Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

An afternoon at Lake Merrit
  • -

In July 2003, Stan and Helga came to the East Bay for a golden summer outing.

Demise of the cultured Lewi family
  • 1902 - 1942

Five siblings who stayed true to German ideals until the bitter end

Ed Eilertsen tribute puzzle
  • -

Ed loved crosswords, so Dan Ruby created a tribute puzzle for his memorial. Kate and Twyla were the clue crew.

Eilertsens by the lake
  • -

Ed was the rector at Saint Martin's By the Lake in Minnetonka Beach, Minn. The family was raised in towns around the lake region west of Minneapolis, including in the church rectory

Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
  • -

Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.

Just so—how the Rubys got their name
  • 1912 - 1939

When and why did Walter Rabinowitz take on our abbreviated last name? He may have gotten the idea during intermission at a Bronx nickelodeon

Lest we forget—family Holocaust testimony
  • 1941 - 1942

Remembering our Ringel and Wohlgemuth/Paechter family members who perished in the Shoah.

Our family during the Nazi years in Berlin
  • February 1933 - September 1942

During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.

Ratner family passage to America
  • July 1890 -

Abe Blokh became Abe Ratner to avoid conscription and get out of Russia. With his young wife and her mother, they voyaged from Bremen to Leeds to New York

Sputnik in the backyard
  • -

Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.

Stan at Brant Lake
  • -

Stan summered at a Jewish summer camp in the Adirondacks.

Third Generation Rubys
  • -

First came Walter, then Danny and Joanne. They would carry on the Ruby-Ringel genes.

Twyla's childhood
  • -

Outlooks of a pre-millennial

Walter's first draft of family history
  • 2006 - Present

Cherry picking the best content from our founding document written in 2006: "The Ruby Family Histories — The Early Lives of Stanley and Helga Ruby"