The process of documenting my family trees started with a lecture I attended at the Wayne Jewish Center in the early 1980's. There, the speaker Miriam Weiner, a renowned genealogist, impressed me with the joy of obtaining knowledge about my family. Little did I know, at that point, that the project to learn about the Feinman, Meyerowitz, Stempel and Stern families would develop to be a massive undertaking.
I have had very little of the luxury and pleasure of interviewing my parents and grandparents. But I have had the pleasure of talking with my aunt Mary Feinman Winer, and my wife's Aunt and Uncle, Ruth and Max Stempel, and their niece Sylvia Robb, who have a wealth of information about their families.
During a trip through Salt Lake City, Utah, I visited the Morman Genealogical Library and was able to find some information there on the Feinman Family, but very little on Stempel. Later trips to The United States Archives in Bayonne enabled me to increase the data and resolve problems. Data on the Stern Family has been difficult to obtain since the possibility exists that Isaac Stern's original family name may not have been Stern.
Assumptions are made throughout the Tree. Specifically, since many of the Stempel family are buried in Queens at a cemetery associated with the town of Przemsyl, then I can only assume that that city is their birthplace. Przemsyl was in Western Galicia, and is now part of Poland. It is interesting to note that Sylvia Robb has memories of her father (Emanuel Stempel) being born on a trip his mother Pearl took back to the town of Strzyzow. I have, as of March 2002 obtained information about the Applebaum Family from Mrs. Sophie Gorman, who was a niece of Pearl Applebaum Stempel.
Other assumptions include the arbitrary setting of a birth date for first and second generations based on an average age of twenty at marriage.
I have collected a great deal of information by visiting the cemeteries and taking pictures of the tombstones. From there I obtained dates of birth and death, the Hebrew names, and the name of the father of the deceased.
I have also collected documents about Jacob Feinman, including his Intent To Become A Citizen Of The United States. That document was signed by him and also shows his occupation to be a blacksmith. This, in itself is interesting since I do remember my father telling me that the family, in Russia, was in the iron business. Further, there had been talk from my grandmother that the family name was Mastravoy. In Russian, a mastravoy is a guildsman, a nobleman or a precision worker or a blacksmith. The translation into German is Feine Mann. A good assumption is that is how we have the name.
Recent analysis, during 2002, has discovered information on the Cohen,Raff,Kaplan,Selinger and Raucher Families, The Kaplan Family includes Dave Umansky, an All-American Football Star, from the University of Richmond.. Additional data indicates notables such as "Henny Youngman" being part of the Feinman/Novak family.
As I receive notices about new additions to the family, I add them to the database. For example, Gehrig Isaac Rosenthal was added upon his birth in October 2002.
In March of 2005, I was contacted by Ryan Charles Rosemore, the son of Lisa Hope Gibbs. Conversations with them provided a wealth of information on the Novak and Efronson side of the family, the descendants of my grandmother Leah Kramer's sister Gitel.
I am currently using Family Tree Maker 2005.
I hope and pray that those who read this document will appreciate the need to formalize and confirm additional data so that future generations will know, as is said by Gary Mokotoff of Avotaynu, "Where we once walked".
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Feinman-Meyerowitz-Kramer-Blum-Stempel-Stern-Witkowsky -Raff