Chuck Schumer — senate majority leader with roots in the Russian Empire
Charles Ellis Schumer was born in Brooklyn on 23 November 1950, the son of Abraham Schumer, who ran an exterminating business, and Selma Schumer, née Rosen, a homemaker, the eldest of three children with a younger brother, Robert, and sister, Fran. He is a second cousin once removed of the comedian Amy Schumer.
Most of his documented ancestry lies in Galicia, which was part of Austria-Hungary, not the Russian Empire. His paternal grandfather, Jacob Schumer, was born in Buchach in 1894, and his paternal grandmother, Minnie Schachner, in Chortkiv in 1896; both towns lay in the Austrian crown land of Galicia from 1772 to 1918 and are now in western Ukraine. His maternal grandmother, Theresa Prichep, was born in New York to parents from Austria.
The link to the Russian Empire runs through his mother's father, Robert Rosen, born in 1899. A genealogical compilation based on census records lists him as born in Russia. It gives no town, and the detail appears in that single source.
Schumer graduated as valedictorian of James Madison High School in Brooklyn in 1967, with a perfect score on the SAT, and then from Harvard College in 1971 and Harvard Law School in 1974. Elected to the New York State Assembly in 1974 at the age of twenty-three, he served three terms there before winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented districts in Brooklyn and Queens from 1981 to 1999.
In 1998 he was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, defeating the three-term incumbent Al D'Amato. He chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from 2005 to 2009 and the Senate Rules Committee from 2009 to 2015, and published a book, Positively American, in 2007. He was elected leader of the Senate Democrats in 2017 and became Senate Majority Leader in January 2021, the first Jewish senator and the first New Yorker to hold the post. He served as Majority Leader until January 2025, when he became Minority Leader. In 2023 he became the longest-serving senator in New York's history. He is married to Iris Weinshall, a former New York City transportation commissioner; they have two daughters.
"Maternal grandfather from Russia (town not recorded); paternal grandparents from Buchach and Chortkiv in Austrian Galicia; to New York"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russia, town not recorded (maternal grandfather); Chortkiv and Buchach (Galicia)
His maternal grandfather, Robert Rosen, born in 1899, is recorded in a genealogical compilation as born in Russia; no town is given. His other documented ancestors came from Buchach and Chortkiv in Austrian Galicia.
Maternal grandfather Robert Rosen (b. 1899) is recorded as born in Russia in a single genealogical compilation based on census records; no town is given. Paternal grandparents Jacob Schumer (Buchach) and Minnie Schachner (Chortkiv) came from Austrian Galicia.
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Russia, town not recorded (maternal grandfather); Chortkiv and Buchach (Galicia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.