A continuation of answering and following up on some of the
questions I have discussed in earlier posts on this blog.
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After working through my O'Leary family in California, I went looking for Other O'Learys in Ireland. I found more siblings for my great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary than I had expected, and wasn't able to find a brother I had found in my San Francisco research -- Arthur O'Leary. I've still had a puzzle finding him and figuring out his story. I know he was living in San Francisco in 1904 because his name appears on Lizzie's immigration record, but I couldn't figure out his address or find him in the city directory. He's referenced again in Ellen O'Leary Ford's death notice in 1932. I did receive some information from one of my Coleman cousins that Arthur was adopted and eventually settled in Portland, OR where he ran a mill. If he was adopted, that might explain the difficulty in finding him in the birth and baptismal records for Ireland. My cousin also said he was the youngest sibling, which would mean he was likely born after 1880. That would mean he was in his early 20s when he arrived in San Francisco. This is another research point I need to revisit.
I still haven't worked out most of the rest of the siblings either. I was able to find John and his family in the Irish census records for 1901 and 1911. The other siblings who remained in Ireland are still difficult to locate. I did revisit the record I found for Jeremiah O'Leary, Jr. in the 1901 census to see if I was mistaken on my first assessment once I learned that John's wife's name was Hanora. I thought the Hannah O'Leary listed as that Jeremiah's sister might possibly be a sister-in-law, but when it said she wasn't married, I eliminated them again.
I may have found a death record in New York for Jeremiah, but I will need to order the death certificate to be certain.
Irish records are challenging in two ways. First is knowing if a record actually exists as so many records have been lost and destroyed over the years. The second is the more obvious problem that the records that do exist are in Ireland. The internet is great for identifying a lot of possible records, but most of what is available on line is a limited index of records found in Ireland. More and more are becoming available on line, but Ireland's privacy laws are a bit stricter than those in the US so what is available is more limited. Add in to the complication that I really need to know more about 20th century records so I can go back further makes working on the O'Leary/Coleman side of the family more challenging.
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The Baptismal Records were more promising. While I've not been able to confirm my findings (again, the challenges of records in Ireland), I do think they're good leads. I did realize I had mis-recorded the year of birth for Bartholomew Coleman. I had noted him as having been born in 1880 rather than 1870, so I went back to the baptismal records to see if he turned up when I entered the correct year. No such luck. A new source has come on line recently that makes it easier to scroll through the images, but I've only done a cursory check there. The best part of this is that it includes records from all over Ireland rather than just a few counties. While being able to identify my Murray/Mullane ancestors through these records is a long-shot since I still don't have parish information (or even county information for the Mullane side) and they were all born in the 1840s and it's hit or miss for records still existing for those years. Still, it's something I can try to sort through for possible leads.
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The Arrival of Lizzie O'Leary is the lone success I've had to date in finding immigration records for any of my ancestors. Of course, she's the most recent immigrant on record. Having arrived in the US in 1904 and coming through Ellis Island made her record much easier to find. I suspect that I may have reasonable luck finding Daniel Coleman in the records since he arrived sometime between 1892-1900. I thought perhaps I'd be able to find him traveling with his brother John, but according to the 1900 census, John arrived in 1877 -- well before Daniel. That John was already in the US is a helpful point though as it could prove useful in finding Daniel. The other immigrant points for the Murray/Mullane side, however, are going to be much more challenging. They all arrived in the 1860s or so and the records that are available from that time are pretty sparse. There are loads of passenger records, but the information gathered was pretty much name, age, occupation, and country of origin. Not knowing where my ancestors landed upon leaving Ireland means checking all major ports on the east coast as well as San Francisco on the off chance they emigrated directly to California. It's also possible they arrived in Canada before the US since both Canada and Ireland were part of the British Empire in the 1860s, so those are records to consider as well. That's a lot of haystacks to search through for a handful of needles!
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When I figured out What Happened to Mollie, I hadn't been able to find an article in the Oakland Tribune about the accident. I was only able to find a small blurb on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Tribune for 1917 has since become available on line, and I was able to find another small blurb about what happened. Though this story was on page 4 rather than page 1, it had a bit more information. It identified Mollie's husband as "Charles W. Johnson, a stevedore, 986 Stanford Avenue" which lines up with what I have already found. The story also mentions that Mollie had run out to the a nearby store and didn't return and that "it is thought she became confused in the rain and stepped in front of the train." That definitely puts more context on what happened.
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This concludes my blog review and hopefully helps bring some of the stories more life. It's definitely helped me remember points of interest I need to go back to and other roads I need to follow up on in my research. I've also been very lax at keeping this blog updated over the past few years, so I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to write more often, even if I only have observations of the process of research rather than results.
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