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.

More Visiting Holy Cross Cemetery -- February 2015

In my last post I detailed a visit to Holy Cross Cemetery in October 2014 that was somewhat successful. In February 2015, I made another visit. This time I focused on Sections T, U, V, 4, and 5 which are in the north corner of the cemetery. This was a few more sections than I would normally cover in one visit, but they are all in fairly close proximity to each other and there are lots of family members buried there mostly between about 1920-1960. It was a particularly productive visit as nearly all the plots have a marker and there are family members on both sides buried there. I had located my Kenny great-grandparents in Section U on my second visit in 2012 and eventually found my Murray great-gandparents in Section U later that year. My Coleman great-grandparents are across the road in Section T. That puts three of my four sets of great-grandparents in the same general vicinity and gave me orientation points to find other family in the same sections.  

Patrick and Myrtle Mullane
are buried with relatives of
Patrick's wife Ellen
Mary Sullivan

Patrick's name is inscribed on the left
side of the marker

I hit Section T first as there was only one location to find there -- the site for Patrick Henry Mullane and his daughter Myrtle. Patrick was one of my great-grandmother Mary Mullane Murray's younger brothers. The headstone was very informative yet confusing since there were so many different names on it. I think I've figured out who everyone is  (or at least a best guess as is the case with the Comerfords) but I do have a mystery to resolve since Patrick's wife Ellen isn't buried in the same plot and I've as yet been unable to find out when she died or where she's buried.

My great-great grandmother
Bessie Gallagher Muckle
buried with her daughter
Theresa Muckle Epstine

Then I walked across the road to Section U where there are a bunch of relatives from my maternal side. My great-great grandmother was Elizabeth (Bessie) Gallagher and was born in County Roscommon, Ireland. She married Thomas Muckle who was born in County Down, Ireland. They spent most of their lives in Virginia City, Nevada and Tom died there. Bessie moved to San Francisco after his death with my great-grandparents.  She died in 1929 and was buried at Holy Cross. Her daughter Theresa Muckle Epstine was buried with her in 1937. The index at SFGenealogy.com indicates that Bessie is in grave 1 and Theresa is in grave 5 which has me wondering if there are other people buried in the plot that aren't in the database for some reason.

Kate Nowlan's daughter
Catherine Nowlan Delury
and family are between
Kate and Bessie

My great-great grandaunt
Kate Gallagher Nowlan
and her family a couple of
places to the right of Bessie

Bessie came to the United States with her two sisters Catherine (Kate) and Margaret (Maggie.)  Kate married Daniel Nowlan and also settled in Virginia City, Nevada before eventually winding up in San Francisco. Kate and Daniel Nowlan had five children and their daughter Catherine Nowlan married Daniel Delury. The Nowlans and Delurys are buried in the same row as Bessie Muckle and Theresa Epstine, so the three graves were easy to find as they were all side by side.

William Muckle and family.
William was my great-grandmother
Maggie Muckle Kenny's brother

A couple of rows away is another Muckle plot. This one is for another of Bessie Gallagher Muckle's children -- her son William Muckle and his family. William was my great grandmother Maggie Muckle Kenny's younger brother and he's buried with his wife and three children.

 My last stop in Section U was to look for the younger of my grandmother Audley Kenny Dwyer's two older brothers -- Harry Kenny and his wife Ethel. I'm pretty sure I located the where they are buried, but there wasn't a headstone. I'll need to go back and bring my phone to help double check. Harry and Ethel are buried with Ethel's daughter Merle Williams and mother Laura S. Glanville.

Daniel E.Delury and family.
Daniel was my grandmother
Audley Kenny Dwyer's second cousin

Ellen O'Leary Ford and family
Ellen was my great-grandmother
Lizzie O'Leary Coleman's sister

Next it was over to Section V where there was some more mixing of my families. I first found more Delurys in row 13 -- Daniel E. Delury, the grandson of Kate Gallagher Nowlan and son of Catherine and Daniel Delury, is buried with his wife Hazel and daughter Margaret. Over in row 14 and a few plots down I found my great-grandmother Lizzie O'Leary's older sister Ellen O'Leary Ford buried with her husband John and daughter and son-in-law Catherine Ford Dwyer and Edward Ambrose Dwyer.

Barbara Jane and her father
Douglas S. Evans
Barbara is my mother's third cousin

Jane Delury Evans is buried
next to her husband and daughter.
Jane is my grandmother's second cousin

This part of my trip was hugely productive and I found all of these folks relatively quickly. I headed then up the hill to Sections 4 and 5. My first stop was some more descendants of Kate Gallagher. Her granddaughter Jane Delury Evans is buried there. Jane Delury Evans's husband Douglas and daughter Barbara Jane are buried in the plot next to her.

Joe and Pauline Kenny

A few rows away, my grandmother Audley Kenny Dwyer's oldest brother, Joseph B. Kenny, Jr. is buried with his wife Pauline. My grandmother and Joe had a falling out somewhere along the line so my mother doesn't have a real memory of him other than family stories. Joe died in 1958, not long after Harry died in 1950. I don't have any memory of my grandmother speaking about either of her brothers so they've always been kind of mysterious people to me. That's why I was surprised to find that Joe's wife Pauline lived until 1985 and was living in Burlingame when she died. I grew up not far away in Millbrae and went to high school in Burlingame.

I continued up to Section 5 before heading home for the day. My first stop was to find John J. Coleman, Jr. and his wife Mildred. Jack Coleman was my grandmother Elizabeth Coleman's first cousin -- the son of my great grandfather's older brother John. Jack may actually be John Coleman, IV as my great-great grandfather's name was also John and if I have identified HIS father correctly I have four generations of John Colemans in a row. Jack Coleman was about 13 years older than my grandmother Elizabeth and worked as a clothing salesman. Mildred was actually his second wife and I've yet to learn much more about them. Jack died in 1979 in San Rafael. Mildred lived until 2002.

Margaret Coleman Madigan and
her husband Mike. The marker was a bit
overgrown and I had
to pull up some grass and dirt to read it.

My last stop on this visit was to my grandmother's sister's grave. Margaret Coleman Madigan is buried in Section 5 with her husband Michael. Mike died in 1961, well before I was born, but Aunt Margaret lived until 1999 so I have many fond memories of her. Margaret was my grandmother's younger sister and they were very close until Nana's death in 1973. I still have a few memories of Nana, but none of them are a sense of her personality since I was only four and a half when she died. Aunt Margaret gave me a good sense of what Nana's personality was probably like as all my father's siblings agree they were like two peas in a pod. She was a warm and loving lady and I miss her vivacity. 

This was definitely my most productive trip to date as I was able to locate all of these graves in about an hour.  It definitely helped that they were all so close to each other! 

Returning to Holy Cross Cemetery -- October 2014

One of the things I have been doing with some regularity is making trips to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try and locate the many many MANY family members that have been buried there over the 150 or so years of the cemetery's existence.  Thanks to the San Francisco Colma Cemetery Index over at SFGenealogy.com, I can easily look up where and when family members were buried between 1887-2005 (the index actually goes up to 2012, but only records that are older than 10 years old are searchable.)  It's a great and useful resource, and I've recorded the names, dates, and locations for many of the family members so I can have a list handy when I go trekking around looking for gravesites.

Since Holy Cross is a large cemetery with about 40 separate sections and to date I've identified relatives in about 20 of them, I try to group my searches to two or three sections that are in reasonable proximity of each other.  Some trips are more successful than others as the row and grave numbering is seldom clearly marked and I can't always find where I'm supposed to be.  There are also the occasions when I DO find the right spot only to find there isn't a headstone to identify the plot, so the location is my "best guess".  On my most recent trip in November I did remember to grab my phone so I could use the database to help confirm my location which was helpful. 

I've learned from my trips and other inquiries that certain locations are mass graves either for the poor (Section A) or for those who were removed from Mount Calvary Cemetery when it was finally closed around 1940 (part of Section H.)  The older sections of the cemetery are a lot trickier than the newer ones as there are a lot of missing headstones (if there were ever headstones in the first place.)  Section M, where my great great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray is buried with her daughter Nellie is one such section.  When I visited in 2012 looking for Bridget, there was no headstone at where I believe she was buried.

Arthur Patrick & Kathleen Ford,
my grandmother Elizabeth
Coleman's first cousin and
his wife

I have, however, had some successes.  On a trip in October 2014, I found the markers for Nana's first cousin Arthur Patrick Ford and his wife Kathleen.  They're buried in Section G2 just a few rows away from Nana and Grandpa Murray.

Mullane family plot where my
great-great grandparents T.J.
Mullane and Mary Manning
Mullane are buried with
their descendants.

On the same trip I was also able to locate the grave of my great-great grandfather Timothy John Mullane in Section F.  T.J. Mullane is buried with quite a few other members of the Mullane family including his wife Mary, sons Thomas Michael, John Martin, and Edward W. Mullane.  Also in the Mullane plot are Margaret E. Mullane, the infant daughter of Edward W., her brothers Raymond and Edward J. Mullane, and Edward J. Mullane's wife Frances Dorothy Donahue Mullane.  Not all of the Mullanes are listed on the headstone, and from the design I'm guessing it was put in later than the original purchase of the plot. 
 
My last stop on this visit was to the mass grave for the Mount Calvary Cemetery internments.  My great-great grandfather John Murray and his daughter Lizzie Frances Murray were moved there from their original burial place.  There is a nice marker there for the over 39,000 people who were relocated when the cemetery was finally closed in 1940. 

My next post will detail a very successful and productive visit in February, 2015.

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.

Found Siblings

It's been a while since my last update. That's largely due to needing to do some off-line, in-person research. I'm not at a brick wall exactly, but at a barrier because there's information I need to go further and I have to go to where the information may be rather than having it instantly available at the tip of my keyboard. With a full-time job, that means in person research is limited to weekends and holidays for the most part, and, naturally, a lot of the places I need to access aren't open on weekends and holidays. I'll have to do some vacation planning to get to some of the information I need.

Still, I've managed to make some progress on a couple of puzzle pieces. You'll remember back in November I stumbled on a death record that I thought might be my great grandfather's older sister Mary (Mollie) in a database of funeral home records. Her age was off by quite a bit, but the rest of the information I found matched up with things I already knew. Mollie was married to a fellow named Charles Johnson and died in 1917 and buried at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma. I was fairly confident that I'd found the right person, but wasn't 100% certain. I put the information I'd found in my records and went on searching for more information on Mollie and her husband Charles as well as continuing my on-going search to figure out what happened to my great grandfather's two brothers Joseph and John Henry.

While searching for a marriage notice for Mollie and Charles, I managed to stumble on a death notice for Joseph in the February 5, 1920 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The notice indicated he had died on February 3 and was the "loving brother of John and Marshall Edward Murray and the late Mollie Johnson and Ella Nelson." Well, all right then! The mention of Mollie Johnson helped confirm my belief that despite the nearly 10 year age discrepancy in the death record I'd found I had indeed located "my" Mollie. Joseph's death notice also indicated he too was buried at Holy Cross. Accessing the Holy Cross records that were available at sfgenealogy.com (currently off-line as of this writing) I found that Joseph was buried with a John H. Murray! Two siblings in one search! John Henry was buried on July 24, 1930, so I went back to the CA Death Index and located his death on July 21, 1930.

I've yet to order death certificates for any of the three siblings to see what bits of information they may provide (I'm particularly interested in seeing if I have correctly identified Joseph's wife.) I have located what I believe to be a marriage record for Mollie Murray and Charles Johnson, however, I'm not completely certain I've got the right record. This is because, once again, Mollie's age is way off and her husband's name is listed not at Charles Johnson but as Carl Johanson. I've done a little bit of digging on Charles/Carl and believe he Anglicized his name, but need to look a bit more to be certain.

In the course of working out a timeline for the siblings, I've discovered that Joseph, who was living with his brother Marshall (my great grandfather) when the 1920 census was taken, died only a couple of weeks after the census was recorded. That he was ill and (presumably) dying definitely helps explain why he was living with them if I've correctly identified his wife. Based on what I've found through the city directories and census, she's in the Napa State Hospital in 1920. Interestingly enough, there is no reference to his wife in the death notice, though the 1920 census record clearly indicates he was married.

I've also found what I believe to be a record for John Henry in the 1930 US Census. That instance has him at San Francisco General Hospital in April, 1930, just a few months before his death in July.

I still need to confirm where the Murray siblings were in 1910. If the marriage record I found for Mollie Murray and Carl Johanson is the correct couple, they were married in December 1909, so I need to look for them together. Joseph had not yet married when the 1910 census was taken (again, if I've correctly identified his wife, they were married shortly after the census was recorded) and John Henry, as best I can tell, never married. Looking for two unmarried men named John and Joseph is not the easiest of tasks! 

So, from what I have found thus far on the Murray side of the family, my great grandfather Marshall was the only one of the six siblings to both live to adulthood and have children of his own. Hopefully, once I'm able to get to some of the off-line records I need to access, I'll be able to find some leads to some Murray cousins.

A Couple of Mysteries Solved

Shortly after Christmas, the wonderful folks at SFGenealogy.com updated their Colma Cemetery Index with an index of the removal cards from Calvary Cemetery. Back in the late 1890s, the city of San Francisco stopped burials within the city limits, and so people began being buried at cemeteries in Colma. There was a protracted battle over what to do with the remains left in the various cemeteries in San Francisco, but eventually most were moved to Colma, and those buried at Calvary Cemetery mostly wound up at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery.

Since I knew my great great grandfather John Murray had died before burials had stopped in San Francisco, I thought I’d see if he turned up in the Calvary records. I had found a death notice for a John Murray in November 1890 that I was fairly certain was my great great grandfather, so I plugged in his name and the date I’d found. He popped up immediately, and the attached image indicated that he had been reburied at Holy Cross in June, 1940. That meant he’s not the unnamed Murray I found buried with my great great grandmother Bridget who was buried in 1912. In addition to the date he was reburied at Holy Cross, the record indicated that there was a second family member buried with him. Well that is certainly interesting!

Who was this second person buried with my great great grandfather? The removal record indicated that the original plot at Calvary had been purchased in November, 1875. Using that date, I searched on anyone with the last name of Murray and up popped a record for Lizzie F. Murray. When I looked at the image attached to the record I got a big smile on my face – the record indicated she was the “child of John & Bridget.” Well, that means I’ve found the right John Murray, and now I’d found the missing child. I really hadn’t expected to find out what happened to the unknown sibling of my great grandfather that was indicated in the 1900 census. According to the removal record, Lizzie was three years old when she died in November, 1875. That would have her born about 1872 and, as I suspected, fall between Mollie (Mary) and my great grandfather Marshall.

An added bonus to these newly added records is that Holy Cross allowed the SFGenealogy team to upload the images from the original Calvary registers. Armed with the names and dates for John and Lizzie Murray, I looked for them in the Calvary registers. According to the register Lizzie died from typhoid fever on November 22, 1875 at the age of 3 years and 3 months old. The Holy Cross records indicate she was buried on November 22, so I’m not sure which it is – did Calvary enter the date of burial under “died on” or did the transfer record just assume the “died on” date was the burial date? Still, in the worst case, I’m within a few days of the correct date.

I did the same look up for John Murray, and it indicated he was 50 years old, born in Ireland and died on November 20, 1890 which matched up with the death notice I found in the San Francisco Call. I can’t quite decipher his cause of death as yet, but I suspect it’s cirrhosis of the liver (the first word starts with a “c” and is followed by “of liver”.) Another interesting note for his record indicated to which parish he belonged. Naturally, whoever entered the information just entered “S.B.” which is less than helpful, and I had to go to the San Francisco City Directory for 1890 to see which church it might be. I’m fairly certain that “S.B.” stands for “St. Bridget/Brigid” (the 1890 directory has it listed as St. Bridget’s, but current references call it St. Brigid’s) as that parish was the closest to where John and Bridget Murray lived in 1890.

Lizzie and John were removed to Section H in 1940, but I wasn’t able to find them in the Holy Cross records. Fortunately, the folks at SFGenealogy were able to help me out when I asked why I was having difficulty. Section H is where the mass grave for removals from Calvary is located and thus not everyone buried there was listed in the Holy Cross records.

Now that I know where my great great grandfather is buried and identified the unknown sibling for my great grandfather, I have one puzzle still to work out. Who is the unknown Murray buried with my great great grandmother? The Holy Cross records list a burial date of March 16, 1912. Could this be one of my great grandfather’s siblings? If so, why isn’t the first name listed? I know it’s not his younger brother Joseph since he shows up in the 1920 census, so if it is a sibling it’s either Mollie (Mary) or John Henry. Another possibility is that it’s a child, thus no name, in which case it could be the unknown child of Mary and Marshall Murray. If that’s the case, however, Mary and Marshall would have likely been married by 1911, and the Mary J. Mullane I’ve found (and am fairly certain is the right Mary Mullane) is still married to Dennis Edward Hayes in 1910, so what the heck happened there?!

I’m going to have to cull through the 1905-1929 California Death Index images to see if I can find a death record that corresponds to the date of burial I’ve found at Holy Cross. Hopefully that will help find the missing relative. I'll also have to spend some more time with the Calvary records to see if there's anyone else listed there.