An Early Millner/Vine Connection and Nascent Shul

 An Early Millner/Vine Connection

 

We all know there is more than one Millner/Vine connection in Trenton. Louis Vine married Sarah Millner in about 1902. Frank Millner married Rose Leah Vine in 1911. But it also appears that in 1908, a joint Millner-Vine effort was to start a new synagogue.

 

I searched Ancestry.com with no specific goal but to find something interesting about our great-grandfather Samuel Millner and his life in Trenton. There were year after year listings in Trenton's City Directory, which provided a history of who lived with whom, when, and where they moved. Then, there was a reference to an article in the September 19, 1908 issue of The Times of Trenton. It's a small article, but it is right there on the front page. It was fascinating:

 

WILL ERECT NEW SYNAGOGUE HERE

 

"The Keneseth Israel has filed articles of incorporation at the office of County Clerk. The organization will establish a congregation for the Hebrews of this city and will erect a synagogue. It will also maintain a school and library to promote learning and culture among the Hebrews and conduct an asylum for poor children. This building is to be at 60 Union Street.

The agent of the organization is Joseph Lavine. The trustees are Samuel M. Millner, Joseph Lavine, Isidor Levin, Max Simon, Harry Haveson, Solomon [sic] Urken, Isaac Wineberg [sic; should be Weinberg], Louis Vine, and Louis Robinson."

 

I have never heard of the Keneseth Israel synagogue in Trenton. And were most, or all, of these trustees related to us? Louis Vine was, of course, Samuel Millner's son-in-law by 1908. Joseph Lavine was married to Dora Vine, so he was Louis' brother-in-law. His mother was Celia Vine, Louis' aunt. So he counts as a Vine. Isidor Levin was Joseph Lavine's brother. His wife was not a Vine, so he is only connected to us through his mother.

 

Solomon Urken was not connected to the Millers.  He was not connected to the Vines until 1929, when his son, Hyman Urken, married Ida Vine. Better late than never! Ida was the youngest daughter of Isaac Vine, the brother of Louis, Dora, and Simon.

 

Likewise, Louis Robinson became connected to the Vine family when his wife's niece Sayde Kohn married Benjamin Vine in 1920. (This was Benjamin, the son of Simon Vine and nephew of Louis Vine and Dora Vine Lavine.)

 

To go further relations, Max Simon's granddaughter Gloria Simon married Theodore Roosevelt Vine, son of Louis Vine and Sarah Millner, in 1942, 34 years after the Keneseth Israel organization. Harry Haveson was the father of Herman Haveson, who in 1921 married Eva Levin, a niece of Isidor Levin. And I am pretty sure Isaac Weinberg had a daughter, Bessie (the two of them are listed as being at the same address in 1910), who married Michael (or Michael) Garb in 1911. Michael was the son of Fanny Levin Garb and, thus, a nephew of Isidor Levin and Joseph Lavine. (I am confident that the newspaper article misspells "Weinberg." Year after year, the Trenton city directory lists Isaac Weinberg and his business, and there is no mention of an Isaac "Wineberg" anywhere.)

 

Anyone who works on Trenton Jewish genealogy realizes that it was a small community and connections were the rule, not the exception.

 

Keneseth Israel apparently was never built. Arthur Finkle, in Trenton's Jews, does not mention it among synagogues, though he lists it as a Jewish organization in Appendix 3, p. 115. He dates it to 1908 and gives the address as Union Street, so it is likely that he also obtained this information from the Times article. Interestingly, the street number is 60. It turns out that Joseph Lavine's home address for several years before and after 1908 was 60 Union Street, according to the city directories. We will probably never know why the deal didn't go through. I should check property records to see if it was ever in or transferred out of Joseph's name.

 

The encyclopedic A History of Trenton of 1929 includes a chapter on "The Jews" under "Churches and Religious Institutions" by Harry J. Podmore. It, too, omits Keneseth Israel altogether.

 

It should be noted that Ahavath Israel, the fourth synagogue of Trenton, was founded in 1909, a year after Keneseth Israel. But there is no connection between Keneseth Israel and Ahavath Israel; the latter was founded explicitly by Hungarian Jews and had no Millners or Vines in its organization.

 

So what I think is that we have a microscopic footnote to Trenton's Jewish history and only a slightly large one to the Millner-Vine history:  that in 1908, Joseph Lavine organized and led a movement to found a fourth synagogue in Trenton, but, for reasons that will probably never be known, he was not successful.