When I was a child my grandmother enjoyed teaching me about my ancestors,  Revolutionary war heroes, Political figures,  Captains of Industry and the High Seas.  They weren't the family she was born into but those of her proud Yankee husband.

All she would say about her parents was that her mother Claudine, had been an opera singer from Chicago and her father ran a  company involved in cotton manufacturing. She claimed Adolf Leeds was Swiss or Austrian and couldn't explain how he came to have  such an English last name.

I didn't question my Great Grandmother's maiden name (Hamber) until the day I found an old book of hers.  In it, the last name  Hamburger had clearly been crossed out.  Using this name on websites like Ancestry.com & Newspapers.com, I learned that  she was  from one of Chicago's most prosperous German-American families.

Adolf Leeds' story was more difficult to unearth.  After much digging, I discovered that the name that the last name he  used when he arrived in America was Levi but that he went by Leve when he became a Citizen.  I also uncovered paperwork that  listed his father's name as Emanuel.

I had been told that he came to America to work in the "family business" so I researched Wolf & Sons, the name on his oldest  stationary.  When I learned that Wolf and Sons was a cotton company based in Stuttgart (with a Boston office) I remembered  seeing photos of my grandmother that were labeled "Uncle M. Wolf's garden in Stuttgart Germany".        
 Further searches lead me to the Wolf Family Archive at the Leo Baeck Institute.  There I found a family tree that that showed this Wolf  family also had a daughter and that she had married Emanuel Levi.  They had 6 children one of whom, had traveled to America and  married Claudine Hamber.  The tree even included the names of my Grandparents.

I may never understand exactly why families like the Levis & Hamburgers had to distance themselves from their heritage, but I can  see no reason why it needs to continue.  I am making my research available through this private site so that friends and family  members that can learn about our our other, equally remarkable ancestors.