If your family story could be streaming

 

Source: Amazon Prime Video.

If you had the opportunity to kick back and turn on a movie or series based on a story in your family history, what would you choose? Taking a break from doing actual research, I let my imagination wander a bit, dreaming up a selection of shows from my own family history. As I haven't had the good fortune of having any ancestors' stories appear in a segment of Finding Your Roots or Who Do You Think You Are, for this thought experiment I am sharing a few true stories that would be amazing to see as a limited series, movie or documentary.

The story most likely to be dramatized is that of Elizabeth Key Grinstead, my 9th-great-grandmother on my Mom's side of the tree (see also this 2015 post on her father, Thomas). In 2019, Elizabeth was featured in an exhibition at Jamestown, and may still be portrayed by an actor at the Jamestown Colony museum. A short 7 minute YouTube video was produced in 2021 narrating the battle for her freedom from slavery as an important piece of Black History. Elizabeth's story is an inspiring one, and I think it has all the elements of being a compelling lesson for today.

For an epic song-and-dance Gilded Age to early Vaudeville series, the story of my Dad's great-aunt Agnes Atherton O'Brien and her rise from the La Salle County Sisters of Charity orphanage to a thirty-plus year career on the stage would be an amazing tear jerker. A second season could follow my great-grandfather Harry O'Brien, as he was inspired by Agnes to pursue a musical career as a clarinetist, venturing to New Orleans for college and playing in the jazz club scene. Comic relief would be the story of his first marriage to the actress daughter of his landlady and her amusing sister Leonora's own failed marriage in New York.

A Civil War drama with a murder mystery and legal battle going to the US Supreme Court (and with a touch of a love story narrated from an eyewitness diary), I'd watch the Notorious Captain Thornhill.

Other war time action stories would involve my 3rd-great-grandfather John O'Brien, as a ship's boy during the Battle of Trafalgar; or the touching World War II feel-good story of my great-grandmother's nephew James Clifton Whitley who completed bomber missions in the Mediterranean and later met a pilot he had shot down, who became his barber and friend. Another story in this category is the amazing Civil War spy story of Felix Stidger. He has a plaque titled "the spy that saved the Union."

For a basketball series, I'd look to the Hoosiers before Hoosiers and the story of the 1915 Indiana high school basketball champions from Thorntown. The victory by my great-grandfather's team led to the construction of a new gym in the small town. 1915, Part Two would follow Edgar Jones' first cousin Nettie Snoddy, who played star guard for the Enid High School girls basketball team in Oklahoma. Nettie's play inspired her younger brother Clarence to a championship in 1921.

My Gumpy's 1937 road trip from Indiana to California with his brother and two cousins would make a funny coming of age comedy. His photos from the trip captured the journey west and back.

For a glamorous around the world love story, I'd watch the story of globetrotting photographers Mary Isabelle Cox and her husband William Irvine.

Another story destined for a film or limited series connects our family to the famous Ronstadts of Arizona. Selena Gomez is in pre-production on a biopic based on the life of Linda Ronstadt. If her movie includes any references to the Vasquez and Suastegui families, that would be really cool.

Inspiring immigration stories I'd love to see on the small screen include my 2nd-great-grandfather Vicente Campuzano's work with Liga Protectora Latina in 1916. Or a sweeping journey across the Atlantic in 1624, from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam by the DuTrieux family.

There are so many of these stories in our family, and in the families of others, and I have not scratched the surface yet. There's more to uncover, more to write, and we may still have a segment on a famous-adjacent family branch on a future Finding Your Roots episode. Season 11 will be released in January.