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.

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

An afternoon at Lake Merrit
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In July 2003, Stan and Helga came to the East Bay for a golden summer outing.

Demise of the cultured Lewi family
  • 1902 - 1942

Five siblings who stayed true to German ideals until the bitter end

Ed Eilertsen tribute puzzle
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Ed loved crosswords, so Dan Ruby created a tribute puzzle for his memorial. Kate and Twyla were the clue crew.

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

Lest we forget—family Holocaust testimony
  • 1941 - 1942

Remembering our Ringel and Wohlgemuth/Paechter family members who perished in the Shoah.

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

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

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

Walter's first draft of family history
  • 2006 - Present

Cherry picking the best content from our founding document written in 2006: "The Ruby Family Histories — The Early Lives of Stanley and Helga Ruby"