Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 1

I realized that over the four years since I started this blog I had posed a bunch of different questions that I may have not answered in a follow up post, so I decided to go back through the 40 or so posts I have written and see what I may have forgotten to update.  I'll also try to put in quick links to questions that were answered in case something was missed.  This will be a multi-part post and one that will appear from time to time as I move along in my research since I suspect there will be more instances of me plowing ahead and forgetting to update all the answers I find and/or forgetting to go back and look at some other questions.

The First Month of Digging brought up a lot of questions and I think I've answered most of them by now.  Some questions, like what happened to my Murray family relatives during and immediately following the 1906 earthquake and fire will probably remain a mystery.  That kind of information is usually found in family stories and I know of none.  Many of the other questions that I pondered in that first month have been answered though.

• What was Bridget's husband's name?  When did he die?
• Who is Joseph's wife? Why isn't she living with him in 1920?
• What happened to Mary and Nellie? Did they marry?
• Who were my great-grandmother's parents? Did she have any siblings?

The question of where in Ireland were my Murray great-great grandparents were from is answered in passing in several posts.  Both Bridget McDonough Murray and John Murray's death notices contained the useful information that they were born in counties Sligo and Galway respectively.  That decidedly narrows down where in Ireland I'll need to look for other points of reference, but with the challenge that is inherent in Irish records it will be difficult to find such common names with out being able to narrow them down to a parish or townland.

When did they come to California is another partially answered question.  Based on what I've been able to find in the San Francisco city directories and the 1900 census record has given me a rough estimate.  In the 1900 census, Bridget shows up as having arrived in the US in 1866.  I first find her with a certainty in the 1867 city directory working at the Occidental Laundry.  However I also found a Bridget McDonough working at the Russ House laundry in 1864 with several other McDonoughs.  I'm not 100% sure that's "my" Bridget, so I've put that record in my "maybe" file for now.  John Murray first shows up in the city directories in 1862 working at Easton's laundry.  So I have a reasonable timeline for both of them arriving in California.  But what about the question of when they arrived in the United States?  While it's possible they both emigrated from Ireland directly to California, it's more likely they arrived in the US on the east coast before moving across the country.  I haven't, to date, found any definitive records of the arrival of either Bridget or John.  The best lead I have is for Bridget as her death notice asked that papers in Chelsea, Massachusetts be notified.  That leads me to believe there was some kind of family in Massachusetts and that Bridget may have landed in Boston before moving west.  As for John -- that's definitely going to be a needle in haystack.  John Murray is a common enough name and the immigration records of the 1860s contain very little information that would allow me to identify one John Murray from another with any certainty.  The most interesting part of this question though gives rise to another question.  If John and Bridget arrived on the east coast sometime between 1860-1866, what was traveling across the entire continent in the middle of the US Civil War like?

The question of what happened to my great grandfather's older brother John Henry is another open question.  I only have spotty records for him.  After finding him living with the rest of the family in 1900-01, I have very little hard evidence on him.  He witnessed my great grandparents' wedding in 1918 and I know he's buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his brother Joseph, so I know he died in 1930.  Those are the only hard records I have for him.  Again, with a name like John Murray, it's a bit tricky tracking him down.  I have a couple of possibilities in census records, but nothing definite.

I haven't quite found all of the Murrays in the 1910 census.  Bridget and Nellie (Ella) have died by 1910 and I'm pretty sure I've found Mollie living with her husband.  The brothers, however, are a bit more of a challenge.  I have a reasonable guess for Joseph, but nothing for either Marshall or John Henry, so that's one area I need to keep looking.

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The Mystery of Mary Mullane introduced me to my first real puzzler of the family -- that my great grandmother was married to someone named Denis Edward Hayes before she married my great grandfather Marshall.  Edward Hayes seems to have dropped out of the records after the 1910 census and I haven't a clue what happened to him.  Based on what I do know, I'm guessing Edward Hayes abandoned my great grandmother sometime around 1910.  My great grandparents weren't married until 1918, four years after my grandfather was born and the information my great grandmother provided for the marriage license wasn't entirely truthful.  Both of those facts lead me to believe Edward Hayes ran off.  I haven't put a bunch of effort in to tracking him down, but do have some potential leads to follow up.  The best of those is from the 1940 census which has an Edward Hayes who is the right age and divorced living at the Napa State Hospital, but with such a big gap between records I can't be certain I've got the right person.  And, like Joseph Murray's wife Agnes, has me wondering what put him in the state hospital in the first place! 

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More McDonoughs was my first lead on some possible relatives of my great-great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray.  I found a Patrick McDonough living near the Murrays in the 1880 census and other searches turned up a Thomas and Betsey McDonough working with a Bridget McDonough at the Russ House in 1864.  I haven't spent much time on the McDonoughs recently, so I haven't found any connection between any of these people to my great-great grandmother.  I did spend some time on them when they first turned up then set it aside for a few months.  When I went back and took a look at the work I'd done, I discovered I'd made several mistakes and gotten different families mixed up so had to scrap a lot of what I did and go back to the beginning.  I think what I've gathered to date is accurate, but it is pretty limited and I've as yet to make any connections.

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.

Fuzzy Findings

I’ve been following several trails through the Murray family trying to figure out some unanswered questions.  Right now, the best I have are suppositions and guesses that need a bit more information to find out if I’m on the right track or if I’ve identified the wrong people.

For starters, one of the unanswered questions I have right now is who was Joseph’s wife?  He shows up in the 1920 census as married, but his wife isn’t living with him.  Who is she?  Where is she?  I’ve done some digging around in the city directories trying to find all of the Murray siblings between 1900 and 1920, and it’s rather hit or miss, especially when I’m trying to track John, Joseph and Mollie (Mary).  I’m never quite sure if the person I’ve found in the directory is the right one.

However, I did find a Joseph S. Murray working as a driver in 1911, which seems a good bet.  I can track him through to 1917, and from 1914-1917 he shows up with a wife named Agnes.  I’ve yet to find any record of their marriage, so I don’t know Agnes’ maiden name.  Despite not being certain this is the right Joseph, I did a search for Agnes Murray in the 1920 census to see if I could find her.  I found two that might fit.  The first Agnes Murray shows up living in San Francisco, but is single.  She is about 45 years old, from Scotland, and working as a cook.  Joseph Murray would have been about 40 years old in 1920, so it’s possible this is the right Agnes, but I don’t think it’s likely.  The second Agnes Murray shows up in Napa.  This Agnes is also about 45 years old, married, and was born in California.  She is also a patient at the Napa State Hospital.  I suspect this is the correct Agnes.  So, if this is the right Agnes and she was married to “my” Joseph S. Murray, what happened between 1917 and 1920 that would put her in the state mental hospital?  Historically, that would be the end of World War I and coincide with the flu epidemic of 1917-1918.  Could something have happened related to those events that would cause some kind of mental breakdown?  I’m not even certain what would cause someone to be hospitalized in the early 1900s when mental illness was no where nearly as well understood as it is today.  I’ve found what I believe is a death record for Agnes in Napa in about 1926, and need to do some more digging to see if I am on the right track.

Another avenue I am exploring is what happened to John Henry and Mollie?  I know that as of 1909, when Nellie died, they are both still living.  Mollie is probably unmarried in 1909, but that is about all I have figured out.  I have no idea where she was living or how she was supporting herself.  John Henry is an equal mystery.  Other than his name appearing in the death notices for Bridget and Nellie, I can’t find a definitive record of him after 1901.  Part of the problem is that by the 1910 census, the four surviving Murray siblings – John Henry, Mollie, Marshall, and Joseph – are all in their 30s and 40s and as best as I can tell unmarried.  Their parents are dead, so I’m looking for four single people living in a city of over 400,000 people.  That’s assuming they stayed living within the city borders.  Talk about a needle in a haystack!  I haven’t been able to find any of them for certain yet in the 1910 census, and the only thing I know for certain is that they are not living together.  The 1920 and 1930 censuses are even less help at least for John Henry and Mollie (and Joseph in 1930) since by then I don't even know if they are still living.

And then there are the McDonoughs.  I still have no idea if Thomas, Betsey, and/or Patrick McDonough are related to Bridget.  There are bits and pieces that point to Thomas and Betsey as possibly being family.  I believe I have found Thomas in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1858.  Betsey also shows up in Chelsea in 1870, though her name is listed as Beesey.  I know Bridget must have had some family in Chelsea as her death notice in the San Francisco Call asked that Chelsea, MA papers be copied, but I can’t find any definite connection between Thomas, Betsey/Beesey, and Bridget.  It’s also not clear if Betsey is a sister or a sister-in-law of Thomas, but I’m fairly certain that those two, at least, are related.  If they are related to Bridget, I do have Thomas’s parents’ names, which will be a world of help.  Patrick was a bit easier to trace through the records, but there is nothing I’ve found about him that would definitely tie him to any of the others.

I’m still waiting for an answer to my request for my great grandmother Mary Mullane’s death certificate, which I’m hoping will tell me what her parents’ names were.  That might help me unravel some of the Mullane mysteries.  I still can’t figure out if the Mary Mullane I found is my great grandmother and if it is what the heck happened to Edward Hayes.

Finally, there are the things I doubt I’ll ever find out.  In the 1900 and 1910 censuses, women were asked how many children they had and how many survived.  In the 1900 census, Bridget Murray said she had six children, five of whom survived.  Based on the ages of her children, I suspect there was a child born between Mollie and Marshall.  That would have been in about 1872, and since that child does not appear in the 1880 census record he or she would have died before then.  A similar situation exists with Sadie Coleman, my great grandfather Daniel’s sister-in-law.  She had three children who did not survive, one born between 1895-1900, the other two between 1900-1910.  I keep my eyes peeled for any of these lost children while I comb through newspaper records looking for other people, but the odds of me being able to find them are not good.

The more I search, the more I realize there is so much more to learn and that some of the information may be lost to time.  I have many library hours ahead of me as some of the information I’m looking for just isn’t easily found online.  And I’ve barely started on the Coleman/O’Leary side, so it’s about time to start digging further into Irish records to see what I can turn up.

1880 Census

As you may recall, the Murray family was missing in the 1880 census -- the pages I believed they were recorded on were missing from the microfilm. I sent an email to the National Archives in Washington, DC asking if they still existed and if so how I could obtain a copy. About a week later I received a reply that the original pages were not stored in DC and I should direct my query to the Missouri State Archives. This struck me as a bit odd, but I followed the link provided and submitted the query again. I got a response back that they only kept records for Missouri (which makes sense) and I should contact the California State Archives (which also makes sense.) 

I sent off my query for a third time, and on Wednesday I came home from work to find a message on my machine from the CA Secretary of State. They had found the pages and would send them to me at the address I had provided in my email request. Well, that sounds promising! (Not to mention surprising -- I expected to have to pay for copies!)  I didn't want to get my hopes up in case what was sent was the first four available pages (5-8) rather than the pages I was looking for (1-4.) 

I arrived home tonight to find an envelope from the CA Secretary of State in my mailbox, and inside were four sets of 11" x 17" pages stapled together in groups of two. I looked at the top of the first page, and found "Page No. 1, Enumeration District 196, San Francisco." Woo hoo! I scanned down the first page and saw Harry Place on lines 8-18 -- wow, they should appear on page 1! They're not on the first sheet, so I turn to the second sheet for lines 19-50. Line 20 -- there they are! John (age 38), works at a laundry, Bridget (37) is keeping house, John H. (11) and Mary A. (9) are at school, and Marshall E. (5) and Ellen A. (2) are at home. Joseph isn't born yet.

This confirms a few things for me, the first being that the 1870 census record that I found was indeed the right family. It looks like Mollie's proper name was Mary, so I'll have to keep searching on both names. Nellie apparently shaved a few years off her age when she married Edward Nelson since she shows up as 2 years old in June 1880. Since she was born in July, that would mean she was born in 1877, which is a year earlier than the age for her in the 1900 census. I have 8 other sheets of paper covering pages 2-4 of the Enumeration District and I plan to look them over to see if there are any other clues that might be useful. So glad to know I was on the right track and was able to find my family despite the missing records.

The First Month of Digging

I began to seriously start looking into the Murray/Coleman side of the family history in January, 2012. I knew my Coleman great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland around 1900 and settled in San Francisco (with a short side-stay in New Jersey in the late 1910s/early 1920s) and that the information I would most easily be able to access would be things I already knew – my grandmother’s siblings, their spouses, children and grandchildren. Everything else prior to 1900, give or take a few years, would have to come from access to records from Ireland. Because of this, I decided to set the Colemans to one side for the moment and focus on the Murrays first.

No one in the family knows a whole lot about the Murray branch of the tree, but I knew both of my Murray great-grandparents had been born in San Francisco and that my great-grandfather’s name was the same as my grandfather’s – Marshall Edward Murray – and that he was a teamster, so I decided to start my search with him. I found him almost immediately in the 1900 census living on Tehama Street. What I didn’t expect to find was that he was living with his mother and two brothers and two sisters! What’s this? No one knew that my grandfather had aunts and uncles; could that mean there are Murray cousins running about that no one has ever heard of? What a find!

Of course, this led to the first of what I’m sure will be many frustrations. His mother’s name was only listed as “B. Murray” – great, what does “B.” stand for? – and his siblings were named John, Joseph, Mary, and Nellie – fantastic, 3 really common names and a possible nickname! So, who should I focus on first? I decided to take on my great-great grandmother “B.” and see what I could find. A few hits and misses as I dug around the available on-line records, when I finally turned up a Bridget Murray living on Tehama Street in the 1896 San Francisco city directory. The address was slightly different than the one in the 1900 census, but the 1897 city directory had her at the same address, and this time Marshall also showed up. They showed up again in 1898, this time with John also. By 1899 they appeared at the same address as I had found in the 1900 census. I’d found the right family.

There’s no 1902 directory available on line and Bridget disappears in 1903, but she turns up again in the 1904 and 1905 directories at a different address, this time on Clementina Street and Marshall and Joseph are living with her. There is no 1906 directory due to the earthquake and fire (I assume), but Bridget turns up once again in 1907 with her sons Marshall and Joseph. I kept tracking “Bridget Murray, widow” through the 1915 directories, but after 1907 none of her children turn up at the same address. To make sure I was still tracking the same Bridget Murray, I returned to the census records and tried to find her in 1910. I find a Bridget Murray living at one of the addresses I’ve noted down for her, but upon checking, I discover that it’s a different Bridget Murray as the ages don’t match up nor do the people she’s living with. That wiped out nearly 10 years of addresses for Bridget. I did find Joseph living at the last good address I had for Bridget in the 1908 city directory, but she wasn’t living with him. Was it possible she died sometime between 1907-1908? I still had addresses for Bridget Murray in 1912 & 1915, so I’ll have to check back on that later.

Having gotten to a sticking point with Bridget, I decided to turn my attention to Marshall, my great-grandfather. I started digging around and found him living on Natoma Street in the 1920 census, which matches up with some of what my parents told me about my grandfather’s childhood. By this time he’s married to my great-grandmother Mary Mullane and my grandfather Marshall, Jr. has been born. Also living with them is Marshall’s brother Joseph who, according to the census record, is married, but there’s no wife living with him. Another mystery to figure out.

Then I encounter the next frustration. It turns out that both my great-grandfather and my grandfather liked to switch their names around, so sometimes they are Marshall Edward and other times they are Edward Marshall. Oh joy. Fortunately, I know that by the time I got to know my grandfather, he went primarily by Edward Marshall, so from here forward Grandpa Murray will be referred to as Edward and his father will be referred to as Marshall.

Marshall, Mary and Edward show up again in the 1930 census, now living on 10^th Street. As I look at the addresses I’ve found, I notice that they are all within a few blocks of one another except for the 1907-1908 address for Bridget and Joseph. I try to find an early 1900s map of San Francisco on line, and the best I can find is one that shows where the 1906 fire burned the city. Yep, as I suspected, my Murray family lived inside the fire zone. I wonder what they did after the fire, where did they live? Were they among the many who camped out in Golden Gate Park? I suspect it’s likely, but who knows if I’ll ever find concrete proof of that.

I decided to do a little more picking around on Marshall’s brothers, John and Joseph, to see what I could find, but with such common first names it’s a bit spotty. I know from the city directories that John’s middle name starts with an H. and Joseph’s middle name starts with an S. That’s some help, and I find a voter registration record for John in 1898 that indicates his middle name is Henry and he’s working as a longshoreman. It also has a description of him as 5’ 9”, dark complexion, blue eyes, and dark hair. Well, it’s a start. I get a couple of false leads on Joseph – it seems there are at least two Joseph S. Murrays living in San Francisco at the time who were born around 1880.

I’m pretty pleased with what I turned up after a few days of research, but of course, for every bit of new information I find, new questions come up. What was Bridget’s husband’s name? When did he die? When did they come to San Francisco? When did they come to the US? Where in Ireland are they from? Who is Joseph’s wife? Why isn’t she living with him in 1920? Where’s John Henry after 1900? What happened to Mary and Nellie? Did they marry? If so, who? Why aren’t any of the Murrays showing up in the 1910 census? And what about the Mullanes? Who were my great-grandmother’s parents? Did she have any siblings? Where in San Francisco did they live?

Coming Next:  Eureka!