Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Abraham Blokh came from Minsk
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Before he became Abe Ratner, he was Abraham Blokh from Minsk.

Benjamin Hopper settles in California
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Fleeing English coal country, he founded the family base in California's Central Valley

Bradley homestead in Wapello County, Iowa
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Widow Patty Smith Swett and six children by two husbands were among the first settlers who staked claims in Wapello County near Ottumwa in May 1843

Eilertsens at sea
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Members of a farming family took to the sea both as an occupational calling and a means of emigration

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

Filming of "The Heartbreak Kid"
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Ed officiates at a movie wedding

From Rezitsa to Rostov
  • 1875 - 1892

Sholom and Sophie Tulbowitz left their ancestral town in the 1870s to settle for 20 years in Russia near Rostov-on-Don.

Life on the Western Reserve
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Families from Connecticut settled northeastern Ohio in the early 1800s

Lisbon to New York—with a detour to Havana
  • August 1940 - May 1941

The Ringel family crossed from Lisbon on the SS Guine—but their entry to the U.S. was anything but routine

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

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 Meeker Massacre
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Social reformer Nathan Meeker was among nine men killed in an uprising of Ute Indians at the White River reservation where he was serving as U.S. agent. His wife and daughter—Smith family descendants—were held hostage for three weeks

The Ringel family roots in old Rzeszów
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Moses Ringel and Rose Lea Reichman raised a large family in Rzeszów in the Galizianer tradition

The Stetson family’s manifest destiny
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From stalwart Yankee roots, Herbert and Hattie Stetson went west with the country

The Wohlgemuths in Danzig
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Before moving his family to Berlin in 1912, Isaak Wohlgemuth prospered as a mover in Danzig. His family roots were in nearby West Prussia.

Tulbowitz in the USSR—an alternative history
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If Sholom Tulbowitz had gone to Dvinsk instead of Rostov, as his cousin did, his Ratner descendants might have grown up in Perm instead of Albany.