An Update on John Murray

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

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

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

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

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

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

The search continues.

A Socially Distant Thanksgiving

As with so many things this year, Thanksgiving 2020 is different than those that came before. Long-standing family traditions are being put on hold as we gather in smaller groups or just stay home with our immediate family. As I write this, I'm getting ready to go over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner. It will just be me and my parents -- the smallest Thanksgiving of my entire life. My brother and sister-in-law are having dinner with my sister-in-law's twin sister and her husband, so I won't see them today. We had a family Zoom call last night and have texted this morning and that's how you stay connected with your loved ones on a socially distanced Thanksgiving in the middle of a global pandemic.

This is not how Thanksgiving is normally spent. A few years ago, I wrote about the family Christmas traditions, and Thanksgiving has it's own similar set of traditions. Growing up, we spent most Thanksgivings with the Dwyer side of the family. I don't really know why as my Dwyer aunts and uncles would often alternate between the Dwyer side and their in-law side of their families, but probably though the time I was in high school we spent most Thanksgivings with the Dwyers. So some years it was a large gathering like Christmas Eve when my mothers four California siblings (her youngest sister lives in Alaska and seldom came down for Thanksgiving) and their families would gather at someone's house for dinner, and other years it would just be spent with my mom's older sister's family and my grandparents.

Sometime in the late 1980s/early '90s, we started spending Thanksgiving with the Murray side of the family. I suspect this is in part due to my cousins starting to get married and having families of their own -- it was getting to complicated to get together with the Dwyer family and accommodate the various extended families. The Murray side is smaller than the Dwyers, and my cousins on that side started getting married a little later. For the last 10 years or so, we've been spending Thanksgiving at the house of one of my cousins. It's a great evening that usually starts at Ed Murray's Tavern -- the amazing deck/bar my cousin built in his backyard as a memorial to our beloved Uncle Eddie. It's an extended family Thanksgiving as my cousin's in laws are usually in attendance and always full of love and laughs. And the usual Murray Dessert-fest -- cake, pie, ice cream, cookies -- you name it, we've got it! Alas, we won't be gathering there this year.

But back to the earliest Thanksgiving traditions. I suspect some of the reason for spending most Thanksgivings with the Dwyer side of the family in the 1970s and '80s was because my mother's birthday is in the last week of November, so there's usually a bit of a birthday celebration involved as well. That makes for an extra busy Thanksgiving, as well as a couple of special and memorable ones.

As it happened my mother's 40th birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving Day. Since it was a big milestone birthday, my parents decided to invite both the Dwyer and Murray families to Thanksgiving dinner -- at our house! Mom is one of six children, Dad is one of five. Mom also grew up with her three Pendergast cousins living across the street, so it's more like she was one of nine children growing up. Everyone was invited to dinner. 

A lot of planning and cooperation goes into hosting a big dinner like that, especially when you're having it in your family living room! The first step -- move all of the living room furniture out of the living room! The living room furniture at that time consisted of a couple of love seats and tables, which mostly got moved into the dining room (save the tables that had lamps on them.) Of course that meant the dining room table had move, and it got set up in the entry way between the kitchen and living room. It became the dessert table. Next was setting up the rental tables in the living room and all the chairs. I don't think Mom and Dad rented chairs, but cobbled together a collection between the dining room chairs and folding chairs we had and borrowed folding chairs from other members of the family. We also borrowed a half dozen small benches from a family at St. Dunstan's where my brother and I went to school with two of their children. I'm not quite sure how that came about since neither my brother nor I were particularly friends with those kids, we were just classmates and hung out with different kids.

Once the house was set up, it was time to start cooking. I can't remember now how many turkeys my father cooked, but I would think it was at least two since we had a double oven in our kitchen. Everyone in the family brought things, but my dad did a lot of cooking that year. One of my mother's cousins roasted his first turkey that Thanksgiving as his wife injured her back and wasn't able to prepare the turkey as planned. Among the many desserts was a cake baked by one of my aunts which was in the shape of a turkey and read "Happy Birthday B... you turkey!" My aunt was a little worried that my mom would be upset, but she loved it and laughed.

We had about 40 people for a sit down Thanksgiving dinner that year. All in our living room. I was among the oldest of the youngest generation, so was privileged to have an actual chair to sit on for dinner. Most of the younger kids were squeezed together on one side of the table closest to the fire place and sat along the benches we'd borrowed. I think we even managed to squeeze in a couple of high chairs for the three one-year-olds. It was a cozy fit.

My father's younger brother and his family didn't come for dinner, but arrived in time for dessert. The family that lent us the benches stopped by at some point in the evening as did one of my brother's friends. Cousins on all sides mixed and played while the adults gabbed the evening away. It was a great party.

It was such a great party that 10 years later for my mom's 50th birthday, we decided to do it again! By that time all of the kids we'd been able to squeeze on to benches were teenagers and the family was much too big to fit everyone in our house for a sit down dinner. Fortunately by that time Uncle Eddie was the pastor at St. Gregory's Church in San Mateo, and they had a great parish hall, complete with an industrial kitchen. Uncle Eddie arranged for us to use the hall and again have the Dwyers, Murrays, and Pendergasts for dinner.

The day before, which was my mother's actual birthday, my parents, brother, and I met my aunt Diane and Uncle Eddie at St. Gregory's to set up the tables and chairs and set out some decorations. It was a bit of a hectic day for me as I'd planned to leave work early and run a couple errands before meeting the family, but wound up spending most of the time dealing with having locked my keys in my car at the gas station! Dad was home cooking three turkeys, so couldn't bring me my spare key and my brother was on his way home from college and mom was still at work. Dad called AAA for me, but it was quite a headache!

Thanksgiving day arrived, and this time we had over 60 people for a sit down dinner. Since we were at St. Gregory's already, Uncle Eddie said a mass for the entire family before dinner. Afterwards we took a great photo of everyone in attendance, and it takes some work to identify who in the family is on which side and who married into any of the families. Again, it was a fun evening of visiting with our family and cousins intermingling. The youngest kids found their way into St. Gregory's gym and tossed a basketball around and just generally ran around having fun.

Earlier this week, one of my Pendergast cousins mentioned he had found a video his mother had taken of that Thanksgiving, and it was great seeing everyone (and how young everyone was! I'm now older than my mother was in that video!) 

So this Thanksgiving is quite different. Hopefully next year we'll be able to be together again and celebrate as a whole family. Looking ahead a few years... Mom's 85th birthday is on Thanksgiving, so maybe it's time to start planning for another big family blow out!

So, Why So Silent?

I've been a bit neglectful of this blog the past year and a half. It's not that I don't have topics to write about (I have 17 different preliminary sketches in my pending posts file!) Nor is it that I've not been doing any family research (my tree has doubled in size in the last year!) Some of it has been that the research I've been doing has been hit and miss and I've not really focused on one path in a while. Some of it is having other things occupy my time and keeping me busy and/or mentally wiped out. Still, you'd think 8 months into a global pandemic that has people staying home more than normal I could have found some time to work on a few blog posts. Mainly, I just haven't had the "creative spark" lately and not up to writing,

So, I'm going to try to start focusing on this blog a bit more and updating with my more recent discoveries. A few things I've found out in the past year or so:

• Who the mysterious "J. Manning" was and where my Mannings most likely come from.
• A discovery on John Murray's origins.
  
• The Belduke/Bolduc/Boulduc line back to the 16th century! (Most of the research has been done by my uncle who's been researching the Dwyer/Kenny side of my family for the last 25 years or so, but wow! it was a lot to add!)
• Another DNA update -- I'm 3% German!

I'm sure there are a few more, plus there are those pending posts I need to finish. More on my grandparents and cousins for example. So with the holiday season approaching, which is a time I always seem to fall back into my family history, I'm going to work on updating this blog a bit. The posts may not hit until after the new year, but I'm going to make a bigger effort than I have of late.

Cousins Day

Murray Cousins, Summer 1979 Lake Tahoe

Here in the 21st Century there seems to be a "National Day" for everything, from National Bubblewrap Day to National Star Wars Day to go along with the more traditional celebrations like Mother's Day and Father's Day. Somewhere along the line July 24 became declared National Cousins Day and as someone who is close with many of her cousins, I definitely think it's a day to be celebrated.

The picture at the top of this post is of me, my brother, and our Murray first cousins, taken one summer (about 1979 I think) at Lake Tahoe. It showed up in a collection of family photos that one of my cousins digitized after our uncle Eddie died in 2012. When I finally popped the CD into my computer to take a look at the pictures and see what was there, I saw this picture and sat and looked at it for a very long time. I'm guessing it's from Uncle Eddie's collection and probably one he carried with him as he traveled around the world while serving in the US Navy as a chaplain. I absolutely love it. This picture so totally captures my happiest childhood memories in one instant it takes my breath away.

I should note here that there are actually eight Murray cousins. The first six of us were born within five years of each other. The two youngest didn't come along for another fifteen years when the youngest of the first six were already in high school. I was in college. They're more like our nephew and niece than cousins -- at least in terms of childhood experiences. I feel kind of badly for the two youngest -- their experience of their cousins growing up are of more adults, not the childhood friends and playmates the rest of us had.

But back to this picture. While I don't remember it being taken, I do remember the summer vacation when it was taken. My mother's youngest sister and her husband owned a cabin near Lake Tahoe and would rent it to family during the summer. We had it in August -- I want to say it was for the entire month, but that seems too long (especially if it was 1979 which is the year my family moved from San Bruno to Millbrae.) It was longer than a week though. My mother's older sister and her family had the cabin before we arrived and we overlapped our stay by a couple of days. After they left, my aunt Diane and her kids came up. Uncle Eddie probably came with them also as I can't imagine Diane driving all the way up to Tahoe. They stayed with us for at least a week. My father's younger brother and his kids also came up, but just for a weekend. It was during this weekend that the picture was taken.

So I look at the six of us, aged 6 to almost 11, and we're just a bunch of goofy kids posing for a summer snapshot. I've got rabbit ears behind my head and am doing the same thing to Anne, Steven and John have their arms draped over each other's shoulders, Mary Elizabeth is hugging Marie* and we're all grinning ear to ear. It captures summer and childhood so amazingly well. It also captures the closeness among the six of us. Nearly 40 years have passed since this picture was taken and we all remain close. Sure, we don't see each other as often as we'd like (or even should) between jobs and families and the busy nature of our adult lives, but we're as tight knit as ever. I like to think of it as having 6 siblings with out some of the sibling rivalry that comes along with most actual siblings.

So, Happy Cousins Day to all my crazy cousins.

*When I started this blog, I decided not to name any living people, so all cousins names have been changed.

Seven of the eight Murray cousins, still having fun in 2017

Kiss Me, I'm Irish -- An Update

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post highlighting my Irish background. I calculated my Irish ancestry based on the number of great-great grandparents (or 3x great grandparents in some cases) who were born in Ireland. Based on that, I said I was 90.63% Irish, 6.25% German, and 3.13% French Canadian [the French history is a bit more complicated.] That's pretty darned Irish for a fifth generation American.

Recently, my father said he wanted to take an Ancestry DNA test and asked me to order him one. Since this was something I'd been wanting to do myself for a while, I ordered two. We got the results back not too long ago and they were interesting to see. No, there wasn't any kind of family scandal -- my dad is my dad (and based on matches to an uncle and cousin, my mom is my mom.) What was interesting was the percentages that turned up. Knowing what I have uncovered about my father's side of the family, I had predicted he'd be mostly Irish with a bit of other British Isles thrown in since it would be unlikely he'd be 100% Irish. My predictions proved correct -- Dad's results came up 93% Irish (technically Ireland/Scotland/Wales) with a "very likely" connection to the Munster province of Ireland with "relatives who lived in this region in the past few hundred years." Dad's maternal grandparents were both born in County Cork which is part Munster, so that part is clearly correct. The rest of his test came up under "Low Confidence Regions" which showed the biggest chunk at 3% for Great Britain. So, yeah, my dad is Irish.

Well, what about my results then? I knew I'd be less Irish than my father since we know there is some German and French ancestry on my mother's side. Still, based on where I know people came from, I was pretty sure I'd still come up mostly Irish. My results turned up 83% Irish and 13% Great Britain. Like Dad, I showed a strong link to Munster which makes sense as in addition to the Coleman/O'Leary branch of my tree coming from County Cork, I have a great-great grandmother on my mother's side who was also from County Cork. County Tipperary is also part of Munster which is where the Dwyers come from, so that would also be included. What's most interesting though, is when you add up my dad's Ireland/Great Britain percentages and my Ireland/Great Britain percentages they total out the same -- 96%! So, yeah, I'm Irish too.

My "Low Confidence Regions" were a bit different than Dad's with 2% "Europe South" and 1% "Europe West" which is probably the French and German bits (though, oddly, Italy is the biggest land area for Europe South.) The fun stuff is in the trace amounts. Both Dad and I show up with less than 1% of Scandinavia (Vikings!), Dad comes up with less than 1% Middle East where I come up with less than 1% Caucasus which are overlapping regions and show the history of human migration.

The next task is to compare these results against other people who have taken the Ancestry DNA test to see if there are any relatives out there who might have more information on the family. There are a couple of promising results I've seen, but have yet to delve into them to see if they're worth pursuing.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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.

Returning to Holy Cross Cemetery -- October 2014

One of the things I have been doing with some regularity is making trips to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try and locate the many many MANY family members that have been buried there over the 150 or so years of the cemetery's existence.  Thanks to the San Francisco Colma Cemetery Index over at SFGenealogy.com, I can easily look up where and when family members were buried between 1887-2005 (the index actually goes up to 2012, but only records that are older than 10 years old are searchable.)  It's a great and useful resource, and I've recorded the names, dates, and locations for many of the family members so I can have a list handy when I go trekking around looking for gravesites.

Since Holy Cross is a large cemetery with about 40 separate sections and to date I've identified relatives in about 20 of them, I try to group my searches to two or three sections that are in reasonable proximity of each other.  Some trips are more successful than others as the row and grave numbering is seldom clearly marked and I can't always find where I'm supposed to be.  There are also the occasions when I DO find the right spot only to find there isn't a headstone to identify the plot, so the location is my "best guess".  On my most recent trip in November I did remember to grab my phone so I could use the database to help confirm my location which was helpful. 

I've learned from my trips and other inquiries that certain locations are mass graves either for the poor (Section A) or for those who were removed from Mount Calvary Cemetery when it was finally closed around 1940 (part of Section H.)  The older sections of the cemetery are a lot trickier than the newer ones as there are a lot of missing headstones (if there were ever headstones in the first place.)  Section M, where my great great grandmother Bridget McDonough Murray is buried with her daughter Nellie is one such section.  When I visited in 2012 looking for Bridget, there was no headstone at where I believe she was buried.

Arthur Patrick & Kathleen Ford,
my grandmother Elizabeth
Coleman's first cousin and
his wife

I have, however, had some successes.  On a trip in October 2014, I found the markers for Nana's first cousin Arthur Patrick Ford and his wife Kathleen.  They're buried in Section G2 just a few rows away from Nana and Grandpa Murray.

Mullane family plot where my
great-great grandparents T.J.
Mullane and Mary Manning
Mullane are buried with
their descendants.

On the same trip I was also able to locate the grave of my great-great grandfather Timothy John Mullane in Section F.  T.J. Mullane is buried with quite a few other members of the Mullane family including his wife Mary, sons Thomas Michael, John Martin, and Edward W. Mullane.  Also in the Mullane plot are Margaret E. Mullane, the infant daughter of Edward W., her brothers Raymond and Edward J. Mullane, and Edward J. Mullane's wife Frances Dorothy Donahue Mullane.  Not all of the Mullanes are listed on the headstone, and from the design I'm guessing it was put in later than the original purchase of the plot. 
 
My last stop on this visit was to the mass grave for the Mount Calvary Cemetery internments.  My great-great grandfather John Murray and his daughter Lizzie Frances Murray were moved there from their original burial place.  There is a nice marker there for the over 39,000 people who were relocated when the cemetery was finally closed in 1940. 

My next post will detail a very successful and productive visit in February, 2015.

Timlines: The Murrays

Working on my family tree has often meant hopping around in time as I focus on one particular branch or person. Doing that often makes things a bit confusing as I try to remember where and when people appear over the years. To help keep organized, I put together a couple of timelines to remind me of who, what, where, and when. I thought it might be useful to share that information here as a reference point.

I'll put up a couple of these posts as it's easier to follow one family at a time. Since I've spent the most time working on the Murray side of the tree, I'll start there. Look for follow up posts on the Mullanes, Colemans, and O'Learys.

MURRAY FAMILY TIMELINE:

About 1840:  John Murray born in County Galway, Ireland.

February, 1841:  Bridget McDonough born in County Sligo, Ireland.

About 1860-1862:  John Murray immigrates to the United States (this is my best guess to date, it's possible he arrived earlier than 1860.)

1862:  John Murray arrives in San Francisco and is working at Easton's Laundry.

About 1866:  Bridget McDonough immigrates to the United States (per 1900 US Census.)

1867: John Murray and Bridget McDonough are both working at Occidental Laundry in San Francisco.

31 August 1867:  John Murray becomes a naturalized citizen at the 4th District Court in San Francisco.

19 July 1868: John Murray and Bridget McDonough are married at St. Bridget's Church in San Francisco.

April 1869:  John Henry Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

17 November 1870:  Mary (Mollie) A. Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

10 August 1872:  Elizabeth (Lizzie) Frances Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

25 July 1874:  Marshall Edward Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

21 November 1875:  Elizabeth (Lizzie) Frances Murray dies of typhoid fever in San Francisco. She is buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery. After Mount Calvary is closed, her remains are removed to Holy Cross Cemetery in 1940.

4 July 1878: Ella (Nellie) Agnes Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

17 August 1880:  Joseph Stephen Murray is born in San Francisco to John Murray and Bridget McDonough Murray.

20 November 1890:  John Murray dies of cirrhosis of the liver in San Francisco. He is buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery with his daughter Elizabeth (Lizzie.) After Mount Calvary is closed, his remains are removed to Holy Cross Cemetery in 1940.

14 June 1907:  Ella (Nellie) Agnes Murray marries Edward Nelson in San Francisco.

4 December 1907:  Bridget McDonough Murray dies in San Francisco. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA. 

5 March 1909:  Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson dies in childbirth in Santa Rosa, CA. She is buried with her mother at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA. There is no record of the child being born/surviving the birth.

22 December 1909:  Mary (Mollie) Murray marries Charles Johnson (aka Carl Johanson) in San Francisco.

2 May 1910:  Joseph Stephen Murray marries Mary Agnes McCarthy (nee Barnes) in San Francisco.

About 1910-1912:  Marshall Edward Murray meets Mary Josephine Mullane. Mary Mullane is separated from her husband Denis Edward Hayes. As of this writing, I do not know what happened to Denis Edward Hayes, but I am guessing he abandoned Mary.

March 1912:  Mary Mullane Murray gives birth to a child who dies shortly after birth. Unnamed child is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with Bridget McDonough Murray and Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson. (This is a best guess based on several facts: [a] Edward Marshall Murray's birth certificate indicates he is the second child born to Mary Mullane Murray, [b] there is an un-named Murray buried with Bridget and Nellie on the Holy Cross burial record, and [c] there is a family story that Edward Marshall Murray had an older sister who died.)

8 May 1914:  Edward Marshall Murray is born in San Francisco to Marshall Edward Murray and Mary Mullane Murray. His birth certificate indicates his given name as John Marshall Edward Murray.

25 February 1917:  Mary (Mollie) Murray Johnson dies in Oakland. She was hit by a Key Route train while crossing the street during a rainstorm after having run out to the grocery store.

5 September 1918:  Marshall Edward Murray and Mary Josephine Mullane are married in Oakland. The marriage certificate shows Mary Mullane as Mary Hayes and that this is her first marriage.

3 February 1920:  Joseph Stephen Murray dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

21 July 1930:  John Henry Murray dies in San Francisco. He is buried with his brother Joseph Stephen Murray at Holy Cross Cemetery. As of this writing, I do not have his cause of death. I haven't found any record of him ever marrying or having children.

5 May 1934:  Edward Marshall Murray marries Elizabeth Mary Coleman at St. Cecilia's Church in San Francisco.

16 April 1935:  Edward Kevin Murray is born in San Francisco to Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray.

3 May 1937:  Daniel Jerome Murray is born in San Francisco to Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray.

12 July 1940:  Mary Mullane Murray dies from heart disease in San Francisco. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

19 December 1943:  John Joseph Murray is born to Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray

11 September 1946:  John Joseph Murray dies of bronchial pneumonia. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

8 May 1948:  Marshall Edward Murray dies of a heart attack in San Francisco. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his wife Mary Mullane Murray.

20 October 1948:  Diane Marie Murray is born in San Francisco to Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray.

1940-1953:  Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray have 3 other children who are still living, therefore will not be specifically named.

21 July 1960:  Daniel Jerome Murray is killed in a car acccident in Vallejo, CA. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery with his Coleman grandparents.

9 June 1962:  Edward Kevin Murray is ordained a Catholic priest in San Francisco.

1968-1989:  Edward Marshall Murray and Elizabeth Coleman Murray's children have a total of 8 children, including me. All of their grandchildren are still living, so will not be named specifically.

5 December 1970:  Diane Marie Murray marries Dennis Alan Earnshaw in San Francisco.

21 April 1973:  Elizabeth Coleman Murray dies of an aneurysm in San Jose, CA. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

April 1976:  Diane Marie Murray divorces Dennis Allen Earnshaw.

7 May 1980:  Edward Marshall Murray dies of cirrhosis of the liver in San Francisco, CA. He is buried with his wife Elizabeth Coleman Murray at Holy Cross Cemetery.

7 November 2005:  Diane Murray Earnshaw dies of cancer in San Bruno, CA. She is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

18 December 2012:  Edward Kevin Murray dies in San Francisco. He is buried in the priests plot at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA.

Holiday Traditions

Merry Christmas! I'm taking a brief break from the blog for the holidays, but there are new posts scheduled for the new year. But as Christmas is upon us, I thought I'd take a minute to reflect and remember the Christmas traditions over the years.

When my brother and I were kids in the 1970s and 1980s, Christmas was a pretty set schedule. Christmas Eve would be spent with the Dwyer family at Grandma and Grandpa's. Christmas morning was just for the four of us (or maybe five if we're talking about the early 70s when Dad's youngest sister lived with us) and Christmas dinner was with the Murray side of the family, usually at our house.

We started going to Grandma & Grandpa's on Christmas Eve about 1973 (if my recollection of family photos and home movies is correct.) By that time, there were 10 of us grandchildren of Don and Audley Dwyer -- the 5 Caseys, 2 Murrays, 2 Dwyer sisters, 1 Murphy. We kids were all sent downstairs to the big family room in the garage. It had once been the bedroom for my mother's two brothers, but changed over once they had moved out of the family home. The rules were simple -- no one was allowed upstairs until after dinner and presents. The lone exception to this rule was my oldest cousin Mark who would have been 13 when these parties started. The next closest kid was the oldest of his three younger sisters who was 9. I was his closest cousin at age 5. My 3 year old brother was his closest male relative. Yeah, pretty obvious why the 13 year old got to go upstairs with the grown ups. Now, we kids weren't left alone totally unsupervised -- especially in those early years -- the adults would rotate turns coming down and keeping an eye on us all. We did a pretty good job of keeping ourselves entertained since there were so many of us so close in age. I spent most of my time in those years with one of my Casey cousins who is only 10 months older than me. The Dwyer sisters were always so quiet and sat off to themselves that it wasn't until late in high school that I ever spent much time with them.

For the first few years, all of us got presents from every family. Since my mom was one of six kids, that meant five gifts plus one from Grandma and Grandpa.  We now call those years the "greed fests" because, as you can imagine, a bunch of kids opening six presents each was a bit chaotic. Mark, being the oldest, would hand out the gifts to us younger kids. The funniest part of this, is that every year we all pretty much sat in the same spots. The boys on the floor at Mark's feet, the Dwyer sisters sharing the overstuffed chair, me and the Casey girls on the couch. The gifts had to be handed out in a particular order -- since there were so many of us close in age it was pretty common for everyone to get a variation on the same gift. After a while, there got to be too many of us to do gifts for everyone reasonably, so we drew names and everyone got two gifts. One from the person who drew their name, one from Grandma and Grandpa (the latter tended to be checks as we got older.)

Before driving home from Grandma and Grandpa's, my brother and I often had to change in to our pajamas (at least while we were under 10 or so) and we'd drive home we would pass a Doggie Diner that was at the corner of Junipero Serra Blvd. and 19th Ave. and I would always be sad to see there were one or two people sitting in there on Christmas Eve. It made me appreciate at a very young age having a large, loving family to spend the holidays with.

Christmas morning in the 1970s was also very familiar year in and year out. My brother and I would get up early to see what Santa had left and wake up Mom and Dad pretty much like any other kids. Mom would heat up some eggnog or hot chocolate once we'd torn through all the presents. Usually about a half hour after we'd opened presents there would be a knock on the door -- my brother's two friends from across the street were on the doorstep to see what we'd gotten for Christmas. We moved away from that neighborhood in 1979, but even today if there's a knock on the door on Christmas morning we say "Oh it must be K and J!"

After opening the presents and running outside to play with our friends, the Murray clan would descend upon the house for more food and presents and family time. There were only six of us cousins until the late 1980s, so we weren't banished to the garage like with the Dwyer family, but we usually were in either my or my brother's bedrooms for the most part while the grown ups socialized in the living room. We began rotating houses some time in the 1980s, so Christmas dinner wasn't always at my parents' house, but it was usually spent the same way -- kids off doing something in one part of the house, adults in another.

As we got older, the traditions changed a bit. By the mid 1980s, there were 18 grandchildren on the Dwyer side, most of whom were in high school or older, so everyone ate and opened presents upstairs. The younger cousins still all went downstairs to run around and play, but we all ate and opened presents together. We continued the tradition as we all got older and my cousins started getting married and having families of their own. Getting together on Christmas Eve finally ended when my grandfather passed away in 2000.  Since then, we've had the Dwyer Family Christmas on the Sunday before Christmas -- usually at either my parents' house or at Mom's older brother's house. We stopped drawing names for gifts a few years ago too -- now just the youngest generation gets gifts generally from the grand-aunts and uncles.

Christmas dinner with the Murray family is largely unchanged, though the rotation of houses now includes those of my cousins. It's a tight squeeze with all of us most of the time, but we always make it work.

Christmas Eve is now just my immediate family. My brother, sister-in-law, and I go over to Mom and Dad's for dinner and then head to Mass. After Mass, my brother and sister-in-law head home and I go back and spend the night at Mom and Dad's. In recent  years, my dad's younger brother also stays with them, so I'm on the couch while he gets the guest room.  Christmas morning arrives and my brother and sister-in-law return for breakfast and presents before heading off to see her family. Mom and I play a round of Scrabble -- she usually wins -- and we get ready for the Murray family gathering. This year it will be at Mom and Dad's (hosted by me and my brother and sister-in-law who don't have big enough homes for the whole family) so we'll be a little busier cleaning and setting up for the family to arrive.

This is always my favorite time of the year because I am reminded just how fortunate I am to have such a large, close-knit, and loving family. My cousins are some of my closest friends and spending time with them and the rest of my family is always the best Christmas present I can imagine.

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.