Meghan Markle’s slave ancestors and Essex boy relations ‘could be revealed’ after approach from US Who Do You Think You Are?
Producers of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are have contacted Buckingham Palace in the hope of helping The Duchess of Sussex learn about her heritage.
PRODUCERS of the American version of Who Do You Think You Are have contacted Buckingham Palace in the hope of helping The Duchess of Sussex learn about her heritage.
'Longing' Meghan Markle has previously spoken publicly about wanting to know more of her family history, and so popular TV show Finding Your Roots stepped in to help.
Using a team of genealogists to look at paper trails ancestors left behind, and DNA experts who use the latest technology in genetic analysis, it looks back on hundreds of years of personal family history.
And the series has already featured many celebrities, including actors Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Junior, singer John Legend, musician Sting and Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin.
Guests are given their own Book Of Life during the show which details everything the researchers have found about them and their family - allowing the stars to look back in time.
The Daily Star found out from an unnamed source that the show had contacted Meghan, after she has publicly spoken about wanting to find out more on her bi-racial history.
"Megan has made no secret about wanting to find out about her past," the source said. "And Meghan's family are so diverse that if she agrees their research will take them across the world.
"Whether it be the victims of the African slave trade on her mum's side or the ancestors related to Scottish warlord Robert the Bruce on her dad's, few families can boast such an incredible heritage.
"Her Book Of Life, we think, would provide her with a lot of answers."
Research has already found that on her mother Doria's side, Meghan, 37, is descended from slaves who toilet on the cotton plantations in the deep south of America.
And that her maternal great-great-great-great-grand father Joseph Betts served in the 40th US Coloured Infantry during the American Civil War, where slaves volunteered to fight to be granted freedom.
Before he joined the army to fight, there is no record of Betts, suggesting he could have been enslaved because the census did not include slaves - but after the war he became a farmer.
On her father's side, descendants are mostly Irish and Dutch immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania.
But one of dad Thomas' ancestors was George Sanders, an aristocrat born in Essex in 1841, who had a family line linking back to the Bruce kings of England.
Before wedding Prince Harry, 34, last year, the Duchess spoke out about her struggles being raised in a mixed-race family, detailing the times she witnessed her mother abused with the n-word.
She also referred to how at 13 she refused to fill out a mandatory school census as there was no box for her ethnicity on the form.
"When I went home that night I told my dad what happened," she said. "He said: 'If that happens again, you draw your own box', those words have always stayed with me.
"The closest thing to connecting me to my ever-complex family tree, my longing to know where I come from and the commonality that links me to my bloodline is a choice my great-great-grandfather made.
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"He chose the last name Wisdom to start anew. He drew his own box."
Finding Your Roots is presented by Henry Louis Gates Jnr, a Harvard professor who also holds 53 honorary degrees and many academic and social action awards.
Obsessed with English history, the 68-year-old is close friends with Barack Obama and is thought to be one of the world's experts in black history.