‘Who do you think you are?’ draws a crowd

Increasing summer school enrollment in the Northern Ozaukee School District, officials say, is primarily due to new and interesting classes created by teachers.

One of those classes is the “Who Do You Think You Are?” ancestry class led by teacher John Annis.

Modeled after the television show of the same name, the course uses resources provided by Ancestry.com to help launch students on a quest to discover their family roots.

Among those students is Andrew Jepson, 12, who traced his father’s family tree to the 1600s, back 17 generations.

“I took this course because my dad encouraged me to do it,” Andrew said. “I thought it was going to be boring. But I found out a lot of stuff I didn’t know. It was very fun.

“The most fun part was finding out who is actually related to me and where they were born and raised.”

One surprise came early on when Andrew found out his great-great-grandfather, a farmer in the Cedarburg area, also was named Andrew.

“My mom told me that’s who I was named after,” he said.

Andrew also found out that many of his ancestors were named John.

“That’s my dad’s name,” he said.

Annis teaches special education during the regular school year but  came up with the idea for the class after researching his own family history, which included discovering that he was part Native American on his mother’s side.

Aided by an Ancestry.com grant that allowed the students to use the site without paying to be members, Annis said it didn’t take long for the students to dive into their projects.

“Kids come in and they’re on their computers right away. They work the whole time,” he said. “I don’t have to motivate them at all.”

Annis encouraged students at the beginning of the course to talk to their parents and grandparents about their family history.

One girl, for instance, talked to her grandmother and was told they were related to Bing Crosby.

“She checked it out, and it was true,” he said.

By talking to relatives, some students found pictures of the people they were learning about in their research.

Annis said the class, which ends this week, benefits students in several ways.

“It helps them develop research skills and reading skills; there’s a lot of reading involved. They learn a lot of history,” he said.

“But they also learn that when they get stuck you have to find different ways to look at things to get the information.”

Andrew said the class was difficult at first because it required him to do some basic research.

“In the beginning it was very hard because I had to know when my parents were born and when they got married,” he said. “And I didn’t know my great grandparents’ names. It got easier in the end.”

Andrew discovered records from England, Germany and Spain.

He learned a lot about his ancestors on his father’s side of the family through census records, ships’ passenger lists and other records.

“They were workers, almost like slaves. They came as settlers and a lot of them had 11 to 14 kids to help on the farms,” said Andrew, who lives in Oostburg and whose mother, Janelle Lyn Jepson, works for Wisconsin Virtual Learning at the NOSD campus.

He was impressed by one early ancestor who left his wife and children in Germany and came over to find land. When he found it, he returned to Germany and brought them back with him, along with other relatives.

Andrew said he plans to continue his research, this time into his mother’s side of the family.

“I want to go over to my grandparents and see if they can help me do the same on my mother’s side,” he said.