A deep look into the former Jewish community of Homestead, PA, the most famous steel town in the U.S. Combining intensive research with innovative technology, this project demonstrates possibilities in rediscovering “lost” history. Read more →

I created this custom software platform to manage the ten of thousands of records I’ve collected about Homestead’s thousands of former Jewish residents and businessmen. Read more →

Using historical city directories and Sanborn maps, this interactive map visualizes the changing residential patterns of the Jewish community in Homestead from 1890-1945. Read more →

I’m collecting examples of signature tablecloths, mid-20th century fundraisers in which individuals donated to have names embroidered on a tablecloth used at the organization’s dinners. Read more →

A trio of studies, in which I close-read individual enumeration districts within the U.S. federal census, reveals surprising discoveries about the reliability of the census itself. Read more →

In April 2022 I organized a workshop, featuring top Jewish genealogists, that raised $30,000 from more than 500 registrants to benefit Ukrainians. Read more →

I spent 7 years collecting every trace I could find of Homestead’s Chinese laundrymen in order to explain why these men could never form a community as other immigrants did. Read more →

A collaborative effort I launched to build an online catalog of records from immigrant Jewish communal organizations. These little-known records are beautiful to look at and invaluable for family and local historians. Read more →

Winner of the RootsTech Developer Challenge, Treelines is an innovative web application I created to help genealogists write and share the stories that we uncover in our trees. Read more →