Getting Sidetracked

I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked researching my Colemans and Murrays over the last several months.  In part this is due to needing some answers to some questions to get through a couple of walls, and in part to getting sidetracked on another genealogy project.  Earlier this year my sister-in-law, "Sissie" was contacted by someone doing estate research and it seems that a cousin of her mother's had passed away with out any heirs and so a search went out for living relatives.  Her mother passed away about twenty years ago and Sissie really didn't know much about her family history, so I offered to do some research to see what I could find out.

Armed with what little Sissie knew, including the name of the deceased cousin, I dove in to see what I could find.  I spent a chunk of the spring and summer looking for records and have managed to find quite a bit -- tracing her family back to before the US Civil War.  I know I can go further back too, but that will take a little more effort as I'm now looking at pre-1850 census records which only listed the names of the heads of households and makes matching families up a bit more challenging.  I've also found names of apparent relatives in several census records as Sissie's ancestors were mostly farmers and all lived near each other in and around Indiana and Kentucky.  That is a time intensive process that I've yet to really focus on.  So far, however, I've identified over 150 relatives in her tree -- a massive increase over what she already knew.

Sissie was particularly interested in any living relatives.  I told her those people would be a bit harder to identify because records of living people are protected by privacy laws and much harder to obtain.  However in my searching I kept running up against another family tree on Ancestry.com that had members of Sissie's family and, most particularly, information on one of her grandmother's sisters that I had been unable to find elsewhere.  After checking with Sissie, I sent a message off to the owner of the tree to see if the person could help fill in gaps.  My luck with such messaging has been hit and miss while working on my own tree, so I was pleasantly surprised when about two months later I actually got a response from the owner of the tree.  It turned out the owner of the tree is Sissie's second cousin!  I was personally thrilled beyond belief and was able to make an email introduction between the cousins.

Things have been pretty much on hold from then, but it has been a fun distraction for me.  Family tree research can get frustrating when you run up against brick walls caused by missing information or insufficient information, so it's nice to step back from one line and focus on another from time to time.  Having a whole separate tree to root around in when I get frustrated with the progress in my own tree is a great way to go off on another adventure.

Baseball and Family Ties

The Chicago Cubs just won their first World Series since 1908 and as a lifelong baseball fan, I am so happy for their fans who have waited so long. I grew up a fan of the San Francisco Giants who saw their own World Series drought of 56 years (52 of them in San Francisco) end in 2010 and was ecstatic that the team I'd been cheering for my entire life had finally won it all. The joy was somewhat tempered with a little bit of sadness though as the first person who I thought about when the last out was made was my grandfather Donald Dwyer, a life long baseball fan, and a die-hard Giants fan once the team moved to San Francisco from New York. Grandpa died in 2000 and never got a chance to see the Giants win a World Series in San Francisco (he did, however, see two World Series losses.) After I attended the victory parade in 2010, I stopped by my parents' house and visited with my mom who said she was thinking of buying some kind of memento and bringing it up to Holy Cross to leave at my grandparents' grave. I told her I was thinking of the same thing, and I'm sure several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins were thinking it also. I don't know that anyone ever did though.* I'm quite sure there are many Cubs fans feeling the same way today, though with an even deeper connection as their drought was nearly twice as long.

*I didn't leave a memento at Grandpa's grave. I did buy a commemorative brick
that is in Seals Plaza at AT&T Park as part of the "Champions Walk."

I also feel empathy for the Cleveland Indians fans who have now taken over the mantle of longest drought between World Series wins from the Cubs -- it's now at 68 years. They watched their team fall from a 3-1 series lead, and I know the disappointment weighs heavily. Even after my Giants have won 3 World Series, I still remember the awful feeling after they lost in 2002 and while the bitterness has faded there is still a pang of "what if" that lingers. (The "what if" for 1989 and the Earthquake Series isn't quite as strong as I suspect the Oakland Athletics would have won without the interruption as they were the better team, though I never would have admitted it then.)

Between connecting with how the fans of both teams are feeling now, I've also been thinking about how amazing it is that the sport of baseball can connect generations for so long. Much of the news coverage of the 2016 World Series was focused on three dates, 1948, 1945, and 1908. 1948 was the last year the Cleveland Indians won the World Series, 1945 was the last year the Chicago Cubs had appeared in the World Series, and 1908 was the last year the Cubs won the whole thing. Those Cubs dates are particularly mind-boggling to me. As a result, there were lots of stories about what life was like in those years, who was president, what famous people were alive, and so on and so forth. Thinking about things in history books wasn't what made me connect with how long it really had been. It wasn't until I started thinking about my own family history that the sense of time truly hit. Working backwards in time, these are the things that really hit me.
The Cleveland Indians last won the World Series on October 11, 1948. This was a full nine days before my aunt Diane Murray Earnshaw was born. Diane died in 2005 at a too young 57, yet the Indians did not win a World Series in that time. My mother's youngest sister would be born two months after the end of the 1948 World Series; my father's youngest sister wouldn't be born for another four and a half years. My great-grandfather Marshall Edward Murray passed away in May 1948, but I still had three living great-grandparents when the World Series ended, including my great-grandmother Maggie Muckle Kenny who would live 19 more years.

The Chicago Cubs lost the 1945 World Series which ended on October 10, 1945. My father would have just started kindergarten and my mother was a little over a month shy of three years old. The older of my mother's two younger sisters is only three months old, her younger brother hasn't been born yet. My father's younger brother Jackie was still living, his next youngest brother had yet to be born. That so many people I've known my entire life had yet to be born in 1945 and 1948 is amazing.

The date that gets me the most though is October 14, 1908 -- the date of the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. I look back at that date and know that none of my grandparents have been born -- it would be a good 18 months until Grandpa would be born. He lived for 90 years and not once in his long life did the Cubs win the World Series. In 1908, my great-grandmother Mary Mullane is still married to her first husband, Edward Hayes. My Coleman great-grandparents have only been married for 4 years (equaling how long Lizzie has been in the United States); my Dwyer great-grandparents have been married just 3 years. The fact that boggles my mind the most though is that at least 6 of my 16 great-great-grandparents are still living, and possibly 9 of 16 (still figuring out the Coleman/O'Leary side on those.) My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth McDevitt Kenny died a few weeks after the end of the World Series, and my great-great-grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray had been dead less than a year.  My great-great-grandparents were all born between about 1823 and 1855, before the U.S. Civil War, yet six of them were still alive in 1908!

Those are just some of the things that happened in my family during those years, and those kinds of occurrences happened in the families who grew up in and around Chicago and Cleveland. I know how much I thought about Grandpa after the Giants won in 2010 (and again in 2012 and 2014.) I am certain Cubs fans are thinking similar thoughts and looking back at all the people in their family who waited for this moment but never got a chance to see it. I am also certain Indians fans are doing the same thing and wondering when it will be their turn to celebrate.

Baseball has an amazing place in American history. With the founding of the National League in 1876, we have 140 years of people following teams from their cities in what has now become Major League baseball. And while some teams have come, gone, and/or changed cities and names, others have been added so that there are now 30 teams across the country for fans to support and hand down their love for sport from generation to generation. It is sharing family traditions, like cheering for a particular sports team, that strengthens and enriches family ties. Even if a person never met any of her great-great grandparents, she can know there are stories of when that ancestor was going to the baseball stadium to cheer on the same team years before. (And heck, if that person is a fan of the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox, they've even gone to the same stadium!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One last thought -- it's a story I always include when I talk about Grandpa and his love of baseball. When he was growing up in San Francisco, Major League Baseball had yet to come west of the Mississippi, so he was a die hard San Francisco Seals fan. One of the highlights in the history of the Seals was a young player from the heavily Italian North Beach section of town, a fellow named Joe DiMaggio who in 1933 had 61-game hitting streak. Occurring during the Great Depression, Grandpa got to witness a lot of that history. (I also include the story my uncle tells in that linked blog post as I was there when it happened, though not quite in the way described.) Wonder what ever happened to that DiMaggio fellow.

Following Up on John Coleman's Children -- Aileen Gertrude Coleman

John and Sadie Coleman had five children who survived into adulthood. The second of their four daughters was named Aileen Gertrude Coleman and she was born in about 1904. Aileen has been an interesting relative to track down, and only in part due to having to separate her records from that of my grandmother's older sister Eileen Dolores Coleman who was born in 1907. I still haven't found a common Coleman ancestor to attribute the two cousins being so similarly named. The closest would be their grandmother Ellen Ross Coleman.

As with all of John and Sadie's children, there has been some challenge in finding out what happened to them over the course of their lives, a matter made more complicated by multiple name changes due to marriage and divorce. Aileen is no different. When I first found Aileen in the 1930 Census, she was listed as Aileen Myers and divorced. She and her son, Raymond (then 3 years old) had moved back home with her mother and siblings. In the 1940 Census, she is again living with her mother and son, but this time her name is Aileen Stiles. She is listed as married, but there is no husband living with her.

So now I had to set out to find two husbands for Aileen. Based on the information I had, I put an approximate timeline on her first marriage to be about 1925 and her divorce must have taken place between about 1927 and 1930. I dug around and eventually found a marriage record for Aileen's first marriage. She married Leslie Louis Myers on October 31, 1925 at St. Andrews Church in Oakland. Their son, Raymond Lester Myers, was born about six months later on May 2, 1926. Since it would appear Aileen was pregnant when she and Leslie Myers married, perhaps things fell apart because of the "shotgun wedding" aspect.

I started looking to see if I could find any record of their divorce and while I've yet to find a confirmed documentation for the date of their divorce, I did find the reason why. While searching through the Oakland Tribune for divorce notices, I found a couple of articles in January 1929 that indicated Leslie had been arrested for embezzlement. According to the January 7, 1929 edition of the Oakland Tribune, Leslie Myers had forged and sold $2000 worth of stock certificates while working as an assistant bookkeeper at the Montgomery and California Street branch of the Bank of Italy (which would later become the Bank of America) due to "destitute circumstances and illness of his wife and baby." He surrendered himself to the San Francisco police on January 5 and "told police he was a 'two-time embezzler,' having taken $1500 from an Oakland Loan company two years ago." Leslie was apparently on probation for the earlier embezzlement which was nearing it's completion as he had repaid most of the money he had stolen. (While the article doesn't state as much, I would imagine the repayments from his first embezzlement came from money he obtained from the second one.) A follow up article in the January 23, 1929 edition of the Oakland Tribune reported that Leslie Myers was sentenced to five years in federal prison. Sure enough, the next time I found Leslie Myers was in the 1930 Census in the federal prison at McNeil Island in Washington. His record shows him as married, so I'm guessing the divorce was in progress around the time of the census or the prison official who completed the census form did not have a current file on Leslie Myers marital status. Leslie Myers died in July 1977.

Now it was time to find Aileen's second husband, Mr. Stiles and determine what happened to him. Why isn't he living with Aileen in the 1940 Census? It's a little too early for him to have gone off to fight in World War II, though that could have been a possibility if he'd gone to Canada or the UK which were already involved in the fighting by then. I needed to back track then and see if I could find any record of an Aileen Stiles between 1930 and 1940. That's where the city directories and voter registries came in handy, and I eventually found Aileen Stiles in a 1932 voter register in Oakland. Mr. Stiles wasn't listed on that record, but there was another register for 1934 and this time I found her with her husband Nelson H. Stiles, a truck driver. The latest record I was able to find of them living together was a 1938 voter register. I went off to the newspapers then to see what I could find and I eventually turned up a notice of a divorce granted to Aileen Stiles from Nelson H. Stiles in the July 4, 1941 edition of the Oakland Tribune.

After her second divorce, Aileen went back to using the name Aileen Myers, presumably because that was the same last name as her son's. I'm still looking into Aileen to find out what happened to her after she divorced for the second time. Right now, I've been able to track her until about 1956 through city directories. I have yet to find a death record for her and I have found very little information on her son Raymond. So there a couple more puzzles to work out.

Reviewing Daniel P. Coleman's Service Record

I've been looking over the service record I found for my great grandfather Daniel Patrick Coleman in the Royal Naval Registers of Seamen's Services. It's been a bit slow going as there are a lot of pieces that are difficult to read and I still need to research what some of the abbreviations mean. I have been able to decipher the names of most of the ships he served on and when he served on them. I've also found a little bit of information on the ships (mostly from Wikipedia, so I know I need to do more in depth research, but there is useful information for starting points.)

According to the records, Daniel joined the Royal Navy in September 1875. He spent about a week on the HMS Revenge, which was a training ship. From October 1, 1875 to October 23, 1875 he was on another ship, but I can't make out the name on the record. He was then assigned to the HMS Ganges for three consecutive terms of service between October 24, 1875 and August 1, 1877. The Ganges was also a training ship.

On August 2, 1877 Daniel, now 17 years old, joined the crew of the HMS Shannon. According to Wikipedia, the Shannon was the first armored cruiser in the Royal Navy, but was a somewhat unsuccessful ship. In April 1878, the Shannon was sent to the China Station, but recalled in July 1878. According to Daniel's service record, he left the Shannon on August 31, 1878. He was then sent to the HMS Victor Emmanuel from September 1, 1878 through April 9, 1879. The Victor Emmanuel was a receiving and hospital ship stationed in Hong Kong at that time, which leads to some questions. If the Shannon was recalled to England in July 1878 and Daniel doesn't leave that assignment until August 31, 1878, how does he wind up on the Victor Emmanuel in Hong Kong on September 1, 1878? If the Victor Emmanuel is a receiving and hospital ship, why is Daniel there? Is he ill or is he waiting for his new assignment (receiving ships were a place for new recruits who were awaiting their assignments)? There is the family story that Daniel nearly died from malaria while in the Royal Navy, so spending seven months on a hospital ship would match up with that story. Of course, the story is that he contracted malaria while fighting in the first Boer War, but as of yet I can't prove he was in that war and he has a medal from the Third Burmese War, so it's possible that the stories got mixed and confused.

My best guess right now for the discrepancy between the Shannon departing the China Station in July 1878 and Daniel's service record is the Shannon was recalled in July, but didn't depart until the end of August. Either that or Daniel was left behind, but not removed from the list of names on board until August/September. This is definitely one period in the record where further research is needed.

After Daniel left the Victor Emmanuel, he was assigned to the HMS Iron Duke for about a month before joining the crew of the HMS Egeria from May 8, 1879 through October 11, 1881. There were a couple of disruptions in Daniel's time on the Egeria. He was sent back to the Victor Emmanuel for about a week in December 1879, so I'm guessing he needed medical services on the hospital ship. He also spent two stints "in the cells" first for 10 days in January 1881 and then for 14 days in April/May 1881. There is nothing in the record that indicates why Daniel was sent to the hospital ship nor "the cells" so I'll have to see if I can learn more about those incidents. Daniel's character is described as "good" for the most part on the Egeria, though there are a couple of notations of "fair" both appearing around the time he was sent to "the cells."

From October 12, 1881 through December 1881, Daniel was stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Station (listed as the N Barracks on his service record.) Daniel spent a couple of weeks of January 1882 on the HMS Duncan before transferring to the HMS Repulse on January 24. The Repulse was the guard ship at the naval base in Hull. Daniel served on the Repulse until August 31, 1883 before returning to the Duncan for a few months.

On January 10, 1884, Daniel joined the crew of the HMS Serapis which was a troop ship between England in India. According to the notes on Wikipedia, the travel time between the two countries took about 70 days. Allowing for time spent in port Daniel probably made two round trips.

On November 12, 1884, Daniel joined the crew of the HMS Ranger. The Ranger is the ship he served on during the Third Burmese War and was awarded the Burmah Medal. Daniel spent nearly three years on the Ranger until October 31, 1887. This is the second longest single assignment in Daniel's record and since the Ranger was involved in a war, that probably makes sense. This is another period of Daniel's service record that I need to spend more time researching.

Daniel left the Ranger and joined the HMS Cambridge on November 1, 1887. Again this was a short service time before he moved on to the HMS Excellent on Februrary 4, 1888. The HMS Excellent was a gunnery school training ship. Daniel spent most of 1888 on the Excellent before moving on to the HMS Amphion on December 10, 1888.

The Amphion is where the record gets curious. Daniel is listed as a member of the Amphion's crew from December 10, 1888 until February 4, 1890. It is from here that Daniel was "sent to Portsmouth to be dealt with summarily." There is no indication what or why Daniel was sent away, but there is a year gap between his last date on the Amphion and his next assignment on the HMS Duke of Wellington on February 10, 1891. That is followed by another gap in his record between March 4, 1891 and April 14, 1891. From Daniel's service time on the Egeria, I can guess that the gaps in service time are due to time spent in confinement for some kind of misbehavior. Whatever happened at the end of Daniel's time on the Amphion had him imprisoned for a little over a year. The notation for his character on the Duke of Wellington is listed as "fair", which after a year in prison is probably understandable, but there is no explanation why there is another six week gap after he leaves the Duke of Wellington.

On April 15, 1891, Daniel is serving on the HMS Victory I, which was the Naval School of Telegraphy, so whatever caused the gap in service time did not prevent Daniel from moving on to an assignment that would give him more skills to be used during his military service time.

Daniel then moved on to the HMS Sans Pariel on August 1, 1891, which was part of the Mediterranean fleet. This was Daniel's longest assignment, lasting until April 17, 1895. During his time on the Sans Pariel, Daniel had another two brief stints "in the cells" -- one for 7 days in August 1894 and another for 5 days in October 1894. Despite these two incidents, his character is listed as "good" or "very good."

Daniel returned to the HMS Victory I on April 18, 1895, and that is the last fully legible entry on his record. There are two more listings after the Victory one, but the ships names are completely blacked out in the image and it would probably require seeing the original record to figure out what they were. Those two listings cover the dates September 1, 1895 to September 11, 1896 and September 12, 1896 to January 4, 1898. The last entry includes that he was discharged at his own request which was granted on December 17, 1897.

The next record I have in Daniel's chronology is his departure from Southampton, England on January 29, 1898 bound for New York on the ship Paris. I need to figure out what happened between Daniel's arrival in New York to when he first appears in San Francisco in the 1900 census, but that's a task for another day. There is also much more to figure out about Daniel's time in the Royal Navy. I want to know more about the ships he served on and where they were sent. I know from what I've found so far that Daniel spent time in Hong Kong, India, and Burma (now Myanmar) as well as being stationed in England. I definitely want to learn more about what got him sent to Portsmouth and I need to learn more about the Burmese Wars.

Following Up on John Coleman's Children -- Gladys Mae Coleman

In my last post, I covered what I had learned so far about my great grandfather's brother John Coleman and his wife Sarah (Sadie.)  I've also discussed one of his grandsons -- Robert F. Kerley -- in an earlier post.  This time I want to cover John and Sadie's oldest child and Robert's mother, Gladys Mae Coleman.

Gladys married Frank Patrick Elliott at St. Anthony's Church in Oakland on February 3, 1917.  (In another one of those weird coincidences, my great great grandmother Mary Manning Mullane had a cousin named Lizzie Quinlivan who was a housekeeper for the priests at St. Anthony's in the 1890s.)  At some point, Frank and Gladys moved to Ohio where their oldest son John was born in 1919.  I haven't been able to find a direct record for Frank or Gladys in 1920, but at least Gladys was in California by August 1920 as that was when their younger son Robert was born.

Gladys and Frank divorced at some point, but I've not yet found a record of their divorce.  I do know it happened prior to 1924 when Gladys shows up living in Oakland with her mother and siblings and has returned to using her maiden name in the city directories.  Gladys and her sister Marion both worked at Capwell's department store in Oakland.

On August 31, 1929 Gladys married Gordon Ernest Kerley in Oakland.  Gordon was born in Montreal, Canada in 1902 and emigrated to the US from Vancouver in about 1925.   Gladys and Gordon were living in San Francisco in the 1930 census, but Gladys's two sons John and Robert were living in Oakland with her mother Sadie.  In 1931, Gladys and Gordon had a son of their own, Gordon Henry Kerley.

By 1936, Gladys and Gordon had moved with all three children to Southern California and John and Robert Elliott were going by John and Robert Kerley.  I don't know if Gordon Kerley formally adopted John and Robert or if they just took their step-father's name.  I'm still following up on my research on all three of Gladys's sons.  Gordon E. Kerley died in 1961 in San Francisco.  Gladys died in Contra Costa county in 1988.  I suspect she was living with (or at least near) her son Robert Kerley who lived in Walnut Creek.

Learning More About the Colemans -- John James Coleman and Sarah Myers Coleman

My great grandfather Daniel Patrick Coleman had an older brother John James Coleman who also emigrated from Ireland to the United States. I first encountered John Coleman living in San Francisco in the 1900 US Census while looking for Daniel. According to the 1900 Census record, John arrived in the United States in 1877. I am still working on determining when and where John arrived in the US, but I do have some idea of what happened to him afterwards.

In about 1895, John married Sarah (Sadie) Myers, probably in San Francisco. By the 1900 census, Sadie had given birth to three children, but only two had survived -- Gladys Mae (b. 1896) and John James, Jr. (Jack, b. 1899). By the 1910 census John and Sadie had moved to Alameda and Sadie had given birth to four more children, again of which only two had survived -- Aileen Gertrude (b. 1904) and Marion (b. 1906.) John and Sadie's eighth child Noel Margaret Coleman was born in 1914. According to both the 1900 and 1910 censuses, John was a sailor. The 1910 census indicates he was a mate on a fishing vessel. By the 1920 census, Sadie turns up as a widow. I haven't been able to find a death notice for John, but based on the California Death Index, I believe he died in 1919. Sadie lived in Alameda County, mostly in Oakland, until her death in 1956.

John and Sadie's children have been challenging to follow in the records as three of their four daughters were married more than once, which means lots of name changes. The fourth daughter, Marion, I haven't been able to find any records for past 1933 as yet, so it's possible she too will prove to have challenging name changes. I've gotten some information on all five of John and Sadie's children, and will follow up with what I've found in later posts.

I am also planning to spend a bit of time looking in to Sadie's family. As I noted in an earlier post, Sadie's younger sister Gertrude Myers Alexander was a witness to my great grandparents' wedding in 1904, so while she is not a direct relative, she did play a role in the family history.

Crossing Paths with Cousins

Most of the research I've done to date has been on the Murray/Mullane side, so this year, I've decided to spend more time looking into the Coleman side of the family tree. One of the first things I'm looking in to is my great grandfather Daniel Coleman's brother John Coleman and his family. John Coleman married a woman named Sarah (Sadie) Myers and had five children that lived to adulthood. I've been working out who each of the children were, who they married, and if they had any children. It's been a bit complicated as it appears each of John's children were married multiple times, so I've had to go very slowly through their records. However, in doing so, I found an item that had me quite amused.

John and Sadie Coleman's oldest child was Gladys Mae Coleman. Gladys's first husband was named Frank Patrick Elliott and they married in 1917. Gladys and Frank had two sons, John and Robert.  In 1929, Gladys married a man named Gordon Ernest Kerley. I haven't discovered what happened to her first husband Frank, but it appears that Gordon Kerley adopted her two sons as they appear in the 1940 Census as John and Robert Kerley.

I haven't found out much yet about John Kerley, but I was able to find quite a bit about his younger brother Robert. After serving in World War II, Robert received his bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley and began a career in university administration. After stints at the University of Kentucky and Johns Hopkins University, Robert Kerley was appointed Vice Chancellor for Administration at UC Berkeley in 1970.

This is where I stumbled on one of those weird small-world occurrences. I found a copy of the University Bulletin for the Staff of the University of California on Google Books that detailed his appointment. The Bulletin read, in part:

"The appointment of Kerley to fill the important executive position on the campus was announced by President Hitch and Chancellor Roger W. Heyns following approval by the Regents."

[University Bulletin: A Weekly Bulletin for the Staff of the University of California, Volume 18, Number 37, 29 Jun 1970]

That sentence gave me a moment to pause and wonder because it contained the name of someone I knew. Roger W. Heyns was a founding board member of the SETI Institute where I have worked for 25 years. While I didn't know Roger well, I did get to know him a bit during his time on the board until his death in 1995. It was yet another reminder that the world is smaller than we would imagine it is.  

Robert Kerley died in 2006 and was survived by his wife and six children. I'm still following up on them, and hope to discover more about this part of the Coleman family tree.

Another Holy Cross Visit -- November 2015

It's fairly time consuming to head up to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try to track down where all the many relatives I have buried there are located.  It helps tremendously that I have a list of locations from the Cemetery Index at SFGenealogy.com so have a list of where I need to go and which family members are buried near each other.  I always make a plan ahead of time as to which sections I'm going to visit and who I'm going to look for.  I had some time off last November, so I planned to spend a morning at Holy Cross.

For this visit, I planned to hit Sections J, K, and M which are more or less in the center of the cemetery.  I parked my car near the Priests Plot and paid a quick visit to Uncle Eddie and waved at Joe DiMaggio's grave in Section I before trekking through Section J looking for some of my Mullane relatives.

This was the first trip I remembered to stick my phone into my search bag (which usually contains gardening gloves, my camera, a bottle of water, a clipboard with my search list, and a gardening shovel in case uncovering a headstone requires a bit more work than my hands can manage) and it proved handy.  Section J is one of the older sections and the row numbering is somewhat perplexing.  After some cross-checking on the phone that I was headed in the right direction, I was able to find the grave I was looking for -- that of my great grandmother's brother Phillip J. Mullane and his wife and three children.  Phillip and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane had four children, but only one lived to adulthood.  Edward, Nora/Norine, and Phillip Clayton are the only ones whose names appear on the headstone.

Next it was over to Section K to see if I could find Thomas Joseph Mullane and his mother Margaret Shanahan Mullane.  Margaret was married to my great grandmother's youngest brother Edward.  Edward is buried over in Section F with his parents and other family members, and based on what I've been able to find at SFGenealogy.com, it appears Thomas and Margaret are buried with some Shanahan relatives.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get properly oriented in this section and wasn't able to locate the grave.  It was particularly frustrating because my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in Section K and I've located their grave previously and I couldn't find them either to help with my orientation.  I'll need to head back to find them.

I walked up the hill next to see if I would luck out in Section M and find a headstone for my grandfather's sister Mollie Murray Johnson.  I knew from a previous visit looking for her mother and sister in the section that there weren't a lot of headstones in this older part of the cemetery and that the ones that were there are much newer.  With so many rows containing very few headstones it was a trick trying to find the right approximate location.  I walked around the area I thought I should be looking for any headstone I could cross-reference on my phone and I couldn't find anything for Mollie.

Since it was a nice day and I had struck out on most of the folks I was looking for I decided I was close enough to walk up to the St. Rose of Lima section where several of my aunts are buried.  After saying hello to Helen, Diane, and Betty (all conveniently within a few rows of each other), I headed down the hill to the San Lorezno section and visit my aunt Pat and got my first look at my cousin Mark's headstone.  It was a little bit sad to walk through these sections as they all were people who impacted my life directly -- much more so than all of the other folks I had been looking for but had never met (or even knew about until recently!)  I miss them all.

As I headed back to my car I realized I was going to have to cut across Section G to get there, so I made my way down to Section G2 to make a quick visit with Nana and Grandpa Murray.  While this wasn't a particularly productive trip in locating ancestors, it was a nice way to spend a warm fall morning.

More Mullane Misery

As I noted when following up on posts about the Mullane family, there was a lot of tragedy in the early part of the 20th Century for all members of the family.  While conducting one of my regular searches of newspapers a while ago, I ran across another sad story about the Mullane family.

Myrtle Mullane, who was the only child of Patrick Henry Mullane and his wife Ellen Mary Sullivan, died at the age of nine during the Independence Day celebrations in 1916.  When I found her death notice that indicated she died while the family was in El Verano in Sonoma County, I thought perhaps there had been some kind of accident while the family was on vacation.  I would need to order her death certificate to know for certain how she died, but I discovered something more about Myrtle that may have contributed to her young death.

In October 1910, Myrtle was playing in the back yard of her parents' home when she found some matches and managed to light one and set her dress on fire.  Ella Mullane rushed out of the house and batted the flames with her hands.  Both Ella and Myrtle were badly burned.  According to the article I found in the San Francisco Call, Myrtle was "a pathetic, moaning figure, swathed in bandages from head to foot."  She was admitted to the Mission Emergency Hospital "where the surgeons will work desperately at the well nigh hopeless task of saving her life."  She was "terribly burned on the face and chest" and was clearly not expected to survive.  The Oakland Tribune coverage was brief, but more optimistic.  Myrtle was sent home after spending just a day at the emergency hospital to be cared for by her mother who was also burned on her hands and arms, but was "well enough to attend to [Myrtle's] injuries."  There was also a brief mention of the incident in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, which made it sound like both Myrtle and Ella were in dire condition.

Myrtle clearly survived this horrific accident, but it does make me wonder if a result was enduring other health problems over the remaining years of her short life.  None of the news articles are particularly long, and the way it was written in the Call was quite dramatic, so it's difficult to know just how badly injured Myrtle was, but it seems to have been fairly serious.  Surviving those kinds of injuries is challenging today, so I can only imagine what it was like in 1910.  It is not terribly surprising that she died about six years later.

Timelines: The Mullanes

Keeping the family history in order is challenging, so to assist in figuring out who, what, where, and when things happened I've created a couple of timelines.  I put up a timeline for the Murrays a couple of weeks ago, this one will cover the Mullanes.  There is some overlap here, so I will leave out the information posted in the Murrays timeline as it relates to the descendants of Marshall Edward Murray and Mary Josephine Mullane.

I plan to do a similar timeline for the Colemans and O'Learys, but those will be further down the road as I focus my 2016 research on that side of the family.

MULLANE FAMILY TIMELINE:

About 1845:  Mary Manning is born in Ireland

19 August 1847:  Timothy John Mullane is born in Ireland.

About 1860-1862: Mary Manning immigrates to the United States (this is my best guess to date.  It’s possible she arrived earlier than 1860.)

1862:  Mary Manning is working as a domestic in San Francisco. 

About 1860-1863:  Timothy John Mullane immigrates to the United States (this is my best guess to date.  It’s possible he arrived earlier than 1860.)

1863:  Timothy John (T.J.) Mullane is working as a clerk in San Francisco.

8 October 1868:  Timothy John Mullane becomes a naturalized US citizen in the 4th District Court in San Francisco.

About 1868-1869:  Timothy John Mullane and Mary Manning are married in San Francisco.  (This is my best guess to date as I've not yet found a record for their marriage.  I suspect they may have been married at Mission Dolores due to the fact that both of their funerals were held there.)

1870:  John Martin Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

21 March 1871:  Mary Josephine Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

22 January 1872:  Timothy Joseph Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

10 May 1874:  Thomas Michael Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

3 September 1875:  Phillip James Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

6 January 1877:  Patrick Henry Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

July 1879:  Edward George Washington Mullane is born to T. J. Mullane and Mary Manning Mullane in San Francisco.

8 December 1888:  Timothy John Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.  He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

5 February 1892:  Mary Manning Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco  She is buried with her husband Timothy John Mullane at Holy Cross Cemetery.

About 1899:  Thomas Michael Mullane marries Jennie (last name unknown) in San Francisco. (The 1900 US Census indicates Thomas and Jennie Mullane have been married for 1 year.  I have not found a marriage record for them as of this writing.)

21 April 1900:  Mary Josephine Mullane marries Denis Edward Hayes in San Francisco.  They appear as married up to the 1910 US Census when Denis Edward Hayes disappears from the records.  As of this writing I do not know what happened to Denis Edward Hayes and believe he abandoned Mary. [For more on Mary Josephine Mullane, see the post Timelines: The Murrays.]

10 May 1900:  Thomas Mullane is born to Thomas Michael Mullane and Jennie (Unknown) Mullane.  As of this writing, this is the only record I have been able to find of Thomas Mullane, Jr. beyond his appearance in the 1900 US Census which was recorded in June, 1900.

29 October 1902:  Phillip James Mullane marries Mary Agnes Greeley at St. Brendan's Church in San Francisco.

10 September 1903:  Edward Ignatius Mullane is born in San Francisco to Phillip James Mullane and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane.

17 December 1903:  Patrick Henry Mullane marries Ellen Mary Sullivan in San Francisco.

6 June 1905:  Maria Nora (Norine) Mullane is born in San Francisco to Phillip James Mullane and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane.

28 August 1905:  Maria Nora (Norine) Mullane dies of enteritis in San Francisco.  She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

14 June 1906:  Timothy Joseph Mullane marries Hattie Mae Huber in Oakland.

8 July 1906:  Myrtle Marie Mullane is born in San Francisco to Patrick Henry Mullane and Ellen Sullivan Mullane.

18 June 1907:  Phillip Clayton Mullane is born in San Francisco to Phillip James Mullane and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane.

About 1908:  Edward George Washington Mullane marries Margaret Shanahan, probably in San Francisco.  I've yet to find a definitive marriage record for them, but the 1910 US Census indicates they have been married for 2 years.

9 February 1909:  Edward John Mullane is born to Edward G.W. Mullane and Margaret Shanahan Mullane in San Francisco.

19 March 1910:  Thomas Michael Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.

15 April 1911:  John Martin Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.  He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his parents.

13 July 1911:  Thomas Joseph Mullane is born to Edward G.W. Mullane and Margaret Shanahan Mullane in San Francisco.

1912:  Jennie (Unknown) Mullane is working as a janitor (janitrix) in San Francisco.  As of this writing, this is the last record I have been able to find about her.

11 October 1912:  Leonard F Mullane is born in San Francisco to Phillip James Mullane and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane.

6 March 1913:  Raymond W Mullane is born to Edward G.W. Mullane and Margaret Shanahan Mullane in San Francisco.

11 January 1915:  Thomas Joseph Mullane dies in San Francisco.  He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA in the Shanahan family plot.

9 March 1916:  Margaret E Mullane is born to Edward G.W. Mullane and Margaret Shanahan Mullane in San Francisco.

20 June 1916:  Margaret E Mullane dies in San Francisco.  She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in the Mullane family plot.

4 July 1916: Myrtle Marie Mullane dies in El Verano, California.  She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

16 January 1917:  Edward George Washington Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.  He is buried with his parents and daughter in the Mullane family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery.

25 Februrary 1917:  Edward Ignatius Mullane dies in San Francisco.  He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his sister Maria Nora (Norine) Mullane.

27 March 1917:  Phillip Clayton Mullane dies in San Francisco.  He is buried with his siblings Edward and Nora at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

20 September 1931:  Raymond W Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.  He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in the Mullane family plot with his father and sister.

6 January 1933:  Margaret Shanahan Mullane dies in San Francisco.  She is buried with her son Thomas in the Shanahan family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

16 June 1935:  Timothy Joseph Mullane dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco.  He is buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery (now Olivet Memorial Park) in Colma, CA.

3 June 1937:  Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane dies of pancreatic cancer in San Francisco.  She is buried with her children at Holy Cross Cemetery.

Before April 1940:  Leonard F Mullane marries Gladys Nichol, presumably in San Francisco. (They appear as married in the 1940 US Census. I have yet to find a marriage record for them.)

12 July 1940:  Mary Mullane Murray dies from heart disease in San Francisco.  She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

18 December 1941:  Phillip James Mullane dies in San Francisco.  He is buried with his wife and children at Holy Cross Cemetery.

1941-1946:  Leonard F. Mullane and Gladys Nichol Mullane have two children that are still living and will therefore not be specifically named.

11 November 1943:  Hattie Huber Mullane dies in San Francisco.

27 May 1944:  Jerald Mullane is born in Marin County, California to Leonard F Mullane and Gladys Nichol Mullane.  He dies one day later.

21 January 1945: Patrick Henry Mullane dies of pneumonia in San Francisco.  He is buried with is daughter Myrtle at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

About 1946:  Edward John Mullane marries Frances Dorothy Donohue in San Francisco. (This is a best guess based on the birth of their children.  I've yet to find a marriage record for them.)

Between 1947-1951:  Leonard F. Mullane and Gladys Nichol Mullane divorce. (This is a best guess based on the birth of their children and Leonard's subsequent re-marriage below.  I have not found a divorce record.)

Between 1948-1949:  Edward John Mullane and Frances Donohue Mullane have 2 children who are still living and will therefore not be specifically named.

8 September 1951:  Leonard F. Mullane marries Helen Anita Becker (nee Balletto) in San Francisco.

26 November 1961:  Leonard F. Mullane dies in San Francisco.  He is buried at Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, CA.

30 May 1979:  Helen Balletto Mullane dies in San Mateo County, CA.  She is buried at Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, CA.

14 November 1980:  Frances Donohue Mullane dies in San Francisco, CA. She is buried in the Mullane family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

6 April 1997:  Edward John Mullane dies in Redwood City, CA.  He is buried in the Mullane family plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.