Family Story Finder
The sweep of family history across the generations
Arnaud Clerc
Joe Liebman’s son made his own name in the Parisian jewelry trade—and carried on the Rue de Saussaye tradition
Bilingual blogging—my French collaborator
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
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
If walls could talk—75 years in a Parisian villa
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.
Rabbi Spektor's true genealogy
Most of what we discovered about Rabbi Spektor's genealogy was entirely true. All but the myth of our family's connection to it
The Stetson family’s manifest destiny
From stalwart Yankee roots, Herbert and Hattie Stetson went west with the country
The Stetsons of Sumner, Maine
Militiaman Hezekiah Stetson homesteaded in Oxford County, Maine, in the years after the American Revolution
The Yeserskys of Volkovysk
Joseph Rabinowitz’s mother was Bertha Yesersky. Was she related to Sora Yesersky, the wife of Rabbi Elchanon Spektor?
Yichus and our relation to the famous rabbi
Walter thought he had proved the family legend of descent from the celebrated Kovno Rav, Rabbi Yitchak Elchanon Spektor. Later facts emerged that suggested a more tenuous connection.