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 20th 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 7th 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.
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