Family Story Finder
The sweep of family history across the generations
Just so—how the Rubys got their name
When and why did Walter Rabinowitz take on our abbreviated last name? He may have gotten the idea during intermission at a Bronx nickelodeon
Ratner family passage to America
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
Young man on the make in the Roaring Twenties
Walter Ruby hustled his way as a traveling silver salesman, with some career side trips into boxing promotion and medicinal alcohol.