Mike's Genealogy Site

Rudolph's Book

Rose Bloom and Rudolph Diamant were married on August 31st of 1913 in New York City. Rose was my grandfather Dave's sister, born five years prior to Dave, in 1888, before the family emigrated from Goniadz, Poland in 1891. Rudolph was born in Amsterdam, and had immigrated to New York in 1909 at age 23.

Rudolph worked as a statistician for the insurance industry, but was also a freelance reporter, having written extensively for the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (a Dutch financial daily) on the 1909 Hudson River celebration. These dispatches on this tricentenial anniversary of Henry Hudson's exploration of the river, as well as the centenial celebration of Fulton's steamboat, were translated into English and published by Rose and Rudolph's son Lincoln 100 years later.

In 1915, Rose and Rudolph's first child was born, a son named Rolph (later Rolf) - a name that was a contraction of their own first names. Rose and Rudolph evidently adored and doted on their son, as is evidenced by this work.

Rudolph assembled this combination photo album and diary with photographs, drawings and prose from Rolf's first year of life. It was made using an oversized book of children's drawings alternating with blank pages, well designed for such a purpose. The book is entitled "Dessins sans parole des Chats", by Theophile-Alesandre Steinlen, published in 1894. The cover and a sample of one of the drawings is appended to the end of the file.

Click here to download a PDF file of a high resolution scan of Rudolph's book. It is a very large file (over 120 MB), and may take some time to download, depending on the speed of your network connection. Although many Web browsers can display these files, in some cases you may need the free Acrobat Reader® supplied by Adobe™. You can also view this journal online by clicking here.