Tracing one's family usually involves delving into archives.
Jon E. Stein, president of the Philadelphia Jewish Genealogical Society,
recommends the American Jewish Historical Society in Waltham, Mass., and the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Philadelphia has the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies Research Library at 18 S. Seventh St., which has 60 memorial books from Eastern Europe on loan
from the Annenberg Research Institute, as well as immigration records and other publications.
Also in area is a Civil War library and museum at 1805 Pine St.; a library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia at 19 S. 22 St. with medical directories from the 19th Century; a Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints in Broomall; The Gratz College Library and a Holocaust Archive at Gratz; and the National Archives, Mid-Atlantic Region, in the old U.S. Courthouse at Ninth and Market streets.
