A Utah medieval knight’s family history changed his life. He wants to help you unlock ancestral secrets, too.

Kalima Watson is an ancestry detective, and he wants to help you get in touch with your family history because he knows it can change your life.

It shifted his.

“When I delved into my own ancestry, it was life-changing,” he said. “I learned about their stories, the hard things that they did, some of the difficulties that they’ve gone through, challenges that they overcame, and just knowing that helped me to feel like I could draw on their power and then face hard, difficult things as well.”

It encouraged Watson to push himself, to take some chances. He got a tattoo and went on a fitness journey, all because he felt “empowered” by his ancestors.

He learned of one relative who was originally from Africa but ended up in Hawaii, and how his life played out there. He also learned about Scandinavian ancestors who traced back to Vikings.

“It made me feel like it’s something that everyone should have access to,” he said, “because if it could be that empowering for me, imagine what it could do for the world.”

About a year ago, Watson started making videos about some of his ancestors. In May, he began building a fanbase, and within a week, he said, his Instagram follower count shot up from from 700 to 100,000.

“To me,” he said, “it [was] a sign that people are interested in their ancestry and that it can be empowering.”

Now, Watson creates a steady stream of videos on social media so others can learn about their family history. He’s amassed nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram under his account, @justkalima.

The Eagle Mountain resident is also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a faith that places a high value on the study of family history. The church describes its FamilySearch library as “one of the largest genealogical libraries in the world.”

Watson uses tools like FamilySearch and Ancestry to help gather documentation and research people’s ancestry. Then, he said, he uses ChatGPT to help with the story-building aspect and get a sense of what was going on in the world during the time that ancestor was alive.

In his videos, Watson dons a medieval knight look, ready to share tales. “People like characters,” he said of his attire, which consists of chain mail and small, round glasses.

“What caught me off guard is, the first probably 10 or 15 videos that I made, nobody mentioned it,” Watson said. “They just kind of accepted that that was the person they were watching. At this point it’s part of the brand, but initially it was just to be goofy and memorable.”

These days, most of the videos Watson makes are for his followers.

Some of the things he has discovered include one follower’s ancestor “who took a bullet in the Civil War and then switched sides,” another whose relative nearly revived an ancient kingship in Ireland, and another who helped build the foundation of modern politics in Greece.

Some followers come to Watson with as little information as their family members’ names, while others might know a thing or two about their family’s past already.

Shane Purdue, a follower from Dallas, Texas, who discovered Watson’s account “by chance” scrolling through Instagram Reels, already had an ancestral family free set up, but Watson helped him unlock new stories he’d never heard before.

“I briefly explained to him a little bit about my great-grandfather and his time serving in the war, and he expanded on that and found all this extra information,” Purdue said. “[He] found a bunch of records, escape and evasion reports, which we were not aware of at that time.”

Purdue showed his grandmother the video, who was “very excited” to learn more about her dad.

Watson said he hopes his videos can not only help people learn about their family histories, but also encourage younger people, who may be less inclined to dig into the past, to get in touch with their roots.

“That’s kind of the whole reason behind it,” he said, “to change that narrative.”

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