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.
Showing posts with label answered questions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label answered questions. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Answering and Reviewing Some Questions, Part 3
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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I started looking at the O'Leary side of my family tree in O'Learys and O'Looneys -- Oh My! and started digging around in what I could learn from cousins on that side of the family. Unlike my Murray/Mullane side of the family, there are relatives I know on the Coleman/O'Leary side. My grandmother Elizabeth Coleman was one of five children (including an older brother who died in childhood) and there are cousins in my father's generation that I've grown up around. While I've only been in intermittent contact with them recently, the leads I got from them when I started out were invaluable. Among the information I received were some family photos that I never knew existed, but I also received a copy of a marriage certificate of my great-grandparents from one cousin. This corrected one error I had originally. The family lore I was told had my great-grandparents married at St. Phillip's Church. In actuality, they were married at Most Holy Redeemer. The witnesses to their marriage were an Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander. According to my cousin, Alexander Christiansen was a doctor friend of my great grandfather's. I haven't looked in to him much, but he's on the list of friends and neighbors to learn a little bit about. Gertrude Alexander was a name I knew when I received the copy of the marriage certificate.
When I found my great grandfather Daniel Coleman in the 1900 census, he was living with his brother John Coleman and wife Sadie (Sarah.) There were two other families living with them at the time. Joseph Myers and his daughter Lillian were one family. The other were Jesse and Gertrude Alexander. When I saw Gertrude's name on the marriage certificate, I decided to go back and take a closer look at who she might be and how she was connected. I knew from the 1900 census record that Joesph Myers was Sadie Coleman's father, so I tried to look for Joseph and Sarah in the 1880 census. When I found them, I discovered that in addition to her sister Lillian, who appears in the 1900 record, she had three older brothers and two more sisters. One of the sisters was named Gertrude. A-ha! Gertrude Alexander was Gertrude Myers, so she was connected through marriage. In the collection of photos I recieved, there is a picture of my great grandparents on their wedding day and standing in the photo beside my great grandparents are Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander!
I also found some of my O'Leary relatives through looking at the partial invitation list to my parents wedding in 1965. After quickly identifying a few people and tracking them down, I never followed up with Mom and Dad about some of the other names on the list. I suspect most of them are family friends on my father's side rather than relatives, but since I never asked I don't know for certain. I need to sit down with Mom & Dad soon to do that. Perhaps over the holidays!
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As I went Onward with the O'Learys, I was able to identify several of my grandmother's first cousins and their children. The difficulty was in identifying some of their spouses. The first unidentified spouse was for Arthur Patrick Ford. I've learned since my initial investigations that he went by "Pat" which was a huge help in finding him in the records and helped me identify his wife as Kathleen Fee. Pat and Kathleen Ford had a daughter named Mary Catherine who died in 1999.
The curious spouse was that of Catherine Ford Dwyer. Since my mother's family is Dwyer, Catherine has always been a bit of a curiosity over the years. A big part of the problem I had initially looking for Catherine and her husband was that I kept looking for them in San Francisco. It wasn't until I found Catherine living in Washington D.C. in the 1940 census that I was able to break through the wall. I found a 1940 marriage record for Catherine Hanora Ford and Edward Ambrose Dwyer in Washington, D.C. Edward Dwyer was born in Syracuse, New York and died in 1956 in Maryland. Catherine had him buried with her parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA. Catherine died in 1987 and I can't find any record of them having any children.
One of the other items I found while looking at the Ford family was that Ellen O'Leary Ford had died of second and third degree burns. I recently discovered a coroner's report on her death and it was quite awful. The report said her clothing caught fire from a "lighted gas plate" while she was preparing dinner. She ran into the yard screaming and was aided by a neighbor before being sent to the hospital where she later died. One interesting bit of information from the coroner's report was a note that the San Francisco Fire Department was represented by a Captain Tenebsky of the "truck company on Waller near Stanyan." That quickly caught my attention. My father is a retired SF firefighter and one of the places he was stationed was 12 Truck on Stanyan Street. I haven't been there since I was a kid, so I wasn't sure of the cross streets and took to Google Maps to locate the intersection. Waller and Stanyan is closer to Golden Gate Park than the current location of Station 12, so I asked my father if the station had moved up Stanyan. He told me it had, which means about 40 years after Ellen Ford died my father worked at the same fire station that had responded to the fire that killed her. Another weird coincidence in the winding path through my family's history!
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I started looking at the O'Leary side of my family tree in O'Learys and O'Looneys -- Oh My! and started digging around in what I could learn from cousins on that side of the family. Unlike my Murray/Mullane side of the family, there are relatives I know on the Coleman/O'Leary side. My grandmother Elizabeth Coleman was one of five children (including an older brother who died in childhood) and there are cousins in my father's generation that I've grown up around. While I've only been in intermittent contact with them recently, the leads I got from them when I started out were invaluable. Among the information I received were some family photos that I never knew existed, but I also received a copy of a marriage certificate of my great-grandparents from one cousin. This corrected one error I had originally. The family lore I was told had my great-grandparents married at St. Phillip's Church. In actuality, they were married at Most Holy Redeemer. The witnesses to their marriage were an Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander. According to my cousin, Alexander Christiansen was a doctor friend of my great grandfather's. I haven't looked in to him much, but he's on the list of friends and neighbors to learn a little bit about. Gertrude Alexander was a name I knew when I received the copy of the marriage certificate.
When I found my great grandfather Daniel Coleman in the 1900 census, he was living with his brother John Coleman and wife Sadie (Sarah.) There were two other families living with them at the time. Joseph Myers and his daughter Lillian were one family. The other were Jesse and Gertrude Alexander. When I saw Gertrude's name on the marriage certificate, I decided to go back and take a closer look at who she might be and how she was connected. I knew from the 1900 census record that Joesph Myers was Sadie Coleman's father, so I tried to look for Joseph and Sarah in the 1880 census. When I found them, I discovered that in addition to her sister Lillian, who appears in the 1900 record, she had three older brothers and two more sisters. One of the sisters was named Gertrude. A-ha! Gertrude Alexander was Gertrude Myers, so she was connected through marriage. In the collection of photos I recieved, there is a picture of my great grandparents on their wedding day and standing in the photo beside my great grandparents are Alexander Christiansen and Gertrude Alexander!
I also found some of my O'Leary relatives through looking at the partial invitation list to my parents wedding in 1965. After quickly identifying a few people and tracking them down, I never followed up with Mom and Dad about some of the other names on the list. I suspect most of them are family friends on my father's side rather than relatives, but since I never asked I don't know for certain. I need to sit down with Mom & Dad soon to do that. Perhaps over the holidays!
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As I went Onward with the O'Learys, I was able to identify several of my grandmother's first cousins and their children. The difficulty was in identifying some of their spouses. The first unidentified spouse was for Arthur Patrick Ford. I've learned since my initial investigations that he went by "Pat" which was a huge help in finding him in the records and helped me identify his wife as Kathleen Fee. Pat and Kathleen Ford had a daughter named Mary Catherine who died in 1999.
The curious spouse was that of Catherine Ford Dwyer. Since my mother's family is Dwyer, Catherine has always been a bit of a curiosity over the years. A big part of the problem I had initially looking for Catherine and her husband was that I kept looking for them in San Francisco. It wasn't until I found Catherine living in Washington D.C. in the 1940 census that I was able to break through the wall. I found a 1940 marriage record for Catherine Hanora Ford and Edward Ambrose Dwyer in Washington, D.C. Edward Dwyer was born in Syracuse, New York and died in 1956 in Maryland. Catherine had him buried with her parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, CA. Catherine died in 1987 and I can't find any record of them having any children.
One of the other items I found while looking at the Ford family was that Ellen O'Leary Ford had died of second and third degree burns. I recently discovered a coroner's report on her death and it was quite awful. The report said her clothing caught fire from a "lighted gas plate" while she was preparing dinner. She ran into the yard screaming and was aided by a neighbor before being sent to the hospital where she later died. One interesting bit of information from the coroner's report was a note that the San Francisco Fire Department was represented by a Captain Tenebsky of the "truck company on Waller near Stanyan." That quickly caught my attention. My father is a retired SF firefighter and one of the places he was stationed was 12 Truck on Stanyan Street. I haven't been there since I was a kid, so I wasn't sure of the cross streets and took to Google Maps to locate the intersection. Waller and Stanyan is closer to Golden Gate Park than the current location of Station 12, so I asked my father if the station had moved up Stanyan. He told me it had, which means about 40 years after Ellen Ford died my father worked at the same fire station that had responded to the fire that killed her. Another weird coincidence in the winding path through my family's history!
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
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.
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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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
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.
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.
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?
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!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
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.
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