Varieties of Family Relationships

Motherhood, Fatherhood and all those familiar relationships have variants

this page will be reorganized when I get a grasp of the categories

the family culture is inclusive of mishpocha, a Yiddish word meaning
"the entire family network of relatives by blood or marriage."

undated letter from Irving Robinson to Susan Cook
"Avrum Michel's first wife, Rachel, died in a fire leaving 4 small children named Joseph, Rivka, Hanna and Pesha.
He then married Rachel's half-sister, Toba, who bore him Sarah, Annie, Isaac, Shea, Rose, Max, Becky, Eta and Esther.
Toba mixed Rachel's children with her own and treated them all alike. All the 13 children grew up as brothers and sisters.
The name Schleger was changed to Nelson by my uncle Max when he arrived in the U.S.A."

Sunday, Aug 19, 2018, email from Ann Baumrind to Barbara Stack, cited with Ann's permission:
My mother always remembered her step grandmother with deep affection and referred to her as her grandmother to outsiders.  My mother and her sisters called her “Bubbeh”, as Toby expected.  My mother always said that Toby worshipped the ground our great grandfather walked on, even though he was much older than she was.  She was an exceptional woman, as I’m sure you know!
Note that Ann descends from Toby's sister or three-quarter-sister or half-sister Rochel Leah. Ann's grandmother was Hanna/Chana in Irving Robinson's letter above. Ann's mother Rose was Toby's great niece.

Obituary Elaine Chandler Hoffman, Nov. 15, 2024:
"Daughter of the late Irving S. and Etta (Cohen) Chandler, Elaine lost her mother at the age of 11, after which she took care of the house for her father and two older brothers, and later her two half-sisters when her father remarried."

January 8 & 9, 1920 Census 78 Dyer Street, Portland, Maine Cooks in home of Aunt Edith (Etta) Robinson

Feb 26, 2019: via email: Judith Cook (Tucker):
“My father told us that he lived in Portland for the year after his mother died because his father could not leave the family
and Portland was where there was a synagogue with a minyan, so he was sent, at the age of 13, to the aunt to say Kadish every day for a year, on his way to school.”

Fri, Sep 18, 2020
David Z. Robinson
Ben Robinson would be so proud that family feeling is so strong, over a half-century after his death

Sat, Jul 25, 2020
David Z. Robinson
Dear cousins, I have been hit with family feeling after seeing these photos

this family also has a number of cousin marriages

July 20, 1913: Este Schleger arrival in Boston (Family Search)
This is the arrival of my grandmother's sister aka Etta Nelson. Name change from Schleger to Nelson. She is going to her brother Yankel Robinsohn, aka Jacob "Jake" Robinson, who is actually her brother-in-law, the husband of sister Rose. Jake was also a 3/4 first cousin to Etta (and Rose), as his father was 3/4 brother of Etta's mother Toby (same father; mothers were sisters).
So maybe brother-in-law plus cousin equals brother. I suspect he felt like a brother.
May I postulate that relationships can be additive?
They are certainly subject to the laws of convenience.



October 26, 1960: Paris: probably written by Francis' father Roger.
"We are not cousin but just a little of the same family, (almost)!!!!"


May 6, 1960: Dover, NH: Just before my Bat Mitzvah by Rabbi Gilbert Elefant. With Aunt Sarah and Uncle Max.
Aunt Sarah was the youngest sister of my late maternal grandmother and very much her proxy.
I think they may have just given me a pep talk. Or a blessing.

1951 Fanny and Stack girls
February 1951 in Lewiston, Maine: Fanny Supovitz, Barbara Stack, Ellen Stack and Anne Stack. Anne Thorner Stack collection.
My father's older sister Fanny became like a grandmother to us after her mother Ethel died in 1949.

לאַנדסמאַן

The American Heritage Dictionary:
A fellow Jew who comes from the same district or town, especially in Eastern Europe.

11/26/2023
London, UK
from Simone Baker and quoted with her permission
"Nowy dwor is our connection. All our families must have known each other - which excites me just as much."

Family Relationships can also be Distanced

Joe Chandler's Dearest Rachel Family Narrative

"I remember one incident Grandma told be about of when she was on one of her walks with Becky Thorner in downtown Portland. One of her cousins, who had been in the States much longer than she or Becky, thought he would play a joke on the two 'Greenas' (Greenhorn newcomers). He gave them oranges and bananas, fruits which were unavailable in the small towns in Poland and Russia from which the two young women came. He wanted to see if they would peel the fruit before eating. They fooled him by not attempting to eat the fruit until later, when someone else took the fruit and by example, showed them what to do. It makes one wonder how many things we take for granted as acts of ordinary life which can be so different under another culture or circumstance."

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