Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard find out fascinating details on PBS series 'Finding Your Roots'
Two of metro Detroit's homegrown celebrities, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, are famous for their Michigan ties.
Now the married actors will be learning a lot about their family histories that stretch way beyond the Wolverine State.
Bell, who grew up in Huntington Woods, and Shepard, who was raised in Milford and went to high school in Walled Lake, will hear some fascinating stories about their ancestries at 8 p.m. Tuesday on the latest episode of "Finding Your Roots," the popular PBS series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
"Finding Your Roots" airs in southeast Michigan on Detroit PBS.
Bell and Shepard will get the scoop on many generations of their family tree from Gates, the Harvard professor and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who has been revealing details of long-ago relatives to famous figures since the genealogical research series launched in 2012.
In a clip posted at the show's PBS website, Gates is shown telling Shepard about his ninth great grandfather, Toussaint Beaudry, who emigrated at age 25 from France to Canada in 1664. After working as a domestic servant at a Montreal hospital, Beaudry became a fur trader.
Another clip has Gates sharing information with Bell on the death of her grandfather's 5-year-old brother, who was killed in a car accident in front of his home, and the disappearance afterward of her great-grandfather, Frank Frygier, who abandoned his family after the tragedy.
Although Bell and her relatives never knew where Frank Frygier went, Gates reveals where he lived out the rest of his days and how he already had experienced much loss before leaving Poland to sail to Ellis Island in 1910.
Asked by Gates what this great-grandfather would have thought about her achievements, Bell says: "Well, I would hope that he would be able to see that the generations trauma has waned a little bit and that, unfortunately, he got the short end of the stick, having to go through all of it. But it yielded some some really happy results with me and my life and my kids."
Says Bell, "I hope he'd be happy to know that we're happy now."
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
Guests Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard
8 p.m. Tuesday
Detroit PBS (Channel 56)
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard learn about their ancestry on 'Finding Your Roots'
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