Finding John Murray

When I first discovered my great-great grandmother Bridget Murray in the 1900 census, she was listed as a widow and living with her five children. Who was her husband? What happened to him? As I dug around in the records looking for Bridget, I found several possibilities for her husband. There was a James & Bridget Murray in the 1870 census, but that Bridget was a bit older than the one in 1900 and they had no children. There was a “Bridget Murray, widow (Thos.)” in the 1915 San Francisco City Directory, but is that the same Bridget I’d been tracking? The best option I found was a John and Bridget Murray in the 1870 census. The age for Bridget was about right and they had a son named John who was 1 year old, which would be about right for the John Henry I found in the 1900 census. Still, I needed to confirm which one of these candidates was the correct one.

When I found Bridget’s death notice in a 1907 edition of the San Francisco Call, I was able to eliminate two of my three candidates. According to the notice, she was the widow of John Murray. Excellent, that meant I could go back to the 1870 census record I’d found and try to determine if this was indeed the right John & Bridget Murray.

1870 Census Record for John & Bridget Murray
(ancestry.com)

When I looked at the 1870 census record, I jotted down all the information listed. John & Bridget and their son John Henry were living with another couple – John and Margaret Feechan. I could read that John Feechan was a shoemaker, but could not decipher the listed occupation for John Murray. I looked at the writing for the other records on the page and still couldn’t quite decipher the word. The best I could come up with was “Nephalstener” which made no sense whatsoever. Obviously there’s no such word as “nephalstener”, but maybe there’s some odd 19^th century occupation that I can’t quite figure out, maybe the “p” is an “f”, maybe it’s supposed to be two words? Well, that’s another item to figure out in the long list of things to figure out. While muddling over this, however, I did get further confirmation that I was on the right track when the death certificate I’d ordered for my great-grandfather Marshall arrived in the mail – his parents were listed as John Murray and Bridget McDonough.

Back to tracking down John in the census, I had discovered a second source for San Francisco City directories that included years not available at Ancestry.com, but the search function left much to be desired and meant a more manual search. I decided to start with the 1870 directory since that would hopefully match up with the census record. Unfortunately the 1870 census records didn’t include house addresses, so that meant logging all of the John Murrays in the directory and try to cross-reference them through the years. There were 17 John Murrays listed in the 1870 directory, but the 14^th entry was intriguing. This John Murray was living at the “corner of Leavenworth and Broadway” and was an upholsterer. Hmm, let’s look at that 1870 census again, could “nephalstener” actually be “upholsterer”? Now that I have a word to compare it to, it’s clear that it is upholsterer. To be extra sure that I’d found the right John Murray, I flipped back in the directory looking for John Feechan. I didn’t find a John Feechan, but I did find a John Feehan living at Leavenworth and Broadway. Well, it looks like I found the right one.

I followed John Murray through the years, but he disappears after 1891. In 1894 Bridget shows up as widow living on Tehama, which is where I found her in 1900. I haven’t located an 1893 directory yet and there are 5 different listings for “Bridget Murray, widow” in the 1892 directory but none are for addresses that I am certain are the right family. My best guess then is that John Murray died between 1891-1892.

Having found John Murray from the 1870s on, I decided to look backwards and see if I can figure out when he arrived in San Francisco. He first appears in 1867 working as mattress maker at the Occidental Laundry. Since I know he is married with a child by 1870, I wonder when he and Bridget met – was it in San Francisco or back in Ireland? Starting with the 1867 directory, I decide to look for Bridget under her maiden name, McDonough. Jackpot on the first try – Bridget McDonough is working as a laundress at the Occidental Laundry.

So now I’ve gotten more information and have time lines to search for other information. Each piece of the puzzle makes the picture clearer than it was before. Bridget McDonough and John Murray worked at the Occidental Laundry prior to September 1867 (the date the directory was published.) They were married with a one year old son by June of 1870 (when the census was taken), which makes it likely they were married in 1867 or 1868. There is one bit of curiosity though, neither John nor Bridget show up in the 1868 city directory, but John pops back up in the 1869-70 directory and appears consistently through 1891. Were they missed when the directory information was collected or were they living elsewhere that year? If they were living elsewhere, where were they and why?