More McDonoughs?

I have spent more time than I could have imagined staring at census records from 1880 looking for the Murray family.  As I've mentioned earlier, the pages I expected them to turn up on are currently missing.  However, one benefit of the scrutiny I've given to this particular set of records has pointed me in another direction while I await an answer from the National Archives.  I noticed that there is a Patrick McDonough living on Filbert in 1880, in the same Enumeration District where I expected to find John and Bridget Murray.  Since Patrick McDonough lived so near the Murrays, I wondered, could he be related to Bridget?  Maybe a brother?  Patrick McDonough is 45 in the census record and a native of Ireland, which would make him about 5 or 6 years older than Bridget, so it's a possibility.

I decided to track Patrick backwards to see if he was indeed related to Bridget and started paging back through the San Francisco City Directories.  When I got to the 1864-1865 directory (printed in Oct 1864), I made an interesting discovery -- a Bridget McDonough working as an ironer at the Russ House Laundry.  Is this "my" Bridget?  It would seem likely, since in the 1867 directory she was working as a laundress and according to the 1900 census she arrived in the US in 1866, which is close enough in time to think they are one and the same.  Another discovery in the 1864-65 directory is a Betsey McDonough working as a domestic at the Russ House Laundry and a Thomas McDonough working as a porter at the Russ House.  Could these be other relatives?  None of the Russ House McDonoughs appear in the 1865-66 city directory (printed in Dec 1865), but there is a Thomas working as a laborer in 1867.  Whether or not that is the same Thomas, I'll need to look further.

I've only begun digging on these possibilities, so it is too soon to tell if they are indeed relatives.  The Russ House McDonoughs would seem a good possibility but I'm having a bit of difficulty tracking them in my preliminary searches.  Patrick McDonough is a little more iffy.  A closer look at his census record from 1880 shows his oldest son, John H. McDonough, was born in Pennsylvania in about 1860, which would have him in the US quite a bit before Bridget. That wouldn't be a reason to eliminate him as it is quite possible that he came over earlier and assisted Bridget's immigration.  I'll need to do some more digging, especially in the 1860 census of Pennsylvania to see if I can turn up Patrick and his family.

I was a bit curious about the Russ House since it clearly appeared to be a hotel in the 1860s, but I wasn't familiar with it. So I did a quick search and found this.  It helped to learn that the original building no longer exists, so I'm not a complete failure as a fourth generation San Franciscan (ok, we'll add an "-ish" to that since I've never lived within the city limits of San Francisco.)  Alas, that the rebuilt Russ Building was the tallest building in San Francisco into the mid-1960s is probably something I should know.