Reviewing Daniel P. Coleman's Service Record

I've been looking over the service record I found for my great grandfather Daniel Patrick Coleman in the Royal Naval Registers of Seamen's Services. It's been a bit slow going as there are a lot of pieces that are difficult to read and I still need to research what some of the abbreviations mean. I have been able to decipher the names of most of the ships he served on and when he served on them. I've also found a little bit of information on the ships (mostly from Wikipedia, so I know I need to do more in depth research, but there is useful information for starting points.)

According to the records, Daniel joined the Royal Navy in September 1875. He spent about a week on the HMS Revenge, which was a training ship. From October 1, 1875 to October 23, 1875 he was on another ship, but I can't make out the name on the record. He was then assigned to the HMS Ganges for three consecutive terms of service between October 24, 1875 and August 1, 1877. The Ganges was also a training ship.

On August 2, 1877 Daniel, now 17 years old, joined the crew of the HMS Shannon. According to Wikipedia, the Shannon was the first armored cruiser in the Royal Navy, but was a somewhat unsuccessful ship. In April 1878, the Shannon was sent to the China Station, but recalled in July 1878. According to Daniel's service record, he left the Shannon on August 31, 1878. He was then sent to the HMS Victor Emmanuel from September 1, 1878 through April 9, 1879. The Victor Emmanuel was a receiving and hospital ship stationed in Hong Kong at that time, which leads to some questions. If the Shannon was recalled to England in July 1878 and Daniel doesn't leave that assignment until August 31, 1878, how does he wind up on the Victor Emmanuel in Hong Kong on September 1, 1878? If the Victor Emmanuel is a receiving and hospital ship, why is Daniel there? Is he ill or is he waiting for his new assignment (receiving ships were a place for new recruits who were awaiting their assignments)? There is the family story that Daniel nearly died from malaria while in the Royal Navy, so spending seven months on a hospital ship would match up with that story. Of course, the story is that he contracted malaria while fighting in the first Boer War, but as of yet I can't prove he was in that war and he has a medal from the Third Burmese War, so it's possible that the stories got mixed and confused.

My best guess right now for the discrepancy between the Shannon departing the China Station in July 1878 and Daniel's service record is the Shannon was recalled in July, but didn't depart until the end of August. Either that or Daniel was left behind, but not removed from the list of names on board until August/September. This is definitely one period in the record where further research is needed.

After Daniel left the Victor Emmanuel, he was assigned to the HMS Iron Duke for about a month before joining the crew of the HMS Egeria from May 8, 1879 through October 11, 1881. There were a couple of disruptions in Daniel's time on the Egeria. He was sent back to the Victor Emmanuel for about a week in December 1879, so I'm guessing he needed medical services on the hospital ship. He also spent two stints "in the cells" first for 10 days in January 1881 and then for 14 days in April/May 1881. There is nothing in the record that indicates why Daniel was sent to the hospital ship nor "the cells" so I'll have to see if I can learn more about those incidents. Daniel's character is described as "good" for the most part on the Egeria, though there are a couple of notations of "fair" both appearing around the time he was sent to "the cells."

From October 12, 1881 through December 1881, Daniel was stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Station (listed as the N Barracks on his service record.) Daniel spent a couple of weeks of January 1882 on the HMS Duncan before transferring to the HMS Repulse on January 24. The Repulse was the guard ship at the naval base in Hull. Daniel served on the Repulse until August 31, 1883 before returning to the Duncan for a few months.

On January 10, 1884, Daniel joined the crew of the HMS Serapis which was a troop ship between England in India. According to the notes on Wikipedia, the travel time between the two countries took about 70 days. Allowing for time spent in port Daniel probably made two round trips.

On November 12, 1884, Daniel joined the crew of the HMS Ranger. The Ranger is the ship he served on during the Third Burmese War and was awarded the Burmah Medal. Daniel spent nearly three years on the Ranger until October 31, 1887. This is the second longest single assignment in Daniel's record and since the Ranger was involved in a war, that probably makes sense. This is another period of Daniel's service record that I need to spend more time researching.

Daniel left the Ranger and joined the HMS Cambridge on November 1, 1887. Again this was a short service time before he moved on to the HMS Excellent on Februrary 4, 1888. The HMS Excellent was a gunnery school training ship. Daniel spent most of 1888 on the Excellent before moving on to the HMS Amphion on December 10, 1888.

The Amphion is where the record gets curious. Daniel is listed as a member of the Amphion's crew from December 10, 1888 until February 4, 1890. It is from here that Daniel was "sent to Portsmouth to be dealt with summarily." There is no indication what or why Daniel was sent away, but there is a year gap between his last date on the Amphion and his next assignment on the HMS Duke of Wellington on February 10, 1891. That is followed by another gap in his record between March 4, 1891 and April 14, 1891. From Daniel's service time on the Egeria, I can guess that the gaps in service time are due to time spent in confinement for some kind of misbehavior. Whatever happened at the end of Daniel's time on the Amphion had him imprisoned for a little over a year. The notation for his character on the Duke of Wellington is listed as "fair", which after a year in prison is probably understandable, but there is no explanation why there is another six week gap after he leaves the Duke of Wellington.

On April 15, 1891, Daniel is serving on the HMS Victory I, which was the Naval School of Telegraphy, so whatever caused the gap in service time did not prevent Daniel from moving on to an assignment that would give him more skills to be used during his military service time.

Daniel then moved on to the HMS Sans Pariel on August 1, 1891, which was part of the Mediterranean fleet. This was Daniel's longest assignment, lasting until April 17, 1895. During his time on the Sans Pariel, Daniel had another two brief stints "in the cells" -- one for 7 days in August 1894 and another for 5 days in October 1894. Despite these two incidents, his character is listed as "good" or "very good."

Daniel returned to the HMS Victory I on April 18, 1895, and that is the last fully legible entry on his record. There are two more listings after the Victory one, but the ships names are completely blacked out in the image and it would probably require seeing the original record to figure out what they were. Those two listings cover the dates September 1, 1895 to September 11, 1896 and September 12, 1896 to January 4, 1898. The last entry includes that he was discharged at his own request which was granted on December 17, 1897.

The next record I have in Daniel's chronology is his departure from Southampton, England on January 29, 1898 bound for New York on the ship Paris. I need to figure out what happened between Daniel's arrival in New York to when he first appears in San Francisco in the 1900 census, but that's a task for another day. There is also much more to figure out about Daniel's time in the Royal Navy. I want to know more about the ships he served on and where they were sent. I know from what I've found so far that Daniel spent time in Hong Kong, India, and Burma (now Myanmar) as well as being stationed in England. I definitely want to learn more about what got him sent to Portsmouth and I need to learn more about the Burmese Wars.

Daniel P. Coleman's Military Service

One of the family stories handed down was that my great-grandfather Daniel Patrick Coleman left home at 15 to join the British Navy because he didn't get along with his stepmother. When Daniel first appears in the 1900 US Census, he is working as a sailor in San Francisco. I know he ultimately became a ships captain for a merchant shipping company. Putting those pieces of information together, I thought I'd look to see if I could find any record of Daniel’s service in the British Navy.

There are some British military records on Ancestry.com, but none of them provided enough information to determine if any of the Daniel Colemans that turned up in the searches was my great-grandfather. So I set off to look for British records. The National Archives of the United Kingdom has some military records available online so I decided to search there. Many of the records are for officers which I doubted Daniel was seeing as he enlisted at 15 and was Irish. There was a set of records for regular seaman's service, so I searched there.

Six different records came up for a Daniel Coleman and as I looked them over I found one born in Kinsale, Cork on March 28, 1860. Most of the records I have for my great-grandfather have him born on March 17, 1860, so I figured that was close enough to take a look. The UK National Archives deliberately distort the online images, so when I looked at the online image it was next to useless to identify whether or not I had found the right person. My only option then was to order a downloadable copy of the image. Fortunately, it only cost £3.30 -- about $5.00 US and was a fairly small document.

When I was able to download the record, I found it was loaded with useful information. A lot of the text is difficult to read, but the first entry is for service on a ship called the Revenge in September, 1875. That would match up with his joining the navy at 15. There are also several notations at the top with his height. The dates for each are a bit difficult to decipher, but they go from 5-feet even to 5-feet, 4-inches to 5-feet, 6-inches (maybe 8-inches?) Again, that would make sense if he joined as a still growing teenager. It's hard to judge how tall Daniel is in the pictures I have of him circa 1920, but he and Lizzie don't appear to be that much different in height so I'm guessing he wasn't particularly tall.

The record I downloaded was only one page long, but it lists all the ships Daniel served on from 1875 until 1898. The end date is a little puzzling as in the 1900 census, Daniel said he arrived in the US in 1892 and was a naturalized citizen. The dates are close enough in time that I’m not too concerned about the discrepancy.

There are columns for "Rating, &c.", "G.C. Badges worn", "Period of Service", "Character", "If Discharged, Whither and for what cause", and "Remarks." There are a lot of abbreviations and scribbles that make the notations in each column difficult to read. I’m guessing the "Rating, &c." column is his rank as one of the few scribbles I can figure out reads "Lg Seamn." The only other one that I can read clearly are the letters "A.B." -- possibly "assistant bosun"?

The "Character" column has the most interesting information. From the first entry onward there are many notations of "Good" or "Very Good." It's not until I got towards the bottom of the page that the entries changed to "Fair." Starting in about 1891 while serving on the ship Excellent things start to change. There's a note in the "Discharged" column that I can't figure out, but in the "Remarks" column next to it there is a notation "Sent to Portsmouth to be dealt with summarily." Unfortunately, the rest of the notations in the "Remarks" column are written very small and are really hard to read. Daniel went back to service on several different ships between 1892-1898, but there are several more notations of "Fair" in the "Character" column along with two notations of "Cells 7 ds", "Cells 5 ds", which I would imagine was some kind of disciplinary action. The last readable item is in the "Remarks" column and indicates Daniel was "granted a free discharge" from the British Navy on December 17, 1897.

I wonder what those last few years in the Navy were like. Daniel would have been in his early thirties with 15 years of service. I know my grandmother was brought up with a strong dislike for the British, so I wonder if some of the tensions between Ireland and England were affecting what was happening on board ship.

There are a lot of different ships listed, so I'll have to see if I can find some history of those ships during the years Daniel was in the Navy. Where were they sent? What was going on in those regions? One of my Coleman cousins passed along a story that Daniel was in one of the Boer Wars and nearly died of malaria. There's nothing on the record that indicates either of those bits of information. Based on a quick look at Wikipedia, if that is accurate, it's likely Daniel fought in the first war in 1880-81 rather than in the second which took place in 1899-1902.

Once I had some basic information from the UK National Archives, I was able to go back to the records at Ancestry and see if I could match up any further records. One record turned up for Daniel in the "UK, Naval Medal and Award Rolls." It appears he won a service medal called the "Burmah Medal" while on the ship Ranger during the Third Burmese War in 1885-1887. I was able to confirm the record based on the service number attached to the record which also appeared on the record I had found in the UK National Archives.  Maybe the story about nearly dying from malaria was related to the Burmese War rather than the Boer War? It doesn't look like Daniel ever received the medal as there was a notation that it was "returned to mint Feb 22." Looking at his service record, it looks like he left the Ranger in October, 1887 and joined the crew of the Cambridge for several months before heading to the Excellent in February, 1888.

It’s interesting that after Daniel's service in the British Navy that eventually both his son Daniel J. Coleman and grandson Edward K. Murray would both serve in the US Navy. Uncle Dan served during World War II and Uncle Eddie was a chaplain in the Navy for 30 years.

There are a lot of great nuggets I've uncovered in this one piece of paper, I just wish I could make out the writing a bit more. I imagine it might be slightly easier to read the original, but since that's in England, I don’t think I'll be taking a look at it any time soon! Still, I'll try to work out what I can and see what information I can find based on what I do know.

Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 3

A continuation of answering and following up on some of the questions I have discussed in earlier posts on this blog. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I started looking at the O'Leary side of my family tree in O'Learys and O'Looneys -- Oh My! and started digging around in what I could learn from cousins on that side of the family. Unlike my Murray/Mullane side of the family, there are relatives I know on the Coleman/O'Leary side. My grandmother Elizabeth Coleman was one of five children (including an older brother who died in childhood) and there are cousins in my father's generation that I've grown up around. While I've only been in intermittent contact with them recently, the leads I got from them when I started out were invaluable. Among the information I received were some family photos that I never knew existed, but I also received a copy of a marriage certificate of my great-grandparents from one cousin. This corrected one error I had originally. The family lore I was told had my great-grandparents married at St. Phillip's Church. In actuality, they were married at Most Holy Redeemer. The witnesses to their marriage were an Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander.  According to my cousin, Alexander Christiansen was a doctor friend of my great grandfather's. I haven't looked in to him much, but he's on the list of friends and neighbors to learn a little bit about. Gertrude Alexander was a name I knew when I received the copy of the marriage certificate.

When I found my great grandfather Daniel Coleman in the 1900 census, he was living with his brother John Coleman and wife Sadie (Sarah.) There were two other families living with them at the time.  Joseph Myers and his daughter Lillian were one family. The other were Jesse and Gertrude Alexander. When I saw Gertrude's name on the marriage certificate, I decided to go back and take a closer look at who she might be and how she was connected. I knew from the 1900 census record that Joesph Myers was Sadie Coleman's father, so I tried to look for Joseph and Sarah in the 1880 census. When I found them, I discovered that in addition to her sister Lillian, who appears in the 1900 record, she had three older brothers and two more sisters. One of the sisters was named Gertrude. A-ha! Gertrude Alexander was Gertrude Myers, so she was connected through marriage. In the collection of photos I recieved, there is a picture of my great grandparents on their wedding day and standing in the photo beside my great grandparents are Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander!

I also found some of my O'Leary relatives through looking at the partial invitation list to my parents wedding in 1965. After quickly identifying a few people and tracking them down, I never followed up with Mom and Dad about some of the other names on the list. I suspect most of them are family friends on my father's side rather than relatives, but since I never asked I don't know for certain. I need to sit down with Mom & Dad soon to do that. Perhaps over the holidays!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

As I went Onward with the O'Learys, I was able to identify several of my grandmother's first cousins and their children. The difficulty was in identifying some of their spouses. The first unidentified spouse was for Arthur Patrick Ford. I've learned since my initial investigations that he went by "Pat" which was a huge help in finding him in the records and helped me identify his wife as Kathleen Fee. Pat and Kathleen Ford had a daughter named Mary Catherine who died in 1999.

The curious spouse was that of Catherine Ford Dwyer. Since my mother's family is Dwyer, Catherine has always been a bit of a curiosity over the years. A big part of the problem I had initially looking for Catherine and her husband was that I kept looking for them in San Francisco. It wasn't until I found Catherine living in Washington D.C. in the 1940 census that I was able to break through the wall. I found a 1940 marriage record for Catherine Hanora Ford and Edward Ambrose Dwyer in Washington, D.C. Edward Dwyer was born in Syracuse, New York and died in 1956 in Maryland. Catherine had him buried with her parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA. Catherine died in 1987 and I can't find any record of them having any children.

One of the other items I found while looking at the Ford family was that Ellen O'Leary Ford had died of second and third degree burns. I recently discovered a coroner's report on her death and it was quite awful. The report said her clothing caught fire from a "lighted gas plate" while she was preparing dinner. She ran into the yard screaming and was aided by a neighbor before being sent to the hospital where she later died. One interesting bit of information from the coroner's report was a note that the San Francisco Fire Department was represented by a Captain Tenebsky of the "truck company on Waller near Stanyan." That quickly caught my attention. My father is a retired SF firefighter and one of the places he was stationed was 12 Truck on Stanyan Street. I haven't been there since I was a kid, so I wasn't sure of the cross streets and took to Google Maps to locate the intersection. Waller and Stanyan is closer to Golden Gate Park than the current location of Station 12, so I asked my father if the station had moved up Stanyan. He told me it had, which means about 40 years after Ellen Ford died my father worked at the same fire station that had responded to the fire that killed her. Another weird coincidence in the winding path through my family's history!

More Photos

I've been in the process of setting up a new computer this week, so didn't upload all the pictures I received from Letty and Cici (partly because I needed to install a new scanner to copy a few of them.) Here are the rest with what information is available. I have uploaded them as I received them save for some minor cropping of white space. I plan on cleaning up what I can of them (saved as a revised version!)

Lizzie O'Leary (standing) with
her sister Polly and mother Mary
about 1903 Ireland

John Alexander Coleman
1905-1913
Daniel & Lizzie's oldest child

Daniel J. Coleman (Uncle Dan)
about 1920

Eileen, Lizzie, Daniel J.
& Elizabeth (Bess) Coleman

Margaret, Daniel P., &  Lizzie Coleman
aboard ship about 1920

Margaret, Daniel P., & Lizzie again

Daniel J. & Elizabeth (Bess) Coleman
(we won't ask what Nana did to her hair)

Family Photos

Growing up I spent a lot of time at my maternal grandparents' house, which had a large room downstairs off the garage.  When my mother was growing up, this room belonged to her two brothers, but I knew it as the family room where Grandma kept a lot of the toys for her many grandchildren. When my grandparents converted it from a bedroom to a family room, they hung a variety of pictures on the wall. Most of the pictures were early photographs of their parents and grandparents. I never really knew who was who in those pictures, but I always knew they were family and the stories related to the various people pictured.

After my grandparents and my grandaunt Elise (my grandfather Dwyer's sister) passed away, my mother's older brother and cousin started going through the family photo albums and scanning pictures for the rest of the family to share. So over the years I've acquired copies of pictures of my grandparents as children (though mostly of my grandfather), my mother and her siblings throughout the years, and so forth and so on. There are lots and lots of pictures of the Dwyer side of my family.

The Murray side, however, is a completely different scenario. For most of my life I've only ever seen about a dozen photographs of anyone on my father's side of the family that were taken before my parents were married. There are a couple of pictures of my dad in high school, a few more from when he was in the army, a picture of Nana and Grandpa Murray taken when my uncle Ed was ordained a priest, another of my father and three of his four brothers taken when my dad was about five, and one or two of my father’s brother Dan after a hunting trip. That’s it. The Dwyer family was big on photography. The Murray family, not so much, and for all I knew there were no other photographs.

At this point in the story, it has become necessary to talk about living people. When I started this blog, I decided not to name any living people, however the narrative starts getting confusing if I keep referring to several people as “cousin.” For this reason, I will be using aliases when referring to living relatives as I continue the story.

About five years ago, however, my father's cousin Letty sent some pictures to Uncle Eddie. He asked one of my cousins to duplicate them for the rest of the family, and suddenly I had about a half dozen new photographs. They look to have been taken in about 1942, based on the one shot with my father in it. There are two pictures that are particularly good. The first is of Nana and Grandpa Murray who are in their late 20s and standing arm in arm in front of the summer rental house they were staying in. The second photo is of my great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary Coleman with Grandpa Murray, my father, and his two older brothers Ed and Dan. Lizzie is wearing a hat in the picture, which makes it difficult to see her face, but it’s nice to see a picture of my grandfather as a young man and my father sucking his thumb!

Lizzie O'Leary & Daniel  
Coleman (seated)
on their wedding
day in 1904

These new found photos are precious to me, and I have the two I mentioned framed and hanging on my living room wall. Then about two months ago, my father's cousin Cici, with whom I have been corresponding about my Coleman/O'Leary research, sent me a scanned file of a photograph of Lizzie O'Leary and Daniel Coleman on their wedding day! Holy smokes!  There are more photographs!

Lizzie O'Leary on her wedding day

When I told her I had received the photo with out any problems, she sent me several more. I have also been in contact with Letty about my research and she too sent me some photos, in this case, hard copies. Some of the pictures I received from Letty were duplicates of the ones I received from Cici, but all told, I now had about a dozen photographs from about 1900-1920 of my Coleman relatives! Wow!

Lizzie O'Leary Coleman 
at her house in Bernal Heights 

Granted, photography has only been around for a little over 150 years and mass-produced cameras weren't readily available until the end of the 19^th century, but it is amazing what having a photograph of someone can inspire. The questions about who the person was, what did she do for a living, what was life like for him, and so much   more just multiply when you have an image of a relative long past. Having these few family photographs further cements that these people existed and had lives and hopes and dreams like we all do and that they aren't just stories of forgotten ghosts.

 

The Colemans on board ship circa 1920
Uncle Dan, Lizzie,
Aunt Margaret (on Lizzie's lap),
Daniel, and Nana

Aunt Eileen & Uncle Dan
I'm guessing their
First Communion
circa 1915

Baptismal Records

In looking for the O'Learys in Ireland, I had found extracted birth/baptismal records for my great grandmother Elizabeth O'Leary and seven siblings. Having only expected to find four siblings, I was surprised to say the least. Since these records weren't originals, but a database of copied records, I wanted to see if there was any chance of finding the original records (without having to fly to Ireland since that's not going to happen any time soon.)

Early on in my searching I had found an Irish genealogy site that had some church records scanned but since at the time I didn't have enough information to make the site useful I just bookmarked it as a resource that might come in handy at a later date.  I forgot all about that site until I found a website called "Irish Genealogy Tool-Kit." What a great resource! It has lots of information and sent me back to the site I'd found months before with the church records. I expect to reference that site quite a bit as I move forward.

The Irish Genealogy website is hosted by the Minister of Arts of Ireland and has a collection of pre-1900 church records for just three of the Republic of Ireland's 26 counties plus the city of Dublin. Luckily for me, County Cork is one of the three counties! (Carlow and Kerry are the other two.) Using the information I got from Ancestry.com, I started plugging in the names and dates for Lizzie O'Leary and her siblings. I had much better luck here than I did with the Irish Census records and found the following:

Baptism of John Leary, 16 January 1865. Parents: Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney.  Sponsors: Patrick Leary and Hannah Ford. Parish/Church/Congregation: Ballinhassig.

Baptism of William Leary, 14 February 1867.  Parents: Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney.  Sponsors:  Daniel Murphy and Eliza Looney. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Ballinhassig.

Baptism of Ellen Leary, 6 April 1869. Parents: Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney.  Sponsors: John Leahy and Ellen Coleman. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Ballinhassig.

Baptism of Edmund Leary, 25 December 1870. Parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney.  Sponsors: Edmund and Margaret Leary. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Ballinhassig.

Baptism of Eliza Leary, 19 March 1873. Parents: Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney.  Sponsors:  Timothy Riordan and Mary Looney. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Ballinhassig.

Those records match up fairly closely with the records I found on Ancestry, most being within a day or two of the birthdate shown in those records. I've yet to turn up records for Polly (Mary), Jeremiah, or Daniel, but the records I found provided additional information I can use in my searches. Taking a look at the sponsors names there appear to be at least four, and probably five, additional family members -- Patrick Leary, Eliza Looney, Edmund Leary, and Margaret Leary. The second Mary Looney is the only one that's puzzling. I suspect it's a sister-in-law or cousin of my great great grandmother Mary Looney as it's not likely that she was both mother and godmother to my great grandmother Elizabeth, but I don't know that for certain. It could even be a clerical error by the priest who recorded the baptism.

Having found some of the O'Learys, I thought I'd also look for the Colemans and see if they turned up at all. In the stories told by Aunt Margaret, her father Daniel Coleman had a half-brother named Bartholomew who also moved to San Francisco. I'd found a death record for him that indicated his mother's maiden name was Cosgrove, and when I searched on his record at Ancestry.com I turned up two brothers, Michael and Cornelius, in the birth and baptisms database. So I was looking for six Coleman siblings, my great grandfather Daniel, his brother John, his sister Margaret and three half-brothers. I turned up the following information (as transcribed):

Baptism of Dan Coalman, 21 March 1860. Parents: J--- Coalman and Ellen Roes.  Sponsors: Ned Coalman and Johann McDonna. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Courcey's Country or Ballinspittal.

Baptism of Ellen Coalman, 20 November 1861. Parents John Coalman and Ellen Moss.  Sponsors: Jeremiah Donoghue and Mary Coveney. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Courcey's Country or Ballinspittal.

Baptism of Michal Coleman, 22 July 1867. Parents John Coleman and Eliza Colgrave.  Sponsors: Bartholomew Coleman and Margaret Mudge. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Courcey's Country or Ballinspittal.
  
Baptism of Cors Thos Coleman, 27 December 1868. Parents John Coleman and Eliza Cosgrave.  Sponsors: Maurice Cosgrave and Mary Murray. Parish/Church/Congregation:  Courcey's Country or Ballinspittal.

As you can see, some of the spelling is a bit off and there are some transcription conflicts.  I took a look at the attached records and Ellen "Roes" and "Moss" look to be Ellen Ross, which was my great great grandmother's name. (The writing on some of the records was atrocious!) The transcription for Eliza "Colgrave" also looks more like Cosgrave in the image. I couldn't find a record for John Coleman Jr. or Bartholomew. The only sister I turned up was named Ellen, not Margaret, so I don't know if there was another sister or if the there's another name conflict. According to the records I've found for Bartholomew, he was born in 1880 and there were only about 40 recorded baptisms in the 1880s for anyone named Coleman (or Coalman) so I suspect Bartholomew's record hasn't been digitized yet since most of the other decades have upwards of 500 Coleman records. Either that or it's been lost to time, though the extracted record I found on Ancestry would seem to indicate there's some kind of record available.

So, again, I have more information to sort through and follow up on. The baptismal dates again match up fairly closely with the records I've found on Ancestry. Daniel Coleman's is the only one that's a little odd as I've found birth dates from 1860-1878 for him, but I've consistently found March 17 so I'm fairly confident in the record. (And I know the 1878 record is wrong as it's from the 1920 census which shows him as age 42 and Lizzie as age 41 and I've always known he was about 10 years older. Most of the other records have him born between 1860-1866.) 

I am very pleased at the progress I've made on the Coleman/O'Leary side of the family in the last two months. There is much much more to sort through and uncover, but that will be true every time I learn something new since each new item uncovered tends to bring along other questions that need answers.

First Field Trip

As useful as the internet has become in the 21^st century, it can’t do everything. I long knew that this trip through the past would require making trips to libraries and cemeteries and who knows what else. So with a little vacation time, I planned my first outing to find some information in person.

The Murrays aren’t turning up in the 1880 census for San Francisco. I’ve found what I am fairly confident is their address for that year: 6 Harry (now Harris) Place. It’s a one-block street off Laguna between Filbert and Greenwich, so it would be easy to miss in an enumeration of the census. I don’t think that’s what happened. After going half blind scrolling through pages and pages of images for the 1880 census trying to find Harry Place, I was able to find a site that helps find census enumeration districts by street name. That sped up my search tremendously – Harry Place was in the 196^th enumeration district. I was pretty sure I had already looked at that set of images on line, but I went back and took a closer look. I discovered that the on line images for the 196^th enumeration district start on page five with the 40^th family visited! Well no wonder I wasn’t finding them – there are four pages missing from the digitized images. The new question is were those pages not digitized for some reason or are they missing? The only way to find that out was to go to the National Archives in San Bruno and take a look at the microfilm and see for myself. Being a federal agency meant it was only open during weekdays, which meant I needed a vacation day to go check out the microfilm.

On my last day of vacation, I drove up to San Bruno and took a look at the microfilm. It took me longer to find the right roll and get it on the reader than it did to scroll through the film to find out if the pages were there. Alas, pages one through four were missing from the microfilm also. Damn. I asked the librarian at the help desk if she knew what might have happened to those four pages, but her answer was about as good as my best guess – they may have been appended to a different part of the census. Since I’ve scrolled through pretty much the entire 12^th Ward of San Francisco on line, plus about half of the other images (which is considerable as there were 229 enumeration districts for San Francisco in 1880 and each averages about 20 pages) and the names aren’t turning up in a search, I’m doubtful the pages were put on to microfilm. Does that mean the pages no longer exist or simply that they were skipped when being put on microfilm? I’m hoping the latter and have sent a request to the National Archives in DC to find out.

The second part of my field trip meant heading up to Colma and wandering around Holy Cross Cemetery. From the death notices I’ve found, I knew Bridget McDonough Murray, Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson, Marshall and Mary Murray were all buried there, but of course I didn’t know exactly where. I had hoped that Mom could come out with me and help look for the Murrays while also showing me where some of the rest of the families were (both her side and Dad’s,) but she wasn’t able to join me. Mom did have some notes on where the graves were, so I took that information with me and drove on up to Colma.

The first stop, naturally, was the cemetery office to inquire about the gravesites. Bridget and Nellie were buried in the same gravesite, but there was no mention of John. I asked the fellow at the desk if anyone else was buried in that gravesite and he said there was someone buried in 1912, but there was no first name to help identify who it was. Could John have been relocated from some place else? I believe he died in November 1890, so it is possible as burials within San Francisco city limits weren’t stopped until 1900. I asked if there was a John Murray buried around November 1890, and the closest he could give me was a John Murray who was buried in January 1890, so that didn’t help. I did manage to impress the fellow at the desk with the dates and information I had already though! He looked up Marshall Murray for me and jotted down the information for that gravesite on the map with Bridget and Nellie and off I went to see who I could find.

I drove first to Section M where Bridget and Nellie were buried. It took a while and quite a bit of tracking through the section to figure out where the row numbering started and how the plots were numbered. If I counted correctly, there wasn’t a gravestone for Bridget and Nellie and the unknown third Murray as was the case for much of this section. According to my mother’s notes, my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in that section, but I couldn’t find them.

Nana and Grandpa Murray's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

Since section M isn’t too far from where several of my aunts are buried, I headed up there and paid my respects before heading back down the hill to find Nana and Grandpa Murray. Mom’s notes were more helpful for this stop and I found their graves fairly quickly.

Next it was over to Section V for Marshall (and presumably Mary, I forgot to ask) Murray. This section was much more complicated to figure out as there is a road that curves through it, so the graves run both horizontally and somewhat vertically along the road. I could not figure out the numbering at all and was unable to locate their grave. Most of the plots in this section have headstones, so I’m fairly confident that a second trip to go through the section more methodically than I did should turn them up.

Daniel & Elizabeth Coleman's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

Second to last stop was to find the Colemans in Section T. Mom’s notes were again helpful and had the row and number and, in this section, the graves were much more clearly marked with numbers. My father’s older brother Dan is buried here with his grandparents (my great-grandparents.)

The Dwyer clan gravestone
at Holy Cross Cemetery

On the way out, I made my final stop at the one gravesite I could find in my sleep – that of my Dwyer grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents as well as a few other sundry relatives (it’s a big plot.) They’re located right in the front section of the cemetery near the office and not far from such San Francisco and California luminaries as the Aliotos and the Browns. Who knew the Dwyers were so posh? (In actuality, the original plot was moved out of San Francisco when burials within the city limits were stopped in 1900 and many folks were relocated to Holy Cross in Colma and thus these graves are among the first in the cemetery.)