A Box of Letters
A Box of Letters
A Family Archive, 1900–1926
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A box of over 100 letters was found in storage in Vancouver.
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Half in English cursive. Half in Yiddish — that no one left in the family could read.
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They turned out to be Sam and Dora Diamondstein’s — great-grandparents of one of this site’s creators, writing to each other in the early 1900s.
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AI translated and transcribed every one, then helped rebuild the story from family trees, research, and memory.
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This web site is what resulted — a real experiment in using AI to do genealogical research honestly.
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This site is built from letters Sam and Dora Diamondstein exchanged between 1900 and 1926 — a window into one period of their lives, not the whole of it, reconstructed as honestly as the letters, the family tree, and living memory allow.
Choose how you'd like to explore.
Read it as a story Read the Story The whole correspondence, woven into one continuous story with real photographs throughout — every detail, every underlined phrase linking straight to the letter or evidence behind it. \~30 min · Six chapters 
Read letter by letter Every Letter Letters, translated and transcribed, sorted by era — the most basic way to browse the archive. 114 letters, 1900–1926 
Meet the people Every Person Everyone named in the letters — family, friends, and the people caught up in their story. 16 people 
Browse The Couple in Pictures Real photographs of Sam and Dora themselves, young to old — the two people whose letters built this whole archive.
A life in motion Follow the Journey Every place this family went, on a map — each one explained, not just shown. 5 maps + timeline 
Worth Knowing Background & Context The real history behind the letters — the Pale of Settlement, the Panic of 1907, the Cuffley Zeppelin — in one place. 14 short reads 
See how this site was built How This Was Made The process behind the archive — a real experiment in using AI to do genealogical research honestly.
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