O Canada! Investigating the French Side of the Family

Since the coronavirus pandemic exploded in March 2020, lots of regular routine life has been suspended while doctors, scientists, and governments try to reign it in. One of the side effects of being generally restricted on places to go and things to do is having to find things to occupy your free time while at home. In general, I have the temperament to handle lots of idle time, but still, everyone gets a bit stir crazy when the normal routines of life are so severely disrupted. Over the summer, when the second surge hit, I was looking for something to occupy my time, so I decided to spend a little bit of time on the Dwyer side of my family tree. Specifically, the French-Canadian branch of the Beldukes.

I don't generally spend a lot of time researching the Dwyer branch of the family. My mother's older brother has been doing an excellent job of it over the past 25-30 years, so I've mostly added his research to my tree. Every now and then, however, I spend some time attaching records to the information gathered by my uncle. That's what I decided to do in mid-June.

My great-great grandmother's name was Emma Belduke and she was born in Concord, New Hampshire to Joseph Belduke and Mary Keily in 1854. Joseph was born in St. Cerain, Quebec in 1831 to Paul Bolduc and Emily Lavigne. Looking for records on Paul and Emily is what sent me off on a six-week trek through a variety of Canadian records from Quebec.

You'll notice that my 4x great grandfather's last name is spelled differently than his son's. I'm not sure if Paul changed the name when he was living in Michigan in the late 1830s (when his younger son Napoleon was born) or if Joseph and Napoleon changed it later. The family name has actually changed twice from what we've been able to find. The original family name in France was Boulduc, and my 9x great grandfather, Louis appears to have changed it to Bolduc when he immigrated to Quebec in 1666.

Yes, you read that right, I have ancestors that can be traced back to 1666 in the province of Quebec, and after filling in the gap of names and dates of all the Bolducs and affiliated families I'm fairly convinced that I'm related to anyone with ancestors from Quebec. The reasoning behind this is fairly simple, Louis Bolduc was a French soldier sent to settle Quebec and his wife Elizabeth (Isabelle) Hubert was a Filles du Roi and sent to Quebec specifically to marry a soldier and help expand the population of New France. This meant they had a lot of children. And their children had a lot of children, and so on and so on. Louis and Elizabeth had eight children, at least four of whom lived well into adulthood. Their son Louis, Jr. (my 8x great grandfather) and his wife Louise Caron had 11 children. Similarly other Filles du Roi and their soldier husbands had large families, and these families intermarried and established the early population of Quebec.

So I spent much July tracing names in the Quebec, Genealogical Dictionary of Canadian Families on Ancestry.com which lists baptism, marriage, and burial dates of many of the founding families of Quebec. Since the families intermarried, it was quite a sort through. Once I ran out of Bolducs, it was on to the families of the women who married into the family, including more than one instance of women in the same family marrying one of the Bolduc men.

In the end, I went from having 1,100 names in my family tree to 2,301! I haven't traced many of the 1,000 plus people I've added as they are far too extended family to spend much time on right now, but I can look further into the direct line of ancestors to see if I can find more information. It's still a low priority project since my primary focus is still on the Murray side of the tree and it will be challenging as there are so many repeating names (Oh the Louis!)

One of the side benefits of this search was being able to find some names connecting back to France in the late 1500s! The challenge from this point is several fold -- whatever records that are still available 400+ years later are likely (a) hand written in archaic script, (b) in French which I neither speak nor read, and (c) in French archives and not necessarily available on line thus requiring visits to France, which, pandemic or no, is not in the plans any time soon.

Still, it's nice to have another path to go traipsing along when I get frustrated or stuck with the Murray/Coleman branch of the tree. I think this wraps up the bulk of the work I've done in 2020 on my family tree, but I still have some things I tracked down in 2019 that I need to update and of course what new discoveries I make this year!

A Socially Distant Thanksgiving

As with so many things this year, Thanksgiving 2020 is different than those that came before. Long-standing family traditions are being put on hold as we gather in smaller groups or just stay home with our immediate family. As I write this, I'm getting ready to go over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner. It will just be me and my parents -- the smallest Thanksgiving of my entire life. My brother and sister-in-law are having dinner with my sister-in-law's twin sister and her husband, so I won't see them today. We had a family Zoom call last night and have texted this morning and that's how you stay connected with your loved ones on a socially distanced Thanksgiving in the middle of a global pandemic.

This is not how Thanksgiving is normally spent. A few years ago, I wrote about the family Christmas traditions, and Thanksgiving has it's own similar set of traditions. Growing up, we spent most Thanksgivings with the Dwyer side of the family. I don't really know why as my Dwyer aunts and uncles would often alternate between the Dwyer side and their in-law side of their families, but probably though the time I was in high school we spent most Thanksgivings with the Dwyers. So some years it was a large gathering like Christmas Eve when my mothers four California siblings (her youngest sister lives in Alaska and seldom came down for Thanksgiving) and their families would gather at someone's house for dinner, and other years it would just be spent with my mom's older sister's family and my grandparents.

Sometime in the late 1980s/early '90s, we started spending Thanksgiving with the Murray side of the family. I suspect this is in part due to my cousins starting to get married and having families of their own -- it was getting to complicated to get together with the Dwyer family and accommodate the various extended families. The Murray side is smaller than the Dwyers, and my cousins on that side started getting married a little later. For the last 10 years or so, we've been spending Thanksgiving at the house of one of my cousins. It's a great evening that usually starts at Ed Murray's Tavern -- the amazing deck/bar my cousin built in his backyard as a memorial to our beloved Uncle Eddie. It's an extended family Thanksgiving as my cousin's in laws are usually in attendance and always full of love and laughs. And the usual Murray Dessert-fest -- cake, pie, ice cream, cookies -- you name it, we've got it! Alas, we won't be gathering there this year.

But back to the earliest Thanksgiving traditions. I suspect some of the reason for spending most Thanksgivings with the Dwyer side of the family in the 1970s and '80s was because my mother's birthday is in the last week of November, so there's usually a bit of a birthday celebration involved as well. That makes for an extra busy Thanksgiving, as well as a couple of special and memorable ones.

As it happened my mother's 40th birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving Day. Since it was a big milestone birthday, my parents decided to invite both the Dwyer and Murray families to Thanksgiving dinner -- at our house! Mom is one of six children, Dad is one of five. Mom also grew up with her three Pendergast cousins living across the street, so it's more like she was one of nine children growing up. Everyone was invited to dinner. 

A lot of planning and cooperation goes into hosting a big dinner like that, especially when you're having it in your family living room! The first step -- move all of the living room furniture out of the living room! The living room furniture at that time consisted of a couple of love seats and tables, which mostly got moved into the dining room (save the tables that had lamps on them.) Of course that meant the dining room table had move, and it got set up in the entry way between the kitchen and living room. It became the dessert table. Next was setting up the rental tables in the living room and all the chairs. I don't think Mom and Dad rented chairs, but cobbled together a collection between the dining room chairs and folding chairs we had and borrowed folding chairs from other members of the family. We also borrowed a half dozen small benches from a family at St. Dunstan's where my brother and I went to school with two of their children. I'm not quite sure how that came about since neither my brother nor I were particularly friends with those kids, we were just classmates and hung out with different kids.

Once the house was set up, it was time to start cooking. I can't remember now how many turkeys my father cooked, but I would think it was at least two since we had a double oven in our kitchen. Everyone in the family brought things, but my dad did a lot of cooking that year. One of my mother's cousins roasted his first turkey that Thanksgiving as his wife injured her back and wasn't able to prepare the turkey as planned. Among the many desserts was a cake baked by one of my aunts which was in the shape of a turkey and read "Happy Birthday B... you turkey!" My aunt was a little worried that my mom would be upset, but she loved it and laughed.

We had about 40 people for a sit down Thanksgiving dinner that year. All in our living room. I was among the oldest of the youngest generation, so was privileged to have an actual chair to sit on for dinner. Most of the younger kids were squeezed together on one side of the table closest to the fire place and sat along the benches we'd borrowed. I think we even managed to squeeze in a couple of high chairs for the three one-year-olds. It was a cozy fit.

My father's younger brother and his family didn't come for dinner, but arrived in time for dessert. The family that lent us the benches stopped by at some point in the evening as did one of my brother's friends. Cousins on all sides mixed and played while the adults gabbed the evening away. It was a great party.

It was such a great party that 10 years later for my mom's 50th birthday, we decided to do it again! By that time all of the kids we'd been able to squeeze on to benches were teenagers and the family was much too big to fit everyone in our house for a sit down dinner. Fortunately by that time Uncle Eddie was the pastor at St. Gregory's Church in San Mateo, and they had a great parish hall, complete with an industrial kitchen. Uncle Eddie arranged for us to use the hall and again have the Dwyers, Murrays, and Pendergasts for dinner.

The day before, which was my mother's actual birthday, my parents, brother, and I met my aunt Diane and Uncle Eddie at St. Gregory's to set up the tables and chairs and set out some decorations. It was a bit of a hectic day for me as I'd planned to leave work early and run a couple errands before meeting the family, but wound up spending most of the time dealing with having locked my keys in my car at the gas station! Dad was home cooking three turkeys, so couldn't bring me my spare key and my brother was on his way home from college and mom was still at work. Dad called AAA for me, but it was quite a headache!

Thanksgiving day arrived, and this time we had over 60 people for a sit down dinner. Since we were at St. Gregory's already, Uncle Eddie said a mass for the entire family before dinner. Afterwards we took a great photo of everyone in attendance, and it takes some work to identify who in the family is on which side and who married into any of the families. Again, it was a fun evening of visiting with our family and cousins intermingling. The youngest kids found their way into St. Gregory's gym and tossed a basketball around and just generally ran around having fun.

Earlier this week, one of my Pendergast cousins mentioned he had found a video his mother had taken of that Thanksgiving, and it was great seeing everyone (and how young everyone was! I'm now older than my mother was in that video!) 

So this Thanksgiving is quite different. Hopefully next year we'll be able to be together again and celebrate as a whole family. Looking ahead a few years... Mom's 85th birthday is on Thanksgiving, so maybe it's time to start planning for another big family blow out!

So, Why So Silent?

I've been a bit neglectful of this blog the past year and a half. It's not that I don't have topics to write about (I have 17 different preliminary sketches in my pending posts file!) Nor is it that I've not been doing any family research (my tree has doubled in size in the last year!) Some of it has been that the research I've been doing has been hit and miss and I've not really focused on one path in a while. Some of it is having other things occupy my time and keeping me busy and/or mentally wiped out. Still, you'd think 8 months into a global pandemic that has people staying home more than normal I could have found some time to work on a few blog posts. Mainly, I just haven't had the "creative spark" lately and not up to writing,

So, I'm going to try to start focusing on this blog a bit more and updating with my more recent discoveries. A few things I've found out in the past year or so:

• Who the mysterious "J. Manning" was and where my Mannings most likely come from.
• A discovery on John Murray's origins.
  
• The Belduke/Bolduc/Boulduc line back to the 16th century! (Most of the research has been done by my uncle who's been researching the Dwyer/Kenny side of my family for the last 25 years or so, but wow! it was a lot to add!)
• Another DNA update -- I'm 3% German!

I'm sure there are a few more, plus there are those pending posts I need to finish. More on my grandparents and cousins for example. So with the holiday season approaching, which is a time I always seem to fall back into my family history, I'm going to work on updating this blog a bit. The posts may not hit until after the new year, but I'm going to make a bigger effort than I have of late.

DNA Update

At the end of 2017, my father asked that I get an Ancestry DNA test for him and since that was something I had been wanting to do myself I also got a test for myself. When the results arrived early last year, they turned out pretty much as expected -- Dad and I are pretty definitively Irish.

The test results were broken down into regions, and my test came back with the following breakdown:

• 83% -- Ireland/Scotland/Wales
• 13% -- Great Britain
• 2% -- Europe South
• 1% -- Europe West
• <1% -- Caucasus
• <1% -- Scandanavia

Recently, Ancestry updated their databases which resulted in revising areas and adjusting the test results accordingly. My new breakdown looks like this:

• 97% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 3% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe

Gone are the trace regions and I'm even more Irish than I "used to" be. Again, none of these results are surprising. The three percent that covers England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe is likely the French and German parts of my ancestry as the regions my ancestors came from are covered in the regional map Ancestry uses. The most interesting breakdown is in the 97% Irish segment. In the original breakdown, it indicated that I had a strong connection to the Munster region of Ireland. Munster is the southern province of Ireland and encompasses County Cork where I know quite a few of my ancestors were born. The new breakdown, is more specific about which areas of Munster I am connected to -- North Munster, North and East Cork, North Cork, North Kerry and North Cork. The "North and East Cork" bit encompasses the area around Kinsale and Ballincollig which is where I know my great grandfather Daniel Coleman and great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary were born. The "North Munster" bit encompasses Tipperary, which is where my great great grandfather James Dwyer was born. The "North Kerry and North Cork" bit is interesting since as of this writing I haven't identified any ancestors from County Kerry. My great great grandmother Margaret McAuliffe was born in County Cork, but I don't know exactly where, so that might be her branch of the tree. It could also be a hint to the Mannings or Mullanes since I haven't determined where in Ireland they came from yet. The Kennys are also a branch that hasn't been narrowed down beyond Ireland, but I've not spent much time on that branch of the tree.

Along with learning about these breakdowns, several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins have taken the Ancestry DNA test as well. It's fun getting notices about a "close relative" match and sending a text or email off to the matching person with a joking "I guess we are family." However, because of this my mother's older brother, who has been researching the Dwyer/Kenny side of the family for the last 25 years, sent a note to those of us who have taken the test explaining who some of the matches are. One match is a descendant of Winifred Gallagher who was the younger sister of my great great grandmother Elizabeth (Bessie) Gallagher. Winifred married a man named Robert Coleman, and when my uncle discovered this he contacted me to see if there might be a connection to my Colemans. The Gallaghers are from County Roscommon, which is in the northwestern part of Ireland -- nowhere near County Cork where my Colemans are from. Still there was an outside chance Robert Coleman was connected to my Coleman ancestors, so with the new information from the DNA tests, I hopped over to my father's test results to see if there was a match to the same person. No such luck, but even a no match is a good result. Now we know my Colemans and Robert Coleman aren't related (though, admittedly, it's still possible there's a much further back connection than the tests can identify at this time.)

Finally, I did check my father's new results to see what change might have popped up for him. Since his initial results showed he was pretty much Irish, I didn't expect to see a whole lot of variation, and I didn't. His original test results came back as:

• 93% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 3% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe
• 1% -- Finland/Northwest Russia
• <1% -- Scandinavia
• <1% -- Middle East

The new results are:

• 98% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 2% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe

So, yep, Dad is still about as Irish as you can get. His Munster province breakdown is similar to mine, only adding "Southwest Munster" which is mostly the southern parts of Counties Cork and Kerry, which gives some hint that there is a possible link to County Kerry in the Manning/Mullane part of our family tree since we know the Murrays are from Galway, the McDonoughs are from Sligo, and the Colemans and O'Learys are from Cork. Perhaps somewhere down the line the DNA test will find a match with one of my Manning/Mullane relatives and we can figure out where everyone came from.

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.

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!

Another Holy Cross Visit -- November 2015

It's fairly time consuming to head up to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try to track down where all the many relatives I have buried there are located.  It helps tremendously that I have a list of locations from the Cemetery Index at SFGenealogy.com so have a list of where I need to go and which family members are buried near each other.  I always make a plan ahead of time as to which sections I'm going to visit and who I'm going to look for.  I had some time off last November, so I planned to spend a morning at Holy Cross.

For this visit, I planned to hit Sections J, K, and M which are more or less in the center of the cemetery.  I parked my car near the Priests Plot and paid a quick visit to Uncle Eddie and waved at Joe DiMaggio's grave in Section I before trekking through Section J looking for some of my Mullane relatives.

This was the first trip I remembered to stick my phone into my search bag (which usually contains gardening gloves, my camera, a bottle of water, a clipboard with my search list, and a gardening shovel in case uncovering a headstone requires a bit more work than my hands can manage) and it proved handy.  Section J is one of the older sections and the row numbering is somewhat perplexing.  After some cross-checking on the phone that I was headed in the right direction, I was able to find the grave I was looking for -- that of my great grandmother's brother Phillip J. Mullane and his wife and three children.  Phillip and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane had four children, but only one lived to adulthood.  Edward, Nora/Norine, and Phillip Clayton are the only ones whose names appear on the headstone.

Next it was over to Section K to see if I could find Thomas Joseph Mullane and his mother Margaret Shanahan Mullane.  Margaret was married to my great grandmother's youngest brother Edward.  Edward is buried over in Section F with his parents and other family members, and based on what I've been able to find at SFGenealogy.com, it appears Thomas and Margaret are buried with some Shanahan relatives.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get properly oriented in this section and wasn't able to locate the grave.  It was particularly frustrating because my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in Section K and I've located their grave previously and I couldn't find them either to help with my orientation.  I'll need to head back to find them.

I walked up the hill next to see if I would luck out in Section M and find a headstone for my grandfather's sister Mollie Murray Johnson.  I knew from a previous visit looking for her mother and sister in the section that there weren't a lot of headstones in this older part of the cemetery and that the ones that were there are much newer.  With so many rows containing very few headstones it was a trick trying to find the right approximate location.  I walked around the area I thought I should be looking for any headstone I could cross-reference on my phone and I couldn't find anything for Mollie.

Since it was a nice day and I had struck out on most of the folks I was looking for I decided I was close enough to walk up to the St. Rose of Lima section where several of my aunts are buried.  After saying hello to Helen, Diane, and Betty (all conveniently within a few rows of each other), I headed down the hill to the San Lorezno section and visit my aunt Pat and got my first look at my cousin Mark's headstone.  It was a little bit sad to walk through these sections as they all were people who impacted my life directly -- much more so than all of the other folks I had been looking for but had never met (or even knew about until recently!)  I miss them all.

As I headed back to my car I realized I was going to have to cut across Section G to get there, so I made my way down to Section G2 to make a quick visit with Nana and Grandpa Murray.  While this wasn't a particularly productive trip in locating ancestors, it was a nice way to spend a warm fall morning.

Holiday Traditions

Merry Christmas! I'm taking a brief break from the blog for the holidays, but there are new posts scheduled for the new year. But as Christmas is upon us, I thought I'd take a minute to reflect and remember the Christmas traditions over the years.

When my brother and I were kids in the 1970s and 1980s, Christmas was a pretty set schedule. Christmas Eve would be spent with the Dwyer family at Grandma and Grandpa's. Christmas morning was just for the four of us (or maybe five if we're talking about the early 70s when Dad's youngest sister lived with us) and Christmas dinner was with the Murray side of the family, usually at our house.

We started going to Grandma & Grandpa's on Christmas Eve about 1973 (if my recollection of family photos and home movies is correct.) By that time, there were 10 of us grandchildren of Don and Audley Dwyer -- the 5 Caseys, 2 Murrays, 2 Dwyer sisters, 1 Murphy. We kids were all sent downstairs to the big family room in the garage. It had once been the bedroom for my mother's two brothers, but changed over once they had moved out of the family home. The rules were simple -- no one was allowed upstairs until after dinner and presents. The lone exception to this rule was my oldest cousin Mark who would have been 13 when these parties started. The next closest kid was the oldest of his three younger sisters who was 9. I was his closest cousin at age 5. My 3 year old brother was his closest male relative. Yeah, pretty obvious why the 13 year old got to go upstairs with the grown ups. Now, we kids weren't left alone totally unsupervised -- especially in those early years -- the adults would rotate turns coming down and keeping an eye on us all. We did a pretty good job of keeping ourselves entertained since there were so many of us so close in age. I spent most of my time in those years with one of my Casey cousins who is only 10 months older than me. The Dwyer sisters were always so quiet and sat off to themselves that it wasn't until late in high school that I ever spent much time with them.

For the first few years, all of us got presents from every family. Since my mom was one of six kids, that meant five gifts plus one from Grandma and Grandpa.  We now call those years the "greed fests" because, as you can imagine, a bunch of kids opening six presents each was a bit chaotic. Mark, being the oldest, would hand out the gifts to us younger kids. The funniest part of this, is that every year we all pretty much sat in the same spots. The boys on the floor at Mark's feet, the Dwyer sisters sharing the overstuffed chair, me and the Casey girls on the couch. The gifts had to be handed out in a particular order -- since there were so many of us close in age it was pretty common for everyone to get a variation on the same gift. After a while, there got to be too many of us to do gifts for everyone reasonably, so we drew names and everyone got two gifts. One from the person who drew their name, one from Grandma and Grandpa (the latter tended to be checks as we got older.)

Before driving home from Grandma and Grandpa's, my brother and I often had to change in to our pajamas (at least while we were under 10 or so) and we'd drive home we would pass a Doggie Diner that was at the corner of Junipero Serra Blvd. and 19th Ave. and I would always be sad to see there were one or two people sitting in there on Christmas Eve. It made me appreciate at a very young age having a large, loving family to spend the holidays with.

Christmas morning in the 1970s was also very familiar year in and year out. My brother and I would get up early to see what Santa had left and wake up Mom and Dad pretty much like any other kids. Mom would heat up some eggnog or hot chocolate once we'd torn through all the presents. Usually about a half hour after we'd opened presents there would be a knock on the door -- my brother's two friends from across the street were on the doorstep to see what we'd gotten for Christmas. We moved away from that neighborhood in 1979, but even today if there's a knock on the door on Christmas morning we say "Oh it must be K and J!"

After opening the presents and running outside to play with our friends, the Murray clan would descend upon the house for more food and presents and family time. There were only six of us cousins until the late 1980s, so we weren't banished to the garage like with the Dwyer family, but we usually were in either my or my brother's bedrooms for the most part while the grown ups socialized in the living room. We began rotating houses some time in the 1980s, so Christmas dinner wasn't always at my parents' house, but it was usually spent the same way -- kids off doing something in one part of the house, adults in another.

As we got older, the traditions changed a bit. By the mid 1980s, there were 18 grandchildren on the Dwyer side, most of whom were in high school or older, so everyone ate and opened presents upstairs. The younger cousins still all went downstairs to run around and play, but we all ate and opened presents together. We continued the tradition as we all got older and my cousins started getting married and having families of their own. Getting together on Christmas Eve finally ended when my grandfather passed away in 2000.  Since then, we've had the Dwyer Family Christmas on the Sunday before Christmas -- usually at either my parents' house or at Mom's older brother's house. We stopped drawing names for gifts a few years ago too -- now just the youngest generation gets gifts generally from the grand-aunts and uncles.

Christmas dinner with the Murray family is largely unchanged, though the rotation of houses now includes those of my cousins. It's a tight squeeze with all of us most of the time, but we always make it work.

Christmas Eve is now just my immediate family. My brother, sister-in-law, and I go over to Mom and Dad's for dinner and then head to Mass. After Mass, my brother and sister-in-law head home and I go back and spend the night at Mom and Dad's. In recent  years, my dad's younger brother also stays with them, so I'm on the couch while he gets the guest room.  Christmas morning arrives and my brother and sister-in-law return for breakfast and presents before heading off to see her family. Mom and I play a round of Scrabble -- she usually wins -- and we get ready for the Murray family gathering. This year it will be at Mom and Dad's (hosted by me and my brother and sister-in-law who don't have big enough homes for the whole family) so we'll be a little busier cleaning and setting up for the family to arrive.

This is always my favorite time of the year because I am reminded just how fortunate I am to have such a large, close-knit, and loving family. My cousins are some of my closest friends and spending time with them and the rest of my family is always the best Christmas present I can imagine.

Intertwining Tree Branches

When I started researching my Murray family tree, I had planned to spend a weekend a month doing research and tracking down people, places, and events. I found so many things so quickly in early 2012 that I found myself spending much more time than I had expected uncovering some of the mysteries of the Murray family. I put a lot of puzzle pieces in place, but as the framework got solidified, finding out more became more challenging and time consuming. With a full-time job and other obligations, research time dwindled down and now I am pretty much doing what I had originally planned -- spending about one weekend a month going over what I've found and what I need to find. At least that's about what it averages out. It also means I've been stuck at the same roadblock for a while as I need to access some records that are only accessible during limited hours on week days. Challenging to say the least.

So, while I've been unable to make as much progress as I'd like, I have been able to spend some time looking more closely at some records and finding connections between all sides of my family. The easiest ones come when I'm looking through city directories. While I'm looking for Murrays and Mullanes, I will frequently stumble on Muckles -- my great grandmother's family on my maternal side -- and so I gather their information also. One project I want to try to put together as I look at the city directories is to map out where everyone lived over the years -- with ancestors on both sides of my family tracing back to the 1860s in San Francisco, I'm certain there are times and places that the Dwyer lines and the Murray lines intersected despite not connecting until 100 years later. It's very likely that they attended the same churches and schools. Did they know each other? Even in passing?

Other times, I stumble on things completely by accident. While looking for the death notice for Mollie Murray Johnson (my great grandfather's sister) I noticed that Edward I Mullane's (my great grandmother's nephew) death notice also appeared in the same issue. I knew that Edward had died as a child, but I had yet to find a date for his death. Finding two records in one was a definite bonus. Of course, it also meant my great grandparents had to attend two funerals in two days for family members. 

And then there are days like one I had recently while making a visit to Holy Cross Cemetery. Living in the same region as your ancestors over a span of 150+ years means that a lot of them wind up in the same cemetery. I've made several trips over the last few years trying to locate where everyone is at Holy Cross. There are about 40 separate sections, and to date, I know of relatives in at least half of them. This means each trip needs to be planned to cover certain sections at once. Older sections of the cemetery are a bit tricky in finding people and it can take a while to find the gravesite I'm looking for. My most recent visit, however, was to sections that mostly covered burials from about 1930-1960 (at least for the original plot purchases) and I was able to find 5 separate gravesites in the first 15 minutes of my visit. I was able to find relatives on both my maternal Dwyer/Kenny side and paternal Murray/Coleman side. My Kenny great-grandparents are buried in the same section as my Murray great-grandparents. My Coleman great-grandparents are in the section across the road, not too far from some of my Mullane relatives. There are O'Leary relatives buried a few rows away from Muckle relatives another section over.

The final, and definitely most difficult, intersection is when a last name from one branch of the tree shows up in the other. My grandmother's cousin Catherine Ford married a man name Edward Ambrose Dwyer. Edward Dwyer was from Syracuse, New York, so finding a connection with my Dwyer ancestors in San Francisco is a long shot, but is something I want to look in to further somewhere down the line. I also know from my uncle who has been researching the Dwyer/Kenny side of my family that there are some Colemans who married into the family. Neither of us has any idea if they're related to my great-grandfather Daniel Coleman. They're from different counties in Ireland, but it's also far enough back that I'll need to spend more time on the Coleman branch to see if there's a connection there too. These interstections are definitely for a later date and time when I've got more of the Murray/Coleman branches fleshed out.

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

1940 Census

After I posted my last update, I realized I had neglected to share what I had found out in the 1940 census records. I had hoped to find out if my great grandmother Mary Mullane had been married before she married my great grandfather Marshall Murray. When I looked at information about the 1940 census I noted that one of the questions that was asked of women was whether or not they had been married before, however what I had missed was that it was a supplemental question asked only of a random sampling of respondents. Alas, Mary Mullane was not one of the random samples, so I still haven't confirmed whether or not she was married to Edward Hayes before she married my great grandfather.

Nevertheless, I was able to gather some interesting information from the census records. When the records were posted on line in the beginning of April, they were not searchable by name (that is an effort still in progress) so I needed to know where my ancestors lived in order to find them in the census. I had a couple of addresses for my Murray relatives, but not specifically from 1940. I had asked my father if his family was living at the house on Niagara in 1940, and he said that they were and gave me the house number. I had addresses for Marshall Murray up to 1932 and then a gap until 1948, so I hoped one of those two addresses would be where I would find him in 1940.

When the census records came on line, I called up an available map that showed the census tracts and opened Google Maps to help orient myself to the streets. None of the Murrays were showing up where I thought they might, but I also wasn't sure I was reading the maps correctly. To test that I was reading the maps correctly, I decided to take a look for my Dwyer relatives since I knew for certain they were living on Westwood Drive in 1940. I found the corresponding map and looked for the enumeration districts in tract O6. In fairly short order I turned up my grandparents and great grandparents living exactly where I expected them to be and conveniently on the same page (my grandparents living across the street from my great grandparents.) It was fun scrolling through this set of images and recognizing all the street names and knowing exactly where they were with out having to cross-reference Google Maps. (That's the downside of not having lived in San Francisco proper -- I am only familiar with certain sections off the top of my head.) It was even more fun showing the page to my mother who recognized the names of the neighbors, some of whom I'd heard many stories about over the years.

Ok, so I was clearly reading the maps correctly. Why wasn't I finding the Murray side of the family? I thought about it and realized that they probably weren't living on Niagara in April 1940. My father had always told me that his grandfather had bought the house for his parents and the plan was for him to move in with them at some point. Just his grandfather (my great grandfather.) That meant the house had to have been purchased after my great grandmother had died. She died in July 1940 -- the house on Niagara hadn't been purchased yet!

I turned back to the city directories and went back to the 1932 listing and proceeded to march forward in time to see if I could find the right address. I eventually found Marshall and Mary living on Natoma in 1939. Nana and Grandpa Murray were living on 29th Street. One of the things that had thrown me in my searches was that Marshall and my grandfather Edward weren't working in the occupations I had expected after 1932, so when I searched and got an Edward Murray working as a watchman and another working as a reporter, I set them aside as the wrong people. It was only when I looked year to year that I realized that the watchman was Marshall and the reporter was my grandfather Edward! That was quite a surprise, and when I mentioned it to my father he said "oh yeah, he worked for the newspaper for a while." Thanks for the heads up Dad! From what I can tell, Grandpa Murray became a teamster around the time he and Nana were married in 1934.

Now that I had found everyone (including the Colemans living on Bosworth) what information could I get? Most of it was things I already knew, but because of the Great Depression there were more questions about employment than had been asked in previous censuses. The items that leaped out at me the most were related to the cost of living -- what was being paid in rent (or the value of the house if owned) and what the person's annual income was.

It was fascinating to see what my ancestors earned in 1940. It ranged from nothing (my great grandfather Daniel Coleman, who was 80 by 1940) to $4,200 (my great grandfather Ignatius Dwyer who was the registrar of voters for San Francisco.) Most intriguing, however, was Marshall Murray. He was earning $1,000 per year as a watchman and paying $16 per month in rent. How on earth was he able to afford to buy a house for my grandparents if he was making that little? Dad's stories always said that his grandfather had bought the house outright for his parents and it cost $4,500. Where did Marshall come up with that much money? Right now, my best guess is that there was some kind of death benefit paid after my great grandmother died in July 1940. It's as good a guess as any I suppose.

So, while I didn't find the information I had hoped in the 1940 census, I did learn some new things about the family during that time frame. And I definitely need to look more into this whole "Edward Murray, reporter" business.

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.)