse, a good deal than death."

What?

♪♪ So, you're telling me you don't think he was insane?

[chuckles] - No, no I don't-- - I just really wanted-- I wanted to hear you say that.

Both: [laugh] - No, I don't think so.

Emily: I read that Charles McCarthy was actually buried at Marysburg Cemetery.

Ken: Oh, okay.

Tara: Yeah.

Ken: Uh, well, our records indicate that he was buried here.

Emily: I didn't get a strong answer if, if he was buried there or not, but what I did-- I am taking it as a, an answer that I get to trust at this point, that he didn't feel a very strong connection to that area.

So I sat there for a very long time, and the only thing I felt was kind of absence, um, as if he didn't really feel a connection to this land.

And I thought that was kind of interesting.

We're going to the Marysburg Cemetery now.

I don't, don't know how I'm going to feel there.

♪♪ So, I am really excited to know if Charles is buried here.

- This is ground-penetrating radar.

That might be something right there.

I would say this is a positive identification of a burial.

- Okay.

I keep asking him why.

Why did he make himself known to me?

And the fact that we dug and then we dug more and then we dug even further and here we are, standing here with this-- a man with a radar.

[laughs] Um, it's possible, it's possible that he would like to be buried by Bridget.

That is some true love that it-- from 1899 until 2010, he, he's trying to make that message known.

So I had the impression that he would like that rebur-burial and to be moved and, and p-put next to Bridget.

We had to really be very delicate in the way we, we extracted him.

And I, at this point, was looking at the remnants, the remains of my great- great-great grandfather, and feeling the sacredness really come over me.

There's that line of crazy that definitely happens, and I have to continually ask myself that question, or I have, and, and a lot of healing's happened because of this journey.

My family’s so important to me, and, and to be able to share as openly as I'm able to do now is more than I can possibly describe.

♪♪ Since the episode, I have gained so much confidence and being able to really tune in and get conscious to my relationship and be able to grow in that relationship and become better friends with those ancestors.

And of course, more ancestors came and I'm learning more and more.

One of the main... messages that my ancestors give me is to enjoy my life and to develop my talents.

One of the most specific things is I'm a dancer, and there have been times in my life where that's all I did, is just dance, dance, dance, dance, just for the love and the joy of it.

Um, I met up with uh, my dance partner, Juan, who happened to be in the library at the same time that I was.

When I was talking to him, he asked me, Do you want to dance again together?

And Charlie was right there.

[fwoot] And he says, This is the time that you say yes.

We set this up for you.

This is the time where you say yes.

And I said yes.

So Juan and I are preparing for a Latin dancing competition.

We don't know when the date will be, but um, it's one of my wildest dreams, on my wildest dreams list, uh, to dance in a competition.

Uh, one of my moti-motivations is to actually follow what my ancestors told me would be best for me.

So I'm doing what they say.

This has been one of the most important um, journeys of my life.

♪♪ ♪♪ Rachel: My name is Rachel Broadbent.

I'm an arborist.

I love trees and I'm an urban planner.

We're looking specifically at open space.

And one of the reasons I wanted to do the Generations Project was I wanted to make sure that my life mattered because I was-- I, I'm getting older, I'm not married, and I thought I wasn't going to have kids.

And so I wanted to still make a contribution to society, to leave a legacy, a meaningful legacy.

♪♪ Rachel's mom: You said that you just for some reason felt... kind of a special connection to... to Grandpa George.

And this, ah, this has his voice on it.

George: I was seven years old when we left Utah and went to Canada.

We helped build the first canal that was built in Canada.

♪♪ Rachel: Okay, I'm excited to go.

I'm gonna go and I wanna find out not only about him, but I think that that's really interesting about the whole canal-- Rachel's mom: Mm-hmm.

And the agriculture there.

You're interested in agriculture.

- Oh, yeah.

- And that would have been the beginning of their agriculture.

- Do you want to go run the plow?

- Yeah.

Having this opportunity gives me an ability to somewhat imagine my ancestors going through this experience.

But I think it's also a lesson for life, too.

You know, that one does not build a canal in a day.

It takes a while and it's incremental.

♪♪ What if we looked into where they came from before that?

Rachel's mom: I saw that these ancestors were actually in Salem, Massachusetts-- Rachel: Uh-huh.

- And I thought, Ooh, you know?

'Cause the witch, the witch trials are always scary to me.

♪♪ Richard: Your ancestor, Sarah Pease, along with about 140 others, were accused of practicing witchcraft.

You know, there's a lot of misconceptions about the witchcraft.

Just because someone lived 300 years ago and weren't as sophisticated as we are, didn't have computers or whatever, they had a lot of natural, innate uh, sense.

And this was a profound thing.

Rachel: I'm so grateful that I live in the era that I live now because as a kind of an independent woman who's kind of used to doing what I want, I c-- I have that freedom.

But in many generations there, that would have been a sure sign that you were different.

And so, can I really imagine living in a time where I couldn't be myself?

Yes, I can.

You know, my father was abusive, and you didn't cause waves.

If you were just quiet and did what you were supposed to do, you didn't draw attention to yourself.

I think I did that a lot as a child, tried to fa-- fly under the radar.

Now I don't think there's a need to do that, so I get to just be myself and I, I'm grateful for that.

♪♪ As I've been trying to figure out like, what is my role in life and what do I want to accomplish, what do I want to contribute?

I'm not sure if I have the answers, but I've also come to the realization that maybe when I find it, it will come to me.

And that it will come to me and then it will happen, it will happen more naturally.

And I need to be living my life and doing the best I can with that, I may not need to seek it out.

It may find me.

♪♪ I think that the Generations Project played a role in a couple of ways.

I think although I... still wanted to have a purpose, you know, kind of like that canal and going forward and determining where I was going to go, I also became a little bit, I think, more open to what life would bring.

And then also, diligent farmers get good fruit.

I realized, you know, that I needed to stop obsessing about what kind of fruit I was going to have, but more just to make sure that whatever my... whatever I did, the, the fruits of my labor, that if I was diligent, that they would be good.

As I learned more about my ancestors, I became more and more sort of saddened by the idea that I wouldn't get to have children, that I, that I would be like this terminus in the family, you know, in the root systems that created me, the trunk, and that there would not be any branching from me.

Not long after I finished the Generations Project, I was at a chili cook-off, and I saw a cute fellow, and I thought, Hey, I'd like to meet him.

Man 1: So, when we first met, um, we were there in, you know, after the chili cook-off, and everybody was cleaning up and I was kind of, you know, walking around cleaning things off of the floor.

And all of a sudden there were these shoes in... front of me and I could tell that the shoes, they weren't like your common like, tennis shoes, they were like shoes with character.

They looked like women's shoes, and I was like, I want to find out who... Like, these are not common shoes, This is not a common woman.

And I looked up and I said, Oh, she's cute, too.

[laughs] Rachel: And we started talking and talking.

And uh, one of the first things we talked about was that I love trees, that I'm an arborist.

And he was so excited to tell me his name because he knew I would be excited.

His name is Linden Alder, which is two trees.

And so we're, we're engaged to be married.

We are gonna get married.

And it's almost gonna be a year after I finished the Generations Project.

So, a year ago, I really did, I was coming to terms with the fact that I may not get married and that if I did get married it might be late enough in life that I wouldn't get to have my own children.

And it's exciting to think that now-- I mean, and we're gonna, we're gonna try to have a family right off.

He's excited to have children, I want to have children, and we're, we're gonna try to have a family.

And so it's exciting.

No matter what the outcome is, it's going to be positive.

It's like, it's like that diligent farmer.

I think that effort and that going forward and that trying is what opens you up for the experiences that need to happen in your life.

♪♪ ♪♪ Sean: My name is Sean Plasse.

I'm 36 years old, live in Vermont.

And we have a term that is "the call," which means a moral obligation to pursue your destiny, to push boundaries and frontiers, um, 'cause it's the best thing for you and for the world.

And for me, following that call as a dyslexic was to try and write a novel.

And it was something that I was intimidated to do 'cause I don't read novels, but it was something I felt called to do.

And so I wanted to go on the Generations Project to see if any of my ancestors had ever followed calls of their own and how they dealt with the consequences of that.

♪♪ You know, I don't understand who wouldn't wanna be up here on a morning like this when there's mist burning off the mountain.

It's a spiritual place.

♪♪ Um, so on one hand, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, on the other hand, I feel so out of place.

I feel lonely or isolated a lot of the time.

♪♪ I guess right now I think I'm just worried about my whole future.

I have no idea what's gonna happen.

So I'm just really frustrated, just always behind and trying to get by.

♪♪ So, the theme is the call.

I feel like our family always has a call to push frontiers, to challenge ourselves, to take risks.

John Alden, rumor has it that he was on the Mayflower.

And I don't think you can get a better call in all of America than being on the Mayflower, so that's the person I'd like to see next.

Jim: We're on the original Alden farm.

This property was given to the Aldens back in 1627.

Sean: Wow.

- All the other families sold, moved, changed, you know, but the Aldens, heh, have stuck here for almost 400 years.

But every time you open a Thanksgiving card and you see a pair of pilgrims of marriageable age, that's John and Priscilla, whatever the name may be.

Sean: [laughing] Jim: John, back in England, would have been a cooper, maybe on a ship, maybe making barrels in some little shop.

Here he became a landowner, which you couldn't have done in England.

He um, became a magistrate.

When he died, they printed up elegy-- poetical elegies of him in Boston.

So he'd have been entirely forgotten if he lived in England, just as we have no idea who his parents were or where he came from.

♪♪ Guide: This, I believe, is John Alden and I would like to introduce you to Sean Plasse.

- Sean Plasse.

Well-- Sean: [laughing] Very nice to meet you.

[laughing] - He's actually one of your descendants, but I know you're going to find that very hard to believe.

Sean: [laughing] - I do sense a bit of a resemblance.

Sean: [laughs] Look at us.

[laughing] So, you followed the call to cross the pond over to here, and you feel that was worth it?

- Well, I think I understand you.

Yeah, yeah, certainly.

I had a hope of, well, of some gain out here.

- [laughs] - By God's grace, I've survived well enough here to see it.

Sean: [laughs] God's been good to you.

You chose correctly 'cause it's 14 generations later.

[laughing] - There we are.

- You did all right.

John: Very well.

Priscilla: I'm sorry, my husband is not at home.

Sean: Oh, I saw him on the ship.

In what part of England did you meet each other in?

Priscilla: We actually met on the ship.

Sean: On the ship?

Priscilla: Mm-hmm.

My husband, he was a part of the crew.

Sean: No kidding?

So, literally, my great grandparents, 14 generations ago, the first time they ever met was on the Mayflower.

Priscilla: Mm-hmm.

Sean: [chuckling] Unbelievable.

This is so crazy.

♪♪ A week ago we were in my tent, and now here I am, finding out that I come from the first American romance and, you know, the first American dream.

♪♪ So, I definitely feel I come from a legacy of people who followed the call.

It doesn't always turn out exactly as planned, but if you're true to yourself and true to other people, with God's help and with love of family, you can go from a barrel maker to Mr. John Alden, and uh, I do feel a great peace.

I made mistakes, but you can get on a ship and fall in love.

You can... not even know how to spell your own name and have a legacy.

I guess I always thought there was something wrong with me.

[sniffs] ♪♪ Maybe something good will come out of my life.

♪♪ So after the Generations Project, my brother and I continued to work 18-hour days, you know, from 6:00 in the morning till midnight sometimes, trying to get this book finished.

There was times we fought and argued, and times I cried, times I prayed, but somehow, someway, I'm actually holding a finished book today.

I never thought today would come.

♪♪ The Generations Project was about independence.

These were independent people who believed it was more important to follow their destiny than anything else.

And seeing all these ancestors who pursued something of meaning, of value, of tradition, of good, true, beautiful courage, virtue, that was really healing for me.

I found a lot of peace from it and I was able to apply that into this book, and I just feel at peace now that that journey is finished.

Like, I feel like my ship has sailed all the way across.

I'm in the new world.

But now, I have to kind of build a life out of that.

You know, I've got my land, I've got my home, I've got everything.

But now it's about family and, and growth and prosperity.

Am I happy?

I think I find my happiness in my Creator and I find satisfaction in creation.

So I think I'm both happy and satisfied right now.

I think there's more chapters to be written, I hope.

I think it will be a good, true, beautiful story in the end.

But I'm on the ship.

I'm sailing.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪