- 7/5/2025
In memory of his beloved late father, actor Chris O'Donnell investigates the paternal side of his family and finds ancestors on the front lines of American history. Chris explores a legacy of courage and patriotism, and a family devotion that extends deeper than he ever imagined.
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00:01Tonight, in honor of his beloved late father,
00:04Chris O'Donnell investigates his paternal family history.
00:07So he went absent.
00:08He discovers a legacy of courage.
00:10So they're just digging holes and burying bodies as fast as they can.
00:13Patriotism.
00:14Having them come in and burn down his town.
00:16His family's up on the hill watching what's going on.
00:18That's right.
00:19And a devotion to family that goes deeper than he ever imagined.
00:22I mean, who wouldn't be so proud to hear this about your family?
00:30All right, Charlie, you ready?
00:42This is the championship of the world right here.
00:44Actor, producer, and director Chris O'Donnell currently stars in the hit series NCIS Los Angeles.
00:51It's the latest success in a career that's thrived on both big and small screens for more than 25 years.
00:58At just 19, Chris earned rave reviews for his debut film, Men Don't Leave, and later for Scent of a Woman.
01:08Then, at just 24, Chris skyrocketed to fame with the breakthrough role of Robin in the blockbuster Batman Forever.
01:17The first Batman film I did, just something so different level.
01:21But I knew when I was working, there was different paths you could take, and I knew that I could continue to date and never get married and enjoy Hollywood and all the benefits of it.
01:31But that really wasn't who I was.
01:33It's tough to have it both ways.
01:34You know, if you know you want to have a great family and a bunch of kids, it's hard to run around in Hollywood.
01:40I think I was like 26, and I had met the right person, and I did always want to have a big family.
01:49Caroline and I have been married 16 years. We have five kids.
01:53Until you have children, you just have no idea what it means to love someone.
01:58I mean, you would literally stand in front of a moving train or something for them.
02:03I'm the youngest of seven. Obviously, I think I had a great role model with my parents.
02:07My dad, William O'Donnell, was born in 1922 in St. Louis.
02:12And I think the biggest motivation to learn more about the family history was when my dad passed away two years ago.
02:18And, you know, you just are longing to keep a connection there.
02:23He was a, you know, totally self-made man. Always put his family first.
02:27It's funny, I still get very choked up just talking about dad.
02:31Even just now, just starting to talk about it.
02:34But, um, just a, uh, incredibly solid role model.
02:45Dad was very proud of me. Mom, too.
02:48I'm lucky enough that she's still alive, so I can still ask her questions about her side.
02:52But I don't know much about my dad's side of the family.
02:56All right. Let's see what you have found out.
03:00So, Tori Barner is my sister Libby's middle child.
03:04She's actually out here for the summer living with us.
03:07Figured, uh, with her being a bit of an amateur genealogist herself,
03:11I'd pick her brain a little bit about what she knows about, uh, specifically my dad's side of the family.
03:16Um, we know that Poppy's parents are Sarah Regina McCabe.
03:20Right. And John O'Donnell.
03:22Here we do, we have the baptism for Sarah Regina McCabe.
03:29Regina McCabe. 1886 is when she was born. Oh my God. In St. Louis.
03:34Child of Henry McCabe and Mary McInnis.
03:38So I've always heard McCabe. Right.
03:40But I've never heard that name before.
03:42Mary McInnis. I don't know anything about this part of the family.
03:46So then to find out more about this...
03:49I went on Ancestry.com, looked up the McInnis name in St. Louis, and I found...
03:55Census.
03:571850 Census.
03:59Wow.
04:00Here's McInnis down here.
04:02And there's Mary, who's just not even a year old.
04:05And her parents are Michael McInnis and...
04:08Eliza.
04:09Eliza McInnis.
04:10So these are Poppy's great-grandparents.
04:13Great-grandparents.
04:14So Tori has already taken me back four generations and more than 150 years
04:19to my great-great-grandparents, Michael and Eliza McInnis.
04:23Since I'm already familiar with the O'Donnells and the McCabes,
04:26I'm curious to see what else Tori was able to dig up on the McInnis line.
04:30I went on some of the local history St. Louis websites.
04:35So there's this website, MoHistory, the Missouri History Museum website.
04:42And if you go to research, search the collections, guide to the archival collections...
04:49This is what you just typed McInnis into?
04:52Mm-hmm.
04:53Mm-hmm.
04:54McInnis.
04:55Michael McInnis, 1849.
04:58Right.
04:59Which includes an account of the cholera epidemic, 1849, by Michael McInnis.
05:04He wrote something on the cholera epidemic, but there was nothing more about that on this website.
05:10So where do we go to find out what he wrote about the cholera epidemic?
05:13You go to St. Louis, Missouri.
05:15What I learned from Tori was about some account of a cholera epidemic that was written about by Michael McInnis, my great-great-grandfather.
05:26But this is all news to me.
05:29I'm not familiar with any cholera epidemic in Missouri.
05:32And I had never heard the family name McInnis before.
05:35So, a lot of questions all of a sudden.
05:38So I'm off to St. Louis.
05:39I'm headed to the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center.
05:53I'm going to meet with archivist Dennis Northcutt in hopes of finding my great-great-grandfather's writings about the cholera epidemic in 1849.
06:01Nice to meet you.
06:02Yeah, good to see you.
06:03I'm trying to find information about my great-great-grandfather, Michael McInnis.
06:07Right.
06:08And he wrote about a cholera epidemic.
06:10Right, right.
06:11Might have anything in relation to this.
06:13Yeah, so this is from our online guide.
06:15So let me take that with me.
06:16Okay.
06:17And I'll go run down the sacks and get that for you.
06:19Appreciate it.
06:23Uh-huh.
06:28You have something.
06:30All right.
06:31So this first item I want to show you are some original recollections written by your great-great-grandfather, Michael McInnis.
06:39This was likely donated to us by Michael McInnis or perhaps some of his family members.
06:44And what was the cholera epidemic?
06:46Oh, so in 1849, St. Louis suffered through this devastating cholera epidemic.
06:52People would take sick and they'd die within a matter of hours.
06:57In the mid-1800s, a deadly cholera epidemic hit the U.S. from Europe.
07:03By 1849, Michael McInnis' hometown of St. Louis was one of the hardest-hit cities in America.
07:10Cholera claimed the lives of roughly 10% of the population.
07:14And at the height of the epidemic, some 88 victims were being buried each day.
07:19It literally just hit like that.
07:22Right.
07:23And it was just something that would get in the water and you drank it or something?
07:25I mean...
07:26Right, right.
07:27Now we know what causes it.
07:28Human waste contaminating the water supply.
07:30Right.
07:31But at the time, they didn't know what caused it.
07:33Take a look.
07:34It's probably going to be a dramatic account because this is one of the worst periods in St.
07:38Louis' history.
07:39All right.
07:40Cholera, 1849.
07:41My father, John McInnis, was the superintendent of the old Catholic graveyard.
07:46My father died whilst the writer was in New Mexico in the Mexican War.
07:52Oh, my God.
07:53So the writer being my great-great-grandfather.
07:56Correct.
07:57My brother, then 16 years old, took charge.
08:00When the cholera was at its height, my mother wrote me a note stating that my brother was
08:05very sick and that four of his men had died the night before, that there were eight bodies
08:11lying in the graveyard and no one to bury them or to attend to their remains, that I
08:16must come out at once and take charge.
08:19And so they're just literally digging holes and burying bodies as fast as they can.
08:23Right, right.
08:244,500 people died within the space of about three months.
08:27Oh, my gosh.
08:29Chris O'Donnell is in St. Louis, reading his great-great-grandfather's recollections
08:34about a deadly cholera epidemic that devastated the city in 1849.
08:39On a very hot day, near the close of the cholera, I was standing at the graveyard gate.
08:45Coming up the road was a woman carrying a large bundle.
08:48I stepped out, seeing she was staggering under the load, and invited her to come into
08:53the shade of a tree and rest.
08:55She then handed the writer a poor ticket for a grave for a child 12 years old.
09:00I told her that was all right and asked when the remains would be brought.
09:05She answered by pointing to the bundle, it is here.
09:08She told me her husband and one child had died with cholera, and now this child was the last.
09:14She told me she was the last of her people, and very likely I would bury her remains the following week.
09:22I can feel the tears running down my cheeks now.
09:26Wow.
09:27Yeah, and you can imagine why he wrote these recollections that had such an effect on them.
09:31Yeah.
09:32Living through it.
09:33Jeez.
09:34Boy, doing all that work for the people, and really a brave person to do that.
09:41That's just amazing.
09:42Yeah.
09:43Wow.
09:44It's a great story.
09:45I mean, you think it's just a great story you're reading about, and then you realize it's
09:49your family, and it's written by your family.
09:52That's unbelievable.
09:53All right, what am I looking at now here?
09:55Oh, my God.
09:56So this is Michael?
09:57Yeah.
09:58Look at that.
09:59Michael McEnnis.
10:00I can't believe there's a photo of him.
10:02That's pretty early for photography to find a photo of an ancestor back in the 1850s or so.
10:11Wow.
10:12I wonder how long he was off at fighting in the Mexican War.
10:16Maybe there's some information on that.
10:18Yeah, I would suggest you go to Washington, D.C., and meet with an expert on the Mexican-American
10:23War, and maybe you can find out.
10:25I mean, here it seems to imply that he served, but maybe you can document that.
10:29Thank you so much.
10:30You're welcome.
10:31I appreciate it.
10:32This is amazing.
10:33To have that firsthand account of the cholera epidemic here in St. Louis, and understand
10:39what he was feeling and what he was going through, it was really amazing.
10:42I don't even have written accounts of my own dad, and this is my great-great-grandfather.
10:48He was going to have to be kind of the man for the family, and he stood up to the desk.
10:55Michael was very brave.
10:57He's had a pretty amazing life so far, so I'm curious to find out what else we can about
11:03Michael.
11:08So, my next stop is Washington, D.C.
11:15I'm going to try and find out whether or not my great-great-grandfather, Michael McInnes,
11:19served in the Mexican-American War.
11:22So, I'm going to meet with Amy Greenberg at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library.
11:27So nice to meet you, Chris.
11:28Nice to meet you.
11:29So, I'm trying to find out some information on my great-great-grandfather, Michael McInnes.
11:34I understand you are an expert on the Mexican-American War.
11:37Well, I was able to get his compiled military records from the National Archives,
11:43and I think you'll find these interesting.
11:45So, my great-great-grandfather served in the Mexican-American War?
11:48He did.
11:49That's amazing.
11:50Can you just give me a little synopsis on the Mexican-American War,
11:53just to refresh my memory from senior year of high school?
11:56Absolutely.
11:57So, the U.S.-Mexico War is about the boundary of the United States at the time.
12:00Gotcha.
12:01In 1846, the western border of the United States reached only to what we now call the Midwest,
12:08and Mexico claimed the area from West Texas to California.
12:13At the time, the U.S. was riding high on a belief known as Manifest Destiny,
12:18the idea that America was destined to stretch across the continent.
12:22In May of 1846, President Polk declared war on Mexico,
12:27and young men like Michael McGinnis answered the call to invade, claim territory,
12:32and push the U.S. border west to the Pacific.
12:37So, here are Michael McGinnis' muster rolls from the U.S.-Mexico War.
12:43So, this would explain how he got there, or?
12:46The muster roll is a record of your service.
12:48McGinnis was one of the 12-month volunteers.
12:52Most of the volunteers in this war signed up for a 12-month period.
12:54Okay.
12:55Michael McGinnis.
12:58So, June 11th to August 31st, 1846.
13:01He's probably 21 years old.
13:03So, he went into June 11th.
13:04This is less than a month after Polk first calls for volunteers.
13:07This war has just begun.
13:08The war has really just begun.
13:10I'm imagining Michael McGinnis being one of the thousands of men who are extremely, extremely excited,
13:14and as soon as they hear this call for troops, they turn out.
13:17They're out there. Okay.
13:18McGinnis was under orders to march through New Mexico, capture New Mexico,
13:23and march all the way to California and capture California.
13:25Oh, really?
13:26This is two months in the summer, marching through Oklahoma and New Mexico.
13:31It was brutal.
13:33Everybody would have been sunburned.
13:34Everybody would have been parched.
13:36Wow.
13:37Okay.
13:38January and February, now we're into 1847.
13:40Right.
13:41What is it?
13:42St. Louis.
13:43He's back in St. Louis.
13:44His remarks, absent on furlough since the last muster.
13:50So, he went absent.
13:54So, he signed up in June of 1846 for a year.
13:58Right.
13:59And then all of a sudden, after seven months, he disappears and he's on furlough.
14:04He's back in St. Louis.
14:05That's right.
14:06In fact, he's back in St. Louis just a few months after he musters in to service.
14:09He got there and then they sent him back?
14:11Pretty much right away.
14:12So, what could that...
14:13I mean, I wonder why he was sent back or what he went back for.
14:15Well, I think we may be able to determine that from looking online at Fold 3, which is historical military records.
14:22Okay.
14:23Letters from the Adjutant General, 1822 to 1860.
14:29All right.
14:30So, I'm going to open that.
14:34Washington, December 21st, 1846.
14:38Discharge of Michael McGinnis.
14:40Okay.
14:41On the 7th of June, last I left St. Louis.
14:45Oh, this is a letter from Michael.
14:47Yeah.
14:48If after leaving Fort Leavenworth and arriving at Santa Fe, I received intelligence of the sudden death of my father.
14:59He just got there and he finds out his dad died, leaving me a large and helpless family to protect and see after.
15:07He just gets there and he gets word that his dad has passed away.
15:10Yeah.
15:11And he's 21 years old.
15:12Wow.
15:13That's a lot of responsibility.
15:15I immediately apply for a discharge.
15:19So, that's what happened.
15:20So, he got to Santa Fe.
15:22He signed up for a year.
15:23He was only there a couple months and immediately he gets a letter that his father's passed away, who's the head of the whole family.
15:29Right.
15:30So, is that a dishonorable discharge or is that?
15:32No, it isn't a dishonorable discharge because at the end of the letter that you were just reading, he was applying for a discharge and he got one.
15:39He got one.
15:40He got one.
15:41So, he was honorably discharged.
15:42He was honorably discharged.
15:43Right.
15:44The family obligation was more important to him and it pulled him back to St. Louis.
15:48Hmm.
15:50You know, there's an amazing collection of Mexican War artifacts at the Smithsonian Museum.
15:57We should probably go check that out while you're here.
15:59That would be great.
16:00Yeah, absolutely.
16:01It seems like Michael was, you know, the ultimate Eagle Scout or something.
16:05I mean, an amazing amount of character.
16:07He signed right up to fight in the Mexican-American War and then when he found out his dad had died, he, you know, felt obligated to go back and take care of the family and then serve his city by burying all the dead during the cholera epidemic.
16:18I mean, he had a real sense of duty and obligation.
16:23Family obviously was such a priority for him and it's always been a priority for me.
16:26I mean, I knew I always wanted to have a big family and, you know, even with my career taking me everywhere I've been filming and that sort of thing, it's always just been, you know, my family first and even above my career.
16:41I've been to the Smithsonian before.
16:42I've taken my kids there.
16:43So, this will be kind of fun to have a real interest in seeing something that directly relates to my family history.
16:51Here's the Mexican War.
16:52Aha.
16:53Amy's arranged for us to meet with one of the curators at the Smithsonian, David Miller.
16:58David, nice to meet you.
16:59Nice to meet you.
17:00How's it going?
17:01All right.
17:02Wow, look at this.
17:03What do we have here?
17:07Chris O'Donnell is at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, where he's just uncovered an intriguing artifact in the museum's collection.
17:18What do we have here?
17:19We have a letter that came in with one of our items in the collections. I think you'd like to read it.
17:24June 5th, 1905.
17:28My dear friend and comrade, I have thought over your request to place my old sabre in your hands.
17:34These arms were given to men to be used either as cavalry or infantry, as occasion might it require.
17:40Neither arms were handsome.
17:41Yet the one I carried and accidentally retained, accidentally retained, is valued as a souvenir of a war that won high honor on the United States.
17:53If you still think it's worthy of placing with other souvenirs of the Mexican War in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., I am not disposed to refuse your request.
18:01Very truly your friend and comrade Michael McGinnis. That's unbelievable.
18:08This is his, this was his sabre.
18:10That was his sabre?
18:11I can't believe that you've got his sabre.
18:16Oh my God.
18:18Are you kidding me?
18:22It is a model 1813 horseman sabre.
18:28And this was in storage here?
18:29Yes it was.
18:30In the Smithsonian.
18:31Mm-hmm.
18:32Who would have thought, 107 years later, his great great grandson would come in here and be looking at this?
18:42He somehow ended up with it, he said.
18:47It's funny, I have a sword from when I did The Three Musketeers. I kept my sword. I somehow accidentally kept it.
18:53Must run in the family.
18:54Must run in the family.
18:55Must run in the family.
18:56What's amazing is that he kept all these letters and these documents writing about the history that he experienced and yet somehow nobody in the family handled this.
19:05So I was doing some research on Michael McGinnis and I also found this.
19:08Let me see what we got here.
19:13Holy cow.
19:15What year did we think this was probably?
19:17About 80 there.
19:19So probably when he wrote this letter?
19:20Yeah.
19:21There are little resemblances to my own father, William.
19:25That's got to be the same bloodline.
19:26There's something to it.
19:28Boy, his hair was white.
19:31Does that mean I'm going gray?
19:37St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 14th, 1911.
19:41Michael McGinnis is the only man living in St. Louis of 8,600 who marched away from here to the Mexican War 65 years ago.
19:49The sword he carried to the Mexican War is preserved as a relic in the Smithsonian Institution.
19:54McGinnis comes of fighting stock.
19:57He is of the ninth generation of his family in this country.
20:00The ninth generation of his family in this country.
20:03And this is back in 1900.
20:05Oh, my God.
20:07That's unbelievable.
20:08In the War of 1812, there were 88 members of his family.
20:13His grandfather, George McNeer, was a lieutenant in the Sea Festivals at the bombardment of Fort McHenry.
20:21In the War of 1812, are you...
20:23That's right.
20:25Oh, my God.
20:26This is outrageous.
20:27It is irresponsible.
20:28Everyone in the War of 1812.
20:30My father was full of money, too.
20:31Oh, woman.
20:32It's impossible.
20:34Yea, what?
20:36My father's shoulders stepped down.
20:37There is no MAN.
20:38Oh, my God.
20:39The zeigen EM website has been educated in this dream.
20:40Thiséisis has been�ame.
20:41Of course, my father joined the 29th century.
20:42Then everybody were able to hide it, but years after math,
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