Back to Holy Cross

Two trips to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma and I hadn’t been able to find my great grandparents Marshall and Mary Murray. I had been told at the office they were buried in Section V, but I could not find them and trying to figure out the section numbering was beyond frustrating. Then a couple of weeks ago I discovered that the folks at SFGenealogy.com had a searchable database of Holy Cross Cemetery available for 1887-2001. I plugged Marshall and Mary in and up popped their records – in Section U! No wonder I couldn’t find them! I entered in the names of various other family members buried at Holy Cross over the past 100 or so years and they all turned up where I expected them to and I logged the specifics for some where I only had the section noted.

My great grand parents
Marshall and Mary Murray

So I headed back up to Holy Cross with a list of names and gravesites to find. I knew that my Kenny great grandparents were also in Section U and from the database they were in Row 14, Grave 134. Marshall & Mary were in Row 23, Grave 59. Mom had shown me where the Kennys were on our last visit so I parked near their graves and counted down the aisle until I got to grave 59. Then I made a right turn and counted rows up until I hit row 23. I was only off a couple of markers and there were Marshall and Mary – finally!

Aunt Eileen & Uncle Bill Doheney

My list for section U also included my grandmother’s sister Eileen Coleman Doheney and her husband Bill. They were fairly easy to find right along the road at the top of the section. Aunt Eileen and Uncle Bill are buried with Uncle Bill’s sister Gertrude and mother Annie.

Nana’s aunt Ellen O’Leary Ford and her husband John Joseph Ford are buried in Section V with their daughter Catherine and her husband Edward Ambrose Dwyer. It was a pretty hot day, so I only did a cursory look for the Fords in Section V and will go back to look for them another day.

My father's younger brother
Jackie Murray who died at age 2

Next it was over to the children’s section to look for my father’s younger brother Jackie (John Joseph Murray.) I’d bypassed this section on previous visits since I only had a general section and not a row and grave number. It’s very sad walking through the rows and seeing lives ended so young. I found Jackie’s grave in fairly short order.

My father's second cousin
Mary Catherine Ford

Since the children’s section is close to the newer crypts where my father’s second cousin Mary Catherine Ford was buried, I walked down there too. Mary Catherine was the daughter of Arthur Patrick Ford and died of cancer in 1999 at the age of 58.

I’ve found several other relatives in the on line database and will make another trek up to Colma in the coming months to document their locations. The database was able to clear up a couple of mysteries. Nana had an older brother John who died as a child. I knew it was sometime between the 1910 census (where John appears) and 1918 when Aunt Margaret was born, but didn’t have a specific date. It turns out that John died in 1913 and is buried with his parents. The database also helped confirm a marriage record I’d found for Catherine Ford Dwyer – in Washington DC! No wonder I was having problems finding her husband in San Francisco. I’m not sure if Edward Dwyer died in San Francisco or in the Washington DC area, but at least I’ve got a name and date to help figure it out! Finally, I have a suspicion that my great grandmother’s brother, Arthur O’Leary might have lived in San Francisco as he was mentioned in Ellen O'Leary Ford's death notice. There are several Arthur O’Learys buried at Holy Cross, four who died after Ellen in 1932. Two of those four show up in the CA Death Index from 1940-1997, and one of those two was born outside of the US. I’ll need to do a bit more digging there also, but it’s a place to start.