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!

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.

Death Certificate Discoveries and Disappointments

Back in February after I discovered the death notices for Bridget McDonough Murray and Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson, I sent off for their death certificates in the hope that I could learn more about them. A couple of weeks ago I came home to find a plain white envelope from the Department of Public Health in my mailbox. I opened it up and saw that it was the death certificate for Nellie. As I read it over, I found that it had a lot of useful information.

According to the certificate, Nellie was born on July 4, 1883 which would have made her 25 when she died on March 4, 1909. According to the 1900 census record, she was born in July 1878 and figuring out her birth date is one of the things I was hoping to learn from the 1880 census record, but at least I have the day and a range for the year. According to the death certificate, she died in childbirth and from what I can decipher it doesn't appear that she delivered the child. Having spent a lot of time combing through the birth/marriage/death notice sections of the San Francisco Call, it didn't come as a surprise (and actually was what I suspected happened) as death in childbirth was fairly common. It's amazing how far we've come in the 100 or so years since Nellie's death. Where once it was commonplace for women to die in childbirth, it is now a rare circumstance (at least in the more developed parts of the world.)

I also learned that she and her husband Edward Nelson were living at the Overton Hotel in Santa Rosa, but had only been living in Santa Rosa for 4 months at the time of her death. I'll have to figure out where they were before then as I've yet to find a definitive record of them in San Francisco. I suspect Edward was working for the hotel because in the 1910 census I found a record for an Edward Nelson who is listed as widowed and is living with several other people with job titles like "porter" and "housekeeper." The death certificate also has Nellie's parents listed as John Murray and Bridget Donohue, but I suspect that is an error as the information would most likely have come from Edward. I'll make a note of it just in case though.

As you can see, there is a lot of information that can be learned from a single piece of paper. So you can imagine my excitement when, a week after Nellie's death certificate arrived I came home to find another plain white envelope from the Department of Public Health. When I opened it up the cover page informed me it was in response to my inquiry about Bridget Murray. Alas, when I turned to the second page I found it was a notice that the death certificate could not be found. Well darn. I had hoped that Bridget's death certificate would help identify her parents and thus allow me to dig up more on the McDonoughs. For now, I'll have to see if the other McDonoughs I've identified are relatives and try to track down the relative in Chelsea, Massachusetts and hope one of those will lead me to the family back in Ireland.

I've not given up all hope on finding Bridget's death certificate as I have found a record for her in the California Death Index for 1905-1939, so I hope that by requesting the record again and providing the additional information I found it will help dig up the record. It's still possible I'll be disappointed again and that the record has been lost in the 105 years since her death, but if there's one family trait that I've inherited it is Irish stubbornness!

First Field Trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nana and Grandpa Murray's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

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

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

Daniel & Elizabeth Coleman's
gravestone at Holy Cross Cemetery

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

The Dwyer clan gravestone
at Holy Cross Cemetery

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

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!