Sylvan Robison - Further Information about Sylvan Robison

Greetings, my dear sister-in-law of the granddaughter of the brother-in-law of my husband's great-uncle.
I am so glad to hear from you, DiAnn. My sister-in-law Jude Robison and I were wondering if you were related, since Iamarino isn't a Jewish name. Do you know Bridget Paula Wynne who did the Gerson Robison (b. 1848) profile?

The Robison clan had a reunion in 1985 and Sylvan's son Bob Robison (1921-10/15/2005)was one of the organizers, along with Stephan Shiman, a grandson of Mindell. Stephen prepared a first edition of the Robison family tree for a second reunion in 1988. Nobody ever managed to organize further reunions, but an updated version of the family tree is at familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/s/h/i/Stephen-L-Shiman. Here is what the updated versionooo had to say about Sylvan.

We had 1881-1936 for Sylvan, but I think your birth date of May 15, 1880, is more accurate. As I said previously, Sylvan was the fourth child of Gerson and his first wife Leah. He married Sophia (Sophie) Moses, for whom we have 1889-1969. Your information of birth on Nov. 28, 1888 in New York and death in Aug. 1989 in New York at age 80 is more accurate. You have a marriage date of 1913. We have the birth order of their children as Leah (1916-1951), Gerson (1916-1971), Marcia (1919- ), Robert (1921- ), and Morris (1922- ).Of course, we now have Sept. 19, 1921 in New York for Robert's birth, and Oct. 15, 2005 (age 84) in North Brunswick, New Jersey for his death. Bob married Eileen Auster (unknown- ), to whomo we have been sending holiday cards since the second reunion. She doesn't remember meeting us but we did meet at the reunion. Bob wanted us to organize a third reunion in Pittsburgh, PA (where we live) but it didn't happen. Bob and Eileen had two sons--Jeffrey (1958-- ) and Daniel (unknown- ). Jeff married Aileen Wong and they also had two sons--David Jacob (1990- ) and Jonathan (1992- ). I believe that this is the Jonathan Robison who provided you with all the information, not to be confused with my husband Jonathan Benjamin Robison, grandson of Louis.

Daniel Robison married Julie Aberg (unknown- ) and they had a daughter Sophia (presumably named after her great-grandmother Sophia Moses. This is where the undated family tree stops. However, we sent a sympathy card when Bob died in 2005 and received an acknowledgement with the names of the family as it existed at that time. It included Hannah (Dan and Julie's younger daughter) and Cecilia (presumably a younger daughter of Jeff and Aileen. David would have been 15 and Jonathan would have been 13 at the time.

If any of Bob's brothers and sisters were at the reunion, I don't remember meeting them. The updated family tree says that Leah Robison married Hans Rudas and had two children. The first child's first name is unknown, but the second is Karen Rudas. Karen married Richard Peddicord and they had a daughter Monica. All birth and death dates except for Leah's are unknown.

Gerson Robison married Eleanor Gertz (unknown- ). They had two sons--David (1940- ) and Kenneth (1951- ). David Robison married Judith Krauss (unknown- ) and they also had two sons--Joshua (1974- ) and Seth (1977- ).Kenneth Robison married Sybil Sokolsky (unknown- ) and they had a daughter, Amanda Robison.

Marcia Robison was married twice. Her first husband was James Kunen (unknown- ) and the second was Albert Mindlin (1917-1991). I suspect that divorce rather than death parted them because there is no date of death for James. Marcia and James had three children--Lisa, Jonathan, and Andrea. Andrea Kunen married Jerry Barr (unknown- ) and they had a son Joshua Barr (unknown- ).

According to Emanuel (Manny) Robison, son of Abraham Robison of the original four immigrants, the family name was Podrabinek. When they arrived in Baltimore and one of them said that he was a rabbi's son, the name was recorded by immigration officials as Robison. They came from a small town near Kovno in the Lithuanian part of Russia. Theresa and Louis was born there. Since Louis was born in 1872 and Mindell was born in Baltimore in 1879, we know roughly when they got here. One of the original immigrants (Gerson?) is said to have been the first teacher of English in a Talmud Torah in the United States. ( I don't know what a Talmud Torah is, but it is clearly some type of educational institution.)

I looked at immigration records for Podrabinek and quite a few managed to get into the U.S. with the name intact. It is a bit of a nuisance to have the name Robison because people are always asking me if I am related to somebody by that name who turns out to be of Scots-Irish descent. I tell hem I am only related to Jewish Robisons from the New York area.