Roots Television | Megan's Roots World

Megan,

Methinks that you are now the most "visible" genealogist in America. Who else has had four segments on morning TV?

May I ask how much of the research work that you have done for these four segments? And who did the nice pedigree charts?

Congratulations - I am very proud of you and your representation of genealogy to the masses.

All the best -- Randy

Hey Randy,

Thanks very much. This was hard work, but I loved it. And yes, I did a lot of the research, but obviously not all of it. Ancestry.com has a talented team of in-house researchers and was also responsible for those great charts. In fact, several of them were done multiple times because we kept finding more names and details.

I also did what I always do when I work on TV shows (none have been this visible, but I've done this kind of thing before), and turned to a number of talented researchers -- such as the folks at ProGenealogists.com, who have consistently worked miracles for me over the years -- to get the job done in time. TV-land operates on such a compressed schedule that the research often relies as much on project management as the ability to find the records. So it was a team effort for which I received a disproportionate share of the credit.

BTW, GMA put me up in a swanky hotel the night before the live shoot (on Thursday morning). I was in NYC up on the 50th floor with a suite that had 2 bathrooms. Made me feel like a star! And it didn't hurt when they sent someone to escort me to the studio for hair and make-up by the same folks who were about to do Mo'nique's and Gretchen Wilson's! The green room was populated by award-winning musicians, and I got to do a quick radio interview before I went on the set as well.

And incidentally, Diane, Robin, Chris and Sam are all even better looking in person than on TV -- and all really nice folks. All in all, it was a pretty incredible experience!

So how's that for a mile-long response?!

Take care,
Megan

Hello Megan
I have enjoyed your blog for a while now, especially the Annie Moore revelations, a really novel way of getting to the truth of the real Annie as well as making the genealogy search fun to do and to read about. The story even made my morning paper here in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I am particulary interested in your rececnt work though, the genealogy of Diane Sawyer, partly because I am a genealogy researcher myself but mostly because I was part of the 'Ulster Historical Foundation' team that did the Mackey research here in Ireland for that programme. Unfortunately even though the ABC crew spent several days here interviewing and filming the data we found for them in the Public Record Office, the Newspaper archive and the Mackey gravestone in County Down, none of it was used in the programme. That's the way it goes I suppose! I am particulary keen to see the Diane Sawyer video but the link to it on the ABC site and your site seems to be gone. Do you have any other link to it that I can view? Many thanks. Siobhan

Hi Siobhan,

The link to Diane's story is:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2626364&page=1

and to her video is:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2626602

I'll email you privately as well.

Take care,
Megan