The First Attempt to Find J Manning

While preparing posts on my search for Julia Manning, I found an early draft tracking my first attempts to find "J. Manning." The post is incomplete, but shows where my thinking was circa 2018 when I worked up the draft. Notice I eliminated Julia pretty quickly. Stay tuned to find out what I've learned since.

My great-great grandmother Mary Manning Mullane died in February 1892 and her death notice mentions she is the "niece of J. Manning." Mary was born around 1845 making her about 46 when she died, so that would mean J. Manning was likely in his or her sixties or early seventies in 1892. It is possible he or she was older or younger than that, but it's a safe age range to start searching. That would mean J. Manning would have been born sometime in the 1820s or 1830s, though the range from 1810-1840 isn't totally out of the question. My great-great grandmother was born in Ireland, so again it is likely that J. Manning was also born in Ireland. Since the death notice appears in the San Francisco Call, and also references a cousin living in Oakland, I believe J. Manning also lived in San Francisco in 1892.

Great, that's a start, right? I need to find someone with a first name that starts with J and was born between about 1820-1835 in Ireland. Now the trick is to identify exactly who this J. Manning is. I was able to find my great-great grandmother "B. Murray" easily enough, so it's off to the San Francisco city directories to see what I'm up against. I first checked the 1892 city directory where I found the following:

• J.J. Manning living at 1115 Castro Street.
• Julia Manning, music teacher, living at 7th and Railroad Avenues
• 9 different James Mannings
• 3 different Jeremiah Mannings, though one is a Jr. and at the same residence as one of the others, so probably someone I can eliminate.
• 5 different John Mannings
•  2 different Joseph Mannings

So that is a total of 20 possibilities (21 if Jeremiah, Jr. is included.) I save the page from the 1892 directory and then go take a look at the 1891 directory. From there I found the following:

• 12 different James Mannings
• 6 different John Mannings
• 1 Joseph Manning living at 612 Taylor Street.

That's still 19 possibilities that I need to compare to the 1892 directory, but I may be able to eliminate the Jeremiahs and Julia Manning. I decided to step back one more year to 1890 and see what I would find there:

• 8 different James Mannings
• 1 Jeremiah Manning living at 1120 Elm Avenue.
• 7 different John Mannings
• 1 Joseph Manning living at 1212 Howard Street.

Down to 17 possibilities, but we've got a Jeremiah back in the picture. I decided to stop there and cross-reference the three years of names and addresses to see which people appeared most consistently at the same address with the same occupation. That's a lot of people to track down and with out an 1890 census, I have to look for voter registrations to see if I can find any of them close to 1892. I eliminate Julia right off the bat as she only appears once in the three years of directories I looked at and since she is a woman I would not be able to find her in the 1890s voter records.

Finally Answering an Early Question and Learning More About the Mannings

One of the first things I discovered while digging in to my family history was that my great-great-grandmother Mary Manning Mullane was the niece of a “J. Manning” based on her death notice in the San Francisco Call. This has been a crazy-making discovery since I had no idea who J. Manning was or whether the person was male or female. The best I could guess was that J. Manning lived in the San Francisco area in 1892 when Mary died, so I would periodically go off on searches through the San Francisco city directories for any Manning with a first name that began with the letter J. I could never find any connection between the random Jameses, Jerimiahs, Johns, and so forth. It was frustrating, but a backburner issue while I went off looking into more promising paths for information.

As I’ve mentioned previously, Newspapers.com has added the complete run of the San Francisco Examiner to its database of newspapers, so I’ve been doing periodic searches on different names and branches of the family. It’s been pretty willy nilly with no real methodology other than generally focusing on more recent latter half of the 20^th century names since it’s one of the few online sources of local newspapers post-1923. When the mood strikes me, however, I go back and search on older records to see if I can fill in any gaps I may have. In that vein, I did a search on Mary Manning Mullane. I wasn’t really expecting to find anything much beyond maybe a society type of article, but discovered another death notice for her. Not a big deal since I have had a copy of the one from the San Francisco Call for eight years, but a useful addition to the collection. Then I read it.

MULLANE, In this city, February ___, Mrs. Mary, beloved wife of the late T.J. Mullane, mother of John, Mary, Joseph, Thomas, Phillip, Patrick, and Edward Mullane, and niece of Julia Manning.

JULIA Manning… Holy cow, now I know who J. Manning is! Off to the city directories! I find a Julia Manning in the 1892 San Francisco city directory living at 7^th Street and Railroad Ave. (There is no longer a Railroad Avenue in San Francisco, so my best guess is she lived somewhere in what is now called India Basin. I need to do some digging to figure out exactly where.) Julia Manning was listed as a music teacher.

Ok, now I know there’s a Julia Manning, so I headed back over to Newspapers.com and another search for obituaries to see if I could learn more. I found an obituary for Julia in an 1898 edition of the San Francisco Examiner.

MANNING – In West Oakland, December 2, Julia Manning, beloved aunt of Elizabeth Quinlivan, a native of Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, aged 80 years.

The funeral will take place to-day (Sunday) at 9 o'clock a.m., from St. Patrick's Church, where a solemn requiem mass will be celebrated for the repose of her soul. Internment, St. Mary's Cemetery, Oakland.

Well, woo hoo! Julia had moved across the bay to Oakland sometime between 1892 and 1898. That made sense since Elizabeth (Lizzie) Quinlivan had been living in Oakland and was quite likely her closest blood relative. The big find here, of course, is that Julia is from Ennis, County Clare, which gives me the most likely location for my Manning ancestors. At the very worst, it’s a place to start looking and wandering out from.

I need to go back and do more digging on Julia to see if I can figure out when she arrived in the United States and if knowing that she was born in about 1818 in County Clare will lead me anywhere. I doubt I’ll be able to find a baptismal record for her as a cursory look at the available records for the parishes that encompass Ennis shows the earliest records start in 1821 and in the most likely parish resource (Drumclift) they don’t start until 1841. However, I may be able to find some associated records like the baptism of my great-great grandmother Mary Manning who was born about 1845 or her cousin Lizzie Quinlivan who was born about 1848. It would be helpful if I knew Mary or Lizzie’s parents’ names, but at the moment I haven’t found them. Still, knowing they are most likely from County Clare is a huge discovery and winnows down where I need to search further. It also leaves just the Kennys as my Irish great-great grandparent immigrant ancestors that have yet to have their county of origin determined. Not too bad.