An Update on John Murray

Continuing my promise to update the blog more regularly and a bit about the research and discoveries I made in 2019 and 2020, we go back and take a look at my great-great grandfather John Murray. As a quick reminder, John was born in Ireland in about 1840, immigrated to the US, and appears in San Francisco by 1862 where he met my great-great grandmother Bridget McDonough whom he married in 1868. John worked as an upholsterer at various laundries until his death in 1890 of cirrhosis.

I found a death notice for John in the San Francisco Call in 2017 that indicated he was from County Galway. That was a pretty good lead -- it narrowed down where I would need to search for a John Murray in Ireland, which is a daunting task as it is! Still, John Murray is a pretty common name, so it's going to be a needle in a haystack kind of search to dig up more information on him.

Once again, the addition of the San Francisco Examiner to Newspapers.com brought some more light into the search. Another new death notice, this one including two key facts. The first is that John is listed as "a native of the parish of Aughrim, County Galway, Ireland." Well, that definitely narrows down the search a bit! The second item is a request of "New York papers, please copy." That would indicate he had family in New York and possibly arrived in the US through New York City.

The New York lead was a bit thinner, so I've set that aside for the moment since I don't have any names, dates, or specific places to go with it and passenger lists of the 1850s and 1860s are pretty sparse on information beyond name and place of origin making it difficult to pin down my John Murray. Knowing the parish of origin in County Galway, however, was a huge clue, so I went off to see if I could find anything there.

The National Library of Ireland has their collection of Catholic Parish Registers available online for free, which makes them terrific to check out. They're also available through Ancestry.com which has indexed them to make them more searchable, though this wasn't the case when I first discovered John Murray's parish of origin. I browsed through the available records for Aughrim parish and found a John Murry born 9 Oct 1838 to James Murry and "Wenefride" (likely Winifred) McLaughlin, baptized 11 Oct 1838 by Patrick Walsh, CC and his godparents were listed as Pat and Mary Murry. There are no baptismal records from 13 Dec 1838 to 17 May 1840, so this may not be the correct John Murray, but it is a starting point for possible connections, especially since I didn't find any other John Murrays born between 1838-1842, which is the range of years the records I have found indicate he was born. The only other possibility in the records is a John Murray born in June 1836 to a Michael Murray and Bridget Drew with godparents named John Murray and Catherine Barrett.

Not having any records for all of 1839 and half of 1840 means that I can't be 100% certain I've found the right John Murray, but I do have some names I can search on and see if I can make any connections. I'm going to focus my search on the first John Murry/Murray as he has the closest birthdate option. Alas, the Ancestry.com search doesn't search on parents’ names in the Parish Registers, so I'll have to search through them manually to see if James and Winifred had any other children baptized in Aughrim parish. Unfortunately, there are no marriage records included for Aughrim in the registers, so I can't search there either and the Aughrim baptismal records only go back to 1828, which is just 12 years before I believe John Murray was born, so it's not likely his parents would be in the records.

The search continues.

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.

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.

Good Guessing

Just about a year ago, I found a death record for my great great grandfather John Murray. He died in November 1890 and the record I found of his death in the Calvary Cemetery records at sfgenealogy.com indicated his funeral was held at “S.B.” parish. Based on where the family lived in 1890 and taking a look at the “S.B.” Catholic churches in the San Francisco City Directory for 1890 I surmised that he was most likely buried out of St. Bridget’s (aka St. Bridgid’s) church at Van Ness and Broadway.

When I started my searching in early 2012, I found my great great grandparents living at “the corner of Leavenworth and Broadway” and did a Google search of Catholic churches near Leavenworth and Broadway to see if I could guess which would be the closest parish, and thus the most likely location where they may have gotten married. I doubted they were married at St. Peter & Paul’s in the heavily Italian North Beach, so thought perhaps Old St. Mary’s would be a good bet.

I didn’t follow up on those possibilities as I only had an approximate time frame for when they would have been married and with an uncertain date and an uncertain parish, well, that was too vague to track down. A couple of weeks ago, I hit yet another site with old newspapers digitized with the plan to cancel my subscription as I never used it. Before I did, though, I checked to see what newspapers they had. Sometime in the intervening months between when I subscribed to the site and my return to cancel the subscription, they had added copies of the San Francisco Bulletin from 1855-1891.  A new source to search!

I ran the usual surnames through the search engine and got a few different hits – including one in the July 20, 1868 edition. In the tiniest of print there was a short list of recent marriages including “In this city, July 19, at St. Bridget’s Church, by the Rev. J.P. Callaghan, John Murray to Bridget McDonough.”  Well what do you know?! It hadn’t occurred to me when looking for churches near John and Bridget to think of ones that had since closed! Duh! And even after finding out where John had been buried from, I didn’t put it all together.

So what does this get me? Well, besides the obvious lead to get information on the marriage of my great great grandparents, I’m guessing it is a safe bet that John and Bridget’s children were all baptized at St. Bridget’s also. Of course, this means I need to access the old records from St. Bridget’s. From what I’ve found, the original documents from St. Bridget’s are now at St. Vincent de Paul parish in San Francisco and the Archives for the Archdiocese of San Francisco are located at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park. The archives will probably be the easier option for searching since the only birthdate of their six children I have any confidence in is for my great grandfather Marshall which means guessing on when they were baptized. That will have to be reserved for another field trip though, as the hours of access to the archives are pretty limited.

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.