On Finding Your Roots, Pharrell Williams heard a family account of enslavement in North Carolina and learned how the program’s researchers connected that account to records. He struggled to speak as he took it in, then said, “I think this, I have to say, I am forever changed.” The episode also proposed—but did not prove—how the Williams surname entered his family.
What Pharrell learned about his family history
The story appeared in Season 7, Episode 5 of Finding Your Roots, “Write My Name in the Book of Life.” Host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presented Williams with the account of Jane Arrington, identified in the episode as his third great-aunt. Arrington had been interviewed in the 1930s, and her words, read aloud on the program, described the experience of her family under enslavement.
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The episode connected Arrington’s testimony with the story of her mother, whom the program identified as Williams’s third great-grandmother. According to the program’s interpretation of the interview and records, Penny Williams sold her to Andrew Jackson May, a planter in Nash County, North Carolina. Arrington’s account described abuse and violence. These are claims presented by the episode through the historical interview and its supporting records, rather than a complete independent verification of every detail.
What the records did—and did not—establish
Gates said the program consulted wills, census forms and a runaway-slave notice. The team concluded that records supported parts of Arrington’s account and indicated that at least three generations of Williams’s ancestors endured bondage. It also drew a clear boundary around its findings: “While we couldn’t substantiate every claim she made, we found numerous records that give credence to her words.”
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Gates estimated that Williams’s great-great-grandfather Fenner was born between 1855 and 1857 and was likely born enslaved, with freedom coming at the end of the Civil War. The dates and circumstances are presented as estimates and likelihoods in the episode, not as an exact, documented birth date.
How the episode explained the Williams surname
Gates proposed that Williams’s surname came from Penny Williams’s husband, William B. Williams, who married her in 1816. He told Pharrell, “We believe that your last name, Williams, comes from Penny’s husband, William B. Williams.” The wording matters: this is the program’s proposed explanation, not a proven origin for the surname.
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PBS also published a related clip focused on the surname explanation: “Dark Origins of A Surname”.
Why Pharrell was emotional
The impact came from hearing an ancestor’s account alongside the program’s attempt to connect it to family records. Williams said the story gave “a very vivid, intense context behind what it means to be African American,” adding, “I thank God that I got to hear it, but I’m so sorry they went through this.” The episode records his reaction; the headline’s “verge of tears” should not be mistaken for a precise quotation from the transcript.
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Gates described what the testimony meant to him: “For most of us, slavery is just an abstract concept, it’s something we’re, we know that was wrong, we were victims by it, but this puts a voice and a face to the slave experience in your own bloodlines, in your own family.” The episode’s account is powerful precisely because it brings testimony and records together while acknowledging what researchers could not confirm.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to research African American family history
For anyone following a family history across slavery, records can be incomplete, and documents may name enslavers rather than the enslaved people themselves. Ancestry’s 2020 guide recommends beginning with later records and working backward. It explains that U.S. slave schedules generally list slaveholders and descriptions, while enslaved people are rarely named. Suggested leads include the 1870 census, neighboring households, property and tax records, newspapers, and probate records such as wills.
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The guide also cautions that documents alone typically will not trace an ancestor to a specific location in Africa. DNA can be one resource, but it does not replace documentary research or, by itself, establish a specific enslaved ancestor. Georgia Public Broadcasting’s 2021 episode listing describes the federal Slave Narrative Project as a collection of roughly 2,300 oral histories conducted in the 1930s.
Sources: PBS episode transcript (February 16, 2021); PBS related clip listing (February 16, 2021); Ancestry, “Researching your African American ancestors” (2020); Georgia Public Broadcasting episode listing (2021).
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