On Friday nights Ancestry.com is featuring a TV show called "Who Do You Think You Are?" and they have been using movie stars as their subjects for research into their ancestry.
The most interesting part is that they travel to so many different museums and places where special records are kept and explain what kind of original records they have. It is very educational and fascinating and never boring.
For instance I never knew that the British hired Hesian solders to help them fight in the Revolution. Rob Lowe's ancestor was one of them who stayed in America and became a Patriot and famous citizen in Ohio. They read from original documents at various sights in Washington D C and New Jersey. They then went to Germany and found more of his ancestors there in the Church records.
They could probably have found out all of this from records stored in Salt Lake City but it is much more interesting to go to original sources.
It is a really a well done show and should encorage many people to start tracing their ancestry lines. I am ready to plunge into Ancestry.com mysself and see if they have anything I do not already have--of course, this is what they want...