The sweep of family history across the generations
Before he became Abe Ratner, he was Abraham Blokh from Minsk.
Seymour, also called Samuel, was partly estranged from the family. He worked as a truant officer in the New York City schools. His daughter Harriet Berkowitz discovered our blog and contributed a trove of precious documents.
If Sholom Tulbowitz had gone to Dvinsk instead of Rostov, as his cousin did, his Ratner descendants might have grown up in Perm instead of Albany.