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.

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! 

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.

Second and Third Field Trips

As summer rolled in, I found myself spending less time digging into the family history than I did during the winter and spring.  I have done some poking around here and there, but haven't turned up a whole lot of new information that has any definitiveness to it.  But that doesn't mean I haven't kept poking around at things either and some of the research I've needed to do required access to records not accessible on line, which definitely slows down the process.

However, I did get a chance to make a couple of field trips during the month of July.  The first was a fortunate happenstance when my cousin invited the family over for her daughter's second birthday.  Since this is the cousin who lives a block from where our great great grandparents lived from 1877-1890, I made a special point to bring my camera and planned to take a quick stroll down the street.  Unfortunately, I forgot to put the battery back in my camera after I had taken it out to charge it!  Thankfully, my mother had her iPhone with her, so I was able to borrow it when we took a stroll down the street.

Numbers 2 & 4 Harris Place,
the approximate location
of  John & Bridget Murray's home from 1877 -1890

The house my great great grandparents lived in is no longer there, but I was able to take a picture of the houses that are on the site now.  John and Bridget Murray and their family lived at 6 Harry Place, so I took pictures of the flats that are at 2 & 4 Harris Place and 8 & 10 Harris Place.

1815 Union Street - location of John Murray's last place of employment

John Murray worked at the Occidental Laundry for most of his life in San Francisco, but the only address I had for the laundry was "Filbert between Gough and Octavia", so I wasn't able to take a picture of that (the block is mostly residential now, with a couple mom & pop type storefronts.)  I did have an address for the last location that John worked and it was also within a short walking distance on Union Street, so I strolled up there to take a look at what is there now.  The building looks to have been remodeled considerably since 1890, but the storefront looks like it might be from the original building. The original building probably looked something like the yellow one to the right in the picture.

My next field trip came at the end of July when Mom and I trekked up to Holy Cross cemetery to see if we could find Marshall and Mary Murray, my great grandparents.  Mom was also going to show me where some of the relatives on her side were buried that I couldn't find on my previous trip.

My Theler great great grandparents

On my initial trip to Holy Cross in April, I had located the approximate location for my great great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray and her daughter Nellie and, based on the notes from my mother, they were buried in the same section as my Theler great great grandparents.  Mom and I headed up there first, and Mom realized that she had mismarked her map. The Thelers weren't in Section M, but in Section K which is down the hill.  That explains why I couldn't find them on my first trip!

Joseph & Maggie Kenny, my great grandparents

After finding the Thelers, Mom and I headed over to Section V to try and find Marshall and Mary.  As I mentioned before, the numbering makes no sense (on the rare occaisions when we could actually find numbers on the headstones) and after traipsing back and forth over the whole section, we couldn't locate their grave.  We decided we'd ask at the office for some more information, but before we went back down to the office, we went over to Section U to find my Kenny great grandparents.  We located them fairly quickly and hopped in the car to go back to the office, only to discover that a funeral procession was pulling in.  We decided to skip the office for now and plan for another trip.

142 Bosworth St. where my
Coleman great grandparents lived

14 Marsily St. where my Coleman
great grandparents lived when my
grandmother was born in 1914

Once we left Holy Cross, Mom and I drove up to San Francisco to find the house Nana grew up in on Bosworth Street.  We found it quickly and when we got out of the car to walk around the neighborhood a little bit, I noticed that the house was on the corner of Bosworth and Marsily St.  The Colemans lived on Marsily Street before they moved to New Jersey, so Mom and I walked up the street and took a look at that house also.  It looked to be fairly original to what the house probably looked like in the early 1900s when my Coleman ancestors lived there.

While we were walking around the neighborhood, my mother told me a story I'd never heard before.  Apparently my father's oldest brother fell out of the first floor window and severely broke his leg when he was about 2 years old.  When we got home, my father elaborated on the story some what -- the owner of the grocery store saw that my uncle was about to fall and ran across to try to catch him.  If I'd known that part of the story, I would have taken a picture of the small grocery store that is still across the street!