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.

Adventures in Israel—Walter and Joanne
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Two of the Ruby offspring went back to Israel for significant periods.

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

Demise of the cultured Lewi family
  • 1902 - 1942

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

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

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 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

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.

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

Love conquers all as Gerhard marries Ilse
  • 1931 - 1939

Two young Berliners make a modern marriage—with lasting consequences

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

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

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

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.

When Ed Eilertsen "crossed the bridge"
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In a dramatic moment while crossing the Mississippi River, he broke with his parents' austere Lutheranism for a more ecumenical approach

Ze'ev and Penina Sharon of Kibbutz Afeq
  • 1935 - 2009

A pioneer to Palestine in 1936, Ze’ev married Penina and they did their part to build the state of Israel as founders of Kibbutz Afek.