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: 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, […]
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 […]
“Deported—Likely to Become a Public Charge”
Shocking words! Especially when you discover that they were applied to your mother’s family. Yet these were the words I saw on the document before me that I had just chanced upon while searching for something else. I had long […]
Researching Old U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Correspondence and Case Files
An earlier version of this article was published July–September 2005 in NW Updates, an internal, National Archives electronic newsletter—Ed. For determined and methodical researchers looking for a fascinating yet obscure gem of a resource related to 20th-century immigration […]
Coming to America through Hamburg and Liverpool Part II: Crossing the Atlantic
In Part I of the saga, “Coming to America Through Hamburg and Liverpool,” in AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXII, No. 4, (Winter 2006), pp. 15–22, we tracked the six Boonin children across Europe to Hamburg, their crossing of the North Sea, their […]
Small Light
When she came to the phone, she said, “I know who you are.” It was about 5:00 p.m. on the East Coast, September 21, 2005. Her daughter, Amy, answered and said her mother was outside. Could she call me back? […]
My Faceless Grandfather
The challenge for us genealogists is to learn as much as possible about ancestors whom we never or hardly ever knew. We strive to give them a face, to bring them back to life through our research. I was fortunate […]
Genealogy Changed My Life
“I have something to tell you, and I want you to hear it from me while I’m alive.” I had no idea what my mother was going to say. “You are Jewish.” I knew that her mother’s parents, Noemi David […]
Finding Emigrants Who Sailed Under a Different Name
After five years of fruitless searching, I finally found the ship manifest for my grandfather and his parents. I had critical help. Someone else actually did it. The method used may be useful to others. A marine historian, Allan Jordan, […]
Using the 1890 New York City Police Census To Find Family Records
I have had success in using the Steve Morse web portal <www.stevemorse.org> and the Ancestry.com for-fee website to research family members and to locate family records in United States censuses. Since I have learned from my research that one of […]
How to Locate a Hard-to-Find Library Holding
My genealogical efforts center around two activities, research into my family history and the compilation of an exhaustive bibliography on the Jews of Posen, today Poznań, Poland. In the course of researching both, I frequently look for such printed items […]
United States Citizenship Records: Derivative, Replacement, and Repatriation Certificate Files
Family history researchers long have known the value of naturalization records. Most researchers interested in documenting naturalizations in the United States begin by searching for court copies of the records that today are located in courthouses, local archives, and regional […]