Christopher Walken Uncovers His Grandfather's Criminal History | Finding Your Roots | Ancestry®

Ah, he seems like a tough customer. What are you doing? We have to find out. Actor Christopher Walken came to me with fundamental questions about his maternal

roots

. His mother Rosalie Russell was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but in 1930, when she was 22, she boarded a ship. for New York leaving his past completely behind while growing up Chris knew Rosalie's mother because she visited her daughter in the United States traveling with her second husband, Chris's stepfather, but Chris doesn't even know the name of Rosalie's father, the Chris's biological

grandfather

, the man I called my

grandfather

. He was a lovely guy, he was covered in tattoos and he had I think they were the king and queen tattooed on his back and he would take off his shirt and do this and it looked like the king and queen were laughing and he was my grandfather, but I understood that It wasn't actually my grandfather, but rather his father, who was never mentioned.

Your mom never talked about that. No. Our search for Chris's grandfather began at the National Archives of Scotland, where we initially hit a wall. The original birth of Chris's mother. The certificate indicates that she was illegitimate and does not name her father, but in 1935, just a few months before she was married in New York, Rosalie requested that a new birth certificate be issued in Scotland and this new certificate contained the name we were looking for. . The surname and rank were Father Joseph Egan's profession, leather merchants. I had never heard of Joseph Egan before today and my mother never used that name, I never heard of it, she was always Russell, she had a re-registration in 1935 to add this name, so she must.

It has been important to her. It must have been very important. It is interesting that she never shared it with anyone. Why do you think

your

mother never told you the name of her own father? I don't know well. I have an idea. Could you turn the page, Chris? That's Joseph Egan, that's the mugshot of him, huh, he looks like a tough customer, he looks at his hands, yeah, look at his head, yeah, hey, you see

your

mother in that face. I do it with my eyes and something in my mouth. Joseph Egan Grandpa, well, what?

Do we have to find out from court records from 1883? Chris's grandfather was arrested for receiving and reselling stolen property. He was given a five-year sentence and sent to a place known as Pentonville Prison, outside London. It was a harsh sentence. Pendonville had been designed to reform inmates through a set of policies we would now call solitary confinement, this meant that for up to nine months Joseph was likely confined to a 12 by 8 foot cell and prohibited from speaking to anyone except The prison guards and his chaplains eventually transferred him to another prison in Dorset, England, where he served his sentence doing manual labor after his release.

Joseph struggled financially for the rest of his short life. Well, this is our revelation, I just want to know that it existed in this fascinating way. You never know what you're going to find in a family tree, yeah, and maybe you know she didn't want to discuss that, do you think she had something to do with why she never talked about it? Oh, absolutely, yes, yes, and not just why she never talked about it, but why she got on a boat when she was 20 years old and she went alone to America. This kind of covering the stories of our ancestors can be a deeply transformative experience that changes the way we see ourselves, our families, and our shared

history

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