WITH A TEAR OF JOY

After multiple decades of searching, on June 21, 2021, I finally found a descendant of Mollie and Harry Mindlin. Those were household names when I was growing up. 

Albums with a picture of their daughter Gloria, and another showing her aunt visiting with my aunt in California, are somewhere in my collection of our family treasures. “Like spite work," to use one of my mother’s favorite expressions, they are currently nowhere to be found.

Gloria’s mother, Mollie, and Mollie's siblings were aunts and uncles of my aunts and uncles from my maternal grandfather’s first marriage. My mother, born of my grandfather’s second marriage, was not biologically related but remained friends with the Mindlin family for many years.

During my years of genealogy research encompassing many great family finds, my mother often asked me to look for the Mindlins. Believe me, I tried.

After collecting all the immigration and census records on Mollie and Harry, I cold-called numerous entries listed with the family name of Mindlin. There is even a cousin on my husband’s side who is married to a Mindlin. She asked her father-in-law if there was any relation to Mollie and Harry, but alas not.

My search continued intermittently. Utilizing new options that are constantly becoming available online, I finally hit pay dirt. In June, after the great success in finding my husband’s Pollack roots back to the mid-1700s (see blog post Never Say Never, dated July 20, 2021), I again posted on the Facebook group, Tracing the Tribe, and received instant gratification. This time, my question was, “Seeking family of Ben Mindlin (born abt 1912 in NYC).”

The same day, with volunteer help from a fellow genealogist in the group, I contacted Mollie and Harry’s great-granddaughter Rebecca. Her maternal grandfather was Ben Mindlin, whom my mother sought after fondly recalling visiting Ben and his family with two small children in Morristown, New Jersey. That was before I was born. I now know that the Mindlins had moved out of state. More than likely, that was why my parents lost contact.

The same week that I made the connection with Rebecca, my brother Al was at my house. At ten years my senior, I asked him about the Mindlins. While he did not remember Rebecca’s grandparents, interestingly, he did recall her great-grandparents.

Al said they visited Mollie and Harry two or three times he could think of while the Mindlins were living in New York. He qualified that it was not New York City but either Brooklyn or the Bronx. Based on the style of the buildings, he thought probably Brooklyn. His hunch was correct, according to Rebecca. She wrote that her mother, Ben’s daughter, was born in Brooklyn before Ben and his family moved to Connecticut.

Harry was a nice man, according to Al, who described him as neatly dressed, with well-pressed suits. He asked if he had a cleaning business. I told my brother that according to the census records, Harry was a presser. Al smiled as he informed me that Harry gave him and our older brother a dime each time they visited. Sadly, he recalled Mollie going into the other room crying. She must have been depressed, Al surmised, or maybe seeing my mother brought back painful memories.

Following up with my eldest brother, Nate, he has no recollection of visiting the Mindlins in New York but says that Morristown rings a bell. He said that it must have been when he and Al were very young.

Rebecca informed me that her mother, Ben’s daughter, passed away in 2013. That was one year after my mother died. She then asked if I had been in touch with her uncle, Ben’s son, Peter. That was the first mention of his name and the knowledge that he was living. He would be next to contact.

While Rebecca’s mother and my mother never got to be part of this reunion, I am sure they would be thrilled that the search continued and the two families are united. The book that started my project of finding all our long-lost relatives, and friends, was the one we presented to my parents and my in-laws the year our first child was born.

Reflections: A Jewish Grandparents’ Gift of Memories, by Ronald H. Isaacs and Leora W. Isaacs, was marked with an entry on my mother’s memories page, which prominently showed, “The Mindlins.” Continuing my search for memorabilia resulted in an old telephone number in a directory my parents saved. The listing was in my writing and misspelled as Mindlen.

My search was fruitful as I have posted here. While checking in my family tree program for a photo of my aunts and uncles, I found one picture of Gloria, Rebecca's grandaunt, and my aunt Estelle. Gloria and Estelle were first cousins. They were standing outside my parent's apartment building with Estelle's daughter, my cousin Lois. That was in the 1940s. 

Lois, 89, lives in Beachwood, Ohio. She reminded me that she gave me the photo. She said that her mother talked lovingly about her sweet cousin Gloria who was very kind and never married. 

Another search in my family tree files led me to the photo of my aunt, Rose Friedman Browning, holding my cousin Joyce and standing next to her aunt, Minnie, Harry’s wife. Harry was Mollie’s brother. 

Sitting in my aunt Rose’s apartment in Los Angeles in 1990, her tickled reaction upon telling me there were three Harrys in the family still lingers. Two sisters married men named Harry, and their brother was also Harry. The picture of my aunt, with her aunt, was taken circa 1944-45 in Los Angeles, California.

Rebecca continues to look for her old family photos. In the meantime, with a tear of joy, I sent her pictures of my aunts and uncles. They were first cousins of her grandfather Ben Mindlin and his sister Gloria. Wow!

My uncles and aunts, Jack, Fred, Estelle, Hy, Rose, and Al Friedman - all first cousins of Ben and Gloria Mindlin

Sarah aka Shirley Friedman Lauritzen was not included in the above photograph with my other aunts and uncles from my grandfather’s first marriage

Gloria Mindlin, Lois and Estelle (nee Friedman) Birns 1940s

My cousin Joyce as a baby held by her mother, my aunt Rose Friedman Browning and Rose’s aunt Minnie, wife of her uncle Harry Gollot (aka Gold) - Harry was the brother of Mollie Mindlin Circa 1944-5 in Los Angeles, California

Death records of Mollie Mindlin’s sister Ida 1914 NYC

Mollie’s sister Ida, my grandfather’s first wife, is interred at United Hebrew Cemetery Staten Island, N.Y.