These notes explain the conventions adopted in the three family trees that follow.

Persons in italics appear with more detail elsewhere.

Only selected members of these extensive families are shown.

East European Jews did not adopt fixed surnames until well into the nineteenth century; so the earliest generations of the Schneerson family are shown without surnames, and some later family members with alternative surnames (as in the Fradkin family).

Given names are even more complicated. Any given name may, at different times and in different places, appear in a multiplicity of forms. (See Editorial Note at 264 above.) The names given in the trees are mainly Yiddish for the earlier generations, including that of IB's grandparents; later names are those used by IB.

The versions of names given here are not always identical with those used by Mendel Berlin in his memoir, sometimes because of differences in transliteration.