National Desertion Bureau Card Catalog

The National Desertion Bureau was established in New York in 1911 with the goal of tracking down men who had abandoned their wives. The Bureau aimed to bring these men to justice, force them to pay child support, and where possible, effect a reconciliation between husband and wife. It worked with hundreds of organizations nationally and internationally to find missing men, and publicized its cases in the press, most famously in the Jewish Daily Forward’s “Gallery of Missing Husbands.”

Initially established with the support of the United Hebrew Charities, the NDB later changed its name to Family Location Service, and eventually merged back into Jewish Family Services, the UHC’s successor, in the 1960s.

This database is comprised of data extracted from 18,000 cards dated 1911-1935, from the card catalog of the NDB. The cards almost always included a case number, the name of the husband and wife, the referring organization, and the date of the case opening. Sometimes, the Bureau’s investigators recorded other details, like where the desertion occurred and when, where and when the man had been found, the cause of desertion, and the “disposition”––the results of the investigation.

The “cause of desertion” was recorded on approximately 4000 out of these 18,000 cards. Reasons for desertion varied widely, and included “another woman,” lack of support, incompatibility, laziness, cruelty, bad habits, business troubles, interference of relatives, gambling, drinking, illness, and “wanderlust.”

While the cards are fascinating as standalone documents, they are also the portal to the much more extensive case files that the National Desertion Bureau created. Some of these case files continued for hundreds of pages, like that of Lena and Morris Adler, whose story you can read here. Others filled only a few pages.

These case files are held by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in an offsite facility. If you would like a search for the case file to be conducted on your behalf, click here to contact the YIVO Archives. Please note that while YIVO’s archivists will make all possible efforts to find the file you are looking for, not all cards in the catalog have an associated file. Conversely, there are many cases that postdate the cards used in this database. If you know of a family member who was a client of the Bureau after 1935, please contact YIVO directly for assistance.

You can use the main search bar to search the database for names of individual men or women. You can also use the menu on the left-hand side to search by other parameters, namely address, case number, referring organization, date of case opening, cause of desertion, and disposition. Click on each card to see the case and view the original card from the catalog. To download multiple results from your search, click the “Download as CSV” button in the top right corner of the database.

Note: there is no soundex search for the database. If you cannot find your relative, make sure to try alternative spellings of their name.