Doing Genealogy, Doing History

In Our Own Voices. A guide to conducting life history interviews with american jewish women — In Our Own Voices cover

Genealogists (those tracing their family members) and social historians (those investigating the history of groups of people) can use some of the same tools in their research. In databases available through the library like Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954: Sources from the American Jewish Historical Society and Ancestry Library Edition, records of individuals, families, and groups can be found.

In the files of the Industrial Removal Office (1899-1922), letters document the move of the Louis and Bessie Goldberg family from New York City to Flint, Michigan.

Fire insurance maps place Louis Goldberg's rooming house adjacent to the Buick Motor Company auto factories. This family was part of larger patterns of migration that have been described by scholars, including Jack Glazier in Dispersing the Ghetto: The Relocation of Jewish Immigrants Across America (1998).

Gazetteers like Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust (2002) and historic map collections like Proquest Sanborn Maps Geo Edition can help locate a person or group geographically. Your library can help you find maps from a particular place and time, whatever your ethnic background or research interest.

Related Resources

JewishGen, an affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

Doing Genealogy, Doing History in the Nazi Camps, resources selected by Kenneth Waltzer, historian, MSU Jewish Studies.

Letter from the Industrial Removal Office (New York, NY) to the Manufacturers Association of Flint dated April 6, 1910. "We have an application from one Bessie Goldberg, who desires to join her husband Louis Goldberg, whose address is c/o Goldman 858 Hamilton Ave Flint Mich…"

858 E. Hamilton Ave is identified as a rooming house on this 1914 fire insurance map of Flint, MI.