At the beginning of the year, I decided to tackle the case of Martin Mullane. Martin appears in the 1869 San Francisco city directory living with my great-great grandfather T.J. Mullane. Other than knowing Martin was a tailor and likely T.J.'s older brother, I hadn't been able to find out much more information. I tracked him through the city directories up until 1880 when he disappears. I had to go back and see if I could find Martin in any census records.
The Mullanes have been very hard to locate in the census records, largely due to the misspelling of their last name. After some digging, I was able to find Martin in the 1870 Census listed as Martin Melane. Finally! That record gave me a lot more information. Martin was married to a woman named Mary, which should make things interesting since T.J.'s wife was also named Mary and they named their daughter (my great-grandmother) Mary! Such fun! Martin and Mary have three sons, Peter age 6 who was born in Ohio, Martin age 3 who was born in California, and Christopher age 1 who was also born in California. I will assume both Martin, Jr. and Christopher were born in San Francisco. Those names match up with the names I found in the 1890s voter registrations, so my guess that they were Martin's sons was correct.
There are a number of other families enumerated in the same building, but since the 1870 Census doesn't record street addresses, I don't know if there are several families living together or if they are living in an apartment building of some kind. The really interesting bit I found is a few lines down from Martin and his family there is another Mary Melane, age 23, who is a washerwoman with a son who is about 9 months old named John. I believe this is my great-great grandmother Mary Manning Mullane, but there's no sign of T.J. with them. Well, that makes for yet another Mullane mystery to figure out. Where the heck was T.J. when the 1870 Census was taken?
Finding this record, allowed me to trace Martin's family a bit more, and I located them in the 1880 Census record living on Shipley Street. Mary Mullane is listed as a widow when the census was taken in June 1880, and since I had records for Martin in the 1879 and 1880 San Francisco city directories, I suspected he may have died earlier in the year. The 1880 Census has a mortality record of anyone who had died over the previous year, so I went to see if I could find Martin in those records, and he turns up twice! Martin died in March 1880 of tuberculosis. I still haven't figured out where he was buried and there aren't any San Francisco papers available on line for 1880, so it will require a trip to a library with microfilm to see if I can find a death notice.
Knowing that Martin had died, I turned to see what I could learn about his wife and sons. The records I found for Mary stop in 1883, so that was a bit of a dead end. I was able to track Peter Mullane until 1904 when he died from tetanus. Peter was a woodworker who worked in mills in and around San Francisco. It doesn't appear that he married or had any children. Martin Francis Mullane went on to become a tailor like his father, but I can't find any record of him after 1898. I did find a Martin Mullane in the Calvary records at sfgenealogy.com who died in March 1900 who is about the same age as Martin Francis Mullane, but I couldn't find a death notice in either the San Francisco Call or San Francisco Chronicle that matched up with the date to confirm if it is the same Martin Mullane, so I don't know if it's the one I'm looking for. The youngest son of Martin and Mary Mullane, Christopher J. Mullane, became a peddler and I've been able to track him up to 1913.
So, as always with the Mullanes, there are a bunch of new puzzles and mysteries to work out and people to track down. I still need to find evidence that the elder Martin Mullane is indeed the older brother of my great-great grandfather T.J. as I believe he is. Knowing that his son Peter was born in Ohio gives me another lead to follow, so that will be part of my next steps along the Mullane branch. My preliminary searches thus far haven't turned up any Mullanes in Ohio, but I've not done much more than a cursory search. It also makes me wonder if Martin fought in the US Civil War. My direct ancestors all seem to have been in California for most of the war and I haven't found anyone who fought in the war, but with Martin living in Ohio which was more more located where the war was going on may have enlisted at some point.
