Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Action at a distance
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Stan's Mathematica notebooks document his later work and speculations

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

Helga at the Theodor Herzl School
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Amid the chaos of the Nazi period, the Zionist school in Charlottenburg taught skills and values that lasted a lifetime

Mössbauer man—Stan makes his mark in physics
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Stan's innovations in Mossbauer spectroscopy.

Seymour Rabinowitz and Harriet Berkowitz
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Seymour, also called Samuel, was partly estranged from the family. He worked as a truant officer in the New York City schools. His daughter Harriet Berkowitz discovered our blog and contributed a trove of precious documents.

Sputnik in the backyard
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Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.

The family secret behind grandfather's desk calendar
  • July 22 1939 -

A surprising artifact discovered after a parent's death leads to a series of discoveries and a new pastime in genealogy

The physics experiment that went wrong
  • 1951 - 1958

How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?

The problem with anti-ballistic missiles
  • October 6 1968 - March 10 1969

Stanley Ruby entered the public debate over nuclear missile technology in 1968-69.

The Rabinowitz girls
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Meta, Blossom and Sadie

The Rubys in Israel—1961 sabbatical
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Our family’s amazing year of discovery and connection

Turning over rocks to find long-lost relatives
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During the course of my genealogy work, I have discovered and connected with cousins from all my family branches. Here are some lessons learned.