O’Learys and O’Looneys – Oh My!

After about seven months of working on my family tree, I decided it was time to see what I could find out about my grandmother’s side of the family. Nana was born Elizabeth Coleman, the fourth child of Daniel Coleman and Elizabeth (Lizzie) O’Leary. Daniel was a merchant sailor who eventually became a ship’s captain, and, according to family lore, his father John Coleman was a lighthouse keeper in Kinsale, Ireland.  Lizzie O’Leary was born in Ballincollig, Ireland and was about 10 years younger than Daniel. Again according to family lore, Lizzie’s brother was a schoolteacher who worked with Daniel’s sister Margaret and they were introduced to each other via their siblings. The story also goes that Daniel courted Lizzie for about 10 years before they were married. According to census records I found, Daniel was living in San Francisco by 1900 and Lizzie joined him there in 1904. I found a record of their marriage license in the San Francisco Call dated July 12, 1904 (which is also how I learned my great grandmother went by the name “Lizzie”.) I’m not certain where in San Francisco Lizzie and Daniel were married, but again going on family lore, think it was St. Phillip’s.

According to the stories told by Aunt Margaret (Nana's sister), Lizzie had two brothers and two sisters and she was in the middle. Her older sister Ellen married a Mr. Ford, younger sister Polly remained in Ireland. Her older brother (name unknown) was the schoolteacher who introduced her to Daniel and her younger brother Jeremiah fought in World War I and died shortly thereafter while living with Lizzie and Daniel when they were in New Jersey.

That was everything I knew when I started out looking in to the O’Leary side of the family tree. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I was recently contacted by one of my father’s Coleman cousins who is also looking into the family tree, and her questions about what I knew prompted me to do two things: (1) ask if she knew the names of Lizzie’s parents and (2) dig up some of my notes. I was delighted when she responded with the names of my great great grandparents – Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. (O’Looney?  Well, that certainly explains a few things about the family!) That will help a bunch in trying to dig up some records from Ireland.

Getting in to my notes, one I found was an email I’d sent to my mother several months ago asking about digging in to her wedding invitation list to see if there were any relatives on Dad’s side of the family that I should look in to. I called Mom to ask if I could come over and look for the list. Mom said she didn’t think she had a list of who she invited to her wedding, but I knew I had seen one several years ago when I was putting together a scrapbook for her and my father’s 40^th wedding anniversary.

I went over to my parents’ house and Mom was convinced that there was no such list, but she’d help me go through some of the boxes she had stored in the closet of my old bedroom. We pulled out the boxes that looked most likely to have what I was looking for – the repurposed shoe and gift boxes – rather than the nice photo boxes. The first couple of boxes didn’t have what I was looking for, but the third box I opened had a repurposed plastic bag that was filled with cards. I pulled one out and it was a congratulatory card for my parents’ wedding; other cards were responses to the wedding invitation. Okay, maybe what I remembered finding was this bag of cards and not a list of names. I started digging through the cards and asking Mom who people were for names I didn’t recognize. I soon found a card from a Mrs. Dennis O’Leary who lived in Burlingame. Bingo! When I spoke to another of my father’s cousins a few months ago, she mentioned visiting “some O’Leary cousins in Burlingame.” I set that card aside and kept digging through the bag. A few more cards came out that my mom identified as “someone your dad invited” and I set those aside too. Towards the bottom of the bag I pulled out several sheets of paper. A-ha! I’d found it, the invitation list I had remembered seeing a few years ago. The reason my mom didn’t remember it was because it wasn’t the list of everyone invited to their wedding, but the list that Nana had given her for Dad’s side of the family! Woo hoo! This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. There were actually two versions of the list – one that Nana had written out by hand (that also had hand written notes by my mother and someone else – either my father or his older brother from the handwriting) and one that was typed up. There were also a couple of other, shorter lists, but those names were mostly family friends.

I scanned over the list and noted the first page was mostly names I knew – Nana’s brother and sisters and their families and a couple of family friends. Page two had a couple of interesting names – Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford and Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford. These should be Ellen’s sons, Nana’s first cousins. I also had the address for Mrs. Catherine Dwyer who was not a relative from my mother’s side of the family, but a cousin of Nana’s. Three names of people I knew to be Nana’s cousins, complete with addresses for 1965. Woo hoo a place to start searching!

The handwritten list is 4 pages long with about fifty names written on it, about half of whom I recognize. The other half I’ll have to figure out with my parents and then start digging on the names that we can’t readily identify. I did get a start on the three names and addresses I had and think I have found about two dozen O’Leary relatives who are about my parents ages or younger. I’ve also done some preliminary searching on Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney and may have some interesting information there too.  More on these items in another post!

Muddling through the Mullanes

After a recent lull in my researching, I decided to focus a little more energy on the family tree. I've gotten to a bit of a sticking point on the Murray branch, so I thought I'd look into the Mullanes. I don't have a lot of definitive information about the Mullane branch of the family tree. I know my great grandmother's name was Mary Josephine Mullane and she married my great grandfather Marshall Edward Murray sometime prior to 1914 when my grandfather Edward was born. I also know she had at least two brothers, Phillip and Patrick, as they were mentioned in her death notice in the San Francisco Chronicle. Finally, Mary Mullane's mother's maiden name was Manning.

After that, things get confusing. The only Mary Josephine Mullane I have been able to find to date lived on Belcher Street in the late 1890s/early 1900s. This Mary Mullane, however, is married to a Denis Edward Hayes in the 1900 and 1910 censuses. If this is the right Mary Mullane, then in 1900 she was living with her husband and two brothers, Joseph and Patrick, and in 1910 she and Mr. Hayes are living with another brother, John. Through the San Francisco city directories, I have also found a Timothy, Thomas, Phillip, and Edward Mullane living at the same address on Belcher.

Now, the first rule of genealogy is not to assume anything. Documentation is crucial to correctly identifying the correct family members. However, with the lack of solid information, I needed to start somewhere and decided to see what I could find on the Belcher Street Mullanes. I left Mary alone since I've already been tearing my hair out trying to figure out if she is indeed the correct Mary Mullane and focused on what I am assuming are the brothers.

From what I've found so far, the Mullanes had a rough time of it in the early 20th century. Patrick Mullane married a woman named Ella Mary (last name unknown) and in about 1907 they had a daughter Myrtle. Myrtle only appears in the 1910 census though. When Patrick and Ella show up again in 1920, there is no sign of Myrtle. Since she would have been about 13 in 1920, I decided to take a look at the California Death Index for 1905-1929. There's a Myrtle Mullane who died in 1916 at age 9. From what I can tell so far, Patrick and Ella had no other children. Phillip Mullane married a Mary Greeley in 1902 and they had at least 4 children. In the 1910 cenus, they have two sons Edward and Clayton, but according to the census record Mary had given birth to three children. By the 1920 census Phillip and Mary show up, but with only one son and his name is Leonard, age 7. Since Edward and Clayton would have been 16 and 12 in 1920, I looked for them in the CA Death Index, and found an Edward, age 13, who died in 1917. I didn't find a Clayton Mullane, but I did find a Phillip C Mullane, age 9, who also died in 1917. I'd have to order the death certificate to be certain that Phillip C Mullane and Clayton Mullane are the same person, but their ages are similar and Phillip C Mullane died in San Francisco. As for the fourth unknown child indicated in the 1910 census, I found a birth notice for a daughter born to a Phillip Mullane in 1905 in the San Francisco Call, but couldn't find any death record that might correspond to a girl born in 1905 who died before 1910. If these are the Patrick and Phillip Mullane identified in my great grandmother's death notice, then they had a really tough time.

John Mullane died in 1911, based on a death notice I found in the San Francisco Call. That death notice indicated brother Thomas had predeceased him, probably in 1910 (again referencing the CA Death Index.) From what I can tell neither married. I haven't found much on Joseph and Timothy Mullane yet, which leaves Edward. Edward married a woman named Margaret Shanahan (I think) in about 1908. They had three sons, Edward (b 1909), John (b 1911), and Raymond (b 1914.) This was a record I was most interested to find. Recently, one of my father's Coleman cousins contacted me as she is also doing research on the family tree. In comparing notes, she mentioned that she had known one of my father's Mullane cousins in high school. Based on the information she gave me, I believe this cousin is a descendant of the elder Edward Mullane.

I'm still waiting on Mary Mullane's death certificate, which I'm hoping will list her parents' names and help me sort out all of this muddled mess, but based on the bits of information I've found, I do feel I'm on the right track. Hopefully I'll have similar luck to what occurred with the Murrays and the missing 1880 census and I have identified the right family with out all the details filled in.

Second and Third Field Trips

As summer rolled in, I found myself spending less time digging into the family history than I did during the winter and spring.  I have done some poking around here and there, but haven't turned up a whole lot of new information that has any definitiveness to it.  But that doesn't mean I haven't kept poking around at things either and some of the research I've needed to do required access to records not accessible on line, which definitely slows down the process.

However, I did get a chance to make a couple of field trips during the month of July.  The first was a fortunate happenstance when my cousin invited the family over for her daughter's second birthday.  Since this is the cousin who lives a block from where our great great grandparents lived from 1877-1890, I made a special point to bring my camera and planned to take a quick stroll down the street.  Unfortunately, I forgot to put the battery back in my camera after I had taken it out to charge it!  Thankfully, my mother had her iPhone with her, so I was able to borrow it when we took a stroll down the street.

Numbers 2 & 4 Harris Place,
the approximate location
of  John & Bridget Murray's home from 1877 -1890

The house my great great grandparents lived in is no longer there, but I was able to take a picture of the houses that are on the site now.  John and Bridget Murray and their family lived at 6 Harry Place, so I took pictures of the flats that are at 2 & 4 Harris Place and 8 & 10 Harris Place.

1815 Union Street - location of John Murray's last place of employment

John Murray worked at the Occidental Laundry for most of his life in San Francisco, but the only address I had for the laundry was "Filbert between Gough and Octavia", so I wasn't able to take a picture of that (the block is mostly residential now, with a couple mom & pop type storefronts.)  I did have an address for the last location that John worked and it was also within a short walking distance on Union Street, so I strolled up there to take a look at what is there now.  The building looks to have been remodeled considerably since 1890, but the storefront looks like it might be from the original building. The original building probably looked something like the yellow one to the right in the picture.

My next field trip came at the end of July when Mom and I trekked up to Holy Cross cemetery to see if we could find Marshall and Mary Murray, my great grandparents.  Mom was also going to show me where some of the relatives on her side were buried that I couldn't find on my previous trip.

My Theler great great grandparents

On my initial trip to Holy Cross in April, I had located the approximate location for my great great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray and her daughter Nellie and, based on the notes from my mother, they were buried in the same section as my Theler great great grandparents.  Mom and I headed up there first, and Mom realized that she had mismarked her map. The Thelers weren't in Section M, but in Section K which is down the hill.  That explains why I couldn't find them on my first trip!

Joseph & Maggie Kenny, my great grandparents

After finding the Thelers, Mom and I headed over to Section V to try and find Marshall and Mary.  As I mentioned before, the numbering makes no sense (on the rare occaisions when we could actually find numbers on the headstones) and after traipsing back and forth over the whole section, we couldn't locate their grave.  We decided we'd ask at the office for some more information, but before we went back down to the office, we went over to Section U to find my Kenny great grandparents.  We located them fairly quickly and hopped in the car to go back to the office, only to discover that a funeral procession was pulling in.  We decided to skip the office for now and plan for another trip.

142 Bosworth St. where my
Coleman great grandparents lived

14 Marsily St. where my Coleman
great grandparents lived when my
grandmother was born in 1914

Once we left Holy Cross, Mom and I drove up to San Francisco to find the house Nana grew up in on Bosworth Street.  We found it quickly and when we got out of the car to walk around the neighborhood a little bit, I noticed that the house was on the corner of Bosworth and Marsily St.  The Colemans lived on Marsily Street before they moved to New Jersey, so Mom and I walked up the street and took a look at that house also.  It looked to be fairly original to what the house probably looked like in the early 1900s when my Coleman ancestors lived there.

While we were walking around the neighborhood, my mother told me a story I'd never heard before.  Apparently my father's oldest brother fell out of the first floor window and severely broke his leg when he was about 2 years old.  When we got home, my father elaborated on the story some what -- the owner of the grocery store saw that my uncle was about to fall and ran across to try to catch him.  If I'd known that part of the story, I would have taken a picture of the small grocery store that is still across the street!