Grandparents' Day: Donald Joseph Dwyer

Last year, just as I was about to make a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, I saw a note that it was Grandparents' Day. Since a grilled cheese sandwich was my usual lunch whenever I was visiting my Dwyer grandparents, I also whipped up the required chocolate milkshake to accompany my sandwich. As I was eating lunch, it occurred to me that I should have written a post about my grandparents for Grandparents' Day. I ran out of time then, so decided to spend some time working on individual posts about each of my grandparents. This is the first of those post and, right now, the plan is to schedule one to run each Grandparents' Day over the next several years. (Grandparents Day officially falls on the Sunday after Labor Day here in the United States.) I decided to start with my maternal grandfather, Donald Joseph Dwyer (or just Grandpa to me), as he was my last living grandparent.

Grandpa was born in San Francisco on March 22, 1910 to Ignatius Dwyer and Mabel Theler Dwyer. Grandpa was their second, and last, child and was a couple months shy of three years younger than his sister Elise. Grandpa's earliest years were spent growing up in the then heavily Irish Mission District, but by 1918 the Dwyers had moved to the brand new development of Westwood Park and were the proud owners of 101 Westwood Drive. Westwood Drive would play a large role in the Dwyer family through the years, and still does today. The annual family football pool is called the Westwood Challenge and is filled with the descendants of Don Dwyer and his sister Elise Dwyer Pendergast.

Grandpa 1932, Cal grad

Grandpa attended St. Ignatius High School which was located at Hayes and Schrader Streets when he graduated in 1928. St. Ignatius would also eventually see his oldest son and three grandsons, though at different locations. After graduating from SI, Grandpa moved on to college at the University of California at Berkeley. During his freshman year he noticed a pretty girl on the ferry from San Francisco to Berkeley and eventually asked her out. That girl was Mary Audley Kenny. They dated throughout their years at Cal and eventually married on August 4, 1936. Don and Audley went on to have six children (four girls, two boys), seventeen grandchildren, and (at last count) 23 great-grandchildren. They were married for 59 years until Grandma died in 1995 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.

Grandpa worked as an assayer for the United States Mint beginning in 1936. His first year was spent working out of what is now called "The Old Mint" on 5th Street in downtown San Francisco, before moving to the new building on Hermann Street, which is still in operation. The Old Mint was the second mint built in San Francisco and opened in 1874 after the original mint proved to be too small for the volume of gold and coins it was handling. It is one of a few buildings to survive the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and was designated as an historical landmark in 1961.

Grandpa & Grandma wedding
photo 1936

Growing up, I always knew that Grandpa had been an assayer, but did not know what that meant. Whenever I asked my mom "What did Grandpa do?" her response was always "He was an assayer." but could never explain what, exactly, an assayer DID. We visited Philadelphia last year and were able to visit the US Mint and take a self directed tour. One floor had an interactive display on how coins were made with windows that looked down on the production floor where various machines were cranking out different coins (we saw a LOT of pennies!) and along this display was a brief explanation of what assayers do (both currently and in the past.) After all these years, I finally had an idea what Grandpa did for a living! (Of course, now I've completely forgotten it, but I did know for a couple of days at least!) Grandpa retired from the Mint in 1970 and he and Grandma spent time in the late 1970s and 1980s taking tours around the US.

So, that's Grandpa's basic biography, but doesn't really describe the man who called me "chum." My mother went back to work in 1972 after taking a few years off after my brother and I were born, so we spent a lot of that year at Grandma and Grandpa's whenever both of our parents were working. I started school in 1973, so days at Grandma and Grandpa's were less frequent, but we spent a lot of weekends at the house at 2 Upland Drive when our parents enjoyed a weekend away, usually in Monterey.

Grandma & Grandpa's 50th
Anniversary party 1986

My favorite memories of those times are really just small little moments. Sitting outside on the stairs in front of the house and chatting with a neighbor and having Grandpa come outside and say "How're you doing, chum?"; driving down to Ocean Avenue in the front seat of Grandpa's red Ford Fairlane to get a special treat of Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner; sweeping up the tobacco Grandpa would spill all over the house from his pipe. (Okay, that might be more of a Grandma memory as she's the one who handed me the hand broom and dust pan and told me to sweep.) Grandpa's pipe is probably his most defining personal item. He smoked it for most of his adult life and the smell of Half and Half tobacco is still a fond memory. Despite spending a chunk of my childhood nagging my mother to quit smoking cigarettes, Grandpa's pipe never seemed to be a problem. I even remember buying him a can of tobacco for a Christmas present when I was in my teens (how I was able to do that I have no idea.)

Another defining memory of Grandpa is his love for the local sports teams. Grandpa was a die-hard San Francisco 49er and San Francisco Giants fan. He loved cheering on those great 1980s Niners with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and well I could probably name every player from those days and so could Grandpa. As much as Grandpa loved the Niners, it was baseball that was his first love. In the years before the Giants moved to San Francisco from New York, he was a tried and true fan of the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. When the Giants came to town, he had regular tickets to see Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, and Juan Marichal. He'd take my mother and her siblings along from time to time and passed on his love of baseball to them who in turn passed it on to their children. And while I don't specifically remember it, I'm sure many of those days spent at Grandma and Grandpa's had Lon Simmons calling Giants games in the background while Grandpa worked on his daily crossword puzzle.

One of my strongest memories of Grandpa is a rainy weekend spent at the house on Upland Drive when I was about 10 years old. Grandpa had just bought a new all in one stereo system that in addition to the usual radio tuner and record player (no, we didn't call it a turntable then) included both an 8-track tape player (wow!) and a cassette recorder (double wow!) By modern standards (and probably even by 1970s standards) it was a pretty low tech system, but it was new and fancy for Grandma and Grandpa! Because it was a rainy weekend, I'm sure my brother and I were driving Grandma crazy since we were stuck inside all day, so we decided to test out the new cassette recorder by having Grandpa recite some poems for us and record them. Grandpa had memorized poems by Robert Service and others when he was a school boy, but my favorite was always his reciting of "Casey at the Bat." Grandpa recited that and a few others and my brother and I managed to make a mess of a couple of recordings and the tape was put away after playing it for my parents when they returned home from their trip.

Me & cousins D & D
with Grandpa on his 88th birthday

In 1989, Grandpa went through a bout of throat cancer after decades of smoking a pipe. After he came through treatment with a clean bill of health, Grandpa decided to buy a new car. This turned into a boon for me as I then wound up with his red 1967 Ford Fairlane as my first car. The car was enormous by 1990 standards and had a few quirks (leaky transmission and no functioning radio) but with a V-8 engine that car could fly. Of course, it took a bit to actually get up to freeway speeds, but once it did it was great fun to drive. I drove it for about a year and a half until keeping it maintained for my daily commute got to be too much trouble and passed it along to my brother. About a year later he crashed it into a tree, which was about the only thing that could do much damage to that car, and it was deemed a total loss. Grandpa was not happy with me.

The last ten years of Grandpa's life were a bit tough. Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in about 1991 and soon afterward the family had to move her to a board and care facility as it was too difficult to care for her at home. Grandpa was very lonely after Grandma went into care, and when Grandma died in October 1995, most of the family thought Grandpa would surely follow soon. Surprisingly, Grandpa lived another four and a half years, until June 2000. He had a lot of different health problems over those years, including a heart attack in 1999, but ultimately it was just time that caught up with him.

My parents had planned a trip to Italy in June of 2000, and they went, with Grandpa's encouragement, even though they knew it was possible Grandpa might not live to hear about their trip. Sure enough, a few days after Mom and Dad left for Italy, Mom's younger sister called me to say Grandpa didn't have much more time. I took the next afternoon off and went up to the house on Upland to visit and say my final farewell. Grandpa was still awake when I arrived, but I'm not sure he knew who I was. He drifted off to sleep not long after, so I sat and visited with a couple of my aunts and uncles who were also at the house. I was telling them about attending the Giants Opening Day at the brand new Pac Bell Park (now AT&T Park) and my trip to Boston where I got to attend a game at Fenway Park. As the conversation wound on, suddenly a voice came from the bed behind me -- "Bye bye baby!" Grandpa had called out Russ Hodges' famed home run call. It was the last thing he'd ever say. I kissed him goodbye that evening knowing it was for the last time.

Grandpa died early on the morning of June 9 and my aunt called me about 6:30 that morning to let me know. I called my mom in Italy to let her know and then went in to work briefly so I could tie a few things up before taking a few days off to help the family with arrangements. My aunt mentioned to me that my mom had found the recording Grandpa had made with me and my brother back in 1979 recently and asked me to find it at my parents' house so one of my cousins could use it for a memorial slide show. I found it and listened to it for the first time in 20 years and got a huge smile on my face as I remembered that rainy weekend listening to Grandpa recite poems for me.

I miss you old chum.

New Clues for the McDonoughs

Early in my research I sent off for a copy of my great-grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray's death certificate. I got a response back indicating the record couldn't be found. Then I discovered a copy of the California Death Index which included images of the index which had the death certificate number listed. I decided I'd try again once I got further on in my research and could mail in everything I needed. It took longer than I planned, but about a month ago I indeed sent off a request for Bridget's death certificate along with a print out of the CA Death Index page with her record highlighted. Hopefully, I'd have better luck this time.  Well, I did.

A few days ago I got an envelope in the mail from the California Department of Vital Records. As always, I got excited about what I might find in the envelope this time and I rushed inside with the mail and groceries to see what it was.  It was, of course, Bridget's death certificate. Finally.

It didn't really hold many surprises as I know when and where she was born and died and where she was subsequently buried. Learning her cause of death was helpful (pulmonary edema), but not of any major interest beyond adding to the various and sundry heart conditions that seem to run through both the Murray and Coleman branches of the family. I learned that her daughter Mary (Mollie) was also living with her and her two sons Marshall and Joseph which I had assumed but couldn't prove.

But the one big bit of information that I was hoping to find was there -- the names of Bridget's parents. I got half lucky I guess because her parents names are listed as Patrick and Mary McDonough. Drat, no maiden name for her mother to help narrow things down a bit further.

Learning Bridget's father's name, however, gives me further reason to investigate the Patrick McDonough I found living a few blocks from Bridget in the 1880 US Census. I may have to send off for his death certificate too, but for now I'm still searching on line resources to see if I can turn up anything of use.

Having this bit of information also makes me want to try to get Bridget and John Murray's marriage record again. I've hit a few stumbling blocks trying to get it over the years, so it's time to try again. I know it should exist, it's just a matter of getting to the record as it's not available on line. Rather frustrating.

Cousins Day

Murray Cousins, Summer 1979 Lake Tahoe

Here in the 21st Century there seems to be a "National Day" for everything, from National Bubblewrap Day to National Star Wars Day to go along with the more traditional celebrations like Mother's Day and Father's Day. Somewhere along the line July 24 became declared National Cousins Day and as someone who is close with many of her cousins, I definitely think it's a day to be celebrated.

The picture at the top of this post is of me, my brother, and our Murray first cousins, taken one summer (about 1979 I think) at Lake Tahoe. It showed up in a collection of family photos that one of my cousins digitized after our uncle Eddie died in 2012. When I finally popped the CD into my computer to take a look at the pictures and see what was there, I saw this picture and sat and looked at it for a very long time. I'm guessing it's from Uncle Eddie's collection and probably one he carried with him as he traveled around the world while serving in the US Navy as a chaplain. I absolutely love it. This picture so totally captures my happiest childhood memories in one instant it takes my breath away.

I should note here that there are actually eight Murray cousins. The first six of us were born within five years of each other. The two youngest didn't come along for another fifteen years when the youngest of the first six were already in high school. I was in college. They're more like our nephew and niece than cousins -- at least in terms of childhood experiences. I feel kind of badly for the two youngest -- their experience of their cousins growing up are of more adults, not the childhood friends and playmates the rest of us had.

But back to this picture. While I don't remember it being taken, I do remember the summer vacation when it was taken. My mother's youngest sister and her husband owned a cabin near Lake Tahoe and would rent it to family during the summer. We had it in August -- I want to say it was for the entire month, but that seems too long (especially if it was 1979 which is the year my family moved from San Bruno to Millbrae.) It was longer than a week though. My mother's older sister and her family had the cabin before we arrived and we overlapped our stay by a couple of days. After they left, my aunt Diane and her kids came up. Uncle Eddie probably came with them also as I can't imagine Diane driving all the way up to Tahoe. They stayed with us for at least a week. My father's younger brother and his kids also came up, but just for a weekend. It was during this weekend that the picture was taken.

So I look at the six of us, aged 6 to almost 11, and we're just a bunch of goofy kids posing for a summer snapshot. I've got rabbit ears behind my head and am doing the same thing to Anne, Steven and John have their arms draped over each other's shoulders, Mary Elizabeth is hugging Marie* and we're all grinning ear to ear. It captures summer and childhood so amazingly well. It also captures the closeness among the six of us. Nearly 40 years have passed since this picture was taken and we all remain close. Sure, we don't see each other as often as we'd like (or even should) between jobs and families and the busy nature of our adult lives, but we're as tight knit as ever. I like to think of it as having 6 siblings with out some of the sibling rivalry that comes along with most actual siblings.

So, Happy Cousins Day to all my crazy cousins.

*When I started this blog, I decided not to name any living people, so all cousins names have been changed.

Seven of the eight Murray cousins, still having fun in 2017

The Devil Is in the Details

I've been going back and forth about whether or not to write a post about the most recent work I've been doing on my family tree. I've hesitated because unlike my other posts, this really isn't about people, but about process. Ultimately, I decided to write about it as it's a learning experience for genealogy and aspiring family historians. I hope by sharing my experience here, I can help others avoid some of the mistakes I made early in my research.

After having spent much of 2017 wading through the Mullane branch of the tree trying to sort out Martin Mullane and his connection to my great grandfather T.J. Mullane, I happened to stumble upon an article from the US National Archives about the best practices for file naming digital files. I found the article very useful and decided to follow some of their guidelines. This required doing a global update to all of the digital files I had on my computer that were associated with my family tree. That part was relatively easy and once I figured out how to do it, I ran the process in about five minutes. Simple, right?

Well, not so fast. By making such a quick and global change, I managed to disconnect all of my media files from Family Tree Maker (FTM) which is the program I use to keep track of my tree. Oops. So clearly I needed to fix that right away. Again, it was a fairly straightforward process. Family Tree Maker has a "find missing media" option that I was able to run to reconnect everything. This worked fairly well, but there were still some files missing largely due to previous renaming I had done over the years. That's when the challenge started. In an earlier version of FTM, which synchs with Ancestry.com, files were automatically given a numerical file name. Great for database linking, not so great for finding a specific file outside of FTM. I had renamed those files outside of FTM and now had no idea what file 12020112482292.jpg was now called.

This started a methodical process that has had me doing a complete review of my files and making sure they are all linked to a specific source and/or person and/or place. First it was finding the missing files in FTM. Next it was discovering that the Windows folder that contained the media files for FTM had about 150 more files than were associated with FTM. That didn't include the 100 or so files I have stored in a folder titled "Pending Media" which are things I've found from sources outside of Ancestry.com (e.g. newspaper clippings, records from other genealogical sites.) Oh. This is going to be a bigger project than I anticipated.

Since I was going to have to go through all my files fairly slowly, I decided to take the opportunity to make sure I had captured all the data from the files I possibly could. One of the great features of FTM is that it is linked to Ancestry.com and can pull records from there and store them on your computer. The problem lies in what data is featured on the record from Ancestry.com. The record will almost always contain a name since that is what is used to locate the record, but it may miss a birth date or (more commonly) another relative on the record. It is very easy to amass records with out really knowing what is in the record, especially when you first start out with family history and genealogy. Your first response is often "Yeah! I found my great-great-grandmother! Merge now! Woo hoo! What's next?" and you don't look too closely at the record beyond the immediate information you need to identify your great-great-grandmother. Luckily, I slowed down on this massive record collecting after the first year or so and started paying closer attention to what was actually in the records, but even then I still missed things.

So, by having to go back through all my records, I began to double check everything and while I had gotten pretty good at capturing most of the information, I didn't always get everything. This was especially true as it relates to my Dwyer/Kenny side of the family. A lot of the information I have entered in my tree is based on information my mother's older brother has passed along over the years and idly clicking on the "hints" button that appears with those names in FTM. My main focus since 2012 has been on the Murray/Coleman side of the family because so little information was known, anything on the Dwyer/Kenny side was treated as "Oh, I should grab that and I'll get back to the details later." Sure, I'll pick up records here and there for the Muckles when I'm looking into the Mullanes and Murrays, but I tend to put them aside for later.

Well, now IS later. Since October, I've been working my way through my files and making sure everything is matched up properly and that I've gotten every useful piece of information from them. The only ones I've left unchecked so far are the records from city directories that I've collected. This is mostly due to this being the single largest collection of information I have and wanting to do about six things simultaneously with the information. With about 400 files the city directories (from several different sources) they are about a quarter of all my files. I've made sure they're all attached to at least one person, but will need to do my deepest dive into them another time. Or, more practically, go through them more slowly over time to gather everything I want to do with them, including mapping the locations out for my San Francisco relations.

As you can imagine, this process is slow and tedious and doesn't have the "wow" factor of a new discovery, but every once and a while I find some interesting nugget that will help me later on down the road. As of this writing, I still have about 60 more files to sort through and associate with a source and person in FTM (most being city directories of course) before I head over to the Pending Media folder to sort through those items. Some are "pending" because I'm not sure they are actually related to my family, but most are ones I gathered from sites outside of FTM/Ancestry that I've been meaning to add over the years and haven't gotten around to it yet.

While working on all of this, I decided now was the time to fix any other errors that might be in my tree. Call it a big spring cleaning. I've discovered some tools in FTM that I think will make things easier for me in the long run, but getting them set up properly will take some time. At the rate I've been going, it may take up a good chunk of 2018 to get everything cleaned up the way I want it to be. It's definitely not as fun as searching and finding new records, but it's valuable because once I'm finished I will have a better picture of what information I have and what I still need.

I won't stop searching altogether either -- I need to have SOME fun while working on this project. I've already done a few jaunts off here and there to sort out some people while cleaning up the records and I expect that will continue if only to break up the tedium of database maintenance. And now that I have a better method of organizing my files, those searches will help me gather more information all at once and help me avoid having to do a major clean up like this again.

So I wanted to share all of this because it really is important to make sure you slow down when gathering information for your family tree. By reviewing records more methodically you can gather all the information you want and need in one shot rather than having to go back and review it a year or two later when you stumble on some related information.

Kiss Me, I'm Irish -- An Update

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post highlighting my Irish background. I calculated my Irish ancestry based on the number of great-great grandparents (or 3x great grandparents in some cases) who were born in Ireland. Based on that, I said I was 90.63% Irish, 6.25% German, and 3.13% French Canadian [the French history is a bit more complicated.] That's pretty darned Irish for a fifth generation American.

Recently, my father said he wanted to take an Ancestry DNA test and asked me to order him one. Since this was something I'd been wanting to do myself for a while, I ordered two. We got the results back not too long ago and they were interesting to see. No, there wasn't any kind of family scandal -- my dad is my dad (and based on matches to an uncle and cousin, my mom is my mom.) What was interesting was the percentages that turned up. Knowing what I have uncovered about my father's side of the family, I had predicted he'd be mostly Irish with a bit of other British Isles thrown in since it would be unlikely he'd be 100% Irish. My predictions proved correct -- Dad's results came up 93% Irish (technically Ireland/Scotland/Wales) with a "very likely" connection to the Munster province of Ireland with "relatives who lived in this region in the past few hundred years." Dad's maternal grandparents were both born in County Cork which is part Munster, so that part is clearly correct. The rest of his test came up under "Low Confidence Regions" which showed the biggest chunk at 3% for Great Britain. So, yeah, my dad is Irish.

Well, what about my results then? I knew I'd be less Irish than my father since we know there is some German and French ancestry on my mother's side. Still, based on where I know people came from, I was pretty sure I'd still come up mostly Irish. My results turned up 83% Irish and 13% Great Britain. Like Dad, I showed a strong link to Munster which makes sense as in addition to the Coleman/O'Leary branch of my tree coming from County Cork, I have a great-great grandmother on my mother's side who was also from County Cork. County Tipperary is also part of Munster which is where the Dwyers come from, so that would also be included. What's most interesting though, is when you add up my dad's Ireland/Great Britain percentages and my Ireland/Great Britain percentages they total out the same -- 96%! So, yeah, I'm Irish too.

My "Low Confidence Regions" were a bit different than Dad's with 2% "Europe South" and 1% "Europe West" which is probably the French and German bits (though, oddly, Italy is the biggest land area for Europe South.) The fun stuff is in the trace amounts. Both Dad and I show up with less than 1% of Scandinavia (Vikings!), Dad comes up with less than 1% Middle East where I come up with less than 1% Caucasus which are overlapping regions and show the history of human migration.

The next task is to compare these results against other people who have taken the Ancestry DNA test to see if there are any relatives out there who might have more information on the family. There are a couple of promising results I've seen, but have yet to delve into them to see if they're worth pursuing.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!