This week I was asked to try out a new social networking site called Rootsy.com.  As soon as I discovered that it was a genealogy tool and a way to track my family history, I was instantly intrigued. My mother's cousin, Bill Israel, has gone to great lengths to track her family's history and has traced it back to the 1700s.  He has documented all his findings and they are astounding. Our family started with a patriarch named Solomon Israel, who came to America from Amsterdam and declared "I am named Solomon and I am Jewish" when he arrived. … [Read more...]