|
First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988
by Rabbi Malcolm Stern, 1991, revised 3rd edition.
Collection description by Ellen Kowitt
BACKGROUND
Permission to provide searchable access on JewishGen to Rabbi Malcolm Stern's First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988, is granted by the American Jewish Archives. Sincere appreciation goes to Dana Herman, Ph.D., AJA Associate Director and JewishGen USA-RD Honorary Advisory Board member.
This seminal book containing pedigree charts of prominent Jewish families whose ancestors settled in the United States prior to 1840 was compiled by noted Jewish genealogist Rabbi Malcolm Stern and is housed on the American Jewish Archives website at https://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja-publications/first-american-families/. The charts are alphabetically arranged as the First American Jewish Families Database and can be browsed as pdfs or searched by name.
Malcolm Henry Stern (1915-1994) earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Pennsylvania and was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. In 1941, he received a Doctor of Hebrew Letters from Hebrew Union College and was honored in 1966 with a Doctor of Divinity degree from the same school. He served as a congregational rabbi and as the genealogist for the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati. In 1960, he published Americans of Jewish Descent in which he traced members of Jewish immigrant families that arrived in the United States before 1840. Two more editions of the book would follow in 1978 and 1991 as First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1977 and First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988. Stern was known as the dean of American Jewish genealogy and served in leadership roles for the American Society of Genealogists, the Jewish Historical Society of New York, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Gomez Foundation for Mill House in Newburgh, New York, which is the oldest surviving Jewish residence in North America. Stern participated in numerous Jewish and non-Jewish genealogical organizations, including the National Genealogical Society, the Jewish Genealogical Society (NYC), the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the Jewish Historical Society of England, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
NOTE: First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988 by Rabbi Malcolm Stern, is considered a foundational and highly valuable, accurate resource for American Jewish genealogy, serving as a primary tool for researchers tracing early Jewish families in America, though it's an historical document from its time (updated to 1988) and researchers should always verify with other sources.
Searching the Database
This database is searchable via the JewishGen USA Database, or the JewishGen Unified Search.
|
