>>John Leland, The New York Times Published: 28 Feb 2021 04:50 PM BdST Updated: 28 Feb 2021 04:50 PM BdST In 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, New York, 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 Richmond trace his own ancestors? "); } After watching the miniseries’ first DVD, he ran upstairs to ask his mother about the names of her relatives. That evening, Richmond, then a studious 13-year-old, turned on the family computer and found a 1930 US Census entry for his maternal great-grandmother. The listing included the name of her father, Brutus Bowens, born in 1889 in South Carolina.