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.

Uncovering a Family Scandal!

Okay, maybe it’s not too terribly scandalous in 2013, but for the early 1900s, it sure could be! A large part of my research over the past year has been trying to figure out the story of my great grandmother Mary Mullane. The only Mary Mullane living in San Francisco between 1871 (when she was born) and 1914 (when my grandfather was born) that I could find was married to a Dennis Edward Hayes in 1900 and as of the 1910 Census, Mary Mullane and Edward Hayes were still married. As late as April, 1911, when her brother John died, she is known as Mrs. Mary Hayes.
 
That made the time line for what little I knew about my great grandmother very odd. According to family lore, my grandfather, Edward Murray, had an older sister who died. Grandpa Murray was born in May 1914. If Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes in 1911, then how on earth could she be married to my great grandfather Marshall Murray and have had two children by May 1914? Turns out the answer is, they weren’t married.

Gasp! A family scandal!

In looking for family records, I have often searched online editions of historical newspapers. Mostly, it has been the San Francisco Call which is available free of charge through the Library of Congress for the years 1890-1913 under it’s various names over the years. I hadn’t been able to find a record of a marriage license being issued for Marshall Murray and Mary Mullane, which was very frustrating. Recently, through the subscription-site Newspapers.com, I was able to access issues of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1865-1923. Being able to do a search of newspapers is a great help when you don’t have a specific date for information. When I logged in to Newspapers.com, I called up the Chronicle and did a usual run of family names to see if I got any hits on people I’ve been researching. One of the first names I entered was Marshall Murray. When that didn’t turn up any hits, I tried Edward Murray which both my grandfather and great grandfather used. One of the records to turn up was the September 6, 1918 issue on the Birth/Marriage/Death notice page. I took a look at the page and saw under the list of names of people who had marriage certificates issued in Oakland “Edward Murray, 42 and Mary Hayes 38, both of San Francisco.” Well, the names are right, the ages are about right, but September, 1918 is nearly four and a half years after Grandpa Murray was born!

I sent off for a copy of the marriage certificate and waited to see if these were my great grandparents. If, as I suspected, they were, I would likely now have the names of Mary Mullane’s parents and know what the heck happened to Edward Hayes. Well, that’s not exactly what happened.

When the copy of the marriage certificate arrived, there were two pages loaded with information, but not all of it made sense. The groom is listed as Edward Murray, a Teamster, born in California, age 42, son of J. Murray and Bridget McDonough both born in Ireland, and that he is single and this is his first marriage. Other than the age being different by 2 years, that all matched what I knew about my great grandfather. The bride is listed as Mary Hayes, a domestic servant, born in California, age 38. Again that made sense, though in her case the age is off by 9 years. Since all the records I’ve found for the Murrays have had wildly variable ages, I set that point aside. It was the next bits of information about Mary Hayes that weren’t adding up. She also said she was single and that this was her first marriage. Huh? Then it goes on to list her parents as John Hayes and Mary Manning, both from Ireland. Double huh?

I know from the census records that Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes, so how could this be her first marriage? Her mother’s name of Mary Manning matched up with other items I’ve found, but who on earth is John Hayes? She is listed as Mary Mullane on my grandfather's birth certificate, so I suspect Mary was being somewhat disingenuous on the marriage license paperwork!

The other interesting bit on the marriage license is that Marshall and Mary were married by a justice of the peace and not in the Catholic Church as the family had always assumed. If she’d been married before, then not getting married in the Church, especially if she’d been divorced, makes sense.

Okay, so what happened?

One of the other items I’ve been tracing is who is the unnamed Murray buried with my great great grandmother Bridget. The records from Holy Cross say that person was buried on March 16, 1912. According to the California Death Index for 1905-1929 for fetal deaths, there is an unnamed Murray child who died on March 15, 1912 in San Francisco. I’ve yet to request a copy of that death certificate, but it would seem likely that is the unknown sister to my grandfather. I have also found a record for a Dennis E. Hayes in the 1940 Census who is about the right age as the Edward Hayes I found married to Mary Mullane in 1900 and 1910. In the 1940 Census, he is listed as divorced, and he is a patient at the Napa State Hospital and was there in 1935. I’ve yet to find any other record of him between 1910 and 1940.

That’s a lot of puzzle pieces, but fitting them together is the trick. The 1910 Census record was recorded on April 23, 1910. At that point Mary Mullane had been married to Dennis Edward Hayes for 10 years and Mary’s brother John was living with them. John died April 15, 1911, and Mary appears as Mrs. M. Hayes in his death notice. Assuming the unnamed child that was born and died in 1912 was the child of my great grandparents, does that mean Mary Mullane ran off with Marshall Murray? Did Edward Hayes abandon Mary? Assuming the Dennis Edward Hayes I found in 1940 is the same one that was married to Mary, when did they officially divorce? Under what circumstances could a woman file for divorce in 1911-1918? Did she file for divorce? Were they actually divorced? Why is Edward Hayes at the Napa State Hospital? When was he admitted to the hospital?

As always, the more answers I find, the more questions I uncover. I’m going to have to spend some time trying to work out this puzzle. I did get one bonus piece of information with this marriage license. The witness to Marshall and Mary’s wedding was John Henry Murray, Marshall’s older brother. It lists him as a resident of the city and county of San Francisco, so I at least have some record of him beyond his being mentioned in his sister Nellie’s death notice in 1909. Maybe I can pin him down soon.

More Mystifying Mary Mullane

Trying to find out about my great grandmother Mary Mullane has been quite a puzzle. To date, the only Mary Josephine Mullane I have found in San Francisco was married to a Dennis Edward Hayes in both the 1900 and 1910 censuses. My grandfather Edward Murray was born in 1914, which leaves a four-year gap between records and should have Mary Mullane and Marshall Murray married by 1913.

I sent off for her death record months ago, but haven’t received any response to the inquiry and may need to request it again as I’m hoping that will help me identify her parents and thus help clear up some of my confusion. I also sent off for the birth record for my grandfather, which provided some interesting, but again confusing, information.

For starters, my grandfather’s name is listed as John Marshall Edward Murray. Where on earth did “John” come from?! My best guess is that it was to honor my great great grandfather John Murray. From what I can tell, he never used John at any point in his life after that. And that’s not even the confusing part!

Towards the bottom of the birth certificate is a notation “Number of children born to this mother, including present birth.” That number is listed as two. Next to it is a notation “Number of children of this mother now living.” That number is listed as one. Well, ok, what’s that all about? There was a family story that my grandfather had an older sister who died as a child and that would match up with the birth certificate information. The question becomes, then, when was this sister born?

According to the 1900 and 1910 census records Mary Mullane Hayes had no children. If this Mary Mullane is the same Mary Mullane that married my great grandfather, then between April 1910 (when the census was taken) and May 1914 (when my grandfather was born) she would have had to have lost a husband, remarried, and had a daughter who subsequently died. That’s an awful lot in a fairly short time. It’s not impossible of course – a fairly reasonable scenario would be something like this:

  May 1910 – unknown daughter born to Mary & Edward Hayes
  1910 – unknown daughter dies in infancy
  1911 – Edward Hayes dies/abandons/divorces Mary
  1912 – Mary meets Marshall Murray
  1913 – Mary and Marshall are married
  May 1914 – Edward Murray is born

I have no evidence whatsoever to support that timeline, but it’s one that makes sense. Another scenario is that Edward Hayes dies before the unknown daughter and Mary marries Marshall then the daughter dies – a widow with a young child might be likely to marry sooner rather than later especially at that point in history.

Unfortunately, that’s all speculation. I’ve yet to find any record of Mary and Marshall’s marriage. I have no idea what happened to Edward Hayes. And I haven’t the faintest idea if the sister is a full sister or half-sister or when she was born or when she died. Heck, I don’t even know for certain if the other child was a girl!

I have been tracking down some other leads on the Mullanes, but I will save them for another post. I will say, this particular branch of the family tree is quite confounding!

Back to Holy Cross

Two trips to Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma and I hadn’t been able to find my great grandparents Marshall and Mary Murray. I had been told at the office they were buried in Section V, but I could not find them and trying to figure out the section numbering was beyond frustrating. Then a couple of weeks ago I discovered that the folks at SFGenealogy.com had a searchable database of Holy Cross Cemetery available for 1887-2001. I plugged Marshall and Mary in and up popped their records – in Section U! No wonder I couldn’t find them! I entered in the names of various other family members buried at Holy Cross over the past 100 or so years and they all turned up where I expected them to and I logged the specifics for some where I only had the section noted.

My great grand parents
Marshall and Mary Murray

So I headed back up to Holy Cross with a list of names and gravesites to find. I knew that my Kenny great grandparents were also in Section U and from the database they were in Row 14, Grave 134. Marshall & Mary were in Row 23, Grave 59. Mom had shown me where the Kennys were on our last visit so I parked near their graves and counted down the aisle until I got to grave 59. Then I made a right turn and counted rows up until I hit row 23. I was only off a couple of markers and there were Marshall and Mary – finally!

Aunt Eileen & Uncle Bill Doheney

My list for section U also included my grandmother’s sister Eileen Coleman Doheney and her husband Bill. They were fairly easy to find right along the road at the top of the section. Aunt Eileen and Uncle Bill are buried with Uncle Bill’s sister Gertrude and mother Annie.

Nana’s aunt Ellen O’Leary Ford and her husband John Joseph Ford are buried in Section V with their daughter Catherine and her husband Edward Ambrose Dwyer. It was a pretty hot day, so I only did a cursory look for the Fords in Section V and will go back to look for them another day.

My father's younger brother
Jackie Murray who died at age 2

Next it was over to the children’s section to look for my father’s younger brother Jackie (John Joseph Murray.) I’d bypassed this section on previous visits since I only had a general section and not a row and grave number. It’s very sad walking through the rows and seeing lives ended so young. I found Jackie’s grave in fairly short order.

My father's second cousin
Mary Catherine Ford

Since the children’s section is close to the newer crypts where my father’s second cousin Mary Catherine Ford was buried, I walked down there too. Mary Catherine was the daughter of Arthur Patrick Ford and died of cancer in 1999 at the age of 58.

I’ve found several other relatives in the on line database and will make another trek up to Colma in the coming months to document their locations. The database was able to clear up a couple of mysteries. Nana had an older brother John who died as a child. I knew it was sometime between the 1910 census (where John appears) and 1918 when Aunt Margaret was born, but didn’t have a specific date. It turns out that John died in 1913 and is buried with his parents. The database also helped confirm a marriage record I’d found for Catherine Ford Dwyer – in Washington DC! No wonder I was having problems finding her husband in San Francisco. I’m not sure if Edward Dwyer died in San Francisco or in the Washington DC area, but at least I’ve got a name and date to help figure it out! Finally, I have a suspicion that my great grandmother’s brother, Arthur O’Leary might have lived in San Francisco as he was mentioned in Ellen O'Leary Ford's death notice. There are several Arthur O’Learys buried at Holy Cross, four who died after Ellen in 1932. Two of those four show up in the CA Death Index from 1940-1997, and one of those two was born outside of the US. I’ll need to do a bit more digging there also, but it’s a place to start.

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!

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.

1940 Census

After I posted my last update, I realized I had neglected to share what I had found out in the 1940 census records. I had hoped to find out if my great grandmother Mary Mullane had been married before she married my great grandfather Marshall Murray. When I looked at information about the 1940 census I noted that one of the questions that was asked of women was whether or not they had been married before, however what I had missed was that it was a supplemental question asked only of a random sampling of respondents. Alas, Mary Mullane was not one of the random samples, so I still haven't confirmed whether or not she was married to Edward Hayes before she married my great grandfather.

Nevertheless, I was able to gather some interesting information from the census records. When the records were posted on line in the beginning of April, they were not searchable by name (that is an effort still in progress) so I needed to know where my ancestors lived in order to find them in the census. I had a couple of addresses for my Murray relatives, but not specifically from 1940. I had asked my father if his family was living at the house on Niagara in 1940, and he said that they were and gave me the house number. I had addresses for Marshall Murray up to 1932 and then a gap until 1948, so I hoped one of those two addresses would be where I would find him in 1940.

When the census records came on line, I called up an available map that showed the census tracts and opened Google Maps to help orient myself to the streets. None of the Murrays were showing up where I thought they might, but I also wasn't sure I was reading the maps correctly. To test that I was reading the maps correctly, I decided to take a look for my Dwyer relatives since I knew for certain they were living on Westwood Drive in 1940. I found the corresponding map and looked for the enumeration districts in tract O6. In fairly short order I turned up my grandparents and great grandparents living exactly where I expected them to be and conveniently on the same page (my grandparents living across the street from my great grandparents.) It was fun scrolling through this set of images and recognizing all the street names and knowing exactly where they were with out having to cross-reference Google Maps. (That's the downside of not having lived in San Francisco proper -- I am only familiar with certain sections off the top of my head.) It was even more fun showing the page to my mother who recognized the names of the neighbors, some of whom I'd heard many stories about over the years.

Ok, so I was clearly reading the maps correctly. Why wasn't I finding the Murray side of the family? I thought about it and realized that they probably weren't living on Niagara in April 1940. My father had always told me that his grandfather had bought the house for his parents and the plan was for him to move in with them at some point. Just his grandfather (my great grandfather.) That meant the house had to have been purchased after my great grandmother had died. She died in July 1940 -- the house on Niagara hadn't been purchased yet!

I turned back to the city directories and went back to the 1932 listing and proceeded to march forward in time to see if I could find the right address. I eventually found Marshall and Mary living on Natoma in 1939. Nana and Grandpa Murray were living on 29th Street. One of the things that had thrown me in my searches was that Marshall and my grandfather Edward weren't working in the occupations I had expected after 1932, so when I searched and got an Edward Murray working as a watchman and another working as a reporter, I set them aside as the wrong people. It was only when I looked year to year that I realized that the watchman was Marshall and the reporter was my grandfather Edward! That was quite a surprise, and when I mentioned it to my father he said "oh yeah, he worked for the newspaper for a while." Thanks for the heads up Dad! From what I can tell, Grandpa Murray became a teamster around the time he and Nana were married in 1934.

Now that I had found everyone (including the Colemans living on Bosworth) what information could I get? Most of it was things I already knew, but because of the Great Depression there were more questions about employment than had been asked in previous censuses. The items that leaped out at me the most were related to the cost of living -- what was being paid in rent (or the value of the house if owned) and what the person's annual income was.

It was fascinating to see what my ancestors earned in 1940. It ranged from nothing (my great grandfather Daniel Coleman, who was 80 by 1940) to $4,200 (my great grandfather Ignatius Dwyer who was the registrar of voters for San Francisco.) Most intriguing, however, was Marshall Murray. He was earning $1,000 per year as a watchman and paying $16 per month in rent. How on earth was he able to afford to buy a house for my grandparents if he was making that little? Dad's stories always said that his grandfather had bought the house outright for his parents and it cost $4,500. Where did Marshall come up with that much money? Right now, my best guess is that there was some kind of death benefit paid after my great grandmother died in July 1940. It's as good a guess as any I suppose.

So, while I didn't find the information I had hoped in the 1940 census, I did learn some new things about the family during that time frame. And I definitely need to look more into this whole "Edward Murray, reporter" business.

First Field Trip

As useful as the internet has become in the 21^st century, it can’t do everything. I long knew that this trip through the past would require making trips to libraries and cemeteries and who knows what else. So with a little vacation time, I planned my first outing to find some information in person.

The Murrays aren’t turning up in the 1880 census for San Francisco. I’ve found what I am fairly confident is their address for that year: 6 Harry (now Harris) Place. It’s a one-block street off Laguna between Filbert and Greenwich, so it would be easy to miss in an enumeration of the census. I don’t think that’s what happened. After going half blind scrolling through pages and pages of images for the 1880 census trying to find Harry Place, I was able to find a site that helps find census enumeration districts by street name. That sped up my search tremendously – Harry Place was in the 196^th enumeration district. I was pretty sure I had already looked at that set of images on line, but I went back and took a closer look. I discovered that the on line images for the 196^th enumeration district start on page five with the 40^th family visited! Well no wonder I wasn’t finding them – there are four pages missing from the digitized images. The new question is were those pages not digitized for some reason or are they missing? The only way to find that out was to go to the National Archives in San Bruno and take a look at the microfilm and see for myself. Being a federal agency meant it was only open during weekdays, which meant I needed a vacation day to go check out the microfilm.

On my last day of vacation, I drove up to San Bruno and took a look at the microfilm. It took me longer to find the right roll and get it on the reader than it did to scroll through the film to find out if the pages were there. Alas, pages one through four were missing from the microfilm also. Damn. I asked the librarian at the help desk if she knew what might have happened to those four pages, but her answer was about as good as my best guess – they may have been appended to a different part of the census. Since I’ve scrolled through pretty much the entire 12^th Ward of San Francisco on line, plus about half of the other images (which is considerable as there were 229 enumeration districts for San Francisco in 1880 and each averages about 20 pages) and the names aren’t turning up in a search, I’m doubtful the pages were put on to microfilm. Does that mean the pages no longer exist or simply that they were skipped when being put on microfilm? I’m hoping the latter and have sent a request to the National Archives in DC to find out.

The second part of my field trip meant heading up to Colma and wandering around Holy Cross Cemetery. From the death notices I’ve found, I knew Bridget McDonough Murray, Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson, Marshall and Mary Murray were all buried there, but of course I didn’t know exactly where. I had hoped that Mom could come out with me and help look for the Murrays while also showing me where some of the rest of the families were (both her side and Dad’s,) but she wasn’t able to join me. Mom did have some notes on where the graves were, so I took that information with me and drove on up to Colma.

The first stop, naturally, was the cemetery office to inquire about the gravesites. Bridget and Nellie were buried in the same gravesite, but there was no mention of John. I asked the fellow at the desk if anyone else was buried in that gravesite and he said there was someone buried in 1912, but there was no first name to help identify who it was. Could John have been relocated from some place else? I believe he died in November 1890, so it is possible as burials within San Francisco city limits weren’t stopped until 1900. I asked if there was a John Murray buried around November 1890, and the closest he could give me was a John Murray who was buried in January 1890, so that didn’t help. I did manage to impress the fellow at the desk with the dates and information I had already though! He looked up Marshall Murray for me and jotted down the information for that gravesite on the map with Bridget and Nellie and off I went to see who I could find.

I drove first to Section M where Bridget and Nellie were buried. It took a while and quite a bit of tracking through the section to figure out where the row numbering started and how the plots were numbered. If I counted correctly, there wasn’t a gravestone for Bridget and Nellie and the unknown third Murray as was the case for much of this section. According to my mother’s notes, my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in that section, but I couldn’t find them.

Nana and Grandpa Murray's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

Since section M isn’t too far from where several of my aunts are buried, I headed up there and paid my respects before heading back down the hill to find Nana and Grandpa Murray. Mom’s notes were more helpful for this stop and I found their graves fairly quickly.

Next it was over to Section V for Marshall (and presumably Mary, I forgot to ask) Murray. This section was much more complicated to figure out as there is a road that curves through it, so the graves run both horizontally and somewhat vertically along the road. I could not figure out the numbering at all and was unable to locate their grave. Most of the plots in this section have headstones, so I’m fairly confident that a second trip to go through the section more methodically than I did should turn them up.

Daniel & Elizabeth Coleman's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

Second to last stop was to find the Colemans in Section T. Mom’s notes were again helpful and had the row and number and, in this section, the graves were much more clearly marked with numbers. My father’s older brother Dan is buried here with his grandparents (my great-grandparents.)

The Dwyer clan gravestone
at Holy Cross Cemetery

On the way out, I made my final stop at the one gravesite I could find in my sleep – that of my Dwyer grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents as well as a few other sundry relatives (it’s a big plot.) They’re located right in the front section of the cemetery near the office and not far from such San Francisco and California luminaries as the Aliotos and the Browns. Who knew the Dwyers were so posh? (In actuality, the original plot was moved out of San Francisco when burials within the city limits were stopped in 1900 and many folks were relocated to Holy Cross in Colma and thus these graves are among the first in the cemetery.)

The Mystery of Mary Mullane

After hitting a couple of road blocks that required field trips during work days, I turned my attention to my grandfather Edward’s mother, Mary Mullane. I’d found a death record for her in 1940 and it gave her middle initial “J” and her mother’s maiden name as Manning. Armed with these bits of information, I sent off for her death certificate and then started looking elsewhere to see what I could find.

Having had success with the San Francisco city directories already, I started there to see if she might turn up. I found a Miss Mary J. Mullane living on Belcher Street in 1896 and 1897. There were quite a few other Mullanes at the same address, all men. My best guess is one is her father the rest are brothers, but which ones are which I can’t really tell. Having an address will make it easier for me to find her in the census records, so I head off to check out the 1900 census.

Huh. Well, this is weird. In 1900, Mary Mullane is still living at the address on Belcher, but now she’s Mary Hayes and she and her husband Edward Hayes are living with her brothers Joseph, Patrick, and Edward. Did I find a different person with the same name and about the same age or was my great-grandmother married twice? I decided to check the 1910 census, maybe Edward Hayes died? I find her again, though this time her husband is listed as Dennis E. Hayes and another brother, John, is living with them. Curious.

Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve found the wrong person. There aren’t a whole lot of Mullanes listed in the city directories though, and most of the ones that were listed were all in that house on Belcher in the late 1890s.

I decide to go looking for more information on Mary Mullane, and that means newspapers. First I checked the San Francisco Call on line and found a notice in the April 21, 1900 edition for marriage license issued to Denis E. Hayes and Mary J. Mullane on Belcher Street. I also stumble upon a death notice for a Mrs. Mary Mullane, who seems to be the mother of Mary J. Mullane. (Why, oh, why are there so many repeating names!) It lists her children as John, Mary, Joseph, Thomas, Phillip, and Patrick and mentions she is the niece of “J. Manning.” Seems to be the right family, but still…

Next stop, it’s off to the San Mateo library and the microfilm for the San Francisco Chronicle. Let’s see if her death notice provides any insight. There is no mention of Dennis Edward Hayes, which I didn’t expect, but there is a mention of two brothers, Phillip and Patrick. Those brothers show up in the death notice for Mrs. Mary Mullane and I can find them living at the same address on Belcher in the late 1890s, so the odds are I have found the right person.

So, if Mary Josephine Mullane was married to Dennis Edward Hayes as late as 1910, what happened? I haven’t been able to find a death notice for Mr. Hayes, but if I’ve found the right Mary Mullane she was married to Marshall Murray by 1914 when my grandfather Edward Murray was born.

I asked my father if he’d heard any stories of his grandmother having been married before, and he said he hadn’t. As I kept poking around I was aware that the 1940 census records were about to be released, so I decided to brush up on what information I could find there. I wasn’t really planning on mining much information from the 1940 census – I know a lot about the people that would likely turn up in it – but a bit of explanation caught my eye.

For all women who are or have been married:
·     Has this woman been married more than once? (Yes or No)
·     Age at first marriage.

Well, what do you know? So now I have a reason to look for the 1940 census. It won’t be as easily searchable right away, but I have the information I need and I should be able to find the right page to see if there is an answer to this question. My only fear is that the census enumerator didn't survey the Murray family before my great-grandmother Mary died in July 1940 and therefore the information got missed.

April 2, 2012, can’t wait!

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!