The only photograph that I have of my great grandfather, Edward Cohen of Cambridge MA. Taken sometime in the 1950s. Father of my grandmother Beryl Cohen Ginsburgh. I don't know that I ever met him, he might have seen me as an infant. He arrived in the late nineteenth century from Kiev as an itinerant house painter. I think he got started purchasing and fixing up houses. Self-made man financially. According to family legend, he financed a fair amount of Cambridge at one time and donated Hillel House to Harvard (all unsubstantiated). He had six children, 3 girls, then 3 boys. My grandmother, the third daughter, may have been his favorite. But all her life she moaned that she was always looked over because "who wants a third daughter?" Sufficiently wealthy that he bought homes for all his children as they married (also unsubstantiated). He purchased a $500 Israeli bond on the occasion of my birth. My father later converted that bond to a US bond and I still have it. A rainy day fund.
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