The Miller Family
View the Miller Family Story - a work in progress.
View photographs and read the story of a trip to Kovno, Batakai and Taurage, home of the Millers.
Part of the Miller Family Tree
Schia and Celia (Dora, Tzipora) Shapiro Miller were likely from Kovno, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania). They had at least four children — Abraham, Rebecca, Morris and Samuel are those whose names we know.
Morris and Abraham, known as Abbe, were the first to immigrate to the U.S. in the late 1880s. Morris took a pack on his back and peddled his wares in the South while learning English at libraries. By the early 1890s they had made enough money to send for their widowed mother, Dora, brother Samuel and sister Rebecca. They worked as pants makers in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
I don’t have a photograph of Celia or Schia but I do have Celia’s death certificate.
Dora Miller’s death certificate, 1919.
Morris married Leah Axelrod and they had a daughter and five sons — Mildred (Mickey), Emanuel (Mannie), Irving, Oscar, Seymour (Si) and Stanley.
Morris Miller
Morris Miller and Leah Axelrod’s marriage certificate, 1900.
Leah Axelrod Miller
The Miller family in the park, about 1912. Top row: Mickey. Middle row: Morris and Leah. Front row: Irving, Oscar and Mannie.
Morris and Leah Miller with Mickey, David, Robert and William Klausner, Mannie and Shirley Miller, and Irving, Oscar, Stanley and Si Miller, 194?
Extended Miller family in the park. Top row: Morris with four unidentified women. Kneeling below Morris is his daughter Mickey. To her left is her brother, Mannie, I think, and to her right is brother Irving. I’m not sure who the rest of the people are.
Jake Mnookin, Si’s grandson, in front of 112 Marlborough Road in Flatbush. Morris and Leah and their children lived there after they moved from Brownsville where they shared a three-family house with Samuel and his family.
Samuel married Rose Licht and they had a son, Saul, and three daughters, Evelyn, Ruth and Muriel.
Portrait of Samuel Miller.
Portrait of Rose Licht Miller, holding Saul, about 1906.
Samuel Miller and Rose Licht’s marriage certificate, 1905.
Saul and Gladys Weissburger (Wyte) Miller and daughter Ronnie, 1948. Their son Jonathan had not been born yet.
Miller family at Jonathan Miller’s Bar Mitzvah, 5 Feb 1967. Standing left to right: ?, ?, Virginia Brodkin, Sherwin Brodkin, Gladys Miller, Jonathan, Saul Miller, Ronnie Miller. Seated left to right: ?, ?, Evelyn Miller Stone, Samuel Stone, Muriel Miller Maiman, Roy Maiman, Ruth Miller Brodkin, Andrew Brodkin.
Muriel Miller, and her second husband Roy Maiman, with her grandchildren, Todd, Denise and Heather Iger. Brad had not been born yet.
Muriel Miller.
Muriel Miller
Samuel Miller with his grandson Jonathan Miller in front of the house on Union Turnpike in Queens, NY.
Abraham (Abbe) married Sheine (Jennie) Rubenstein and they had Sore (Mary), Hirsch (Harry), Gitte (Ethel), Ada and Leonard.
Abbe had returned to Russia in the mid-1890s where he married Sheine and had his first two children. Shortly before the birth of Gitte (Ethel), Abbe returned to Brownsville and lived with his mother and brothers, leaving his wife and three children in Russia. Two years later the rest of his family arrived in Brownsville and they had Ada and Leonard.
Abbe Miller
Harry Miller, center.
Abraham Miller’s death certificate, 1936.
Jennie Rubenstein Miller and one of her grandchildren.
Leonard and his wife Pauline Miller.
Sadly, I have no photographs of Mary, Ada or Ethel.
Rebecca married Jacob Smith and they had Mary (Mae), Ida (Ada), Lillie, Joseph and Isidor (Irving).
Sadly, I have no photographs of anyone in this branch of the family, although I do have Ida’s birth certificate.
