A Teenager Was Bullied. His Ancestors Saved Him. Dennis Richmond Jr. was a middle-schooler who took refuge in his family history, some of it very surprising. Dennis Richmond Jr. dove into his family history at an early age and was fascinated by the ancestors he discovered.Credit...Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Feb. 26, 2021 In March 2008, Dennis Richmond Jr. watched “Roots” with his father, and it changed his life. It was a Sunday, the Richmonds’ day for leafing through family photographs in their apartment in Yonkers, N.Y., looking at relatives going back about a century. “Roots,” Alex Haley’s semifictional account of his family’s journey from West Africa, posed a challenge: How far back could young Dennis trace his own ancestors?