My Blog

I was planning a visit to Liepaja in Latvia, and I had a Google AI chat window open to help with the itinerary. One of our family stories was that my grandfather Louis had left Liepaja (then called Libau) as a young child, with his three sisters Bessie, Sarah and Mary. Their mother had died, and they were travelling to South Africa to join their father and brother in 1908. My grandfather with his three sisters in Libau (Liepaja). My grandmother Rose’s story was that “The

One of my Feinstein great-great-great-aunts was called Sarah Dina. She was born in Liepaja, Latvia, in 1840. At the age of twenty-two, she married Abbe Oppenheim, and they had seven children, all born in Liepaja between 1863 and 1878. The youngest child was Salomon. I didn’t know what had happened to the rest of the family, but I discovered him living in Cardiff, Wales, in 1911. He was working as a jeweller and pipe maker, and he had changed his name to William Poorten. Thi

One of our many family mysteries involves a relative who was living with our Katz family in Hackney in 1911. The name on the census looked like Rose Peizov. She was single, came from Russia, and was working as an assistant. This week, while writing about the head of the household (my great-grandfather's brother Nathan Katz) for the family archive , I found some new records and a more likely name for her. How did I find these now, when I had not found them before? I started by

Collect material. Photos, letters, postcards, stories, invitations, maps, newspaper clippings and heirlooms will bring your archive to life. Find a website that allows you to link your material to a person in your family tree. I can recommend https://weare.xyz/ Add the material that you've found to each person or family. Tell their stories! Writing about each person in your tree encourages you to look for more documents, photos and sources. You notice where the gaps are, and

As I was adding Jethro Shaw to our family tree a few days ago, I came across this claim: “Jethro SHAW of Oakerside Wensley farmer was a...

I wrote about Hinda, who was Ari and Eva's 4x great-grandmother, back in 2018. Recently, I was given a photo album belonging to Hinda's...

It’s always quite exciting to discover that your relatives had a role to play in sensational events of the day. Last week we visited...

In September of 1914, a highlight of the early autumn social season in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, was the wedding of Bertha Jason and John...

One of the highlights of 2023 has been removing Marie Krivitzky from my list of unsolved mysteries. I had always known that Marie was a...

Sometimes when you discover a discrepancy and realize that you’ve made a mistake in your tree, it’s instructive to look back and piece...

William Branson Strickson was Ari’s 5x great-grandfather, and was quite unusual in that he made the decision to move away from his...

The Daily News, Lebanon, Pennsylvania · Friday, March 17, 1933, p. 10. My aim in doing a one-name study of all the Feinsteins in the...

Kalisz. By Fallaner - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109880483 I have been busy making great...

Overton Hall is a country house just outside Ashover in Derbyshire. It was described as “a pleasant old residence, embosomed in ancient...

I had a feeling yesterday that I might make another breakthrough this year. I’m not sure why, but it feels as though slowly and steadily...

I recently rediscovered this wonderful photograph of my grandfather Louis. It is a cabinet portrait taken in a photographic studio in...

One of the ways to organize your ancestors is to give them numbers, using the Ahnentafel system. My grandson Ari would be No. 1, his...

Ari’s 6x great-grandmother, Mary Flint, was born on 23 August 1791 in Middleton By Wirksworth, Derbyshire. Her parents were William Flint...

Today I discovered that the name of Ari’s Latvian 4x great-grandmother was Sophia. I knew that her husband was Josif or Jossel, and I...

Today we visited the grave of Flight Sergeant Frederick David Johnson at Botley Cemetery. He died in 1943, at the age of twenty-two, when...