How to request and view Desertion Bureau case files

Today, Nicole and Diana welcome Gavin Beinart-Smollan, the Public Historian in Residence at The Jewish Board, one of New York State’s largest and oldest mental health and social service agencies. Gavin is also a PhD candidate at New York University, researching the history of Jewish immigration and the Jewish immigrant family. He is the project lead for 150yearsofcare.org, a digital history exhibition and genealogy database.

In this episode, Gavin discusses two incredible resources: the National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog (1911–1935) and the United Hebrew Charities of New York Recipients & Donors (1869–1877) database. Diana asks Gavin about the National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog, an index to cases where an agency helped women track down husbands who had abandoned their families. Gavin explains that the catalog includes husband's and wife's names, case dates, referring agencies, and causes of desertion, which can include "another woman," "lack of support," or "laziness." He also mentions that longer case files contain even more information and sometimes even photos. Nicole asks why a mental health and social service agency would build a genealogy database, and Gavin explains that it connects people in poverty to the past. He also shares how the Desertion Bureau functioned, including advertising cases in Yiddish newspapers to shame men into returning, and discusses the ethical considerations of making this material public.

Diana then asks Gavin about the United Hebrew Charities of New York Recipients & Donors database, a dataset of recipients and donors from New York City’s United Hebrew Charities in 1873. Gavin describes how this smaller dataset includes names, street addresses, amounts of aid, and “worthiness” notations. Listeners will learn how to search these unique databases, the type of genealogical data they contain, and the historical context of charity and social services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This summary was generated by Google Gemini.

Links

National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog - The Jewish Board 150 Years of Care  -https://150yearsofcare.org/ndb-database/?catalogId=23284

The Forward: A Gallery of Missing Husbands (1908-1920) by Michael Morgenstern at JewishGen.org - https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/usa/missinghusbands.html

United Hebrew Charities Recipients & Donors - The Jewish Board 150 Years of Care - https://150yearsofcare.org/uhc-recipients/

Yivo Institute for Jewish Research - Yivo.org - https://yivo.org/

Giving the Gift of Family History to the Homeless: Olive Branch Connections by Sarah Clift - https://familylocket.com/giving-the-gift-of-family-history-to-the-homeless-olive-branch-connections/

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