DNA archives show Julia Roberts isn’t a ‘Roberts”

Julia Roberts has expressed her surprise after discovering that she is not a ‘Roberts’ in the family DNA archives.

The 55-year-old actress appeared on Ancestory’s Finding Your Roots to delve deeper into her family line and the family’s DNA archives.

Julia Roberts discovered her surname was different with the help of a medical practitioner, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. because her great-great-grandmother Rhoda Suttle Roberts had an affair with a married man after the death of her husband, Willis Roberts.

‘Digging into Georgia’s County archives, we discovered that Rhoda married a man named Willis Roberts sometime in the 1850s,’ Dr. Henry told the actress.

Willis Roberts, Julia’s great-great-grandfather, died in 1864, a decade after Julia’s great-grandfather, John, was born. An indication that Willis is John Roberts’ father.

A search of the archives revealed that while Julia’s great-grandfather Willis was not listed in the 1880 census, her great-grandfather John Pendleton Roberts was.

When the DNA samples were examined, it was discovered that Julia and her cousin’s samples did not match those of their great-grandfather, Willis Roberts.

‘We found a cluster of matches that tie Julia and her cousin to one man,’ Dr. Henry explained… Mitchell, Henry MacDonald Jr.

Following the reading of the name, Julia inquired, ‘So we’re Mitchells?’, to which the professor replied, ‘Julia Mitchell’.

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