Who Do You Think You Are? Episode 3.08 Edie Falco

Acclaimed actress Edie Falco is best known for her TV, film and stage portrayals of tough female characters. Her performance as Carmela on the hit series "The Sopranos" earned Edie three Emmys and five Screen Actor Guild awards. Her current starring role in "Nurse Jackie" garnered Edie yet another Emmy, making her the first ever to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress for both a comedy and a drama.

Edie was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Long Island. She currently lives in Manhattan with her son Anderson and daughter Macy. "Family is very important to me and it happened over time," Edie says as she talks about the years of struggles it took to make a career for herself. She is a child of divorce, so marriage was never seen as a necessity in her life. Edie grew up with an Italian father and spent a good deal of time with his family while she would only occasionally visit with her mother's family. Edie hopes this journey into her past will help reveal more about her mother's side of the tree.

Edie begins her journey by having a conversation with her mother to find out what she knows about her family's past. Edie's mother takes out a handmade family tree that shows the past couple of generations. Edie's mom takes her through the document and shows a photo of her grandfather, Edie's great-grandfather, named George Megrath. Her memory on him is fuzzy, but she believes he came from Wales and that Megrath was his mother's maiden name. Edie is curious why her great-grandfather went by his mother's last name and not his father's, Brown.

Edie heads to the New York Public Library to expand her search with the help of librarian Maira Liriano. They look at the 1920 census and find George Megrath and his wife Florence listed. Then to Edie's surprise, they find that Wisconsin is listed as the place of birth for George, not Wales like her mother told her. They look deeper on the census and find that George's mother, Mary, was born in New York City and his father in England. So based on this new information, Edie's mother's family tree is incorrect as no one originated from Wales.

Edie logs onto Ancestry.com and finds a newspaper obituary of George Megrath from 1946. The article talks about George's life as he was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, worked as an electrician and died in New York City at 70. "Seems like the stories that were passed down from generation to generation is like the game of telephone," Edie says as she discovers all the information her family thought they knew was unfortunately skewed. Edie heads to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to search for more details about her great-grandfather and learn why he disavowed the Brown family name.

"I never thought I would find myself in Milwaukee, especially when searching for my roots," Edie reveals. She heads to the All Saints Cathedral to find George's baptism records and learn about his parents. After finding the record, Edie discovers that George's parents' names were Charles C. Brown and Mary Megrath Brown. Edie heads to the Milwaukee Historical Center and learns Charles C. Brown, commonly known as C.C., was originally from England and became a controversial newspaper writer and editor.

"He had the reputation of making news where there was no news," Edie reads from a biography about her great-great-grandfather C.C. Brown. It seems C.C. made many enemies as a newspaper writer and editor. "C.C. was quite an interesting character," Edie admits as she reads a historical sketch about his antics. Edie later finds a perplexing article about C.C. and the tragic death of his 16-year-old son, George Megrath. "How can that be?" Edie asks because her great-grandfather lived past his 70s. Historian Dr. Mueller explains that newspapers of that period often jumped the gun on news and most likely did so with George's accident, which he obviously survived.

Having learned that C.C. was a peculiar newspaper writer with a negative reputation and that he also divorced George's mother when George was just two, Edie can now understand why George took his mother's name instead of his father's. Later, Edie learns that her 3x-great-grandmother, C.C.'s mother, was named Sister Catherine Brown, and by looking at the census, she discovers that Sister's Catherine's birthplace is oddly listed as "at sea." To find out more, Edie heads to England where Sister Catherine's mother and father were born.

In England, Edie learns that Sister Catherine's birth name is Catherine Kate Kindley and that she grew up with her grandmother while her parents Ralph and Dorothy were at sea. Ralph was considered a master mariner and he took the unusual step of having his wife accompany him on his voyages. A master mariner is the captain of an ocean-going commercial ship, and Ralph Kindley sailed during the British Imperial century. It was a time where England boasted the largest merchant fleet in the world. For master mariners like Ralph Kindley, it was a lifestyle as well as a career and meant spending the majority of their lives at sea.

Edie meets with maritime historian Sam Willis to find out more about what her ancestor's life must have been like at sea. He brings her aboard an 18th century ship, a vessel similar to what her 4x-great-grandfather would have commanded. Edie's breath is taken away by the majesty of the ship as they take her out to sea. While sailing, Sam tells Edie that Ralph and Dorothy must've cared deeply for each other because it was very uncommon for wives of crewmembers to travel aboard ships; luckily, he was the captain and made the rules.

Willis shows Edie a ship manifest of Captain Kindley's ship, the Lord Cochrane, around the time of Catherine's birth and surmises that she was born at sea during a voyage from London to New Orleans. Then Willis gives Edie a document about Captain Kindley's death. He died at sea around October 1840 when he was sailing from the coast of Africa to the Port of New York. "So many dimensions of the picture have come together now," Edie says of learning about her ancestors from Wisconsin to the Atlantic ocean. "It's like reading a good book."