COUSINSPLUS CousinsPlus is the family history web page of the descendants of two brothers, Usher and Lazar Elia Uberstine. We hear they came from Gorodok, which means little town and is one of many, many Gorodoks.We have deduced that ours is in the Vileika District between Volozhin and Radoshkovici in the part of Russia now comprising Belarus.On old maps it is shown in the northernmost part of Minsk gobernia, just south of Vilna gobernia, to which many remember Lazar's offspring referring. His daughter, Ida Uberstine, married Harris Farberman who came from Volozhin; his daughter, Toby Uberstine, married Aaron Kahanovich, who came from Grodno. You can see who married whom, and where each came from, complete with latitude and longitude of their respective shtetls, in a color-coded table created for that purpose.It's called, "Who came from where?" and you will find it in the history table of contents at www.cousinsplus.com. Click site map, then features stories, and there it is in the list.Or you can copy this link: http://www.cousinsplus.com/families/CousinsPlus/History/Who-came-from-where-revised.htm#spaces-on-top As of May, 2005, there were 1442 individuals and 533 families representing 426 surnames in our Uberstine database. Below, our most common surnames, followed by the number of times they appeared in 2005: Berman(18) Cohen(27) Gelman(18) Glockner(49) Karben(17) Levine(17) Rogoff(25) Rosenthal(18) Rubenstein(48) Uberstine(47) Anyone who finds the FamilyTreemaker's interactive tree inhospitable to browsing may look at our web page trees chapter. Our visual display there is, like FamilyTreemaker's, also cleansed of dates of the living in the interests of family privacy. http://www.cousinsplus.com/ Click on general stories and scroll until you see the photo of Usher Uberstine.You aren't likely to miss him! Webmaster/editor and co-founder with brother, Michael-David BenDor in 1997, Susan Martha Rogers Grandchildren of Morris Rubenstein (1883-1940) and great-great-grandchildren of Usher Uberstine of Gorodok
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- Uberstine Tree – 1,489 of us - 2012 (268 KB)
The Uberstines of Gorodok, Vileika District, Belarus, are at the root of our tree. Quite accidently, in 2004, while schmoozing with a favorite elderly cousin descended from a niece of Usher Uberstine, we learned Usher and Lazar Elia may well have had a sister. This sister married a man named Friedman, and their son became a rabbi, who lived and worked for a time in Meridan, CT. With their three daughters, the family would come to visit and have a meal at the home of Lou Gelman and Minnie Cohen Gelman because, Cousin Shirley told me, her mother kept kosher for her mother, Toby Uberstine Kahanovich (Cohen). The three daughters married and moved away, so we found the trail quickly grew cold, but this tidbit gives future generations of curious Uberstine family researchers something to pursue: a Rabbi Friedman of Meridan, Ct. in the 1920s and/or 1930s. As for our tree, we now number more than 1,489.
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- Usher Uberstine (21 KB)
He is the patriarch of our family, along with his brother, Lazar Elia, of whom no photo exists to our knowledge.Usher's photograph comes to us through his youngest daughter in America, Ethel Rubenstein Varonok. It was in the possession of Ethel's granddaughter, Ruth Sollender Goldstein, when it was loaned, along with almost half the other photos that follow here.Ruth's brother, Irving Sollender, and I calculated that Usher might have been born about 1823.The photo was taken in Minsk according to the printing on the postcard-sized original. - The extended Varonok family in 1897 (22 KB)
Ethel stands directly behind her mother-in-law. - Usher Uberstine's overtree (13 KB)
This skeletal overtree portrays only the children and the grandchildren of Usher Uberstine. - Ethel Rubenstein and Harry Varonok in 1897 (10 KB)
This closeup of Ethel and Harry is from a large group photograph of Harry's extended family taken before they came to America. Ethel's granddaughter, Ruth Sollender Goldstein, spoke of a kiddush cup engraved with "Gorodok." Her grandfather, Harry, told another granddaughter, Minnie Rosenthal Solowitz, that his branch of the family came from Ekaterinaslav. That was an area to the south where Jews were encouraged to settle into farming communities after 1880. We don't know how Ethel met Harry. Some consider the story on Ethel's branch the best chapter on our family history web page at: http://members.xoom.com/smrogers3. - Lazar Elia Uberstine's overtree (9 KB)
The overtree of Lazar Elia Uberstine clearly shows how very much larger than his brother'sAmerican branch his own is.Photos of his children and grandchildren (as well as this overtree)appear on our web page and also on the CousinsPlus site at http://www.MyFamily.com. - Israel Rubenstein and his betrothed (16 KB)
Israel Rubenstein was the oldest of Usher's children to come to America. He owned a building on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn and died before 1923. We know nothing else about him except that Irving Sollender, the first grandchild of Ethel (his only sister to come to America), was named for him. - Hyman Rubenstein and second wife, Ruchel, 1927 (8 KB)
Hyman Rubenstein's older brother, Irving, persuaded him to go into real estate.At one point he owned two buildings on Howard Avenue in Brooklyn, and his sister, Ethel, lived with her family in one of them. More about Hyman and his second wife, Ruchel, appears on our web pagein "Ethel's Story: from kid sister to matriarch." - Hirschel and Rivka Rubenstein with daughter, Dora (9 KB)
The only photo we have of Morris Rubenstein's parents is this one, with their youngest daughter, Dora. Hirschel was a tanner and lived in Ostroshitskiy Gorodok.His wife, Rivka, died in 1919, and according to my father, in the late 1920s, Hirschel met with violence, which caused his death. - Hirschel's oldest son, Morris & fiancee Esther (14 KB)
The oldest of Hirschel's five children who came to America, Morris Rubenstein arrived in 1901 and became engaged in 1906 to Esther Simon, whom he met through a matchmaker, a tale in the short introduction to our family history web page. Morris' attempts to become a citizen proved a comedy of errors, and appear on our main web page as "Stories documents tell." - Hirschel's niece, Esther, with her family (13 KB)
Esther Kirshner Chasman was the daughter of Hirschel's sister, who married a man named Samuel Kirshner (not to be confused with "Shimsel" Kirshner of Wolozin, who married Rashka Gelman, daughter of Hirschel's first cousin, Udasha Uberstine -- see Lazar Elia's overtree below, the last item here.)Esther Kirshner Chasman came to America with her husband, Leonid Chasman, and their two small children. Leonid settled in Newark, New Jersey, where he did well in pharmaceuticals; his milk of magnesia was an early success.What Morris Rubenstein and Eleanor Chasman had in common was that they were both in America without their parents, and so they celebrated the holidays together. The Chasmans, who were wealthy, would send a car to fetch Morris, Esther, and their four sons for one of the two Passover seders. The other seder would be held at Morris' with the assistance in the cooking department of his youngest sister, Dora, who lived just down the street. (Morris' wife, Esther, was legendary in her lack of housewifely skills.)The Chasmans invited family to their home on occasion, and more than half a century later, vivid memories linger ... of falling into the fish pond on their lawn after tempting fate by attempting to "walk" its edge, and of making deliveries of early pharmaceuticals with Leonid in his truck at dawn.Esther Chasman would visit her Aunt Ethel -- other Chasman details appear in Ethel's story. - Louis Rubenstein and wife, Sarah, in 1927 (6 KB)
The occasion for this photo taken on October 29, 1927, was the wedding of Louis and Sarah's third child and only son, Abe, to Ceil Hirschoff. Louis Rubenstein was the youngest of all Usher's children to come to the America and the only one to settle in the Bronx.Louis was an avid supporter of all family events, which he would sometimes attend without Sarah, who was well known to be a homebody.Shirley, the daughter of Louis' niece, Dora Rubenstein Karben, remembers Louis loved to dance, and that at family affairs, he would trip the light fantastic with the outgoing Rose Varonok Sollender, oldest daughter of his sister Ethel.After Sarah passed away in 1952, Louis did not falter in his attendance at family events.Two years later, he made the 90-minute subway trip from the Bronx to Brooklyn for the bar mitzvah of Jerry Karben so early in the morning that he ended up cooling his heels on a bench in the street until he thought it wasn't too early to ring the Karbens' doorbell.Louis' granddaughter, Lila Glatt D'Amato, remembered fondly the matching blue wool winter capes he sewed for her and her sister, Anita, on the sewing machine in the living room of their small apartment.In addition to being a fine tailor, Louis was also an ardent union supporter. One of his son's daughter-in-laws told me early on -- when I was preparing our web page section, "Coming to America" -- that Louis had 'packed heat' in those early days of unionizing the garment center. For more about Louis and his nephew, Henry, who was a writer for the Jewish Daily Forward, a union enthusiast, and finally, an ILGWU unionizer in California, see the last chapter in "Coming to America" on our family history web page.
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