Toronto: Now and Then Books, 2010; softcover, 170 pp. Price: $22. Order from <www.now andthenbookstoronto.com>. The Jew in Canada, ed. Arthur D. Hart. Originally published in 1926; abridged facsimile edition Now and Then Books, cost: 2010. softcover, large format, 466 […]
“I Was You”: A True Story
One day back in the 1950s, Irving Spierer, the sole Holocaust survivor of his Hungarian family, was walking down a street in Brooklyn, New York, when a complete stranger—let’s call him Saul Rabinowitz (not his real name), another […]
How I Found Ancestors and Living Relatives After More Than a Century of Separation
Ever since I was a child, I have been interested in my family history and used to update the handwritten family tree that my mother had compiled. Our family’s biggest mystery, a source of my considerable attention and […]
Genealogical Gems in U.S. State Archives and Historical Societies
Each of the 50 United States has a designated archive or a set of archives that serves as repositories for its respective state, county, and city governmental historical records. Sometimes called a state archive or state historical society, these repositories […]
Locating Living Americans: Selected Resources
Family historians often seek descendants of relatives who live in the United States whose exact location is unknown. Frequently, all that is known are surname and approximate age. Such problems may be resolved by using a combination of the resources […]
Little Man in A Big Hurry: The Life of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, Uranium King and Art Collector, by Gene Hirshhorn LePere
Little Man in A Big Hurry: The Life of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, Uranium King and Art Collector, by Gene Hirshhorn LePere. This is the remarkable story of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, who donated the largest private art collection ever accumulated to […]
From Popelnya to Pittsburgh: The Deaktor Family
From Popelnya to Pittsburgh: The Deaktor Family, by Susan Glickman Davis and Alan Steinfeld. This book covers the years 1830 to 2009 and traces the history of the Deaktor family from its beginnings in Ukraine and Romania through its emigration […]
An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb (1876–1953) and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors.
An American Experience: Adeline Moses Loeb (1876–1953) and Her Early American Jewish Ancestors. Contributors are John L. Loeb, Jr., Kathy L. Plotkin, Margaret Loeb Kempner, and Judith E. Endelman, with an introduction by Eli N. Evans. Hardcover, large format, full […]
WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records Sources & Research Methodology, by Ron Arons
WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records Sources & Research Methodology, by Ron Arons, Criminal Research Press. 385 pp. Softcover. $54.00. Many of us have family members who participated in the dark side of society, but, I suspect, few have thought to find […]
Connecting with California Cousins: The Joke Is on Me
When I asked my Uncle Frank about the places where his parents, my grandparents, had lived before they immigrated to the United States, he responded with a twinkle in his eye, “From Pinsk to Minsk.” When I asked my Uncle […]
Rocking and Rolling in Cleveland
The earliest known record of my Wudl/Woodle family in the United States was of B. Wudel who arrived in New York aboard the Washington on July 30, 1845, accompanied by his wife and one-year-old daughter, L. Wudel. New York city […]
From Cracow to New Orleans: How Google Helped Reunite a Family Separated by War and Migration
Our visit to New Orleans in December 2002 was the culmination of an exciting adventure in family history. Just a few months earlier, who would have thought that my mother, brother, and I would travel from Vancouver, Canada, to attend […]
Joint Distribution Committee Archives: Resources for Genealogists
The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), popularly known as the “Joint,” was established in 1914 to provide aid to destitute Jews, primarily in what was then Palestine and in Eastern Europe, where Jews were often living in deplorable conditions […]
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo: The Story of a New Christian
Among the most important positions in the American political establishment is that of Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court’s founding in 1789, only 7 of the 110 judges have been Jewish, and none was chosen before […]
Directories in Addition to City Directories
When Alex Friedlander’s article on directories appeared in the Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy, it was accurate and covered many of the resources then available. Much more has become known on the subject, however, and some changes have occurred. Today, […]
Directories
This section will discuss four categories of directories whose contents can be useful for genealogical research: city directories, telephone directories, biographical directories, and professional directories. All of these valuable reference sources can be found in the United States and internationally. […]
Just How Were Passenger Manifests Created?
As is well known, vast numbers of Jews left Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, destined primarily for the United States—but also for South Africa, Palestine, Argentina, and elsewhere. The ships that carried them also brought passenger […]
Book Review: One Hundred Years in Canada: The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Tree
One Hundred Years in Canada: The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Tree, by Bill Gladstone, 2008. $40 (U.S. or Canada) Available at http://rubnaft.com/. http://www.billgladstone.ca Some books invite exploration from the minute you first set eyes on them. One Hundred Years in Canada […]
How My Friend Paul and I Are Not Related by Steve Stein
Paul Bloom and I have been friends for more than 30 years. We attend the same synagogue, sit on the same bench every Friday night, and have attended each other’s children’s bar and bat mitzvahs and weddings. For a time, […]
Book Review: The Life and Times of Congregation Kesher Israel, by Harry D. Boonin
The Life and Times of Congregation Kesher Israel, by Harry D. Boonin. 192 pages. $29.95. Self-published, 2008. Society Hill, a picturesque area of colonial Philadelphia, was home to this old synagogue, around which grew a lively community of Eastern European […]
Book Review: My Future Is In America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants. Edited and translated by Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer
My Future Is In America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants. Edited and translated by Jocelyn Cohen and Daniel Soyer. Softcover, 330 pages. Published by New York University Press in conjunction with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. $25.00 In 1942, […]
Newspaper and Magazine Websites Valuable For Genealogical Research
Newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries are rich sources of genealogical data, but gaining access to them can be difficult and time-consuming. This article discusses two new websites that offer full-text, key-word access to these newspapers: […]
US Citizenship and Immigration Service Opens Fee-for-Service Genealogy Program
The long-anticipated U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) fee-for-service genealogy program opened to the public in August 2008 with USCIS’s well-known historian Marian Smith as Acting Chief. Complete details and history of the program were described by Arline Sachs in […]
Jewish Newspaper Research in Philadelphia
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Philadelphia (JGSGP) will co-sponsor the 29th annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) conference on Jewish genealogy in August 2009. To help researchers prepare for the conference, this article outlines the history of Jewish […]
A Window into the Galveston Immigration Plan at the Central Zionist Archives
Two thousand index cards of Jewish immigrant families to Galveston, Texas, (1907–14) repose at the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) in Jerusalem. They are part of a collection of documents generated by the Galveston Plan, a project of the Jewish Territorialism […]