Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Arnaud Clerc
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Joe Liebman’s son made his own name in the Parisian jewelry trade—and carried on the Rue de Saussaye tradition

Betty Wohlgemuth's last years
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Following Isaak's death in 1929, Betty lived comfortably in the cosmopolitan Bavarian Quarter—until the Nazi repressions made life unbearable

Bilingual blogging—my French collaborator
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Historical blogging makes strange bedfellows. A French jewelry critic and I were both interested in the history of the Clerc jewelry business during the Nazi era

Family roots in the Plymouth colony
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Isetta Stetson descended from early Massachusetts colonists, going all the way back to the Mayflower on one side. Nine generations later, her midwestern parents still upheld Yankee values

Ghosts of Weißensee—the cemetery played on
  • 1929 - 1942

How did Betty Katz meet her end in February 1942?

If walls could talk—75 years in a Parisian villa
  • 1918 - 1992

Insider dealings in the French jewelry trade. Swank cocktail parties for the Nazi elite. A rough-cut Jewish jeweler and his ebullient new wife. Where Henry Kissinger met Le Duc Tho.

Louis Katz of Kolberg
  • 1839 - 1918

Betty’s father was a prosperous merchant who came to Pomerania from East Prussia.

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.

The Stetson family’s manifest destiny
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From stalwart Yankee roots, Herbert and Hattie Stetson went west with the country

The Stetsons of Sumner, Maine
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Militiaman Hezekiah Stetson homesteaded in Oxford County, Maine, in the years after the American Revolution

The Wohlgemuths in Danzig
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Before moving his family to Berlin in 1912, Isaak Wohlgemuth prospered as a mover in Danzig. His family roots were in nearby West Prussia.