Jon Ossoff Family History

Thomas Jonathan Ossoff, better known as the US Senator Jon Ossoff, was born on February 16th, 1987 to Richard and Heather Ossoff in Atlanta, Georgia.  He grew up in the nearby Northlake community.  He is their only child.

Although his mother is not Jewish, Jon was raised in a Jewish household, went to the Reform synagogue in Atlanta, and was bar mitzvah’d.  He shortly afterwards made his first trip to Israel.

Jon was close to his Jewish grandparents in Massachusetts growing up and spent a lot of time there.  His father has said that they imparted on him their values, with an emphasis on civil rights and on community focus.  At school his mentor was the civil rights leader John Lewis.

Jon’s early work experience – from 2013 to 2021 – was with Insight: The World Investigates, a London-based investigative TV company which he had part financed with money inherited from his grandfather.  This company worked with reporters to create documentaries about corruption in foreign countries.

Politics.  But politics called.  His first try was for the Republican-held House seat in Georgia’s 6th congressional district in 2017.  He did well in fund-raising and in boosting the Democratic vote but not enough to take the seat.

His performance was favorably viewed in Democratic circles and he was well financed to contest the Republican-held Georgia Senate seat in 2020.  This time he triumphed in a razor-thin victory which required a runoff election.

When Jon took office, he became the first Jewish senator from Georgia and, at the age of thirty-three, the youngest member of the US Senate.

A National Figure?  By 2026 Jon – young and telegenic and not yet forty – was being seen by some as a national figure who could make a US Presidential bid in 2028.  That August, during a rally on his US Senate re-election campaign, he made the following startling statement:

“Donald Trump doesn’t want to do the job of President.  Instead he wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on the apparently defenseless flying palace gifted him by the Emir of Qatar.”

MAGA supporters were outraged.  But he had clearly stuck a nerve.  Other Democratic leaders wouldn’t say it.  Yet his words expressed a revulsion felt by many Americans.

He has also been in touch with changing US public sentiment about Israel and the war on Iran.  He has described himself as a pro-Israel Jewish American, but – horrified by Gaza – he has voted to restrict certain US military shipments to Israel.  He has also been opposed to the war and the way in which it has been run.

There are of course prominent Jewish Americans – such as Jared Kushner with Trump and the financier Bill Ackman – who still remain staunch defenders of the Netanyahu Israeli government.

Russian Jews

The Ossoff name among Jews from Eastern Europe is a rare one, with just 85 Ossoffs recorded in America today.  If the US 1920 census is anything to go by, the only Ossoffs coming there were Jon’s forebears to Massachusetts, another Ossoff family in the Bronx, and a third in Venango county, Pennsylvania.

Jon’s ancestors were from Vilnius in Lithuania, within the orbit of the Czarist Russian empire at that time.  There the spelling was Osovski or Osowski, a more common name, and one still found in Poland today.  Osowy means “aspen tree.”

Lithuania on the Baltic Sea had long been a Jewish home, with its capital Vilnius dubbed “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.”  But the Jewish condition changed in the 19th century after the partition of Lithuania from Poland.  Jews in the Russian Empire then faced a number of legal restrictions within the Pale of Settlement.

And by the late 19th century they were also experiencing rising anti-semitism and Czarist pogroms.  America offered an escape route and many took it.

Emigration.  Jon’s great grandparents Israel Ossoff and Annie Shochet had married in Vilnius around the year 1909.  Their first two children – Harry and Tillie – were born in Lithuania.  But they soon made the decision to leave.  And they left in stages between 1911 and 1913, first Israel and his siblings and then Annie with the children and one of her siblings as well.

Jon remembered them in 2021 when he was sworn in as the US Senator for Georgia:

“Today, as I was sworn in, I held in my jacket pocket copies of the ships’ manifests recorded at Ellis Island when my great grandfather Israel arrived in 1911 and my great grandmother Annie arrived in 1913.”

Israel and Annie would be the parents of eight children at their new home in America.

The Ninth Arrival.  Two of Annie’s siblings – Ethel and Leah – stayed behind.  They married and the future looked bright for them in a newly independent Lithuania.

But the war came.  The Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941 and occupied the country.  They decimated its Jewish population.  Both Edith and Leah ended up in concentration camps where they perished in 1943.

Miraculously Leah’s younger son Nathan Krugman managed to escape the camp.  Around 1947 he and his wife Ann wound up in a displaced person camp in Europe.  Whilst there Nathan placed a classified ad in the Forward newspaper seeking  relatives.  His maternal aunt Annie spotted the ad in Massachusetts and sponsored his visa to the United States.

Israel and Annie told their eight children: “This is your ninth sibling.”

Nathan arrived in America in 1949, settled in Peabody, Massachusetts, and worked in the chemical industry.  He eventually became a factory owner before passing away in 2010.

Home is Massachusetts

Jon’s great grandparents Israel and Annie had left Lithuania and they made their home in the town of Peabody in the industrial North Shore region of Massachusetts.

Israel Ossoff.  Israel ran a gas station on Main Street in Peabody along with a small trucking business for hauling leather goods.  Their service station, Ossoff’s Auto Service, was first located at 110 Main Street.  It later moved to 85 Main Street with Israel and Annie living in a home to the rear of the gas station.

Starting in the 1930’s Israel also served on the board of a credit union that served the local Jewish community.

Peabody has been called Tanner City as it was once the leather capital of the United States.  Four of Israel’s sons – Harry, Hyman, Michael and Melvin – would go on to be successful in the leather business.

Hyman (Hy) Ossoff.  Of Israel’s five sons, Hy above made the biggest impression.

With the onset of war he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and served as a bombardier on B-24’s in the Pacific.  He then returned to Peabody.  His friend Harry introduced him to his sister Blanche who was working for the Army Nurse Corps.  They met in New York, hit it off, and were married in 1947.

At Peabody Hy formed Ossoff Leather Company in 1947 and thus begun with his brother Michael his 45-year career in the leather business.  He later established Suncook Tanning Corporation across the state line in Pittsfield, New Hampshire.  This continued with his son David as a part-owner.

From his homes at Lynn and Marblehead Hy was active with the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore for close on seventy years.  When at Lynn he had played volleyball at the JCC and was so good that he was on the US national volleyball team that went to Israel for the Maccabiah Games in 1953.

Hy died in 2008 at the grand age of eighty-nine, leaving an undisclosed amount of money to his grandson Jon.

Next Stop Atlanta

The Ossoffs have held reunions each year with about 60 to 70 members of their family at their cottage in New Hampshire.  While this clan has generally remained in New England, the career of Richard Ossoff – Hy’s eldest son – took him elsewhere.

Richard Ossoff.  Richard, born in 1948, attended college in Pennsylvania, worked in Washington DC, and went to business school in Boston. He then worked for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. in Washington DC.  He moved to Atlanta in 1978 when the firm opened an office there.

On leaving McKinsey in the 1980’s Richard started up Strafford Publications in Atlanta.  This began as a traditional newsletter publishing company, specializing in the legal and accounting markets.  His company later entered into teleconference-based, later webinar-based, continuing education programs for lawyers, accountants and tax executives.  Strafford joined BARBRI Global, a  premier legal education provider, in 2022.

For recreation Richard had gotten his private pilot’s license during his freshman year in college and his commercial license the following year.  He has been flying for over forty years.

Jon’s Mother Heather.  Jon’s mother is not Jewish.  She is not even American.  Born in Australia, she is a descendant of an Englishman who arrived there in the 19th century.  She has also through marriage some Scottish and UK Channel Island blood in her.

Heather’s great grandfather Robert Fenton was from a family of farm laborers in Durham.  Possibly a mariner, he had come to Melbourne, Australia around 1870, married there and stayed.  He and his wife Rachel settled in the Footscray suburb of Melbourne.  They were the parents of eleven children.

Jon’s line from Robert Fenton ran as follows:

• through his fourth son Henry Edwin, born in 1888
• and through Henry’s third son Thomas John, born in 1911.

These Fentons were still living in Footscray.  However, World War Two drew Thomas away.  He was sent to Europe to fight in the Mediterranean sector.

His grandson Jon has written:

“My granddad Thomas was wounded and captured in Greece while serving with the Australian army in 1941.  He spent the rest of the war as a POW and – after his escape – as a fighter with the Greek resistance.  He would go on to serve as an Australian diplomat in Athens during the 1950’s and 1960’s.”

His escapades in Greece were in fact dramatic.  According to another account, he jumped a train and the Greeks hid him for a year in Salonika.  The Germans warned of reprisals and he escaped and was caught again in Crete.  Finally he escaped to Alexandria in Egypt on a Greek passport.

When the war was over Thomas returned to Australia and married Alma Doig in Sydney in 1946.  Their daughter Heather arrived two years later.

Heather Fenton grew up in Sydney and studied there.  Then, seeking new beginnings, she left for America in 1971 at the age of twenty-three.

There she worked in management consultancy and, as feminism was starting to make a name for itself, with a focus on women in the workforce.  Later she co-founded NewPower PAC, an organization that works to elect women to local office across Georgia.

Somewhere along the line she met Richard Ossoff, also in management consultancy.  They dated for several years and got married in Atlanta in the early 1980’s.  Their son Jon was born in 1987.

Jon Ossoff’s Family Tree

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