Another Holy Cross Visit -- November 2015

It's fairly time consuming to head up to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try to track down where all the many relatives I have buried there are located.  It helps tremendously that I have a list of locations from the Cemetery Index at SFGenealogy.com so have a list of where I need to go and which family members are buried near each other.  I always make a plan ahead of time as to which sections I'm going to visit and who I'm going to look for.  I had some time off last November, so I planned to spend a morning at Holy Cross.

For this visit, I planned to hit Sections J, K, and M which are more or less in the center of the cemetery.  I parked my car near the Priests Plot and paid a quick visit to Uncle Eddie and waved at Joe DiMaggio's grave in Section I before trekking through Section J looking for some of my Mullane relatives.

This was the first trip I remembered to stick my phone into my search bag (which usually contains gardening gloves, my camera, a bottle of water, a clipboard with my search list, and a gardening shovel in case uncovering a headstone requires a bit more work than my hands can manage) and it proved handy.  Section J is one of the older sections and the row numbering is somewhat perplexing.  After some cross-checking on the phone that I was headed in the right direction, I was able to find the grave I was looking for -- that of my great grandmother's brother Phillip J. Mullane and his wife and three children.  Phillip and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane had four children, but only one lived to adulthood.  Edward, Nora/Norine, and Phillip Clayton are the only ones whose names appear on the headstone.

Next it was over to Section K to see if I could find Thomas Joseph Mullane and his mother Margaret Shanahan Mullane.  Margaret was married to my great grandmother's youngest brother Edward.  Edward is buried over in Section F with his parents and other family members, and based on what I've been able to find at SFGenealogy.com, it appears Thomas and Margaret are buried with some Shanahan relatives.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get properly oriented in this section and wasn't able to locate the grave.  It was particularly frustrating because my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in Section K and I've located their grave previously and I couldn't find them either to help with my orientation.  I'll need to head back to find them.

I walked up the hill next to see if I would luck out in Section M and find a headstone for my grandfather's sister Mollie Murray Johnson.  I knew from a previous visit looking for her mother and sister in the section that there weren't a lot of headstones in this older part of the cemetery and that the ones that were there are much newer.  With so many rows containing very few headstones it was a trick trying to find the right approximate location.  I walked around the area I thought I should be looking for any headstone I could cross-reference on my phone and I couldn't find anything for Mollie.

Since it was a nice day and I had struck out on most of the folks I was looking for I decided I was close enough to walk up to the St. Rose of Lima section where several of my aunts are buried.  After saying hello to Helen, Diane, and Betty (all conveniently within a few rows of each other), I headed down the hill to the San Lorezno section and visit my aunt Pat and got my first look at my cousin Mark's headstone.  It was a little bit sad to walk through these sections as they all were people who impacted my life directly -- much more so than all of the other folks I had been looking for but had never met (or even knew about until recently!)  I miss them all.

As I headed back to my car I realized I was going to have to cut across Section G to get there, so I made my way down to Section G2 to make a quick visit with Nana and Grandpa Murray.  While this wasn't a particularly productive trip in locating ancestors, it was a nice way to spend a warm fall morning.

Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 4

A continuation of answering and following up on some of the questions I have discussed in earlier posts on this blog. 

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After working through my O'Leary family in California, I went looking for Other O'Learys in Ireland. I found more siblings for my great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary than I had expected, and wasn't able to find a brother I had found in my San Francisco research -- Arthur O'Leary. I've still had a puzzle finding him and figuring out his story. I know he was living in San Francisco in 1904 because his name appears on Lizzie's immigration record, but I couldn't figure out his address or find him in the city directory. He's referenced again in Ellen O'Leary Ford's death notice in 1932. I did receive some information from one of my Coleman cousins that Arthur was adopted and eventually settled in Portland, OR where he ran a mill. If he was adopted, that might explain the difficulty in finding him in the birth and baptismal records for Ireland. My cousin also said he was the youngest sibling, which would mean he was likely born after 1880. That would mean he was in his early 20s when he arrived in San Francisco. This is another research point I need to revisit.

I still haven't worked out most of the rest of the siblings either. I was able to find John and his family in the Irish census records for 1901 and 1911. The other siblings who remained in Ireland are still difficult to locate. I did revisit the record I found for Jeremiah O'Leary, Jr. in the 1901 census to see if I was mistaken on my first assessment once I learned that John's wife's name was Hanora. I thought the Hannah O'Leary listed as that Jeremiah's sister might possibly be a sister-in-law, but when it said she wasn't married, I eliminated them again.

I may have found a death record in New York for Jeremiah, but I will need to order the death certificate to be certain.

Irish records are challenging in two ways. First is knowing if a record actually exists as so many records have been lost and destroyed over the years. The second is the more obvious problem that the records that do exist are in Ireland. The internet is great for identifying a lot of possible records, but most of what is available on line is a limited index of records found in Ireland. More and more are becoming available on line, but Ireland's privacy laws are a bit stricter than those in the US so what is available is more limited. Add in to the complication that I really need to know more about 20th century records so I can go back further makes working on the O'Leary/Coleman side of the family more challenging.

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The Baptismal Records were more promising. While I've not been able to confirm my findings (again, the challenges of records in Ireland), I do think they're good leads. I did realize I had mis-recorded the year of birth for Bartholomew Coleman. I had noted him as having been born in 1880 rather than 1870, so I went back to the baptismal records to see if he turned up when I entered the correct year. No such luck. A new source has come on line recently that makes it easier to scroll through the images, but I've only done a cursory check there. The best part of this is that it includes records from all over Ireland rather than just a few counties. While being able to identify my Murray/Mullane ancestors through these records is a long-shot since I still don't have parish information (or even county information for the Mullane side) and they were all born in the 1840s and it's hit or miss for records still existing for those years. Still, it's something I can try to sort through for possible leads.

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The Arrival of Lizzie O'Leary is the lone success I've had to date in finding immigration records for any of my ancestors. Of course, she's the most recent immigrant on record. Having arrived in the US in 1904 and coming through Ellis Island made her record much easier to find. I suspect that I may have reasonable luck finding Daniel Coleman in the records since he arrived sometime between 1892-1900. I thought perhaps I'd be able to find him traveling with his brother John, but according to the 1900 census, John arrived in 1877 -- well before Daniel. That John was already in the US is a helpful point though as it could prove useful in finding Daniel. The other immigrant points for the Murray/Mullane side, however, are going to be much more challenging. They all arrived in the 1860s or so and the records that are available from that time are pretty sparse. There are loads of passenger records, but the information gathered was pretty much name, age, occupation, and country of origin. Not knowing where my ancestors landed upon leaving Ireland means checking all major ports on the east coast as well as San Francisco on the off chance they emigrated directly to California. It's also possible they arrived in Canada before the US since both Canada and Ireland were part of the British Empire in the 1860s, so those are records to consider as well. That's a lot of haystacks to search through for a handful of needles!

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When I figured out What Happened to Mollie, I hadn't been able to find an article in the Oakland Tribune about the accident. I was only able to find a small blurb on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Tribune for 1917 has since become available on line, and I was able to find another small blurb about what happened. Though this story was on page 4 rather than page 1, it had a bit more information. It identified Mollie's husband as "Charles W. Johnson, a stevedore, 986 Stanford Avenue" which lines up with what I have already found. The story also mentions that Mollie had run out to the a nearby store and didn't return and that "it is thought she became confused in the rain and stepped in front of the train." That definitely puts more context on what happened.

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This concludes my blog review and hopefully helps bring some of the stories more life. It's definitely helped me remember points of interest I need to go back to and other roads I need to follow up on in my research. I've also been very lax at keeping this blog updated over the past few years, so I'm going to try to make a concerted effort to write more often, even if I only have observations of the process of research rather than results.

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.

Well, What Happened to Mollie?

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't been able to get as much done this year as I'm up against a couple of blocks that require access to records that aren't available on-line. I had, however, finally found death notices for three of my great grandfather Marshall Murray's siblings that I have been trying to find for the better part of the last two and a half years. Several records helped me confirm that Marshall's older sister Mollie (Mary) had married and was named Mollie Johnson when she died in 1917. I sent off for her death certificate as well as those of her two brothers, Joseph and John Henry, to see what more I could learn.

Mollie's death certificate arrived a few days ago and I was stunned to see her cause of death. When I saw the date of 1917, I thought she had possibly been one of the many victims of the flu pandemic of 1917-18. That was not the case. Mollie was hit by a Key Route train and died from a fractured skull! That meant that all three of my Murray great grandaunts died tragically. Lizzie Murray was the first to die of typhoid at age 3 in 1875, Nellie (Ella) Murray Nelson died in childbirth in 1909, now Mollie was hit by a train in 1917!

Clipping from San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, February 26, 1917
newspapers.com

I figured a train fatality would be newsworthy, so I went to check out the available on line newspaper sites to see what I could turn up. The Oakland Tribune isn't available on line for the year 1917, but the San Francisco Chronicle is and I was able to find a small note at the bottom of page 1. When I get my next off-line opportunity, I'll have to add checking out the Oakland Tribune microfilm to see if there is more to the story than what was printed in the Chronicle.

The thing I found most interesting is the note that "the dead woman appeared to be about 45 years old." Mollie was 46 when she died, but when she married Charles Johnson Mollie subtracted 14 years from her age. Her death notice and death certificate show her as 37 years old, or 9 years younger than she actually was. So either she looked her age or the doctors estimated her age before she was identified.

I did a quick look at Google Maps to identify the intersection of the accident and cross checked it against the address I had for Mollie when she died. It looks like she was killed crossing the street on her way home as the intersection of Lowell Street and Stanford Avenue in Oakland is just a few hundred feet from where Mollie and Charles lived at 986 Stanford Avenue (assuming, of course, that house numbering hasn't changed in the intervening century.)

I'm still waiting on the death certificates for Joseph and John Henry.  Hopefully they're not quite as dramatic!

Found Siblings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe It's Mollie

I've still been a bit lax this year in my researching. I've spent more time organizing and making lists than doing any actual digging, but I have done some minor searching here and there looking for more information on the people I've already identified in the family tree.

One of the mysteries I've been trying to solve is what happened to my great grandfather Marshall's siblings. I found his missing sibling identified in the 1900 Census -- Lizzie -- earlier this year in old cemetery records for Calvary Cemetery, and I know his younger sister Nellie died in childbirth in 1909. That left figuring out what happened to his older brother John Henry, his younger brother Joseph, and his older sister Mary (aka Mollie.) I know Joseph is alive as late as 1920 since he is living with Marshall in the 1920 census. I know John Henry is alive as late as 1918 as his is a witness to Marshall's marriage to Mary Mullane. The best information I had on Mollie is her name appearing in Nellie's death notice in 1909. The only direct record I had, however, was when she appeared in the 1900 Census with the rest of her family.

After 1900, I've had a heck of a time finding what happened to Mollie. I don't know what she did for a living, so any possible leads in the city directories are just guesses. If she got married, I would need to know her husband's name to find her. In Nellie's death notice in 1909, she's referenced as Nellie's sister, Mollie Murray. Mollie was born in 1870, which would make her 39 in 1909, so my best guess based on that information was that she had never married. Still, I couldn't find any record that I could confirm was my Mollie (Mary) Murray.

I've recently spent some time going back to resources that I was aware of, but hadn't really utilized much. There are several sources of historical mortuary records available online and I decided to spend a bit of time running through them at sfgenealogy.com and familysearch.org. Mostly I was entering surnames of family members and seeing if anyone turned up in the records. I found a bunch of the Mullanes on the SF Genealogy site that matched up with records I'd already found, but didn't have much luck with any of the other surnames. Over at FamilySearch, however, I got a hit on Murray.

The record indicated the father's name was John Murray, so I looked over to see who the child was. Her name was Mollie Johnson and she died on February 25, 1917. Well, that's interesting. I clicked on the record and the attached image from the J.S. Godeau Funeral Records had details on the funeral and, quite helpfully, a copy of the death notice in the paper. I took a look at the record and the very brief death notice indicated that Mollie was the "beloved wife of Charles Johnson and sister of John, Joe, and Edward Murray."  Now, according to this record, Mollie was 38 years old, but based on the census records I have, Mollie should have been 46 or 47 years old in February 1917. Considering the liberties most of the Murrays took with their ages, I'm not going to discount this being the correct Mollie because of her age. Her father's name is correct as are the names of her three brothers. It would have been more helpful if my great grandfather had been referred to by his first name Marshall rather than his middle name Edward, but since he went by both, I'm not going to discount that bit either.

The funeral record indicated she died at home in Oakland and that the cause of death was pending an inquest. I would imagine that record would be found in the Alameda county records and with a death date and a married last name I can also check the state death records and try to obtain a copy of her death certificate. She's buried at Holy Cross like so many other family members, but it doesn't appear as if her husband Charles was buried with her. There is a Charles Johnson buried somewhat near her with a Mary Johnson, so it's possible he remarried and wound up buried with his second wife.  The name is a bit too common to be certain though.

I've done a little bit of searching on Charles Johnson to see if I can find a marriage record for he and Mollie, but so far no luck. I would imagine they got married in San Francisco or Oakland sometime between 1909 and 1917 based on the information I have so far, but nothing's turned up in my usual search locations as yet.

While I'm not 100% certain that I've found "my" Mollie, I again have a pretty good probability.

Fuzzy Findings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1880 Census

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

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

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

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

Eureka!

After a month and a half of poking around in the family history I realize, I’ve got the bug. Each new discovery gives me a little thrill of excitement and opens up a whole set of questions I want to find answers to. I had planned on spending one weekend a month checking out the family history, but a bout of flu in late January zapped my energy so I spent more time than I had expected digging around to see what I could find. I followed a few trails to nowhere and a few others that might be somewhere but there just isn’t enough solid information to be sure yet. I really wanted to figure out where the Murray clan was in 1910, but wasn’t getting much of anywhere, so I turned my attention to the Colemans if only to get source material for what I already knew.

I found my great grandfather Daniel Coleman in the 1900 census living on Folsom Street in San Francisco. At first glance at the record, it looked like he was living with a family named Alexander, a fellow sailor. As I looked more closely at the page, however, I noticed the name “Coleman” a few lines above the Alexander family, and I realize that there is another family living at the same address. John Coleman, his wife Sadie, and children Gladys and John are also living at the same address as Daniel Coleman. Daniel is listed as a lodger, but I suspect that he and the elder John are brothers. Both are sailors and their ages are about 4 years apart and I think Daniel’s father’s name was also John, so it’s a good bet. I’ll have to check out that record a little bit more, but there are some more possible relatives.

The Coleman clan appears again in the 1910 and 1930 censuses in San Francisco. Daniel has married Elizabeth O’Leary by 1910 and they have 3 children – John, Eileen, & Daniel. By 1930 my grandmother Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret are born. I knew the family lived in New Jersey for a while and Aunt Margaret was born there, so I figured they’d be there in the 1920 census. My first few searches turned up frustratingly empty until I try a search on Aunt Eileen – BINGO! I get a thrill of excitement as I look over the record and realize it's the right family. There is the Coleman family living in Jersey City, just across the river from New York City. I suspect whomever talked to the census taker was not a member of the family as lots of the information is inaccurate (having all of the children being born in New Jersey for example) which would explain why I was having problems finding them. Oldest brother John has died by this time (something I already knew) so it’s a family of six.

Having found the Colemans in New Jersey, I turned my attention back to the Murrays in San Francisco. I was determined to find out what happened to my great-great grandmother Bridget Murray. I started checking out other genealogy sites focusing on her death record. From the 1900 census, I knew she was born in February 1841 in Ireland and the last confirmed record I could find for her was in the San Francisco city directory in 1907 when she would have been 66, so I looked for any death records between 1907 and 1920. I have learned quickly that birth dates were a guideline for the Murray family (I have found records for my great-grandfather Marshall that indicated he was born anywhere between 1873 and 1880) so when I found a mortuary record for a Bridget Murray living on Tehama Street in 1915 that matched up with a Bridget Murray I’d found in the city directory in 1915 that I hadn’t been able to eliminate from my list I thought nothing that the birth year was off by 20 years. The mortuary record didn’t have enough information for me to confirm or exclude this Bridget from my family tree, but it did indicate there was a death notice for her posted in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The San Francisco Chronicle is only available on line back to the mid 1990s, so obviously this was going to mean a trip to the library and pulling out microfilm. Thank goodness I’d learned this method of research way back in high school in the dark ages before the internet! A trip to the San Mateo Main Library was all that was needed to confirm whether or not this was indeed my great-great grandmother. I pulled the appropriate roll of film and scrolled to the date I’d found on-line. Reading the death notices in the 1915 Chronicle was not an easy task – the print is really small and I could only zoom in so much. I had to practically press my nose to the glass to read “…Bridget Murray beloved mother of Eugene, Joseph, Thomas, Stephen, and Frank Murray…”  Damn, wrong Bridget. Again. I printed out the page anyway just so I’d have a reference for the wrong Bridget in case I ran into her again.

Meanwhile, in between searching for family members, I was also searching for resources to find my family members. One of the ones I discovered was the Library of Congress. They have a large collection of old newspapers available and searchable on line. One of the papers is the now defunct San Francisco Call. On a whim, I decided to see how good the search function was, so I entered Bridget Murray and the years 1900 to 1920 to see what I might turn up. Imagine my joy when 23 different pages popped up! My joy faded a bit when the first three records I found were for real estate transactions. All of the records I’d found for the Murrays indicated they were renters and working class – they likely couldn’t afford to buy and sell multiple properties. The fourth record I found was a 1909 death notice for an Ella Agnes Nelson. Who? That can’t be the right family. But wait… “…beloved daughter of the late John and Bridget Murray, and loving sister of John, Mollie, Marshall, and Joseph Murray.” The brothers’ names are right, the mother’s name is right, but the two sisters don’t quite match up with the Nellie and Mary I found in the 1900 census. I’ll save that record to look at later and see what else has turned up. Going on a hunch from Ella’s death notice, I scanned the other results of my search and noticed another record that looked like the birth/marriage/death notice section and was from 1907. I opened that record up and JACKPOT! This Bridget Murray lived at the last address I had that I was sure was hers and her children were listed as “John, Mollie, Marshall E., and Joseph Murray and Mrs. Edward Nelson.” That not only meant I had the right family, it meant I had a LOT more information.

According to the death notice, Bridget’s husband was named John; she was born in County Sligo Ireland, and she was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery! I had suspected she was buried at Holy Cross since it’s the main Catholic cemetery near San Francisco and pretty much all the rest of my relatives have been buried there over the last 100 or so years, but it was fantastic to have confirmation of this. The death notice also asked that papers in Chelsea, Massachusetts be copied, so it looks like I have another lead to track down.

Of course, Bridget’s death record also meant that the death record I found for Ella Agnes Nelson was also the right family, which would make her Nellie. She and her husband Edward were living in Santa Rosa, California, so I’ll have to dig around and see what I find for her there – if anything at all. I’ll also have to figure out her age – not a surprising issue I know – as in the 1900 census she’s listed as having been born in 1878 which would make her 31 in 1909, but the death notice looks to have her as 23 or 25 (again the print is small and difficult to read.)

Finding Bridget and Nellie gave me quite a thrill and I did a little happy dance in my living room. Oh yes, I’m definitely hooked on this maze of mysteries. And still more new leads and trails to follow. Who is this Edward Nelson? Did he and Nellie have any children? What happened to my great-great grandfather John? And now that Mary is Mollie, will I be able to find her as well? I also realize I need to get in touch with my father’s cousin who is supposed to be working on the Coleman family tree to see if my theory about the John Coleman I found living with my great grandfather is correct. Many paths through the maze, and what fun they are to follow!

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!