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.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment