Bobby Bones shared earlier this week he wanted to look into his family history. He doesn't know much passed his parents and grandparents names, so he wanted to hire a genealogist to give him his family history.
Dr. Yates from Oklahoma State University reached out to Bones on Instagram to say she could help him find his history and in just a few days, she pulled so more information from public record for him. She teaches forensics at the university and then started working in the forensics genealogy program, there they work with unidentified human remains and use extraction and open source intelligence to identify the remains.
She started with Bones birth date and his legal name, and she was able to find lots of public documents. She found his yearbook photos, his parents, his mom's obituary, and shared that since he knew his grandparents names she was able to go back to the 1490s of his family history. She saw one fun fact, which she hasn't been able to fully confirm yet because hasn't been through every public document, but Bones is 10th cousins with some famous people. Those famous people happen to be previous presidents James Madison and Teddy Roosevelt. She was able to see a direct line to their grandfathers in his family tree, and that's not something that's in most trees.
Dr. Yates was building out a family tree for Bones on ancestry.com and she noted that if anyone has their grandparents names, you can double the family trees, which allows someone to see so much of their history. She noted she could see some cousins who got married in his family tree, but that's the case in most trees. She found German, Dutch, French, and English lines in his ancestry. It seems he's in the right place with Tennessee because he has a lot of ancestors from this state. His mom's side comes from Ireland, but Dr. Yates wasn't able to pin down a specific country within it. She was able to pin down a specific place from her dad's side, The Kingdom of Wittenburg, Germany. Bones 7th great grandfather on his dad's side lived there.