If you’ve visited davidmittman.org before, you’ll notice that things have changed. The old design came from a theme made for news sites. It never looked much like a family history website, so I replaced it.
What’s new
The look. The new design is meant to feel like a family archive. The menu at the top works like the tabs on a row of file folders. The home page opens with a photograph of my parents and their friends from around 1949, followed by a short introduction and links to the families, the stories and my latest research.
Family pages. Each family I research now has its own page, 29 so far. You can find them all on the Families tab. Most pages start by naming the couple the family descends from and where they came from. Below that is a short account of the family: their children, where the family moved, how many people I’ve found and the years they span. Names on these pages link to each person’s page in my Reunion family tree, so you can go straight from a family’s story to the details about each person. On the Mittman-1 page, for example, the name of Leon Mittman, who founded the family with his wife Bertha, links to his page in the tree.
Migration maps. Each family page has a map of where the family went. Each line traces one person’s move from where they were born to the last place I have for them. The founding generation is shown in the darkest color, their children lighter, and their grandchildren lighter still. Circles show where living members of the family were born or married. For the Mittman family from Czernowitz, you can follow the family from Ukraine to Chicago and from there across the United States.
Search. There’s now a Search tab. Type a name and the site finds matching people and families. Spelling is a constant problem in genealogy. Names were written down by clerks, immigration officers and census takers, who spelled them the way they heard them. The search allows for that. A search for “Mitman” also finds Mittman and Mittmann, and a search for “Pleeth” also finds Plicht and Plachta, which are forms of the same family name. You can narrow the results by years of birth or by family.
Stories. The stories have their own tab. A few are for family only and ask for a password. Those are marked “family only”. Others, like the Schilder Cousin Club, are open to everyone.
How it was built
All of this comes from my family file in Reunion, the genealogy program I use on my Mac. When I update my research, I export the file, and a small program turns it into the family pages, maps and search. The Reunion family tree itself is also on the site. The website now stays in step with my research, instead of drifting out of date the way the old family pages did.
Privacy was an important part of the work. People I’ve marked as private in Reunion appear only as “Living” and their last name. Records of where people lived are left out. My full family file stays on my own computer.
I built the new site with help from Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic. I described what I wanted and made the decisions. Claude wrote the code, tested it, and checked the site’s security along the way.
What’s coming
- A place search, so you can see who in the family was born, married or died in a particular town.
- A way to work out which Mittman family is yours, based on where and when your ancestors lived.
- Fuller write-ups on the family pages, with photographs and stories.
- More places on the maps. Some historical names, like Galicia and Russian Poland, still need map positions.
If you find a mistake, or recognize someone and have something to add, please let me know.
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