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. 

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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!

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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!

Onward with the O’Learys

As I mentioned in my last post, I managed to get a couple of leads to start tracing out some of my O’Leary relatives. I decided to start with the names from the invitation list to my parents’ wedding in 1965. Who were A. Ford and J. Ford and what could I find out about Catherine Dwyer and Mrs. Dennis O’Leary?

My first step was to take a closer look at the items I had taken from my parents’ house. The card from Mrs. Dennis O’Leary was signed May O’Leary and said that she and her twin daughters would be attending the wedding. Okay, so that’s four people to find: Dennis O’Leary, who presumably has died by 1965, May O’Leary, and their twin daughters. I plugged the information I had into my family tree and went on to the next. Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford also responded to the wedding invitation that they would both attend, but their daughter would be unable to join the festivities. The card was signed Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, so no full name, but another initial. I plugged them into the family tree also. Mrs. Catherine Dwyer also accepted the invitation, but by 1965 she appears to be widowed. There wasn’t a card from Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford, but they and their daughter were on the invitation list, so I entered their information too.

Before I continue, I should pause to mention that I decided when I started this blog not to mention any living people directly by name.  Now I’m at a point where I am discovering some of my father’s second cousins and as such they are probably within 10 years or so in age of my father, which means in all likelihood a good number of them are still living. Until or unless I have sufficient evidence to prove otherwise, these cousins will be referred to indirectly (e.g. Dennis O’Leary’s twin daughters.) While it is possible that some of Nana’s cousins are still living, they would all be near 100 years old or more so I’m figuring that it’s not likely.

Once I entered the information I had, I headed off to take a look at the San Francisco City Directory for 1965. This is different than the phone book that just lists name, address, and phone number for the registered owner of the telephone. The city directories often listed spouses’ names and occupations as well as home and often work addresses. A very useful tool that I was surprised to discover continued into the early 1980s! I was able to find J. Ford quickly – his full name was John J. Ford and his wife’s name was Verna and he worked for E.F. Hutton & Co. Using this information I was able to check census records to learn that in addition to the daughter that was invited to my parents wedding, they also had a son. I’ve not found out much yet on these two beyond their names and approximate birth dates.

There were several different possibilities for Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, but none of the names I found in the city directory matched up with the address I had, so I decided to go back a bit further. I knew he was the son of Ellen O’Leary and the brother of John J. Ford, so I searched the census records and I found the Ford family in the 1920 census. This helped quite a bit. A.P. Ford is Arthur Ford and he was born in about 1913. John J. Ford is his older brother, born in about 1905 and they had a sister, Catherine, born in about 1906. Ah-ha! Catherine Dwyer is likely Catherine Ford! Their father’s name is also John J. Ford, born in about 1868 in Ireland. The elder John Ford worked as a galvanizer.

I haven’t been able to identify Arthur Ford’s wife as yet, but know that they had at least one child, the daughter who was invited to my parents’ wedding. I’ve also been unable to identify Catherine Ford Dwyer’s husband, but it’s been entertaining looking for him as I keep hitting records for my Dwyer grandparents and great grandparents! My mother says that there is no direct relation to her Dwyers and Catherine’s husband, and she’s probably right at least as far as we can easily identify, but perhaps somewhere in the far distant past there is a common root. I haven’t been able to learn if Catherine and Mr. Dwyer had any children.

My next search was for Dennis and May O’Leary. Since they were living in Burlingame (or at least May and her daughters were) in 1965, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find them in the San Francisco City Directory, so I worked with what I knew and looked for twin girls named O’Leary that were about my father’s age. It took a few tweaks to find them as they were a bit younger than I thought, but in looking for them I was able to find four older brothers. Having these brothers enabled me to find Dennis in the 1940 census where three of the four boys also appear.  Dennis was born in about 1907 in Ireland, unlike Nana and her Ford cousins who were all born in San Francisco.

As I was gathering more information on the Ford family, I was able to find a death record for Ellen O’Leary Ford that came from a collection of San Francisco funeral home records. Ellen died in 1932, and when I found this record I was working on my iPad, so the image file attached to the record was hard to read. When I took a look at the image on my computer I learned two things. First, that Ellen died from second and third degree burns over one half of her body area. That seriously stunned me for a bit. As I’ve been going through the family tree I’ve been finding out how various relatives died and for the most part they’re fairly common causes: childbirth, heart attack, etc. But second and third degree burns? What an awful and painful way to die. I am going to assume there was some kind of house fire as that would seem to be the most likely cause, and will definitely start digging through old newspapers to see if I can learn more about that.

The second thing I learned from the death record I found for Ellen was much more mundane, but definitely useful. There was a clipping of her death notice from the San Francisco Examiner and it said she was the “dearly beloved wife of John J. Ford, loving mother of John J. Jr., Arthur Patrick, and Catherine H. Ford. and beloved sister of Arthur O’Leary and Mrs. D. Coleman.” Ah-ha! I’ve found the missing brother!

Or at least, that’s what I thought. I’d yet to begin searching on my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. What I’ve found in those searches has me a bit more puzzled. We’ll save that for another post.