Well, What Happened to Mollie?

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't been able to get as much done this year as I'm up against a couple of blocks that require access to records that aren't available on-line. I had, however, finally found death notices for three of my great grandfather Marshall Murray's siblings that I have been trying to find for the better part of the last two and a half years. Several records helped me confirm that Marshall's older sister Mollie (Mary) had married and was named Mollie Johnson when she died in 1917. I sent off for her death certificate as well as those of her two brothers, Joseph and John Henry, to see what more I could learn.

Mollie's death certificate arrived a few days ago and I was stunned to see her cause of death. When I saw the date of 1917, I thought she had possibly been one of the many victims of the flu pandemic of 1917-18. That was not the case. Mollie was hit by a Key Route train and died from a fractured skull! That meant that all three of my Murray great grandaunts died tragically. Lizzie Murray was the first to die of typhoid at age 3 in 1875, Nellie (Ella) Murray Nelson died in childbirth in 1909, now Mollie was hit by a train in 1917!

Clipping from San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, February 26, 1917
newspapers.com

I figured a train fatality would be newsworthy, so I went to check out the available on line newspaper sites to see what I could turn up. The Oakland Tribune isn't available on line for the year 1917, but the San Francisco Chronicle is and I was able to find a small note at the bottom of page 1. When I get my next off-line opportunity, I'll have to add checking out the Oakland Tribune microfilm to see if there is more to the story than what was printed in the Chronicle.

The thing I found most interesting is the note that "the dead woman appeared to be about 45 years old." Mollie was 46 when she died, but when she married Charles Johnson Mollie subtracted 14 years from her age. Her death notice and death certificate show her as 37 years old, or 9 years younger than she actually was. So either she looked her age or the doctors estimated her age before she was identified.

I did a quick look at Google Maps to identify the intersection of the accident and cross checked it against the address I had for Mollie when she died. It looks like she was killed crossing the street on her way home as the intersection of Lowell Street and Stanford Avenue in Oakland is just a few hundred feet from where Mollie and Charles lived at 986 Stanford Avenue (assuming, of course, that house numbering hasn't changed in the intervening century.)

I'm still waiting on the death certificates for Joseph and John Henry.  Hopefully they're not quite as dramatic!

Found Siblings

It's been a while since my last update. That's largely due to needing to do some off-line, in-person research. I'm not at a brick wall exactly, but at a barrier because there's information I need to go further and I have to go to where the information may be rather than having it instantly available at the tip of my keyboard. With a full-time job, that means in person research is limited to weekends and holidays for the most part, and, naturally, a lot of the places I need to access aren't open on weekends and holidays. I'll have to do some vacation planning to get to some of the information I need.

Still, I've managed to make some progress on a couple of puzzle pieces. You'll remember back in November I stumbled on a death record that I thought might be my great grandfather's older sister Mary (Mollie) in a database of funeral home records. Her age was off by quite a bit, but the rest of the information I found matched up with things I already knew. Mollie was married to a fellow named Charles Johnson and died in 1917 and buried at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma. I was fairly confident that I'd found the right person, but wasn't 100% certain. I put the information I'd found in my records and went on searching for more information on Mollie and her husband Charles as well as continuing my on-going search to figure out what happened to my great grandfather's two brothers Joseph and John Henry.

While searching for a marriage notice for Mollie and Charles, I managed to stumble on a death notice for Joseph in the February 5, 1920 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The notice indicated he had died on February 3 and was the "loving brother of John and Marshall Edward Murray and the late Mollie Johnson and Ella Nelson." Well, all right then! The mention of Mollie Johnson helped confirm my belief that despite the nearly 10 year age discrepancy in the death record I'd found I had indeed located "my" Mollie. Joseph's death notice also indicated he too was buried at Holy Cross. Accessing the Holy Cross records that were available at sfgenealogy.com (currently off-line as of this writing) I found that Joseph was buried with a John H. Murray! Two siblings in one search! John Henry was buried on July 24, 1930, so I went back to the CA Death Index and located his death on July 21, 1930.

I've yet to order death certificates for any of the three siblings to see what bits of information they may provide (I'm particularly interested in seeing if I have correctly identified Joseph's wife.) I have located what I believe to be a marriage record for Mollie Murray and Charles Johnson, however, I'm not completely certain I've got the right record. This is because, once again, Mollie's age is way off and her husband's name is listed not at Charles Johnson but as Carl Johanson. I've done a little bit of digging on Charles/Carl and believe he Anglicized his name, but need to look a bit more to be certain.

In the course of working out a timeline for the siblings, I've discovered that Joseph, who was living with his brother Marshall (my great grandfather) when the 1920 census was taken, died only a couple of weeks after the census was recorded. That he was ill and (presumably) dying definitely helps explain why he was living with them if I've correctly identified his wife. Based on what I've found through the city directories and census, she's in the Napa State Hospital in 1920. Interestingly enough, there is no reference to his wife in the death notice, though the 1920 census record clearly indicates he was married.

I've also found what I believe to be a record for John Henry in the 1930 US Census. That instance has him at San Francisco General Hospital in April, 1930, just a few months before his death in July.

I still need to confirm where the Murray siblings were in 1910. If the marriage record I found for Mollie Murray and Carl Johanson is the correct couple, they were married in December 1909, so I need to look for them together. Joseph had not yet married when the 1910 census was taken (again, if I've correctly identified his wife, they were married shortly after the census was recorded) and John Henry, as best I can tell, never married. Looking for two unmarried men named John and Joseph is not the easiest of tasks! 

So, from what I have found thus far on the Murray side of the family, my great grandfather Marshall was the only one of the six siblings to both live to adulthood and have children of his own. Hopefully, once I'm able to get to some of the off-line records I need to access, I'll be able to find some leads to some Murray cousins.