In my last post, I started answering and following up on some of the questions I have discussed in earlier posts on this blog. This post continues the review of past entries with updates and current status.
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When I was reviewing the 1940 Census trying to locate my family, I realized one of the reasons I'd had difficulty finding my grandparents and great-grandparents was that neither Marshall nor Edward Murray were working in occupations I had expected them to be. The most curious discovery was that my grandfather Edward had appeared in several 1930s directories as a "reporter". A reporter? Grandpa Murray was a teamster, what's this reporter business? I asked my father about it and he said yes, his father had worked for a newspaper. Dad wasn't sure which one and thought he might have been a photographer. I'll need to do some digging to see if I can find out what exactly Grandpa Murray was doing when he worked at a newspaper. Dad also said that his father didn't graduate from high school, but according to the 1940 census he had completed 12 years of school. My grandmother was the informant on that, so presumably she knew whether or not my grandfather had graduated.
I still haven't figured out for certain how my great grandfather paid for the house on Natoma. I'm still guessing there was a life insurance payment after my great grandmother died in July, 1940, but I haven't found any evidence of that yet. I'm not entirely sure where I might find that information either, so it's an item of interest that sits on a back burner for now.
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Muddling Through the Mullanes was my first attempt at clarifying the Mullane relationships, and fortunately my best guess assumptions proved correct. That means that my great grandmother Mary Mullane's brothers had a lot of loss. Her brothers Phillip, Edward, and Patrick all lost children between 1905 and 1917.
The first child lost was Phillip's daughter Maria Nora Mullane who died on August 28, 1905 at the age of 2 months, 22 days old. I was able to find a copy of her burial record from Holy Cross at sfgenealogy.com and it appears she died from enteritis (at least that's the best guess I can come up with as the handwritten record is atrocious!)
Edward was the next brother to lose a child. On January 8, 1915, Edward
and his wife Margaret lost their son Thomas Joseph Mullane. He was
only about three and a half. I don't have a copy of his death certificate and the records at
sfgenealogy.com only go up to January, 1911. My best guess would be some kind of illness.
Edward lost his second child, a daughter named Margaret a little over a year later on June 20, 1916. Margaret was only three months old at the time of her death.
The next child lost was Patrick's daughter Myrtle Marie Mullane. She died on July 3 or 4, 1916 (the death notice and headstone say July 3, the CA Death Index says July 4) in Sonoma County. Her death notice says "in Verano", which I'm guessing is El Verano. El Verano is a resort town just outside of Sonoma city near several hot springs. Based on the date of her death, I'm guessing the family were on vacation for the Independence Day holiday when she died. Again, I don't have a copy of her death certificate, but I'm guessing there was some sort of accident.
The family tragedies didn't end there. Phillip and his wife Mary lost two of their three sons in 1917. First Edward Ignatius on February 25 then Phillip Clayton just a month later on March 27. Edward was about thirteen and a half and died within days of my great grandfather Marshall Murray's sister Mollie (Mary) Murray Johnson. Phillip was a few months shy of his tenth birthday. Again, I would need copies of their death certificates to know how they died, but based on the proximities of their respective deaths, I would guess some contagious illness was the cause. Whether it was the flu, tuberculosis, measles, or some other illness that is much more survivable and preventable today is something left to be determined.
The losses in the Mullane family during this time weren't limited to the children of my great granduncles. My great grandmother had 6 or 7 brothers, and three of them also died between 1905-1917. Thomas Michael Mullane died on March 19, 1910 of tuberculosis. I only recently discovered his death notice in the San Francisco Chronicle and discovered he was married to a woman named Jennie, so I will need to follow up on her. Oldest brother John Martin Mullane also died of tuberculosis a year later on April 15, 1911. It doesn't appear that he ever married. Finally Edward (George) Washington Mullane died not long after his daughter Margaret on January 16, 1917, also of tuberculosis. The coroner's report of his death indicated he had suffered from tuberculosis "for some time", so it's possible that with so many family members with tuberculosis that some of the children were exposed to it and also died from it.
That is quite a lot of loss in over about a 12 year period and again reminds me of how much has changed over the past century. Today, tuberculosis is pretty rare in the United States and can be treated with antibiotics (though it appears that a drug resistant form has developed in recent years making it more difficult to treat.) I decided to take a quick look at the leading causes of death in 1910 -- about the midpoint for the many Mullane deaths. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of death for adults between 20-50 are tuberculosis and typhoid (excluding the high percentage of deaths related to post-partum infections) and for children 10 and under it's diarrhea/enteritis and bronchopnuemonia. In 2010, the leading causes of death are cancer and heart disease (presumably this is for adults, I wasn't able to find an easy split.) Similarly, in 1915 the infant mortality rate was about 100 per every 1,000 live births or 10% of all children. By 2013 (the most recent date I was able to find) the number has dropped to 5.6 infant deaths per every 1,000 live births or just 0.56%. It's good to be reminded every once and a while just how much progress has been made over the last 100 years. Sometimes it's all too easy to take for granted the advances modern medicine and technology have given rather than being amazed at the progress that has been made.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 1
I realized that over the four years since I started this blog I had posed a bunch of different questions that I may have not answered in a follow up post, so I decided to go back through the 40 or so posts I have written and see what I may have forgotten to update. I'll also try to put in quick links to questions that were answered in case something was missed. This will be a multi-part post and one that will appear from time to time as I move along in my research since I suspect there will be more instances of me plowing ahead and forgetting to update all the answers I find and/or forgetting to go back and look at some other questions.
The First Month of Digging brought up a lot of questions and I think I've answered most of them by now. Some questions, like what happened to my Murray family relatives during and immediately following the 1906 earthquake and fire will probably remain a mystery. That kind of information is usually found in family stories and I know of none. Many of the other questions that I pondered in that first month have been answered though.
When did they come to California is another partially answered question. Based on what I've been able to find in the San Francisco city directories and the 1900 census record has given me a rough estimate. In the 1900 census, Bridget shows up as having arrived in the US in 1866. I first find her with a certainty in the 1867 city directory working at the Occidental Laundry. However I also found a Bridget McDonough working at the Russ House laundry in 1864 with several other McDonoughs. I'm not 100% sure that's "my" Bridget, so I've put that record in my "maybe" file for now. John Murray first shows up in the city directories in 1862 working at Easton's laundry. So I have a reasonable timeline for both of them arriving in California. But what about the question of when they arrived in the United States? While it's possible they both emigrated from Ireland directly to California, it's more likely they arrived in the US on the east coast before moving across the country. I haven't, to date, found any definitive records of the arrival of either Bridget or John. The best lead I have is for Bridget as her death notice asked that papers in Chelsea, Massachusetts be notified. That leads me to believe there was some kind of family in Massachusetts and that Bridget may have landed in Boston before moving west. As for John -- that's definitely going to be a needle in haystack. John Murray is a common enough name and the immigration records of the 1860s contain very little information that would allow me to identify one John Murray from another with any certainty. The most interesting part of this question though gives rise to another question. If John and Bridget arrived on the east coast sometime between 1860-1866, what was traveling across the entire continent in the middle of the US Civil War like?
The question of what happened to my great grandfather's older brother John Henry is another open question. I only have spotty records for him. After finding him living with the rest of the family in 1900-01, I have very little hard evidence on him. He witnessed my great grandparents' wedding in 1918 and I know he's buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his brother Joseph, so I know he died in 1930. Those are the only hard records I have for him. Again, with a name like John Murray, it's a bit tricky tracking him down. I have a couple of possibilities in census records, but nothing definite.
I haven't quite found all of the Murrays in the 1910 census. Bridget and Nellie (Ella) have died by 1910 and I'm pretty sure I've found Mollie living with her husband. The brothers, however, are a bit more of a challenge. I have a reasonable guess for Joseph, but nothing for either Marshall or John Henry, so that's one area I need to keep looking.
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The Mystery of Mary Mullane introduced me to my first real puzzler of the family -- that my great grandmother was married to someone named Denis Edward Hayes before she married my great grandfather Marshall. Edward Hayes seems to have dropped out of the records after the 1910 census and I haven't a clue what happened to him. Based on what I do know, I'm guessing Edward Hayes abandoned my great grandmother sometime around 1910. My great grandparents weren't married until 1918, four years after my grandfather was born and the information my great grandmother provided for the marriage license wasn't entirely truthful. Both of those facts lead me to believe Edward Hayes ran off. I haven't put a bunch of effort in to tracking him down, but do have some potential leads to follow up. The best of those is from the 1940 census which has an Edward Hayes who is the right age and divorced living at the Napa State Hospital, but with such a big gap between records I can't be certain I've got the right person. And, like Joseph Murray's wife Agnes, has me wondering what put him in the state hospital in the first place!
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More McDonoughs was my first lead on some possible relatives of my great-great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray. I found a Patrick McDonough living near the Murrays in the 1880 census and other searches turned up a Thomas and Betsey McDonough working with a Bridget McDonough at the Russ House in 1864. I haven't spent much time on the McDonoughs recently, so I haven't found any connection between any of these people to my great-great grandmother. I did spend some time on them when they first turned up then set it aside for a few months. When I went back and took a look at the work I'd done, I discovered I'd made several mistakes and gotten different families mixed up so had to scrap a lot of what I did and go back to the beginning. I think what I've gathered to date is accurate, but it is pretty limited and I've as yet to make any connections.
The First Month of Digging brought up a lot of questions and I think I've answered most of them by now. Some questions, like what happened to my Murray family relatives during and immediately following the 1906 earthquake and fire will probably remain a mystery. That kind of information is usually found in family stories and I know of none. Many of the other questions that I pondered in that first month have been answered though.
- What was Bridget's husband's name? When did he die?
- Who is Joseph's wife? Why isn't she living with him in 1920?
- What happened to Mary and Nellie? Did they marry?
- Who were my great-grandmother's parents? Did she have any siblings?
When did they come to California is another partially answered question. Based on what I've been able to find in the San Francisco city directories and the 1900 census record has given me a rough estimate. In the 1900 census, Bridget shows up as having arrived in the US in 1866. I first find her with a certainty in the 1867 city directory working at the Occidental Laundry. However I also found a Bridget McDonough working at the Russ House laundry in 1864 with several other McDonoughs. I'm not 100% sure that's "my" Bridget, so I've put that record in my "maybe" file for now. John Murray first shows up in the city directories in 1862 working at Easton's laundry. So I have a reasonable timeline for both of them arriving in California. But what about the question of when they arrived in the United States? While it's possible they both emigrated from Ireland directly to California, it's more likely they arrived in the US on the east coast before moving across the country. I haven't, to date, found any definitive records of the arrival of either Bridget or John. The best lead I have is for Bridget as her death notice asked that papers in Chelsea, Massachusetts be notified. That leads me to believe there was some kind of family in Massachusetts and that Bridget may have landed in Boston before moving west. As for John -- that's definitely going to be a needle in haystack. John Murray is a common enough name and the immigration records of the 1860s contain very little information that would allow me to identify one John Murray from another with any certainty. The most interesting part of this question though gives rise to another question. If John and Bridget arrived on the east coast sometime between 1860-1866, what was traveling across the entire continent in the middle of the US Civil War like?
The question of what happened to my great grandfather's older brother John Henry is another open question. I only have spotty records for him. After finding him living with the rest of the family in 1900-01, I have very little hard evidence on him. He witnessed my great grandparents' wedding in 1918 and I know he's buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his brother Joseph, so I know he died in 1930. Those are the only hard records I have for him. Again, with a name like John Murray, it's a bit tricky tracking him down. I have a couple of possibilities in census records, but nothing definite.
I haven't quite found all of the Murrays in the 1910 census. Bridget and Nellie (Ella) have died by 1910 and I'm pretty sure I've found Mollie living with her husband. The brothers, however, are a bit more of a challenge. I have a reasonable guess for Joseph, but nothing for either Marshall or John Henry, so that's one area I need to keep looking.
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The Mystery of Mary Mullane introduced me to my first real puzzler of the family -- that my great grandmother was married to someone named Denis Edward Hayes before she married my great grandfather Marshall. Edward Hayes seems to have dropped out of the records after the 1910 census and I haven't a clue what happened to him. Based on what I do know, I'm guessing Edward Hayes abandoned my great grandmother sometime around 1910. My great grandparents weren't married until 1918, four years after my grandfather was born and the information my great grandmother provided for the marriage license wasn't entirely truthful. Both of those facts lead me to believe Edward Hayes ran off. I haven't put a bunch of effort in to tracking him down, but do have some potential leads to follow up. The best of those is from the 1940 census which has an Edward Hayes who is the right age and divorced living at the Napa State Hospital, but with such a big gap between records I can't be certain I've got the right person. And, like Joseph Murray's wife Agnes, has me wondering what put him in the state hospital in the first place!
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More McDonoughs was my first lead on some possible relatives of my great-great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray. I found a Patrick McDonough living near the Murrays in the 1880 census and other searches turned up a Thomas and Betsey McDonough working with a Bridget McDonough at the Russ House in 1864. I haven't spent much time on the McDonoughs recently, so I haven't found any connection between any of these people to my great-great grandmother. I did spend some time on them when they first turned up then set it aside for a few months. When I went back and took a look at the work I'd done, I discovered I'd made several mistakes and gotten different families mixed up so had to scrap a lot of what I did and go back to the beginning. I think what I've gathered to date is accurate, but it is pretty limited and I've as yet to make any connections.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Men (and Women) of Mystery
Ever since I was a kid, one of my favorite genres of novels has been the mystery/detective tales. From plowing through all the Agatha Christie novels while in junior high school to more contemporary authors like Michael Connelly, I've always enjoyed stories that have an aspect of trying to guess how they will end. I've also always been a fan of jig-saw puzzles. So that I'm fascinated by trying to unravel the stories of my family history shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Over the last 4 years or so I've uncovered a whole slew of people that I (and much of the rest of the family) knew nothing about. From the simple things like learning the names of my great-great grandparents on both the Murray and Coleman sides of the family to discovering the names of great grandaunts and uncles I'd never heard of to figuring out what happened to all these people, it's been a great adventure and a never ending series of mysteries and puzzles to work out.
Beyond working out the puzzles of people I've found with a direct connection to me and my family, I've also encountered a number of people that appear momentarily with my relatives and then disappear. I've also encountered people who seem to ride alongside continuously but I have no idea what the connection is between them and my family. I'm not sure which is more frustrating -- people who seem obviously connected but can't be found beyond a single record or ones who don't appear connected at all but appear in multiple records.
The first time I encountered people I couldn't figure out the connection was when I found my great-great grandparents John and Bridget Murray in the 1870 census. They were living with another couple John and Margaret Feehan. John is a 23 year old shoemaker from Ireland and Margaret is 20 years old and from New York. I did a cursory search on them and discovered that John died in 1875 and was from County Louth, Ireland. Since John Murray was from Galway and Bridget McDonough Murray was from Sligo, I figured John and Margaret Feehan were friends they made upon arriving in San Francisco and set them aside. It's possible there may be some other connection to find, but that's to study at a much later time.
Then I hit my first real conundrum. I was searching for my Mullane relatives and found them living at 45 Belcher Street between 1894 and 1897. This enabled me to discover my great-great grandmother Mary Mullane and her brothers, but there was one name that appeared in 1895 and then disappeared again completely. There was someone named Richard E. Mullane living with the rest of the Mullane family at 45 Belcher in 1895. At first I thought he might be another of Mary's brothers, but as I dug through the years I found no brother with the name Richard. So who is he? Where did he come from? Where did he go? I can't find any other record for him. There are two other mysterious Mullanes who appear at the 45 Belcher address -- Edwin and Joseph. Those two may be one of Mary's brothers recorded mistakenly. The 1880 census lists a Joseph among the brothers and he appears again in 1900 and is in the city directories between 1894-1909. The confusion comes in 1898 when there are two Josephs living in the Belcher house. To make matters worse starting in 1895 there is a Timothy Joseph Mullane living in the same house. Tracking Timothy forward, I found a record from a funeral home collection that included his death notice in the paper. "T. Joseph Mullane ... brother of Phillip and Patrick Mullane and Mrs. Mary (Edward) Murray." So, it is possible that Timothy and at least one of the Josephs are the same person, but I can't put them together. Edwin Mullane appears from 1897-1899, and I strongly suspect that this is a misprint for Mary's brother Edward Mullane I just can't prove it.
So I've stuck Richard, Joseph, and Edwin Mullane over to one side to puzzle over later. Perhaps they're other relatives that will turn up or are actually people I've already identified that were mistakenly identified in the city directories.
And then there are the Comerfords. In the 1910 census a John W. Comerford and his daughter Maime are listed as lodgers with Patrick Mullane and his wife Ellen. John Comerford is still living with Patrick and Ellen in the 1920 census. When I went to Holy Cross Cemetery looking for Patrick's grave, I discovered among the many people he's buried with, there is Mary Comerford who died in 1917! I went back to find Mary Comerford in the 1900 census since she's 13 in 1910, and she turns up living in the family of Jeremiah and Mary Sullivan -- Ellen Mullane's parents! She's only 4 years old and neither of her parents are living with the Sullivans and she's listed as a "lodger." Right now my guess is the Comerfords are related to the Sullivans some how, but I'm not entirely sure. I also double checked the burial records for the plot where Patrick Mullane was buried on sfgenealogy.com since the headstone also listed a Mary Donohue in the plot. It turns out that Patrick Mullane was buried with his daughter Myrtle, along with John and Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary and John Donohue. Patrick, Myrtle, Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary Donohue are listed on the headstone. Jeremiah Sullivan was Patrick's father-in-law and I believe Mary Donohue was his mother-in-law who remarried after Jeremiah's death (thus explaining John Donohue.) I haven't tied in the Comerfords anywhere yet and I don't know what happened to Ellen Sullivan Mullane. She's not buried with the rest of the family and I've yet to find a death record for her, so even the mystery people lead to other family mysteries.
The final group of mystery people are the employers and business partners I've encountered. I'm curious about these people also and what their stories are and how they relate to my family's stories. I've done very little digging into these people other than to note their names when they appear. This group is definitely the lowest priority of mystery people.
I've spent a little bit of time trying to track down all these people to see how they fit in, but with so many other puzzles to work out they are definitely secondary in my research. Still, as someone who loves working out puzzles, I won't leave them alone entirely.
Beyond working out the puzzles of people I've found with a direct connection to me and my family, I've also encountered a number of people that appear momentarily with my relatives and then disappear. I've also encountered people who seem to ride alongside continuously but I have no idea what the connection is between them and my family. I'm not sure which is more frustrating -- people who seem obviously connected but can't be found beyond a single record or ones who don't appear connected at all but appear in multiple records.
The first time I encountered people I couldn't figure out the connection was when I found my great-great grandparents John and Bridget Murray in the 1870 census. They were living with another couple John and Margaret Feehan. John is a 23 year old shoemaker from Ireland and Margaret is 20 years old and from New York. I did a cursory search on them and discovered that John died in 1875 and was from County Louth, Ireland. Since John Murray was from Galway and Bridget McDonough Murray was from Sligo, I figured John and Margaret Feehan were friends they made upon arriving in San Francisco and set them aside. It's possible there may be some other connection to find, but that's to study at a much later time.
Then I hit my first real conundrum. I was searching for my Mullane relatives and found them living at 45 Belcher Street between 1894 and 1897. This enabled me to discover my great-great grandmother Mary Mullane and her brothers, but there was one name that appeared in 1895 and then disappeared again completely. There was someone named Richard E. Mullane living with the rest of the Mullane family at 45 Belcher in 1895. At first I thought he might be another of Mary's brothers, but as I dug through the years I found no brother with the name Richard. So who is he? Where did he come from? Where did he go? I can't find any other record for him. There are two other mysterious Mullanes who appear at the 45 Belcher address -- Edwin and Joseph. Those two may be one of Mary's brothers recorded mistakenly. The 1880 census lists a Joseph among the brothers and he appears again in 1900 and is in the city directories between 1894-1909. The confusion comes in 1898 when there are two Josephs living in the Belcher house. To make matters worse starting in 1895 there is a Timothy Joseph Mullane living in the same house. Tracking Timothy forward, I found a record from a funeral home collection that included his death notice in the paper. "T. Joseph Mullane ... brother of Phillip and Patrick Mullane and Mrs. Mary (Edward) Murray." So, it is possible that Timothy and at least one of the Josephs are the same person, but I can't put them together. Edwin Mullane appears from 1897-1899, and I strongly suspect that this is a misprint for Mary's brother Edward Mullane I just can't prove it.
So I've stuck Richard, Joseph, and Edwin Mullane over to one side to puzzle over later. Perhaps they're other relatives that will turn up or are actually people I've already identified that were mistakenly identified in the city directories.
And then there are the Comerfords. In the 1910 census a John W. Comerford and his daughter Maime are listed as lodgers with Patrick Mullane and his wife Ellen. John Comerford is still living with Patrick and Ellen in the 1920 census. When I went to Holy Cross Cemetery looking for Patrick's grave, I discovered among the many people he's buried with, there is Mary Comerford who died in 1917! I went back to find Mary Comerford in the 1900 census since she's 13 in 1910, and she turns up living in the family of Jeremiah and Mary Sullivan -- Ellen Mullane's parents! She's only 4 years old and neither of her parents are living with the Sullivans and she's listed as a "lodger." Right now my guess is the Comerfords are related to the Sullivans some how, but I'm not entirely sure. I also double checked the burial records for the plot where Patrick Mullane was buried on sfgenealogy.com since the headstone also listed a Mary Donohue in the plot. It turns out that Patrick Mullane was buried with his daughter Myrtle, along with John and Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary and John Donohue. Patrick, Myrtle, Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary Donohue are listed on the headstone. Jeremiah Sullivan was Patrick's father-in-law and I believe Mary Donohue was his mother-in-law who remarried after Jeremiah's death (thus explaining John Donohue.) I haven't tied in the Comerfords anywhere yet and I don't know what happened to Ellen Sullivan Mullane. She's not buried with the rest of the family and I've yet to find a death record for her, so even the mystery people lead to other family mysteries.
The final group of mystery people are the employers and business partners I've encountered. I'm curious about these people also and what their stories are and how they relate to my family's stories. I've done very little digging into these people other than to note their names when they appear. This group is definitely the lowest priority of mystery people.
I've spent a little bit of time trying to track down all these people to see how they fit in, but with so many other puzzles to work out they are definitely secondary in my research. Still, as someone who loves working out puzzles, I won't leave them alone entirely.
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Following Up on Marshall's Siblings -- Joseph S. Murray
When I started researching the Murray family roots back in January, 2012 one of the first things I discovered was that my great-grandfather Marshall Edward Murray was one of six children. That was stunning news since there wasn't any knowledge of these siblings handed down. So one of the tasks I had was to identify and find out what happened to Marshall's siblings. To date, I have been able to track down information on all five siblings, but there have been several mysteries to figure out. Having, after much effort, figured out what happened to his older sister Mary (aka Mollie), I turned my focus on younger brother Joseph.
After initially finding Joseph with the rest of the family in the 1900 census and tracking him through 1905 through the city directories, I lost him until he showed up in the 1920 census living with my great-grandparents Marshall and Mary Murray. The census shows that he was married, but there is no wife living with the rest of the family. I went back to the city directories to see if I could figure out what Joseph's wife's name might be. The difficulty in this was sorting between two different Joseph S. Murrays that appeared in the directories. When one of the two I was tracking turned up with a wife named Agnes in the 1914 directory, I opted to look further at that Joseph.
I turned then to newspaper archives. I did a search for Joseph and Agnes and found a notice of a marriage license issued to a Joseph S. Murray and Mary A. McCarthy in the May 3, 1910 issue of the San Francisco Call. Having already dealt with a number of people who used their middle name over their first name, I thought his might be a good lead especially as Joseph was listed as age 32 which was about right.
Next it was over to the San Francisco County records at FamilySearch.org. These records aren't indexed yet (or at least weren't at the time I searched, some partial indexing has begun recently) so it meant scrolling through individual records. Since I had a date to look for the issuance of the marriage license, I was able to quickly narrow down the image sets to check. Through the records, I was able to find that Joseph Stephen Murray married Mary Agnes McCarthy on May 2, 1910 by a justice of the peace. I also learned that Mary Agnes had been married previously and her maiden name was Mary Agnes Barnes.
Since the notice in the Call stated that both Joseph and Mary Agnes were living at 420 Dolores Street, I went back to the 1910 census to see if I could find them. Joseph was not living at the 420 Dolores Street address when the census was taken in April, 1910, but I was able to find Agnes M. McCarthy and her 15-year-old daughter Nelly C. McCarthy.
So it seems I had identified the correct couple, but that left a few questions unanswered. Did I identify the correct Joseph S. Murray? And what happened to Agnes? Going on the guess that I had the right couple, I looked for Agnes in the 1920 census. The best bet turns up as a resident in the state hospital in Napa.
The Murrays all seem to disappear from the city directories between 1917-1919 when Marshall and Mary reappear, but no such luck with Joseph and Agnes, so I was stuck with Joseph living with Marshall and Mary in 1920 with out his wife. It wasn't until I was digging around in Mollie Murray's story that I hit on a death notice for Joseph in 1920. I sent off for Joseph's death certificate to see what information that might hold.
When Joseph's death certificate arrived, it confirmed that I had guessed right -- his wife is listed as Agnes Murray! I'll have to search a bit more to find out what happened to Agnes, but at least I was on the right track. Also, as is often the case, the death certificate provided some other useful information. Beyond learning Joseph's cause of death (tuberculosis, which he appears to have been suffering from for a period of 8 months prior to his death) I also learned he was a checker for the Southern Pacific Railroad. I was able to find payroll records for Joseph between October 1916 and October 1919 which indicate he made between about $40 and $60 every two weeks. Based on a couple of conversion sites I found online, that looks to be between about $13,660 and $20,485 per year in today's dollars -- definitely not enough to live in San Francisco in 2015!
Now that I've wrapped up Joseph, that leaves figuring out what happened to John Henry. I'm also curious about what happened to Agnes's daughter Nelly, but that will be another side track search to follow up when I'm stuck at a wall.
After initially finding Joseph with the rest of the family in the 1900 census and tracking him through 1905 through the city directories, I lost him until he showed up in the 1920 census living with my great-grandparents Marshall and Mary Murray. The census shows that he was married, but there is no wife living with the rest of the family. I went back to the city directories to see if I could figure out what Joseph's wife's name might be. The difficulty in this was sorting between two different Joseph S. Murrays that appeared in the directories. When one of the two I was tracking turned up with a wife named Agnes in the 1914 directory, I opted to look further at that Joseph.
I turned then to newspaper archives. I did a search for Joseph and Agnes and found a notice of a marriage license issued to a Joseph S. Murray and Mary A. McCarthy in the May 3, 1910 issue of the San Francisco Call. Having already dealt with a number of people who used their middle name over their first name, I thought his might be a good lead especially as Joseph was listed as age 32 which was about right.
Next it was over to the San Francisco County records at FamilySearch.org. These records aren't indexed yet (or at least weren't at the time I searched, some partial indexing has begun recently) so it meant scrolling through individual records. Since I had a date to look for the issuance of the marriage license, I was able to quickly narrow down the image sets to check. Through the records, I was able to find that Joseph Stephen Murray married Mary Agnes McCarthy on May 2, 1910 by a justice of the peace. I also learned that Mary Agnes had been married previously and her maiden name was Mary Agnes Barnes.
Since the notice in the Call stated that both Joseph and Mary Agnes were living at 420 Dolores Street, I went back to the 1910 census to see if I could find them. Joseph was not living at the 420 Dolores Street address when the census was taken in April, 1910, but I was able to find Agnes M. McCarthy and her 15-year-old daughter Nelly C. McCarthy.
So it seems I had identified the correct couple, but that left a few questions unanswered. Did I identify the correct Joseph S. Murray? And what happened to Agnes? Going on the guess that I had the right couple, I looked for Agnes in the 1920 census. The best bet turns up as a resident in the state hospital in Napa.
The Murrays all seem to disappear from the city directories between 1917-1919 when Marshall and Mary reappear, but no such luck with Joseph and Agnes, so I was stuck with Joseph living with Marshall and Mary in 1920 with out his wife. It wasn't until I was digging around in Mollie Murray's story that I hit on a death notice for Joseph in 1920. I sent off for Joseph's death certificate to see what information that might hold.
When Joseph's death certificate arrived, it confirmed that I had guessed right -- his wife is listed as Agnes Murray! I'll have to search a bit more to find out what happened to Agnes, but at least I was on the right track. Also, as is often the case, the death certificate provided some other useful information. Beyond learning Joseph's cause of death (tuberculosis, which he appears to have been suffering from for a period of 8 months prior to his death) I also learned he was a checker for the Southern Pacific Railroad. I was able to find payroll records for Joseph between October 1916 and October 1919 which indicate he made between about $40 and $60 every two weeks. Based on a couple of conversion sites I found online, that looks to be between about $13,660 and $20,485 per year in today's dollars -- definitely not enough to live in San Francisco in 2015!
Now that I've wrapped up Joseph, that leaves figuring out what happened to John Henry. I'm also curious about what happened to Agnes's daughter Nelly, but that will be another side track search to follow up when I'm stuck at a wall.
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