Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Abe Ratner in the seltzer business
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The Ratner family became established in the Fifth Ward of Albany, N.Y. Abe bottled soda water and Rose nurtured a brood of children.

Mercantile roots in old Danzig
  • 1850 - 1910

Three brothers of the Kleemann family from the Weinberg district of 19th century Danzig operated a coffee and tea import business. Hugo Lewi married into the family and was a dealer in military effects. 

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

Shtetl life in Russian Rezhitsa
  • 1790 - 1875

Today it is Rezekne in Latvia. In the 19th century, it was the village in Vitebsk Province where our Tulbowitz clan lived in the old Yiddish way

The Eilertsens in Brooklyn
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From Red Hook to Gerritsen Beach to Bay Ridge, Jack and Camilla Eilertsen lived the Norwegian immigrant experience in Brooklyn

The Kaufhaus at Schloßstraße 97
  • 1907 - 2001

In 1907, Moritz Feidt built a department store in Berlin Stieglitz. It still stands today

The Kauflers of Krakow
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Our best documented family line is Feige Kaufler's ancestry among the Jewish families of Krakow.

The Rabinowitz family in Jewish Harlem
  • 1875 - 1917

Joseph and Lena Rabinowitz were Russian immigrants who ran a corner grocery in Jewish Harlem. Their nine children were native Americans

The Yeserskys of Volkovysk
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Joseph Rabinowitz’s mother was Bertha Yesersky. Was she related to Sora Yesersky, the wife of Rabbi Elchanon Spektor?

When Ed Eilertsen "crossed the bridge"
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In a dramatic moment while crossing the Mississippi River, he broke with his parents' austere Lutheranism for a more ecumenical approach