Edward Norton, who starred as the “genius” tech billionaire Miles Bron in the film ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ was a guest at the PBS genealogical history show ‘Finding Your Roots’ where the actor discovered that the real-life Pocahontas was his 12th grandmother.
Pocohontas was a Native American who had welcomed English settlers into Virginia in the early 1600’s. Later, she was kidnapped and taken to England where she married tobacco planter John Rolfe in 1614 and converted to Christianity. She died there.
According to the host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr, a paper trail directly led to connecting Norton to his 12th great grandmother Pocahontas and great- grandfather John Rolfe. He further revealed that Pocahontas had died around 1617, while Rolfe had passed away in March 1622.
On this revelation, Norton had remarked that he was quite astonished.
‘It just makes you realize what a small … piece of the whole human story you are.’
The show also revealed to Edward Norton that his third great-grandfather, John Winstead, owned a family of slaves, which included a 55 year old man, a 37 year old woman, and five young girls whose ages were between 4 and 10.
To this, Norton confessed that he had researched his own history before coming on the show, and realizing that his family had owned slaves was something that was quite uncomfortable for him.
‘The short answer is these things are uncomfortable. And you should be uncomfortable with them. It’s not a judgment on you in your own life but it’s a judgment on the history of this country and it needs to be acknowledged first and foremost and then it needs to be contended with. When you read ‘Slave, age 8′, you just want to die.’
