Good Guessing

Just about a year ago, I found a death record for my great great grandfather John Murray. He died in November 1890 and the record I found of his death in the Calvary Cemetery records at sfgenealogy.com indicated his funeral was held at “S.B.” parish. Based on where the family lived in 1890 and taking a look at the “S.B.” Catholic churches in the San Francisco City Directory for 1890 I surmised that he was most likely buried out of St. Bridget’s (aka St. Bridgid’s) church at Van Ness and Broadway.

When I started my searching in early 2012, I found my great great grandparents living at “the corner of Leavenworth and Broadway” and did a Google search of Catholic churches near Leavenworth and Broadway to see if I could guess which would be the closest parish, and thus the most likely location where they may have gotten married. I doubted they were married at St. Peter & Paul’s in the heavily Italian North Beach, so thought perhaps Old St. Mary’s would be a good bet.

I didn’t follow up on those possibilities as I only had an approximate time frame for when they would have been married and with an uncertain date and an uncertain parish, well, that was too vague to track down. A couple of weeks ago, I hit yet another site with old newspapers digitized with the plan to cancel my subscription as I never used it. Before I did, though, I checked to see what newspapers they had. Sometime in the intervening months between when I subscribed to the site and my return to cancel the subscription, they had added copies of the San Francisco Bulletin from 1855-1891.  A new source to search!

I ran the usual surnames through the search engine and got a few different hits – including one in the July 20, 1868 edition. In the tiniest of print there was a short list of recent marriages including “In this city, July 19, at St. Bridget’s Church, by the Rev. J.P. Callaghan, John Murray to Bridget McDonough.”  Well what do you know?! It hadn’t occurred to me when looking for churches near John and Bridget to think of ones that had since closed! Duh! And even after finding out where John had been buried from, I didn’t put it all together.

So what does this get me? Well, besides the obvious lead to get information on the marriage of my great great grandparents, I’m guessing it is a safe bet that John and Bridget’s children were all baptized at St. Bridget’s also. Of course, this means I need to access the old records from St. Bridget’s. From what I’ve found, the original documents from St. Bridget’s are now at St. Vincent de Paul parish in San Francisco and the Archives for the Archdiocese of San Francisco are located at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park. The archives will probably be the easier option for searching since the only birthdate of their six children I have any confidence in is for my great grandfather Marshall which means guessing on when they were baptized. That will have to be reserved for another field trip though, as the hours of access to the archives are pretty limited.

The Things You Find

One of the fun aspects about looking for historical records of my family is stumbling on random bits of history. After finding the mortuary records for several family members, I went looking for copies of their death notices in the newspaper archives.

Finding the birth, marriage, death notice section of the paper can sometimes be tricky when scanning the online images, so I'll often start at the first or second image and scroll through the pages to find what I'm looking for. In the process I've gotten a glimpse of various news stories, ads, and other items. Every so often I stumble on something fun or interesting -- a local crime, a scandalous divorce. In my recent perusings, I was scrolling through copies of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1905 and 1912. In the 1905 paper, I happened to stop on the sports page and notice the tiny box scores for the major leagues. In 1905, there was no Major League Baseball west of St. Louis, so most of the local sports coverage was college and minor league baseball. Still, I was curious how my now San Francisco Giants, then in New York, had done. I zoomed in on the tiny box score to see the Giants had beaten St. Louis 8-1. The only other bit included in the box score was the pitching battery. The winning pitcher in that game was legendary Giants Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson. I had to smile that of all the times I decided to stop and check the box scores I had stumbled on a game by one of the most prominent pitchers in baseball history.

The next interesting thing that I stumbled on was in 1912. Again I was just scrolling through the pages when a boldfaced "Titanic" caught my eye. I paused expecting to see some kind of outlandish advertisement. I was partly correct. It turns out I had stumbled on an ad for the never to happen return trip of the Titanic sailing out of New York. Having the perspective of 100 years of hindsight, I wondered what happened to the folks who had booked passage on that return trip. What were their thoughts on being on the other side of such a historic event.

There have been other things like this that I've stumbled upon perusing old newspapers and while right now my focus is on finding specific information, I do think I need to plan some time to go back and read some of those old papers in their entirety. The history lessons of my school years was so much remembering dates and places and names for exams that the day to day perspective of events got filtered out. Following my family tree through history is similar in some ways to reading a novel of historical fiction. It has presented history in a new light and made it all the more real than dry text books and lectures ever could.

Maybe It's Mollie

I've still been a bit lax this year in my researching. I've spent more time organizing and making lists than doing any actual digging, but I have done some minor searching here and there looking for more information on the people I've already identified in the family tree.

One of the mysteries I've been trying to solve is what happened to my great grandfather Marshall's siblings. I found his missing sibling identified in the 1900 Census -- Lizzie -- earlier this year in old cemetery records for Calvary Cemetery, and I know his younger sister Nellie died in childbirth in 1909. That left figuring out what happened to his older brother John Henry, his younger brother Joseph, and his older sister Mary (aka Mollie.) I know Joseph is alive as late as 1920 since he is living with Marshall in the 1920 census. I know John Henry is alive as late as 1918 as his is a witness to Marshall's marriage to Mary Mullane. The best information I had on Mollie is her name appearing in Nellie's death notice in 1909. The only direct record I had, however, was when she appeared in the 1900 Census with the rest of her family.

After 1900, I've had a heck of a time finding what happened to Mollie. I don't know what she did for a living, so any possible leads in the city directories are just guesses. If she got married, I would need to know her husband's name to find her. In Nellie's death notice in 1909, she's referenced as Nellie's sister, Mollie Murray. Mollie was born in 1870, which would make her 39 in 1909, so my best guess based on that information was that she had never married. Still, I couldn't find any record that I could confirm was my Mollie (Mary) Murray.

I've recently spent some time going back to resources that I was aware of, but hadn't really utilized much. There are several sources of historical mortuary records available online and I decided to spend a bit of time running through them at sfgenealogy.com and familysearch.org. Mostly I was entering surnames of family members and seeing if anyone turned up in the records. I found a bunch of the Mullanes on the SF Genealogy site that matched up with records I'd already found, but didn't have much luck with any of the other surnames. Over at FamilySearch, however, I got a hit on Murray.

The record indicated the father's name was John Murray, so I looked over to see who the child was. Her name was Mollie Johnson and she died on February 25, 1917. Well, that's interesting. I clicked on the record and the attached image from the J.S. Godeau Funeral Records had details on the funeral and, quite helpfully, a copy of the death notice in the paper. I took a look at the record and the very brief death notice indicated that Mollie was the "beloved wife of Charles Johnson and sister of John, Joe, and Edward Murray."  Now, according to this record, Mollie was 38 years old, but based on the census records I have, Mollie should have been 46 or 47 years old in February 1917. Considering the liberties most of the Murrays took with their ages, I'm not going to discount this being the correct Mollie because of her age. Her father's name is correct as are the names of her three brothers. It would have been more helpful if my great grandfather had been referred to by his first name Marshall rather than his middle name Edward, but since he went by both, I'm not going to discount that bit either.

The funeral record indicated she died at home in Oakland and that the cause of death was pending an inquest. I would imagine that record would be found in the Alameda county records and with a death date and a married last name I can also check the state death records and try to obtain a copy of her death certificate. She's buried at Holy Cross like so many other family members, but it doesn't appear as if her husband Charles was buried with her. There is a Charles Johnson buried somewhat near her with a Mary Johnson, so it's possible he remarried and wound up buried with his second wife.  The name is a bit too common to be certain though.

I've done a little bit of searching on Charles Johnson to see if I can find a marriage record for he and Mollie, but so far no luck. I would imagine they got married in San Francisco or Oakland sometime between 1909 and 1917 based on the information I have so far, but nothing's turned up in my usual search locations as yet.

While I'm not 100% certain that I've found "my" Mollie, I again have a pretty good probability.

A Slow Year for Research

As you may have noticed from the paucity of posts this year, I’ve been a bit lax in my research in recent months. I’ve spent some time cleaning out my database and better organizing my files, but I’ve not spent a whole lot of time on searching for new records and documents.

That’s not to say I haven’t done any research or found new documents. After Uncle Eddie died last December, I wound up with some records that had been in his possession. Uncle Eddie (my father’s eldest brother) had been the executor for Aunt Eileen’s estate. Aunt Eileen was my grandmother’s oldest sister and she and Uncle Bill had no children, so her estate was left to her nieces and nephews. In the documents Uncle Eddie had, there was a copy of her will which listed her beneficiaries and contained addresses for them as of her death in 1998. Nothing in those documents was hugely revealing, though it was helpful in locating some past addresses of relatives.

The more interesting documents I received were ones that were indirectly related to Eileen’s estate. The key document was a copy of a baptismal record for my great grandmother Lizzie O’Leary Coleman. It wasn’t an original record of her baptism, but one that was provided by the parish in 1938. This record indicates that Lizzie was baptized in the parish of Ovens in the Diocese of Cork. My earlier discoveries had put her baptism in the parish of Ballinhassig, but as I had spent time looking for baptismal records I had uncovered a map of the various Catholic parishes in Ireland and knew that the parish of Ovens (or Ovens & Aglis) wasn’t far from Ballinhassig and Ballincollig parishes. I’m guessing that in the intervening years since my great grandmother was baptized (in 1873) and the record was provided (in 1938) the parishes merged.

This discovery helped reinforce my earlier discovery of Jeremiah O’Leary’s baptism in the Ovens and Aglis parish in 1825. While I’m not 100% certain that the record I found for Jeremiah is that of my great great grandfather, the odds are favorable.

Lizzie’s baptismal record matches up with the record I found on line – her parents are Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary Looney and her godparents are Timothy Riordan and Mary Looney. I’ve yet to figure out who the second Mary Looney is, but that’s a trail to follow. The one additional item I learned is the name of the priest who baptized her – Reverend Carson Murphy. Whether these clues lead to any other information remains to be seen.

I also wound up with a lot of information on Uncle Bill’s side of the family as his family records were among Aunt Eileen’s papers. While the Doheneys are only relatives by marriage, it’s interesting information to have and may prove useful further on down the line as my research continues.

I also finally received a copy of my great grandmother Mary Mullane Murray’s death certificate. It confirmed that I have been tracking the correct Mullane family from San Francisco over the last year and a half. Mary’s parents are listed as Mary Manning and Timothy Mullane, which are the names I had found in the census, city directories, and newspapers. It also confirms my thought that Mary was less than honest on her marriage license application! Her death certificate indicates that Timothy Mullane was born in England, which conflicts with the census information I found showing him born in Ireland. Seeing how this information would have been provided by my great grandfather Marshall Murray, I suspect it was his best guess. Nonetheless, it may be another clue on places to search.

According to her death certificate, Mary died of chronic myocarditis brought on by high blood pressure. She also had a chronic ventral hernia and something illegible due to atrophy of her abdominal muscles. All in all sounds like a heart condition to me.

I’ve also dug around and believe I’ve found a few more Mullane and O’Leary descendants that are still living in the San Francisco Bay Area where much of the family has remained over the past 150 years. I’m still working out some verifications and double checking the records, but there looks to be quite a few distant cousins in the area.

So while I’ve not been as diligent in my research this year as I was last year, I have still made some strides in finding out where my family came from and where they’ve wound up. Hopefully as the autumn progresses I will find a bit more time to follow up on some of the leads I’ve discovered.

Uncovering a Family Scandal!

Okay, maybe it’s not too terribly scandalous in 2013, but for the early 1900s, it sure could be! A large part of my research over the past year has been trying to figure out the story of my great grandmother Mary Mullane. The only Mary Mullane living in San Francisco between 1871 (when she was born) and 1914 (when my grandfather was born) that I could find was married to a Dennis Edward Hayes in 1900 and as of the 1910 Census, Mary Mullane and Edward Hayes were still married. As late as April, 1911, when her brother John died, she is known as Mrs. Mary Hayes.
 
That made the time line for what little I knew about my great grandmother very odd. According to family lore, my grandfather, Edward Murray, had an older sister who died. Grandpa Murray was born in May 1914. If Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes in 1911, then how on earth could she be married to my great grandfather Marshall Murray and have had two children by May 1914? Turns out the answer is, they weren’t married.

Gasp! A family scandal!

In looking for family records, I have often searched online editions of historical newspapers. Mostly, it has been the San Francisco Call which is available free of charge through the Library of Congress for the years 1890-1913 under it’s various names over the years. I hadn’t been able to find a record of a marriage license being issued for Marshall Murray and Mary Mullane, which was very frustrating. Recently, through the subscription-site Newspapers.com, I was able to access issues of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1865-1923. Being able to do a search of newspapers is a great help when you don’t have a specific date for information. When I logged in to Newspapers.com, I called up the Chronicle and did a usual run of family names to see if I got any hits on people I’ve been researching. One of the first names I entered was Marshall Murray. When that didn’t turn up any hits, I tried Edward Murray which both my grandfather and great grandfather used. One of the records to turn up was the September 6, 1918 issue on the Birth/Marriage/Death notice page. I took a look at the page and saw under the list of names of people who had marriage certificates issued in Oakland “Edward Murray, 42 and Mary Hayes 38, both of San Francisco.” Well, the names are right, the ages are about right, but September, 1918 is nearly four and a half years after Grandpa Murray was born!

I sent off for a copy of the marriage certificate and waited to see if these were my great grandparents. If, as I suspected, they were, I would likely now have the names of Mary Mullane’s parents and know what the heck happened to Edward Hayes. Well, that’s not exactly what happened.

When the copy of the marriage certificate arrived, there were two pages loaded with information, but not all of it made sense. The groom is listed as Edward Murray, a Teamster, born in California, age 42, son of J. Murray and Bridget McDonough both born in Ireland, and that he is single and this is his first marriage. Other than the age being different by 2 years, that all matched what I knew about my great grandfather. The bride is listed as Mary Hayes, a domestic servant, born in California, age 38. Again that made sense, though in her case the age is off by 9 years. Since all the records I’ve found for the Murrays have had wildly variable ages, I set that point aside. It was the next bits of information about Mary Hayes that weren’t adding up. She also said she was single and that this was her first marriage. Huh? Then it goes on to list her parents as John Hayes and Mary Manning, both from Ireland. Double huh?

I know from the census records that Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes, so how could this be her first marriage? Her mother’s name of Mary Manning matched up with other items I’ve found, but who on earth is John Hayes? She is listed as Mary Mullane on my grandfather's birth certificate, so I suspect Mary was being somewhat disingenuous on the marriage license paperwork!

The other interesting bit on the marriage license is that Marshall and Mary were married by a justice of the peace and not in the Catholic Church as the family had always assumed. If she’d been married before, then not getting married in the Church, especially if she’d been divorced, makes sense.

Okay, so what happened?

One of the other items I’ve been tracing is who is the unnamed Murray buried with my great great grandmother Bridget. The records from Holy Cross say that person was buried on March 16, 1912. According to the California Death Index for 1905-1929 for fetal deaths, there is an unnamed Murray child who died on March 15, 1912 in San Francisco. I’ve yet to request a copy of that death certificate, but it would seem likely that is the unknown sister to my grandfather. I have also found a record for a Dennis E. Hayes in the 1940 Census who is about the right age as the Edward Hayes I found married to Mary Mullane in 1900 and 1910. In the 1940 Census, he is listed as divorced, and he is a patient at the Napa State Hospital and was there in 1935. I’ve yet to find any other record of him between 1910 and 1940.

That’s a lot of puzzle pieces, but fitting them together is the trick. The 1910 Census record was recorded on April 23, 1910. At that point Mary Mullane had been married to Dennis Edward Hayes for 10 years and Mary’s brother John was living with them. John died April 15, 1911, and Mary appears as Mrs. M. Hayes in his death notice. Assuming the unnamed child that was born and died in 1912 was the child of my great grandparents, does that mean Mary Mullane ran off with Marshall Murray? Did Edward Hayes abandon Mary? Assuming the Dennis Edward Hayes I found in 1940 is the same one that was married to Mary, when did they officially divorce? Under what circumstances could a woman file for divorce in 1911-1918? Did she file for divorce? Were they actually divorced? Why is Edward Hayes at the Napa State Hospital? When was he admitted to the hospital?

As always, the more answers I find, the more questions I uncover. I’m going to have to spend some time trying to work out this puzzle. I did get one bonus piece of information with this marriage license. The witness to Marshall and Mary’s wedding was John Henry Murray, Marshall’s older brother. It lists him as a resident of the city and county of San Francisco, so I at least have some record of him beyond his being mentioned in his sister Nellie’s death notice in 1909. Maybe I can pin him down soon.

Kiss Me I'm Irish!

I haven't done much research since the holidays, so haven't had much to share here for a bit. With St. Patrick's Day upon us, I thought I'd do a quick look to see just how Irish I am. To date, none of my research on my paternal side has countered the belief that I am 100% Irish on that side. I believe I've identified all eight of my great great grandparents and all eight were born in Ireland.

On my maternal side, I have to go back an extra generation to my 3x great grandparents to find all the countries of origin. On that side, thanks to the research done by my uncle, we know that thirteen of my sixteen great great great grandparents were born in Ireland. I have two 3x great grandparents who were born in Germany and one who was born in Quebec, Canada. My French Canadian great great great grandfather Joseph Belduke married Mary Kiely who was born in Ireland. This makes my great great grandmother Emily Belduke half Irish and half French Canadian. (Getting all of the Quebecois back to France goes much further back than the rest of my ancestors as my uncle has manged to trace the Beldukes back to the early 17th Century. My 8x great grandfather Louis Bolduc was the first born on the North American continent in 1669!)

Add up the number of Irish (and half-Irish) great great grandparents on both sides of the family, and the total is 14.5 of 16. That makes me 90.63% Irish, 6.25% German, and 3.13% French Canadian. There's a scene in the movie "Stripes" where Bill Murray's character says "We're Americans... You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. ... We're mutts." And it's pretty much true -- Americans can trace their ancestry back to every corner of the world. So I have to admit, I'm pretty amazed that after having ancestors living in the United States for at least 100 years, that I am still overwhelmingly Irish American.

Between what my uncle has uncovered on my maternal side and what I have uncovered on my paternal side, I am able to trace my family back to seven of the 32 counties of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) -- Galway, Sligo, Cork, Tipperary, Tyrone, Down, and Roscommon. Those counties cover the North, West, and South points of the island and three of the four provinces. I still need to know where the Mullanes and Mannings originated and I'm not sure if my uncle has figured out where the Kennys are from (I don't have it in my records!)

More O'Learys?

Back in September, I started looking through the Irish Census records and the church records that are available on line for County Cork to start piecing together some of the O’Leary branch of the family tree. I started first looking for my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. When I found them in the 1901 Irish Census, I culled the information available and added it to my database. Similarly, when I combed through the baptismal records looking for my great grandmother Lizzie O’Leary and her siblings, I added the information found there to my files.

Those searches gave me approximate birth years for my great great grandparents and possible aunts and uncles for my great grandmother. Using that information, I went back to the Irish Genealogy site that has the pre-1900 church records for Counties Cork, Kerry, and Carlow to see if I could track down more information on that group of ancestors. I started with Jeremiah O’Leary. According to the 1901 Census, he was 76 years old which means he was born in about 1825. I plugged his name and approximate birth year into the search engine for the Cork & Ross diocese church records, and up popped 34 baptismal records. Not all were for a child named Jeremiah O’Leary, so I immediately eliminated them. That left me with five possibilities, only one of which was in Ballinhassig (the parish where my great grandmother and her siblings were baptized.) The other parishes I found were Kilmurry, Ovens & Aglis, and Cork South Parish. I looked at the record for the Jeremiah (Jerry) O’Leary who was baptized in the Ballinhassig parish first. His parents’ names were Timothy O’Leary and Joney Neville, so I used that information to see if I could find any siblings that matched up with the names I had found as godparents to my great grandmother and her siblings. I didn’t find any certain siblings. Hmmm. If my guess that the godparents for my great grandmother and her siblings were aunts and uncles, I needed to find a Patrick and Edmund O’Leary. Mary O’Leary was another possibility, but as she and Edmund were both godparents of my great grandmother’s brother (also named Edmund) I suspect Mary is Edmund’s wife.

What I needed was a map. While I’ve visited Ireland, I am not familiar enough with the geography beyond a general knowledge of where the various counties are. The parishes (both civil and religious) and towns are harder to identify without a map. Unfortunately, the Irish Genealogy site doesn’t have a map of the various parishes, so I had to go search for one. I was able to find a variety of maps at the Irish Times. It would be easier to work out which parishes border each other if the Catholic parishes map weren’t broken into three regions, but from what I could work out Ballinhassig parish is bordered by Ballincollig, Innishannon, Clountead, Douglas and Carrigaline parishes. None of those turned up in my search for Jeremiah, but I did notice the parish Ovens located next to Ballincollig. I had a Jeremiah O’Leary baptized in the parish of Ovens & Aglis in my search, that seemed like a good one to check out, so I clicked on his record. His parents were John O’Leary and Joan Mulcahy. I searched again using those options and found an Edmund O’Leary whose parents were named John O’Leary and Joannah Mulcahy who was baptized in the Ovens & Aglis parish in 1829. Hmmm. Joan and Joannah are fairly close, and Edmund O’Leary was one of the godparents I found.

While I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, it’s a strong possibility, so I noted down all the information in both baptismal records for Jeremiah and Edmund. I’ll have to do some more digging to see if I can confirm this find, which will definitely be challenging without census records, but hopefully some of the census alternates will prove helpful.

I had no luck searching for a Patrick O’Leary who was about the same age as my great great grandfather Jeremiah. There were several, but none with the same parents or in the same parish.  Perhaps Patrick was a cousin instead of a brother or maybe the record is missing. I don’t have enough information to know either way yet.

Having had reasonable luck with Jeremiah, I turned to my great great grandmother Mary O’Looney.  According to the 1901 census, she was 58 years old which would have her born in about 1843. Nothing turned up with that information, so I looked at the 1911 Census record. The Mary O’Leary I found there is a 73 year old widow which would have her born in about 1838. I tried that date, again no luck. I tried searching with out a date, which gave me many more options and the ability to filter by parish and decade. I found a Mary Looney baptized in February 1835 in Ballinhassig parish. This might be a possibility. Her parents were named Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson.

As I did with Jeremiah, I did a search on those two last names to see if I could come up with any of the suspected siblings. I came up with 6 names – all children of Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson in Ballinhassig parish: Mary Looney (17 Feb 1835), Lidia Luony (24 Jan 1837), Timothy Luony (15 April 1838), Eliza Luony (31 March 1841), Margaret Looney (13 June 1847), and George Looney (30 Nov 1852.)  I had found an Eliza Looney in the baptismal records as the godmother of my great great grandmother’s brother William.

Again, I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, but it is a strong possibility and I’ve noted all of the information I found. I definitely have some digging to do this year to see if I can find any other information that will support these finds.

I’ve yet to do the same kind of searching on the Colemans, but have that on my to do list for this year as well. That to do list is getting longer by the day!

A Couple of Mysteries Solved

Shortly after Christmas, the wonderful folks at SFGenealogy.com updated their Colma Cemetery Index with an index of the removal cards from Calvary Cemetery. Back in the late 1890s, the city of San Francisco stopped burials within the city limits, and so people began being buried at cemeteries in Colma. There was a protracted battle over what to do with the remains left in the various cemeteries in San Francisco, but eventually most were moved to Colma, and those buried at Calvary Cemetery mostly wound up at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery.

Since I knew my great great grandfather John Murray had died before burials had stopped in San Francisco, I thought I’d see if he turned up in the Calvary records. I had found a death notice for a John Murray in November 1890 that I was fairly certain was my great great grandfather, so I plugged in his name and the date I’d found. He popped up immediately, and the attached image indicated that he had been reburied at Holy Cross in June, 1940. That meant he’s not the unnamed Murray I found buried with my great great grandmother Bridget who was buried in 1912. In addition to the date he was reburied at Holy Cross, the record indicated that there was a second family member buried with him. Well that is certainly interesting!

Who was this second person buried with my great great grandfather? The removal record indicated that the original plot at Calvary had been purchased in November, 1875. Using that date, I searched on anyone with the last name of Murray and up popped a record for Lizzie F. Murray. When I looked at the image attached to the record I got a big smile on my face – the record indicated she was the “child of John & Bridget.” Well, that means I’ve found the right John Murray, and now I’d found the missing child. I really hadn’t expected to find out what happened to the unknown sibling of my great grandfather that was indicated in the 1900 census. According to the removal record, Lizzie was three years old when she died in November, 1875. That would have her born about 1872 and, as I suspected, fall between Mollie (Mary) and my great grandfather Marshall.

An added bonus to these newly added records is that Holy Cross allowed the SFGenealogy team to upload the images from the original Calvary registers. Armed with the names and dates for John and Lizzie Murray, I looked for them in the Calvary registers. According to the register Lizzie died from typhoid fever on November 22, 1875 at the age of 3 years and 3 months old. The Holy Cross records indicate she was buried on November 22, so I’m not sure which it is – did Calvary enter the date of burial under “died on” or did the transfer record just assume the “died on” date was the burial date? Still, in the worst case, I’m within a few days of the correct date.

I did the same look up for John Murray, and it indicated he was 50 years old, born in Ireland and died on November 20, 1890 which matched up with the death notice I found in the San Francisco Call. I can’t quite decipher his cause of death as yet, but I suspect it’s cirrhosis of the liver (the first word starts with a “c” and is followed by “of liver”.) Another interesting note for his record indicated to which parish he belonged. Naturally, whoever entered the information just entered “S.B.” which is less than helpful, and I had to go to the San Francisco City Directory for 1890 to see which church it might be. I’m fairly certain that “S.B.” stands for “St. Bridget/Brigid” (the 1890 directory has it listed as St. Bridget’s, but current references call it St. Brigid’s) as that parish was the closest to where John and Bridget Murray lived in 1890.

Lizzie and John were removed to Section H in 1940, but I wasn’t able to find them in the Holy Cross records. Fortunately, the folks at SFGenealogy were able to help me out when I asked why I was having difficulty. Section H is where the mass grave for removals from Calvary is located and thus not everyone buried there was listed in the Holy Cross records.

Now that I know where my great great grandfather is buried and identified the unknown sibling for my great grandfather, I have one puzzle still to work out. Who is the unknown Murray buried with my great great grandmother? The Holy Cross records list a burial date of March 16, 1912. Could this be one of my great grandfather’s siblings? If so, why isn’t the first name listed? I know it’s not his younger brother Joseph since he shows up in the 1920 census, so if it is a sibling it’s either Mollie (Mary) or John Henry. Another possibility is that it’s a child, thus no name, in which case it could be the unknown child of Mary and Marshall Murray. If that’s the case, however, Mary and Marshall would have likely been married by 1911, and the Mary J. Mullane I’ve found (and am fairly certain is the right Mary Mullane) is still married to Dennis Edward Hayes in 1910, so what the heck happened there?!

I’m going to have to cull through the 1905-1929 California Death Index images to see if I can find a death record that corresponds to the date of burial I’ve found at Holy Cross. Hopefully that will help find the missing relative. I'll also have to spend some more time with the Calvary records to see if there's anyone else listed there.

A Year of Searching

Last January, I decided to start researching my paternal ancestors – the Coleman and Murray branches of my family tree. When I started out, I had only the barest of information and a total of 71 names plugged into my family tree. Granted there were a few more people than those 71 that I knew existed. I knew most of my father’s first cousins were married and had children for starters. What I didn’t know was all their names or ages, and so they weren’t immediately added to the tree. I’m still gathering some of that information, but now I’ve got a list of 213 names and a much fuller looking tree.

There is still a lot of information I need to gather on my living relatives, but I know so much more now than I did just a year ago. And I’ve gone from knowing next to nothing about my ancestors, to having a picture of who they were and how they lived. I’ve learned my great grandfather Marshall Murray had five siblings and that both of his parents emigrated from Ireland – his mother from County Sligo and his father from County Galway. While I don’t know much more about my great great grandparents’ families, I do have paths to chase down to see if I can find out more. I do know my great great grandfather John Murray worked as an upholsterer upon arriving in San Francisco in about 1865 and that he met my great great grandmother Bridget McDonough while she was working as a laundress at the same laundry.

I’m still trying to learn more about my great grandfather’s siblings, and that is proving to be a challenge, but if I figured out what happened to one sister over the course of my first year of research, I am optimistic I can find out what happened to the other four siblings.

I’m fairly confident I’ve found my great grandmother Mary Mullane’s family, and while there are many puzzles to work out among the Mullanes I know that my grandfather had a few cousins who lived into adulthood and have children of their own.

On the Coleman/O’Leary side, I was able to find so much information from Ireland that I was stunned. When I began I expected that finding records from Ireland would be much more difficult, but I lucked out considerably by having my ancestors come from County Cork and the availability of some of the church records on line. Those records have given me leads not only on my great grandparents’ siblings, but their parents, aunts, uncles, and (possibly) grandparents (my great great great grandparents!) I’m still trying to verify some of that information, but the start looks promising.

While looking at my family history, I’ve also had to look more at world history. What was happening where my family was living while they were living? How did those events impact their lives? How have familiar places changed over the years since my ancestors walked the same streets I have? I’ve learned quite a bit. I think I’m finally getting the point of all those school assignments I had over the years!

Shortly after I began my search last January, I picked up a new CD by Bruce Springsteen. There were two songs on that CD that keep running through my head as I dig through the past to find out who my family was. The first is called “We Are Alive” and the chorus is:

We are alive
And though our bodies lie
Alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder
And heart to heart 

The song is about many things, but mostly about people who struggled to make a better life for themselves and their families. It rings very true to me, especially when coupled with the second track, “American Land.” That song is about the hope and promise of America and, oddly enough, has a Celtic feel to it. It opens with:

What is this land America, so many travel there
I’m going now while I’m still young my darling meet me there
Wish me luck my lovely, I’ll send for you when I can
And we’ll make our home in the American Land.

 

Thinking about my ancestors who left the only home they’d known to travel thousands of miles away to find a better life knowing that they’d likely never see their home again is amazing to me. I can’t imagine what that would be like. I’ve long joked that my ancestors got it right on the first try – they settled in San Francisco and never left. Over 150 years later, and most of my family is still in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Oh, I’m sure some as yet figured out second, third, and fourth cousins have long since left the area, but between my extended family on my maternal side and the extended family on my paternal family I don’t have to travel far to find family. The idea of moving half a world away never to return is something beyond my comprehension.

 

Learning more about those people and what they went through to make a better life for their family and, ultimately, me is something I am eager to learn. I am their legacy and what does that mean. People I’ve never known yet have informed who I am. Those spirits do rise and stand behind me as I move forward.

 

I can’t wait to see what the next year of searching brings!