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.