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.