13 WTHR Indianapolis"Who Do You Think You Are?"

Eyewitness News Anchor John Stehr took a trip back into his family's history with an expert from Ancestry.com, who works on the NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Everyone has a story - a story that was written in the decades before they were born.

Most of us don't know the details, even though the details from then define who we are today.

For me, some of the details were in front of me my whole life, but I never took the time to put the pieces together. A simple stone in St. Mary's Cemetery on the North Side of Pittsburgh has been in place since 1940. My grandfather is buried there - Anton Knauss. Born in 1885. Died in 1940. I never knew much about him, and he died when my mother was so young, she didn't know much about him either. It turned out that his story is the key to my past and a big part of my present. I had no idea the emotional journey that was waiting for me.

Anastasia Harman is an expert in ancestry study. She works for ancestry.com, the company behind the NBC program "Who Do You Think You Are?". To help bring attention to the program, she would do for me what she does for the people you see in prime time.

We met at the University of Pittsburgh, in a room dedicated to Austrian Heritage. My grandfather Anton came from Austria, but the beautiful artwork and artifacts in the room would have been foreign to him. His family were peasants, tenant farmer from a poor, rural village. No closer to Austrian culture than I am in the United States today. As Anastasia put it: "They worked on their land, but never had the opportunity or much hope for success. If he stayed, his life would have been spent on farmland owned by someone else".

So, like tens of thousands of Europeans at the turn of the 20th century, Anton and his sister Alois followed older brother Michael to America in hopes of a better life. He rented a room from Michael, sharing quarters with his brother, sister, and Michael's wife and four children. By 1910, all of the siblings were in Pittsburgh. There is no record of what happened to their parents back in Austria. Ancestry experts will tell you that the amount of information that exists about in previous generations has a direct correlation to their wealth. The less money they had, the less record of their lives.

But, we do know about my grandfather Anton. He didn't go to work in the steel mills of Pittsburgh as many European immigrants did in those years, he went to work making iron. To be specific, Iron City Beer. Iron City is one of Pittsburgh's most iconic products - a favorite of mill workers. Anton bottled it until prohibition shut down the plant in 1920. When prohibition ended in 1933, he went back and stayed there until he died. It was not glamorous, but Anastasia calls it far preferable to the life he left behind. "by working there, and working in other factories, he was able to own his own home", she said, "They often say that it takes the second generation, your mom's generation, or your generation to kind of achieve that American dream -- but he was very successful coming here".

The home he owned was shared with his brother-in-law and his family. Just as when Anton rented a room from his older brother 10 years earlier, other family members helped him pay the mortgage on his pride and joy - the two-story home he owned on a hill above the city. The 1930 census says their home was worth $7,000 dollars - an almost unheard-of achievement for a man who had no shot at owning a home or land in his native land.

All of this is run-of-the-mill stuff, but the story comes back around to St. Mary's Cemetery, located not far from where Anton lived and worked. The generation of immigrants gravitated to one another in life - and they rest close to each other almost a century later.

Genealogy is not just about branches above you on the family tree, it's about the ones below too. At St. Mary's, my first-born son Jared rests next to my grandmother Martina and my grandfather Anton, the man I never knew. He died in 1991, when he was just four years old. I have always felt badly that my son has been so far removed from his family. But it turns out, he's not.

Not only is he next to his great-grandparents, but my grandfather's brother Michael is also buried nearby, next to his wife Josephine. And, there's more. Michael's daughter Anna is here, along with his daughter Rose and her husband. His other children Joseph, Marie, and Frank. Anton's sister Alois is buried in an unmarked grave.

There are Bocks and Pinters and Aumers close by, all closely related to the generation that came to Pittsburgh more than 100 years ago. In all, 26 close relatives - and I only knew about two of them.

The book of Matthew says "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also". Now I know that this part of my heart is surrounded by family.

I thought my family tree was small, and not very important, in the scheme of things. What I learned through this process is that the previous generations lived lives that matter and when we pay attention we find they still matter today.