"In 2010, Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, and Sonoma Counties marked its 160th anniversary. Its founders, August Helbing and 11 other Jewish emigres, established the Eureka Beneveolent Society (EBS) in 1850 to help care for the widowed and orphaned of that era of shipwrecks, mining disasters, fires, and disease. JFCS traces its roots and its mission to that organization. Twenty years later, members of the EBS and other Jewish community leaders in San Francisco founded an orphanage and home for the aged, the Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society...Over the ensuing decades...these organizations grew into the Jewish Family Service Agency...in 1977, the two organizations merged to form teh present-day JFCS. In JFCS: Centuries of Pioneering, we celebrate the contributions of these pioneer Jewish leaders -- and their modern-day counterparts -- in establishing the rich fabric of philanthropy and community of the San Francisco Bay Area" -- Front jacket flap.