Growing up I spent a lot
of time at my maternal grandparents' house, which had a large room downstairs
off the garage. When my mother was
growing up, this room belonged to her two brothers, but I knew it as the family
room where Grandma kept a lot of the toys for her many grandchildren. When my grandparents converted it from a
bedroom to a family room, they hung a variety of pictures on the wall. Most of the pictures were early photographs
of their parents and grandparents. I
never really knew who was who in those pictures, but I always knew they were
family and the stories related to the various people pictured.
After my grandparents and
my grandaunt Elise (my grandfather Dwyer's sister) passed away, my mother's
older brother and cousin started going through the family photo albums and
scanning pictures for the rest of the family to share. So over the years I've acquired copies of
pictures of my grandparents as children (though mostly of my grandfather), my
mother and her siblings throughout the years, and so forth and so on. There are lots and lots of pictures of the
Dwyer side of my family.
The Murray side, however,
is a completely different scenario. For
most of my life I've only ever seen about a dozen photographs of anyone on my
father's side of the family that were taken before my parents were
married. There are a couple of pictures
of my dad in high school, a few more from when he was in the army, a picture of
Nana and Grandpa Murray taken when my uncle Ed was ordained a priest, another
of my father and three of his four brothers taken when my dad was about five,
and one or two of my father’s brother Dan after a hunting trip. That’s it. The Dwyer family was big on photography. The Murray family, not so much, and for all I knew there were no
other photographs.
At this point in the story, it has become necessary to
talk about living people. When I
started this blog, I decided not to name any living people, however the
narrative starts getting confusing if I keep referring to several people as
“cousin.” For this reason, I will be
using aliases when referring to living relatives as I continue the story.
About five years ago,
however, my father's cousin Letty sent some pictures to Uncle Eddie. He asked one of my cousins to duplicate them
for the rest of the family, and suddenly I had about a half dozen new
photographs. They look to have been
taken in about 1942, based on the one shot with my father in it. There are two pictures that are particularly
good. The first is of Nana and Grandpa
Murray who are in their late 20s and standing arm in arm in front of the summer
rental house they were staying in. The
second photo is of my great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary Coleman with Grandpa
Murray, my father, and his two older brothers Ed and Dan. Lizzie is wearing a hat in the picture,
which makes it difficult to see her face, but it’s nice to see a picture of my
grandfather as a young man and my father sucking his thumb!
 |
Lizzie O'Leary & Daniel
Coleman (seated)
on their wedding
day in 1904 |
These new found photos are
precious to me, and I have the two I mentioned framed and hanging on my living
room wall. Then about two months ago,
my father's cousin Cici, with whom I have been corresponding about my
Coleman/O'Leary research, sent me a scanned file of a photograph of Lizzie
O'Leary and Daniel Coleman on their wedding day! Holy smokes! There are
more photographs!
 |
| Lizzie O'Leary on her wedding day |
When I told her I had
received the photo with out any problems, she sent me several more. I have also been in contact with Letty about
my research and she too sent me some photos, in this case, hard copies. Some of the pictures I received from Letty
were duplicates of the ones I received from Cici, but all told, I now had about
a dozen photographs from about 1900-1920 of my Coleman relatives! Wow!
 |
Lizzie O'Leary Coleman
at her house in Bernal Heights
|
Granted, photography has
only been around for a little over 150 years and mass-produced cameras weren't
readily available until the end of the 19th century, but it is
amazing what having a photograph of someone can inspire. The questions about who the person was, what
did she do for a living, what was life like for him, and so much more just
multiply when you have an image of a relative long past. Having these few family photographs further
cements that these people existed and had lives and hopes and dreams like we all
do and that they aren't just stories of forgotten ghosts.
 |
The Colemans on board ship circa 1920
Uncle Dan, Lizzie,
Aunt Margaret (on Lizzie's lap),
Daniel, and Nana |
 |
Aunt Eileen & Uncle Dan
I'm guessing their
First Communion
circa 1915 |
