Back to the future: Canton ophthalmologist traces family back to the 13th century

By Jeffrey Pickette

A poster that was hanging in his childhood bedroom that read “our future is where our past is,” inspired Daniel Laby to trace his family’s history when it came time for him to select a topic for his high school research project.

Three generations of the Laby family during their visit to the ancestral family home of Zaragoza, Spain. Dr Laby is in the back row, third from the right. The family is standing in front of the “Aljaferia” — the ancient 11th century Moorish fortress later used by the Kings of Aragon as well as by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. It was in the throne room of this castle where members of the Laby family worked for the Kings of Aragon as financiers, diplomats and doctors.

At the time, Laby was able to trace as far back as his paternal grandfather’s arrival to the United States in 1904. But in the years since, Laby, while far removed from his high school days, has continued the project in a sense, tracing his ancestry back to 13^th century Spain.

“I think to really understand what your future is going to be … you have to understand where you came from and what your past history is,” Laby said.

Laby, a pediatric ophthalmologist at Eye Care For Kids in Canton, has been at his Cobb’s Corner location for the last five years. He is an assistant clinical professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and is a specialist in sports vision, having worked with professional teams like the Red Sox, Cardinals and Dodgers, and even U.S. Olympians.

But in his spare time, he has a passion for genealogy, and he will share this passion as part of a lecture he will give for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston this Sunday at Temple Emanuel in Newton. Laby said he’d like to entertain, motivate, and educate his audience.

“I think anyone could do it,” Laby said of tracing ancestry. “You just have to have curiosity and patience and determination.”

His grandfather’s family is from Hebron, Israel, and a book about the history of the Hebron community that included detailed land deeds helped Laby trace his family back “several hundred years.”

Throughout his genealogical quest, Laby said that he has been “fortunate to have an obscure name.” As he points out, if he had a more common Jewish last name like Cohen or Levy, it would be more difficult to determine whether or not the names he was finding in various primary documents were actually those of his ancestors.

Over the last decade, Laby has been able to trace his family from Hebron back to 13^th century Spain. His family was actually a prominent member of society, helping to arrange the marriage of Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella and helping to arrange funds for Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas, according to Laby’s research.

While a different building stood in its place, using ancient property ownership maps from his ancestral home of Zaragoza, Laby was actually able to visit the site of his ancestor’s home on a recent trip to Spain.

“When you do this kind of family history you learn those small details, which makes it real and makes it personal, which is what is fun about it,” he said.

Despite his family’s influential status, they were expelled from Spain along with the rest of the Jewish population in 1492. From there the family split, with some going to North Africa and others heading toward Italy and eventually to the Greek Jewish community of Salonika (Thessaloniki) before settling in Hebron.

Throughout the process, Laby has been able to meet or correspond with relatives he said he would not have otherwise known about if not for this interest in his family’s history. On a trip to Israel, he also met descendants of the Alazar family, a family from Zaragoza Laby’s ancestors knew back in Spain.

Laby has been able to trace his family’s origins with the help of primary documents — arrival records, passenger logs, land deeds, maps, and even a Ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract) from 1435. Amazingly, in examining the history of his paternal grandfather’s family, this is just one-fourth of Laby’s lineage.

The advent of the internet has helped to expedite this search for his ancestors. When Laby was working on his high school research project, he had to travel to the National Archives in Washington and go through reams of microfilm. When he wanted a picture of the ship on which his grandfather came to this country, Laby had to write a letter to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. But today, many of these documents or records are available on the internet.

“There’s a whole lot more reward, if you will, in finding [a document at the archives] and printing it out,” Laby said. “There’s a negative side to searching on the [internet] as well, but certainly in efficiency and speed it can’t be beat.”

In recent years Laby has also used DNA to help in his search. DNA can determine if someone shares a common ancestor with you and is therefore related to you in someway, but it can also suit a much larger purpose — determining a person’s origins and determining from what part of the world their ancestors once lived, Laby explains.

Through DNA and Laby’s other passion, biblical archeology, he is hoping to trace his family back even further. But just how far back does Laby want to trace his family? “Abraham,” he jokes.

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