More Visiting Holy Cross Cemetery -- February 2015

In my last post I detailed a visit to Holy Cross Cemetery in October 2014 that was somewhat successful. In February 2015, I made another visit. This time I focused on Sections T, U, V, 4, and 5 which are in the north corner of the cemetery. This was a few more sections than I would normally cover in one visit, but they are all in fairly close proximity to each other and there are lots of family members buried there mostly between about 1920-1960. It was a particularly productive visit as nearly all the plots have a marker and there are family members on both sides buried there. I had located my Kenny great-grandparents in Section U on my second visit in 2012 and eventually found my Murray great-gandparents in Section U later that year. My Coleman great-grandparents are across the road in Section T. That puts three of my four sets of great-grandparents in the same general vicinity and gave me orientation points to find other family in the same sections.  

Patrick and Myrtle Mullane
are buried with relatives of
Patrick's wife Ellen
Mary Sullivan

Patrick's name is inscribed on the left
side of the marker

I hit Section T first as there was only one location to find there -- the site for Patrick Henry Mullane and his daughter Myrtle. Patrick was one of my great-grandmother Mary Mullane Murray's younger brothers. The headstone was very informative yet confusing since there were so many different names on it. I think I've figured out who everyone is  (or at least a best guess as is the case with the Comerfords) but I do have a mystery to resolve since Patrick's wife Ellen isn't buried in the same plot and I've as yet been unable to find out when she died or where she's buried.

My great-great grandmother
Bessie Gallagher Muckle
buried with her daughter
Theresa Muckle Epstine

Then I walked across the road to Section U where there are a bunch of relatives from my maternal side. My great-great grandmother was Elizabeth (Bessie) Gallagher and was born in County Roscommon, Ireland. She married Thomas Muckle who was born in County Down, Ireland. They spent most of their lives in Virginia City, Nevada and Tom died there. Bessie moved to San Francisco after his death with my great-grandparents.  She died in 1929 and was buried at Holy Cross. Her daughter Theresa Muckle Epstine was buried with her in 1937. The index at SFGenealogy.com indicates that Bessie is in grave 1 and Theresa is in grave 5 which has me wondering if there are other people buried in the plot that aren't in the database for some reason.

Kate Nowlan's daughter
Catherine Nowlan Delury
and family are between
Kate and Bessie

My great-great grandaunt
Kate Gallagher Nowlan
and her family a couple of
places to the right of Bessie

Bessie came to the United States with her two sisters Catherine (Kate) and Margaret (Maggie.)  Kate married Daniel Nowlan and also settled in Virginia City, Nevada before eventually winding up in San Francisco. Kate and Daniel Nowlan had five children and their daughter Catherine Nowlan married Daniel Delury. The Nowlans and Delurys are buried in the same row as Bessie Muckle and Theresa Epstine, so the three graves were easy to find as they were all side by side.

William Muckle and family.
William was my great-grandmother
Maggie Muckle Kenny's brother

A couple of rows away is another Muckle plot. This one is for another of Bessie Gallagher Muckle's children -- her son William Muckle and his family. William was my great grandmother Maggie Muckle Kenny's younger brother and he's buried with his wife and three children.

 My last stop in Section U was to look for the younger of my grandmother Audley Kenny Dwyer's two older brothers -- Harry Kenny and his wife Ethel. I'm pretty sure I located the where they are buried, but there wasn't a headstone. I'll need to go back and bring my phone to help double check. Harry and Ethel are buried with Ethel's daughter Merle Williams and mother Laura S. Glanville.

Daniel E.Delury and family.
Daniel was my grandmother
Audley Kenny Dwyer's second cousin

Ellen O'Leary Ford and family
Ellen was my great-grandmother
Lizzie O'Leary Coleman's sister

Next it was over to Section V where there was some more mixing of my families. I first found more Delurys in row 13 -- Daniel E. Delury, the grandson of Kate Gallagher Nowlan and son of Catherine and Daniel Delury, is buried with his wife Hazel and daughter Margaret. Over in row 14 and a few plots down I found my great-grandmother Lizzie O'Leary's older sister Ellen O'Leary Ford buried with her husband John and daughter and son-in-law Catherine Ford Dwyer and Edward Ambrose Dwyer.

Barbara Jane and her father
Douglas S. Evans
Barbara is my mother's third cousin

Jane Delury Evans is buried
next to her husband and daughter.
Jane is my grandmother's second cousin

This part of my trip was hugely productive and I found all of these folks relatively quickly. I headed then up the hill to Sections 4 and 5. My first stop was some more descendants of Kate Gallagher. Her granddaughter Jane Delury Evans is buried there. Jane Delury Evans's husband Douglas and daughter Barbara Jane are buried in the plot next to her.

Joe and Pauline Kenny

A few rows away, my grandmother Audley Kenny Dwyer's oldest brother, Joseph B. Kenny, Jr. is buried with his wife Pauline. My grandmother and Joe had a falling out somewhere along the line so my mother doesn't have a real memory of him other than family stories. Joe died in 1958, not long after Harry died in 1950. I don't have any memory of my grandmother speaking about either of her brothers so they've always been kind of mysterious people to me. That's why I was surprised to find that Joe's wife Pauline lived until 1985 and was living in Burlingame when she died. I grew up not far away in Millbrae and went to high school in Burlingame.

I continued up to Section 5 before heading home for the day. My first stop was to find John J. Coleman, Jr. and his wife Mildred. Jack Coleman was my grandmother Elizabeth Coleman's first cousin -- the son of my great grandfather's older brother John. Jack may actually be John Coleman, IV as my great-great grandfather's name was also John and if I have identified HIS father correctly I have four generations of John Colemans in a row. Jack Coleman was about 13 years older than my grandmother Elizabeth and worked as a clothing salesman. Mildred was actually his second wife and I've yet to learn much more about them. Jack died in 1979 in San Rafael. Mildred lived until 2002.

Margaret Coleman Madigan and
her husband Mike. The marker was a bit
overgrown and I had
to pull up some grass and dirt to read it.

My last stop on this visit was to my grandmother's sister's grave. Margaret Coleman Madigan is buried in Section 5 with her husband Michael. Mike died in 1961, well before I was born, but Aunt Margaret lived until 1999 so I have many fond memories of her. Margaret was my grandmother's younger sister and they were very close until Nana's death in 1973. I still have a few memories of Nana, but none of them are a sense of her personality since I was only four and a half when she died. Aunt Margaret gave me a good sense of what Nana's personality was probably like as all my father's siblings agree they were like two peas in a pod. She was a warm and loving lady and I miss her vivacity. 

This was definitely my most productive trip to date as I was able to locate all of these graves in about an hour.  It definitely helped that they were all so close to each other! 

Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 2

In my last post, I started answering and following up on some of the questions I have discussed in earlier posts on this blog.  This post continues the review of past entries with updates and current status.

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When I was reviewing the 1940 Census trying to locate my family, I realized one of the reasons I'd had difficulty finding my grandparents and great-grandparents was that neither Marshall nor Edward Murray were working in occupations I had expected them to be.  The most curious discovery was that my grandfather Edward had appeared in several 1930s directories as a "reporter".  A reporter?  Grandpa Murray was a teamster, what's this reporter business?  I asked my father about it and he said yes, his father had worked for a newspaper.  Dad wasn't sure which one and thought he might have been a photographer.  I'll need to do some digging to see if I can find out what exactly Grandpa Murray was doing when he worked at a newspaper.  Dad also said that his father didn't graduate from high school, but according to the 1940 census he had completed 12 years of school.  My grandmother was the informant on that, so presumably she knew whether or not my grandfather had graduated.

I still haven't figured out for certain how my great grandfather paid for the house on Natoma.  I'm still guessing there was a life insurance payment after my great grandmother died in July, 1940, but I haven't found any evidence of that yet.  I'm not entirely sure where I might find that information either, so it's an item of interest that sits on a back burner for now.

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Muddling Through the Mullanes was my first attempt at clarifying the Mullane relationships, and fortunately my best guess assumptions proved correct.  That means that my great grandmother Mary Mullane's brothers had a lot of loss. Her brothers Phillip, Edward, and Patrick all lost children between 1905 and 1917.

The first child lost was Phillip's daughter Maria Nora Mullane who died on August 28, 1905 at the age of 2 months, 22 days old.  I was able to find a copy of her burial record from Holy Cross at sfgenealogy.com and it appears she died from enteritis (at least that's the best guess I can come up with as the handwritten record is atrocious!)

Edward was the next brother to lose a child.  On January 8, 1915, Edward and his wife Margaret lost their son Thomas Joseph Mullane.  He was only about three and a half.  I don't have a copy of his death certificate and the records at sfgenealogy.com only go up to January, 1911.  My best guess would be some kind of illness.

Edward lost his second child, a daughter named Margaret a little over a year later on June 20, 1916.  Margaret was only three months old at the time of her death.

The next child lost was Patrick's daughter Myrtle Marie Mullane.  She died on July 3 or 4, 1916 (the death notice and headstone say July 3, the CA Death Index says July 4) in Sonoma County.  Her death notice says "in Verano", which I'm guessing is El Verano.  El Verano is a resort town just outside of Sonoma city near several hot springs.  Based on the date of her death, I'm guessing the family were on vacation for the Independence Day holiday when she died.  Again, I don't have a copy of her death certificate, but I'm guessing there was some sort of accident.

The family tragedies didn't end there.  Phillip and his wife Mary lost two of their three sons in 1917.  First Edward Ignatius on February 25 then Phillip Clayton just a month later on March 27.  Edward was about thirteen and a half and died within days of my great grandfather Marshall Murray's sister Mollie (Mary) Murray Johnson.  Phillip was a few months shy of his tenth birthday.  Again, I would need copies of their death certificates to know how they died, but based on the proximities of their respective deaths, I would guess some contagious illness was the cause.  Whether it was the flu, tuberculosis, measles, or some other illness that is much more survivable and preventable today is something left to be determined.

The losses in the Mullane family during this time weren't limited to the children of my great granduncles.  My great grandmother had 6 or 7 brothers, and three of them also died between 1905-1917.  Thomas Michael Mullane died on March 19, 1910 of tuberculosis.  I only recently discovered his death notice in the San Francisco Chronicle and discovered he was married to a woman named Jennie, so I will need to follow up on her.  Oldest brother John Martin Mullane also died of tuberculosis a year later on April 15, 1911.  It doesn't appear that he ever married.  Finally Edward (George) Washington Mullane died not long after his daughter Margaret on January 16, 1917, also of tuberculosis.  The coroner's report of his death indicated he had suffered from tuberculosis "for some time", so it's possible that with so many family members with tuberculosis that some of the children were exposed to it and also died from it.

That is quite a lot of loss in over about a 12 year period and again reminds me of how much has changed over the past century.  Today, tuberculosis is pretty rare in the United States and can be treated with antibiotics (though it appears that a drug resistant form has developed in recent years making it more difficult to treat.)  I decided to take a quick look at the leading causes of death in 1910 -- about the midpoint for the many Mullane deaths.  According to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of death for adults between 20-50 are tuberculosis and typhoid (excluding the high percentage of deaths related to post-partum infections) and for children 10 and under it's diarrhea/enteritis and bronchopnuemonia.  In 2010, the leading causes of death are cancer and heart disease (presumably this is for adults, I wasn't able to find an easy split.) Similarly, in 1915 the infant mortality rate was about 100 per every 1,000 live births or 10% of all children.  By 2013 (the most recent date I was able to find) the number has dropped to 5.6 infant deaths per every 1,000 live births or just 0.56%.  It's good to be reminded every once and a while just how much progress has been made over the last 100 years.  Sometimes it's all too easy to take for granted the advances modern medicine and technology have given rather than being amazed at the progress that has been made.

Men (and Women) of Mystery

Ever since I was a kid, one of my favorite genres of novels has been the mystery/detective tales. From plowing through all the Agatha Christie novels while in junior high school to more contemporary authors like Michael Connelly, I've always enjoyed stories that have an aspect of trying to guess how they will end. I've also always been a fan of jig-saw puzzles. So that I'm fascinated by trying to unravel the stories of my family history shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Over the last 4 years or so I've uncovered a whole slew of people that I (and much of the rest of the family) knew nothing about. From the simple things like learning the names of my great-great grandparents on both the Murray and Coleman sides of the family to discovering the names of great grandaunts and uncles I'd never heard of to figuring out what happened to all these people, it's been a great adventure and a never ending series of mysteries and puzzles to work out.

Beyond working out the puzzles of people I've found with a direct connection to me and my family, I've also encountered a number of people that appear momentarily with my relatives and then disappear. I've also encountered people who seem to ride alongside continuously but I have no idea what the connection is between them and my family. I'm not sure which is more frustrating -- people who seem obviously connected but can't be found beyond a single record or ones who don't appear connected at all but appear in multiple records.

The first time I encountered people I couldn't figure out the connection was when I found my great-great grandparents John and Bridget Murray in the 1870 census. They were living with another couple John and Margaret Feehan. John is a 23 year old shoemaker from Ireland and Margaret is 20 years old and from New York. I did a cursory search on them and discovered that John died in 1875 and was from County Louth, Ireland. Since John Murray was from Galway and Bridget McDonough Murray was from Sligo, I figured John and Margaret Feehan were friends they made upon arriving in San Francisco and set them aside. It's possible there may be some other connection to find, but that's to study at a much later time.

Then I hit my first real conundrum. I was searching for my Mullane relatives and found them living at 45 Belcher Street between 1894 and 1897. This enabled me to discover my great-great grandmother Mary Mullane and her brothers, but there was one name that appeared in 1895 and then disappeared again completely. There was someone named Richard E. Mullane living with the rest of the Mullane family at 45 Belcher in 1895. At first I thought he might be another of Mary's brothers, but as I dug through the years I found no brother with the name Richard. So who is he? Where did he come from? Where did he go? I can't find any other record for him. There are two other mysterious Mullanes who appear at the 45 Belcher address -- Edwin and Joseph. Those two may be one of Mary's brothers recorded mistakenly. The 1880 census lists a Joseph among the brothers and he appears again in 1900 and is in the city directories between 1894-1909. The confusion comes in 1898 when there are two Josephs living in the Belcher house. To make matters worse starting in 1895 there is a Timothy Joseph Mullane living in the same house. Tracking Timothy forward, I found a record from a funeral home collection that included his death notice in the paper.  "T. Joseph Mullane ... brother of Phillip and Patrick Mullane and Mrs. Mary (Edward) Murray." So, it is possible that Timothy and at least one of the Josephs are the same person, but I can't put them together.  Edwin Mullane appears from 1897-1899, and I strongly suspect that this is a misprint for Mary's brother Edward Mullane I just can't prove it.

So I've stuck Richard, Joseph, and Edwin Mullane over to one side to puzzle over later. Perhaps they're other relatives that will turn up or are actually people I've already identified that were mistakenly identified in the city directories.

And then there are the Comerfords. In the 1910 census a John W. Comerford and his daughter Maime are listed as lodgers with Patrick Mullane and his wife Ellen. John Comerford is still living with Patrick and Ellen in the 1920 census. When I went to Holy Cross Cemetery looking for Patrick's grave, I discovered among the many people he's buried with, there is Mary Comerford who died in 1917! I went back to find Mary Comerford in the 1900 census since she's 13 in 1910, and she turns up living in the family of Jeremiah and Mary Sullivan -- Ellen Mullane's parents! She's only 4 years old and neither of her parents are living with the Sullivans and she's listed as a "lodger." Right now my guess is the Comerfords are related to the Sullivans some how, but I'm not entirely sure. I also double checked the burial records for the plot where Patrick Mullane was buried on sfgenealogy.com since the headstone also listed a Mary Donohue in the plot.  It turns out that Patrick Mullane was buried with his daughter Myrtle, along with John and Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary and John Donohue.  Patrick, Myrtle, Mary Comerford, Jeremiah Sullivan, and Mary Donohue are listed on the headstone. Jeremiah Sullivan was Patrick's father-in-law and I believe Mary Donohue was his mother-in-law who remarried after Jeremiah's death (thus explaining John Donohue.) I haven't tied in the Comerfords anywhere yet and I don't know what happened to Ellen Sullivan Mullane. She's not buried with the rest of the family and I've yet to find a death record for her, so even the mystery people lead to other family mysteries.

The final group of mystery people are the employers and business partners I've encountered. I'm curious about these people also and what their stories are and how they relate to my family's stories. I've done very little digging into these people other than to note their names when they appear. This group is definitely the lowest priority of mystery people.

I've spent a little bit of time trying to track down all these people to see how they fit in, but with so many other puzzles to work out they are definitely secondary in my research. Still, as someone who loves working out puzzles, I won't leave them alone entirely.