In 1949, teenagers Bill Durbin and Lorraine Kalish met at Jimmy’s Malt Shop in East St. Louis, Illinois. They would later marry and have ten children—nine boys and one girl—of whom this writer is the seventh. On the pages that follow is a narrative history of this family of twelve, a story going back more than 300 years.
I’m lucky to have learned these stories, mostly from my parents and relatives willing to answer my endless questions, and from other family historians whom I will thank in due course. My aim here is to share, as succinctly as I can, what I’ve learned about our known ancestors and what their lives were like.
The stories here are organized into three main sections, one for Bill’s family history, one for Lorraine’s, and one for the history they made together. Each of these is subdivided more-or-less chronologically. There is also a family reference that summarizes the basic facts of each family—significant dates, where families lived, lists of children, and so on.
To put some bounds on a subject area that is inherently boundless, for the most part this history ends at the generation just before mine—that of my parents and their cousins. The history of this family is, of course, still being written. The ten of us Durbin kids live across six different states nowadays, and each of our families is a story in progress. I will leave to others the sharing of those.
Next: The Story in a Nutshell
Michael Durbin 