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Have you ever wondered about your past, beyond your parents and grandparents? About their parents and grandparents? What life was like for them? In The Children of Leyzor and Chaya, Barbara E. Lovitts delves into a time and a place foreign to us, one of poverty, illiteracy, and state-sponsored discrimination. She takes us on a journey starting in 1849 with Leyzor and Chaya's marriage in a Polish shtetl, assembles their nine children, and discusses her search for and discovery of their descendants-more than a thousand children born across several generations, and families filled with love, tragedy, humor, hope, sorrow, and death.
Lovitts traces this Jewish family's history from czarist Russia-Poland to the Lower East Side of Manhattan to their present-day dispersion throughout the U.S. and the world. She details how different their lives are from the first generation to settle in America in the 1880s; how far they have come socially, educationally, and economically; and how diverse they have become. Many of Leyzor and Chaya's descendants are still adding to the family, while, for others, the bloodline has ended. Yet they will always be connected as the children of Leyzor and Chaya.
This family history is enhanced with of images of foreign birth, marriage, and death registrations; passenger records and ship images; early U.S. marriage certificates; and lots and lots of photos of family members, some dating back to the 1890s. The family's life events, occupations, and places of residence are summarized in numerous tables.
About the author
About the Author: Barbara E. Lovitts is Leyzor and Chaya's great-great-granddaughter. She holds a Ph.D in sociology and spent her career working in the field of education, pre-K to Ph.D, at national science associations, the federal government, nonprofits, and research organizations in Washington, DC. For eight years, she devoted her free time to doing genealogy and to writing the history of the maternal line of her family.
