A.K.’s history is one of the first parts of the family tree I put together. His section is short and frustrating, because the name Josephs drops off the map immediately. (I’ve got clues, but they’re all over the place.)
Still, it’s impressive. This Hebrew sliver of our family has been in this country an astonishing 330 years. Seven years ago when I asked a Jewish genealogist for help tracing A.K., he wrote back in a week with twenty names and said, “This is unbelievable. I myself am pretty lucky, but this is about as good as I ever heard of…. It so happens one of my own ancestors was also born in 1810, and after many years of search I have not even gotten ONE GENERATION beyond that.”