Zoë Wanamaker was born in New York, but when she was three her father, American actor Sam Wanamaker, fled to the UK to escape the anti-communist McCarthy witch-hunts. Hoping to understand her father’s decision better, Zoë heads to Washington DC where she visits the FBI Headquarters. Here, under the Freedom of Information Act, Zoë gets access to her father’s FBI file, an extraordinary document that reveals the level of scrutiny Sam was under and the very real risk of imprisonment he faced.
Wanting to explore the roots of her father’s left-wing politics, Zoë next looks into the life of her father’s father, Maurice Wanamaker, an émigré Russian Jew. Zoë is moved to discover that, soon after his arrival in Chicago, Maurice suffered a series of personal tragedies and hardships that almost destroyed his American dream.
Finally, Zoë travels to Nicolaev in the Ukraine where she discovers the original form of her unusual surname and the reason why her family originally left for America.
You can find many clues within your own family’s archives. Photographs, films or videos, letters and diaries are all good sources to discover what sort of people your ancestors really were.
Our podcast on starting your family history (MP3, 26.6Mb) will give you some useful tips and starting points.
If your ancestors came to Britain from another country incoming passenger lists are also a good place to start.
You can get information on Jewish ancestry using the Moving Here website. This website lists the main sources available for research, both within the UK and overseas, as well as providing historical context for the records and topics covered.
You might also find these research guides useful:
Foreign Office Records from 1782
