Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Eilertsens by the lake
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Ed was the rector at Saint Martin's By the Lake in Minnetonka Beach, Minn. The family was raised in towns around the lake region west of Minneapolis, including in the church rectory

Family History Machine is reborn in 2020
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Machinist Dan Ruby and his team members envision a new future for Family History Machine

Grad-student life in a packet of letters
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Stan maintained correspondence with his closest high school and Army buddies, several of whom went on to prominent careers.

Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
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Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.

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

Mel Brenner
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Mel accomplished many things in life, but his life’s greatest moments happened during the Battle of the Bulge

Our family during the Nazi years in Berlin
  • February 1933 - September 1942

During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.

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.

Stan at Brant Lake
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Stan summered at a Jewish summer camp in the Adirondacks.

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 Rabinowitz girls
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Meta, Blossom and Sadie

Third Generation Rubys
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First came Walter, then Danny and Joanne. They would carry on the Ruby-Ringel genes.

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.

Twyla's childhood
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Outlooks of a pre-millennial