When I started researching the Murray family roots back in January, 2012 one of the first things I discovered was that my great-grandfather Marshall Edward Murray was one of six children. That was stunning news since there wasn't any knowledge of these siblings handed down. So one of the tasks I had was to identify and find out what happened to Marshall's siblings. To date, I have been able to track down information on all five siblings, but there have been several mysteries to figure out. Having, after much effort, figured out what happened to his older sister Mary (aka Mollie), I turned my focus on younger brother Joseph.
After initially finding Joseph with the rest of the family in the 1900 census and tracking him through 1905 through the city directories, I lost him until he showed up in the 1920 census living with my great-grandparents Marshall and Mary Murray. The census shows that he was married, but there is no wife living with the rest of the family. I went back to the city directories to see if I could figure out what Joseph's wife's name might be. The difficulty in this was sorting between two different Joseph S. Murrays that appeared in the directories. When one of the two I was tracking turned up with a wife named Agnes in the 1914 directory, I opted to look further at that Joseph.
I turned then to newspaper archives. I did a search for Joseph and Agnes and found a notice of a marriage license issued to a Joseph S. Murray and Mary A. McCarthy in the May 3, 1910 issue of the San Francisco Call. Having already dealt with a number of people who used their middle name over their first name, I thought his might be a good lead especially as Joseph was listed as age 32 which was about right.
Next it was over to the San Francisco County records at FamilySearch.org. These records aren't indexed yet (or at least weren't at the time I searched, some partial indexing has begun recently) so it meant scrolling through individual records. Since I had a date to look for the issuance of the marriage license, I was able to quickly narrow down the image sets to check. Through the records, I was able to find that Joseph Stephen Murray married Mary Agnes McCarthy on May 2, 1910 by a justice of the peace. I also learned that Mary Agnes had been married previously and her maiden name was Mary Agnes Barnes.
Since the notice in the Call stated that both Joseph and Mary Agnes were living at 420 Dolores Street, I went back to the 1910 census to see if I could find them. Joseph was not living at the 420 Dolores Street address when the census was taken in April, 1910, but I was able to find Agnes M. McCarthy and her 15-year-old daughter Nelly C. McCarthy.
So it seems I had identified the correct couple, but that left a few questions unanswered. Did I identify the correct Joseph S. Murray? And what happened to Agnes? Going on the guess that I had the right couple, I looked for Agnes in the 1920 census. The best bet turns up as a resident in the state hospital in Napa.
The Murrays all seem to disappear from the city directories between 1917-1919 when Marshall and Mary reappear, but no such luck with Joseph and Agnes, so I was stuck with Joseph living with Marshall and Mary in 1920 with out his wife. It wasn't until I was digging around in Mollie Murray's story that I hit on a death notice for Joseph in 1920. I sent off for Joseph's death certificate to see what information that might hold.
When Joseph's death certificate arrived, it confirmed that I had guessed right -- his wife is listed as Agnes Murray! I'll have to search a bit more to find out what happened to Agnes, but at least I was on the right track. Also, as is often the case, the death certificate provided some other useful information. Beyond learning Joseph's cause of death (tuberculosis, which he appears to have been suffering from for a period of 8 months prior to his death) I also learned he was a checker for the Southern Pacific Railroad. I was able to find payroll records for Joseph between October 1916 and October 1919 which indicate he made between about $40 and $60 every two weeks. Based on a couple of conversion sites I found online, that looks to be between about $13,660 and $20,485 per year in today's dollars -- definitely not enough to live in San Francisco in 2015!
Now that I've wrapped up Joseph, that leaves figuring out what happened to John Henry. I'm also curious about what happened to Agnes's daughter Nelly, but that will be another side track search to follow up when I'm stuck at a wall.
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