In Answering and Reviewing Questions, Part 2,
I mentioned I had recently discovered a death notice for Thomas Michael
Mullane, one of my great-grandmother Mary Mullane Murray's younger
brothers. The surprising bit of information that I discovered from that
was that Thomas was married to a woman named Jennie. I set off to find
out more about Jennie and what might have happened to her, and the
first thing I turned up was a census record from 1900. Thomas and
Jennie were living on Sixth Street in San Francisco with their one month
old son, Thomas, Jr. and had been married for a year. That was even
more surprising news! There was no mention of a child in Thomas's death
notice in 1910, so was he left out or had he also died?
I
then went to check the 1910 census and discovered it was taken in April
-- a month after Thomas died. That meant looking for Jennie as a widow
with a nearly 10 year old son. Neither turned up. I checked the city
directories and the death notice for an address and turned up 111 or 111
1/2 Germania Street. With that information I could identify the enumeration district
for the 1910 census and search the images directly. I found 111
Germania, but not Jennie and Thomas, Jr. Looking at some of the other
records on the page, I suspect 111 1/2 was missed as there are records
for 109 1/2 and 107A. It's also possible that Jennie and her son have
gone to live with her family, but as yet I don't know Jennie's maiden
name to look for her there.
So,
I tried to see if I could find a record of Jennie and Thomas's marriage
in 1899. My best bet for that would be newspapers (and I am eternally
grateful that both the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Call
are available on line for these kinds of searches!) Off to
newspapers.com to run my search and I get a couple of hits on Thomas M.
Mullane in June 1899 -- fantastic! Well, not so fast.
I
took a look at the articles and they aren't a marriage notice, but
brief articles on the theft of some shoes! A shop owner named H.C.
Lucke reported an on-going theft of shoes from his shop. The name
looked familiar to me, so I went back to my records and saw that Thomas
Mullane was listed as working for Mr. Lucke in the 1896-1898 city
directories!
The article that appears in the Call says
that Thomas Mullane (spelled Mulane), age 23, had worked for Mr. Lucke
for seven years. It seems Thomas and one of his co-workers had been
stealing "only the most expensive makes" of shoes that cost "from $7 and
upward" over a period of two months and giving or selling them to
friends and acquaintances. When they were arrested, the police found "a
dozen fine pair of patent leather shoes" and both men promptly
confessed. Thomas's partner in crime, a Charles Rochette, had worked
for Mr. Lucke for about three months and had been hired "as an act of
charity."
For
such a brief article, it contained a lot of information. For example,
Mr. Rochette was married "to an estimable young woman" and resided at
217 Eighth Street. For my purpose, however, the line for Thomas was
more promising as he was "unmarried" per this article. So as of June 9,
1899, Thomas is not married. His son, Thomas, Jr. was born on May 10,
1900. That gives me a window to search for a marriage notice for Thomas
and Jennie. Nothing has turned up on my searches, so I'm going to have
to look at the papers manually. I'm also going to need to follow up on
the arrest of Thomas Mullane to see if there's any notice of
punishment. The articles I found just say he was booked into the city
prison for petty larceny, so I'm not sure how much time, if any, he
would be in jail.
I'm
also puzzled about why I haven't been able to turn up anything on
Thomas, Jr. after 1900. He isn't mentioned in the death
notice for his father, and I can't find any record at all beyond his
birth notice. It's possible he died before his father, but I haven't turned
him up in the California Death Indexes. The death indexes don't begin
until 1905, so if he died as a young child he wouldn't be there, but I'm
also not finding a burial record at Holy Cross. While it's possible
that if he did die between 1900-1905 that he wasn't buried at Holy
Cross, that seems a little unusual. His father is buried there in the family plot, so it would make
sense if he were buried there too. Another possibility is that his
mother Jennie remarried and her new husband adopted Thomas Jr. thus
giving him a different last name.
It's
going to take some digging and slogging through pages of newspapers and
city directories to see if I can turn anything up on Thomas, Jennie,
and Thomas Jr. Fortunately, I can do most of that research on line so I
won't have to wait to gain access to the records I'm looking for. It
will probably take some time though, particularly going through the
newspapers as it's easy to miss things if you don't pay attention. Hopefully I'll be able to work out this puzzle and find out what
happened!
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