Preserving History

Shelli Liebman Dorfman

Senior Writer

I

n the summer of 1996, after a year of
researching his family history, Dick
Jaeger sat down to have a quiet talk
with his 90-something aunt and uncle in
New York. They spoke about the ancestry
of the very small family he grew up know-
ing.
The talk — plus an e-mail introduction
by a cousin he had never met — plunged
him deeply into a project that, 11 years
later, has become a 50,000-name database
of extended family and a 72-page chroni-
cle of his discoveries.
The results of his research, captured in
a remarkable scrapbook, hold a detailed,
pictorial history — complete with maps,
legal documents and commentary —
tracing back to the 1400s.
"When I started, I
knew only my

Sta f f p ho to by Ang ie Baan

Couple meshes genealogy with scrapbooking for a unique family keepsake.

Caryn and Dick Jaeger display their family historical scrapbook.

par-
ents, grand-
parents, a few aunts and
uncles and cousins;' said Dick, who lives
in Farmington Hills. "All I knew of past
generations were the names of two sets of
great-grandparents and that my grandpar-
ents had several siblings."
Now, through three Web sites he created,
he has widened the circle with contacts
offering information about his ancestors
as well as newly found relatives. Dick has
met and corresponded with extended
family from Atlanta to Los Angeles and
Australia to South Africa.
Five years ago, the listings of the many
family branches he discovered became too

long to be manageable online
and kept crashing his com-
puter. "I had so many names
on it that if I printed it out,
the list would fill 1,380 pages,
including an 80-page index',' he said.
So, at his wife Caryn's suggestion, Dick
began to organize the names to place in a
scrapbook. "I tried to include a sense of all
the family groups as well as those who had
a special family story that might otherwise
be lost in time if not recorded': he said.
Caryn already had made 20 scrapbooks
so it seemed like the ideal solution for
displaying the names and also the pho-
tos, immigration papers, birth, marriage
and death certificates and other family
paperwork Dick had been storing in a file
drawer and cartons.
"So, while Dick did the research, I began
to work on putting it all in a scrapbook:'
Caryn said.
An ongoing scrapbook, added Dick.

"In so many cases, one small piece of
information leads to a lot more research
and hopefully more information:' he said.
"For example, recently I obtained my
great-great-grandmother's death certifi-
cate, which listed her parents' names and
her place of birth; and that led to a whole
branch of the family we hadn't known
about."
The book is already a revised copy
of the first, whose pages outgrew its
cover. The last page already reads, "To
Be Continued," in anticipation of future
entries, to be highlighted by names and
photos of the couples' two new grandchil-
dren due this summer.

mother's second husband.
And he has discovered famous names in
his family tree, including Albert Einstein;
Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann;
and Julius Weissman, an early 20th-centu-
ry second violinist in the Kiev Symphony.
A cousin, Judah Benjamin, who is
thought to be the first Jew to be elected to
the United States Senate, is pictured next
to a copy of a Confederate $2 bill with his
face on it.
While the book began as Dick's jour-
ney, he eventually added a small section
on Caryn's family history — based on a
history already researched by a cousin in
Baltimore.

What's Inside
During Dick's research he discovered some
enlightening secrets, like how, unknown
to the family, the man he thought was his
grandfather — and his mother's father
— was not, but was, instead, his grand-

Making A Book
"Creating this scrapbook is the first hobby
Dick and I ever enjoyed together:' Caryn
said.

Preserving History on page 22

April 19 2007

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