Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

A milliner's daughter in Long Beach
  • 1943 - 1947

Elly worked hard to earn a living as a hat maker while Helga adapted easily at Julia Richmond High School. In the summer, they took a room in a beach town on Long Island.

Meeting Harriet Berkowitz
  • 2008 - 2009

Harriet Berkowitz was doubly distanced from her Rabinowitz roots, first by her father’s partial family estrangement and then by his divorce. But she shared a trove of precious family documents and childhood memories after discovering this blog. 

Stan finds love outside of a 20-block radius
  • April 1946 - June 1947

Home from the war, Stan Ruby was a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. Helga Ringel was a smart, pretty war refugee from Berlin

The early history of the Wohlgemuth family
  • March 11 1812 - July 25 1876

In 1812 in Preußisch Stargardt, an elderly Jew Moses and his sons Salomon and Herz took the surname Wohlgemuth in exchange for Prussian citizenship rights. Our family, descended from Herz Wohlgemuth, stayed in Stargardt for the next three generations