On Tuesday 3 January, host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr revealed to Edward Norton that he was a direct descendant of the Indian princess Pocahontas. She is in fact his 12th great-grandmother.
The actor of "Fight Club" and recently "Glass Onion" knew that such a rumour existed in his family, explains CNN, but the historian told him that there were written traces of this lineage. He is therefore a direct descendant of Pocahontas and her husband, the colonist John Rolfe, whose marriage took place in Virginia in 1614. The couple had a son, Thomas Rolfe, in 1615, but Pocahontas died on her return from London in 1617, aged 22, probably of pneumonia or tuberculosis.
"It just makes you realise what a small... piece of the whole of human history you are," Norton remarked after the revelation.
The actor was less pleased to learn that his third great-grandfather owned slaves, including children. "It's uncomfortable to know that and there's a lot to be uncomfortable about. An 8-year-old child slave: you want to die reading that".
Cousin of Julia Roberts
Invited to the same evening, Julia Roberts also discovered that she had a slave-owning ancestor. And that she shared a DNA lineage with Edward Norton. "This means that you have inherited this shared DNA from a distant ancestor, somewhere at the heart of this family tree", explained the historian.
Text by Le matin.ch
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