Knesseth Israel Shul in Trenton?

An Early Millner/Vine Connection

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

I was searching Ancestry.com with no specific goal other than perhaps finding 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, and when and where they moved.  And then there was a reference to an article in the September 19, 1908 issue of The Times of Trenton.  A small article, but 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 for the promotion of 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, Solomno [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 Benjamin Vine’s son and Samuel Millner’s son-in-law by 1908.  Joseph Lavine was married to Dora Vine, so he was Louis’ brother-in-law.  And 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 Millners.  And 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 only 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 to some further removed 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, who was a niece of Isidor Levin.  And I am sure Isaac Weinberg had a daughter Bessie (the two of them are listed as being at the same address in 1910), who married Ichael (or Michael) Garb in 1911. Ichael was the son of Fanny Levin Garb, and thus a nephew of Isidor Levin and Joseph Lavine.  (I am certain 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.  There are Winebergs buried at the Brothers of Israel cemetery in Trenton, so I am sure this is a typical spelling variant within one family.)

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 1908, and gives the address as Union Street, so it is likely that he also obtained this information from the Times article.  It is interesting that 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 specifically founded by Hungarian Jews, and had no Millners or Vines in its organization.  Arthur Finkle also tells me that in 1906 there was a similar movement to found a synagogue in Trenton that did not go anywhere.


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.

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