WDYTYA Episode 208: Ashley Judd

Tonight, Ash­ley Judd was the celebri­ty on the sea­son finale of Who Do You Think You Are?

Her fam­i­ly sto­ry is com­pelling, and includes a Union Civ­il War vet­er­an from Ken­tucky, who was cap­tured twice by the Con­fed­er­ates, and was a bat­tle­field amputee.

Addi­tion­al­ly, her line goes back to the ear­li­est days of the Ply­mouth Bay Colony in Mass­a­chu­setts.

The show pre­sent­ed her as doing some of the research with her father. This was­n’t an entire­ly believ­able por­tion of the show.

At one point, a researcher indi­cat­ed that the Civ­il War ances­tor’s age of 18 at the mus­ter­ing in and 18 at mus­ter­ing out might have indi­cat­ed that he lied about his age on mus­ter­ing in. That is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble. But the age being the same on mus­ter­ing in and out is com­mon through­out US mil­i­tary records, and is sim­ply reflec­tive of a prac­tice that lists the age at mus­ter­ing in instead of the sol­dier’s cur­rent age through­out the records about that sol­dier.

How­ev­er, despite that glitch, it was a com­pelling, dra­mat­ic, and emo­tion­al sea­son finale. The video will be avail­able for a lim­it­ed time on demand at: http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/episode-guide/