Obituary for Herman Handler

Herman Handler died on March 19, 1961, in Youngstown, Ohio. There was a brief obituary in the Akron Beacon Journal the following day, which wonderfully ties together much of what I've found about the family.

"Herman Handler," Akron Beacon Journal, 20 March 1961, p. 24, col. 1;
digital image, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com : viewed 7 October 2018).

Sympathy Saturday ~ Adolf Handler's Death Record

As I recently noted, a researcher in Šid, Serbia, contacted me via JewishGen's Family Finder and shared with me some digital images from the local archives.

This is the death record for my husband's great grandfather, Aron / Adolf Handler. When he died, he left several adult children, but also four young children from his second wife: Rose, Josef, Sam, and Regina.

Again, I have taken the long horizontal entry and split it into two pieces for easier reading. And again, I got help with the translation from Google Translate.

Sympathy Saturday ~ Reisner Twins

I would like to take this opportunity to remember twin sisters, one of whom died due to being born prematurely and the other who died as a teenager.

These girls were first cousins to my mother-in-law.

Manhattan (New York City) Death Certificates, 1919-1948. Certificate no. 1066 (1921), Sarah Reisner,
FHL Microfilm 2027054, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sarah Reisner died on January 11, 1921, after having been born on January 9, 1921, to Jacob Reisner and Rebecca (Levitt) Reisner (half-sister to Rose (Levitt) Goldstein). The ONLY reason I knew to look for this death certificate is, again, thanks to the wonderful memory of my mother-in-law, who told me that her sister, Naomi Reisner, had a twin who died as a baby.

Photograph of Naomi Reisner
Courtesy: Jeff Kontoff

Sadly, Naomi Reisner died a couple of weeks before her 17th birthday, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

See Naomi's FindAGrave memorial here. Although her gravestone indicates that she died at 17 years old, she was actually just two weeks shy of her 17th birthday.

And Naomi's stone includes a photograph of her.

Thank you to Find A Grave volunteer, Jeff Kontoff, for all his work in the Jewish Cemeteries of West Springfield, and for giving permission to share this photograph here.

Sympathy Saturday ~ A Death Followed by a Birth

In researching the Sam Handler family, and finding Sam Handler's Naturalization Papers, I discovered that Sam and Sadie had a third child after Esther (b. 1910) and Arthur (b. 1912). According to his Petition for Naturalization, Alfred was born on August 16, 1914.

However, I had not found him in subsequent census records, which showed Sam and Sadie with only two children, Esther and Arthur, so I checked "Ohio Deaths 1908-1953" at FamilySearch and found a death certificate for Alfred Handler who died July 30, 1919, of Acute Lymphoid Leukaemia, just a few days before his fifth birthday.

According to Sam's brother Josef Handler's naturalization papers, Josef and Lena Handler's son Alfred was born on August 10, 1919, less than two weeks after his cousin's death. With the tradition in Jewish families of naming children after deceased relatives, I wonder if this Alfred was named after his recently deceased cousin.

From the naturalization papers for Josef Handler