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On last night’s “Finding
Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” Gates revealed the roots of Hollywood couple
Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. (You’ll be able to catch
it online if you missed it.)

I was relieved to learn at the very beginning of that Kevin Bacon’s caveman hair is
for a movie role. Wondering about it would’ve been distracting.

Both come from distinguished New England families. A few years back I read the book In
My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family by Sedgwick’s
uncle John Sedgwick. I was glad to see him interviewed for this episode, and unsure
what work the show’s researchers would have left to do.

But they did discover something new: Family patriarch Theodore Sedgwick, a prominent
lawyer in Colonial Massachusetts, owned a slave. This was surprising because he took
on the case of a slave named Mumbet who sued for her own freedom, claiming that the
new Massachusetts constitution made all men free—and she won.

Kevin Bacon’s Quaker ancestor also owned slaves, though Gates pointed out that at
least his will directed they should learn to read and be freed at age 35.

Gates’ visit to a high school classroom demonstrated how little-known it is that slavery
was so widespread in the northern colonies. I didn’t realize that Quakers hotly debated
the issue of slavery before setting themselves against it.

Sedgwick also took a DNA test revealing that she is half Jewish, and she seemed to
express relief. But at the beginning of the show, she was described as half Jewish
through her mother, so I didn’t understand that emotion—perhaps some explanatory scenes
were edited out.

And the big drumroll: Gates revealed to the couple that they’re ninth cousins once
removed (which is very, very distant). Even without the news
reports coming out before the show, I would’ve seen this one coming a mile away,
as soon as Sedgwick said at the start of the episode “My biggest fear is that we’re
cousins.”