Good Guessing

Just about a year ago, I found a death record for my great great grandfather John Murray. He died in November 1890 and the record I found of his death in the Calvary Cemetery records at sfgenealogy.com indicated his funeral was held at “S.B.” parish. Based on where the family lived in 1890 and taking a look at the “S.B.” Catholic churches in the San Francisco City Directory for 1890 I surmised that he was most likely buried out of St. Bridget’s (aka St. Bridgid’s) church at Van Ness and Broadway.

When I started my searching in early 2012, I found my great great grandparents living at “the corner of Leavenworth and Broadway” and did a Google search of Catholic churches near Leavenworth and Broadway to see if I could guess which would be the closest parish, and thus the most likely location where they may have gotten married. I doubted they were married at St. Peter & Paul’s in the heavily Italian North Beach, so thought perhaps Old St. Mary’s would be a good bet.

I didn’t follow up on those possibilities as I only had an approximate time frame for when they would have been married and with an uncertain date and an uncertain parish, well, that was too vague to track down. A couple of weeks ago, I hit yet another site with old newspapers digitized with the plan to cancel my subscription as I never used it. Before I did, though, I checked to see what newspapers they had. Sometime in the intervening months between when I subscribed to the site and my return to cancel the subscription, they had added copies of the San Francisco Bulletin from 1855-1891.  A new source to search!

I ran the usual surnames through the search engine and got a few different hits – including one in the July 20, 1868 edition. In the tiniest of print there was a short list of recent marriages including “In this city, July 19, at St. Bridget’s Church, by the Rev. J.P. Callaghan, John Murray to Bridget McDonough.”  Well what do you know?! It hadn’t occurred to me when looking for churches near John and Bridget to think of ones that had since closed! Duh! And even after finding out where John had been buried from, I didn’t put it all together.

So what does this get me? Well, besides the obvious lead to get information on the marriage of my great great grandparents, I’m guessing it is a safe bet that John and Bridget’s children were all baptized at St. Bridget’s also. Of course, this means I need to access the old records from St. Bridget’s. From what I’ve found, the original documents from St. Bridget’s are now at St. Vincent de Paul parish in San Francisco and the Archives for the Archdiocese of San Francisco are located at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park. The archives will probably be the easier option for searching since the only birthdate of their six children I have any confidence in is for my great grandfather Marshall which means guessing on when they were baptized. That will have to be reserved for another field trip though, as the hours of access to the archives are pretty limited.

Uncovering a Family Scandal!

Okay, maybe it’s not too terribly scandalous in 2013, but for the early 1900s, it sure could be! A large part of my research over the past year has been trying to figure out the story of my great grandmother Mary Mullane. The only Mary Mullane living in San Francisco between 1871 (when she was born) and 1914 (when my grandfather was born) that I could find was married to a Dennis Edward Hayes in 1900 and as of the 1910 Census, Mary Mullane and Edward Hayes were still married. As late as April, 1911, when her brother John died, she is known as Mrs. Mary Hayes.
 
That made the time line for what little I knew about my great grandmother very odd. According to family lore, my grandfather, Edward Murray, had an older sister who died. Grandpa Murray was born in May 1914. If Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes in 1911, then how on earth could she be married to my great grandfather Marshall Murray and have had two children by May 1914? Turns out the answer is, they weren’t married.

Gasp! A family scandal!

In looking for family records, I have often searched online editions of historical newspapers. Mostly, it has been the San Francisco Call which is available free of charge through the Library of Congress for the years 1890-1913 under it’s various names over the years. I hadn’t been able to find a record of a marriage license being issued for Marshall Murray and Mary Mullane, which was very frustrating. Recently, through the subscription-site Newspapers.com, I was able to access issues of the San Francisco Chronicle from 1865-1923. Being able to do a search of newspapers is a great help when you don’t have a specific date for information. When I logged in to Newspapers.com, I called up the Chronicle and did a usual run of family names to see if I got any hits on people I’ve been researching. One of the first names I entered was Marshall Murray. When that didn’t turn up any hits, I tried Edward Murray which both my grandfather and great grandfather used. One of the records to turn up was the September 6, 1918 issue on the Birth/Marriage/Death notice page. I took a look at the page and saw under the list of names of people who had marriage certificates issued in Oakland “Edward Murray, 42 and Mary Hayes 38, both of San Francisco.” Well, the names are right, the ages are about right, but September, 1918 is nearly four and a half years after Grandpa Murray was born!

I sent off for a copy of the marriage certificate and waited to see if these were my great grandparents. If, as I suspected, they were, I would likely now have the names of Mary Mullane’s parents and know what the heck happened to Edward Hayes. Well, that’s not exactly what happened.

When the copy of the marriage certificate arrived, there were two pages loaded with information, but not all of it made sense. The groom is listed as Edward Murray, a Teamster, born in California, age 42, son of J. Murray and Bridget McDonough both born in Ireland, and that he is single and this is his first marriage. Other than the age being different by 2 years, that all matched what I knew about my great grandfather. The bride is listed as Mary Hayes, a domestic servant, born in California, age 38. Again that made sense, though in her case the age is off by 9 years. Since all the records I’ve found for the Murrays have had wildly variable ages, I set that point aside. It was the next bits of information about Mary Hayes that weren’t adding up. She also said she was single and that this was her first marriage. Huh? Then it goes on to list her parents as John Hayes and Mary Manning, both from Ireland. Double huh?

I know from the census records that Mary Mullane was married to Edward Hayes, so how could this be her first marriage? Her mother’s name of Mary Manning matched up with other items I’ve found, but who on earth is John Hayes? She is listed as Mary Mullane on my grandfather's birth certificate, so I suspect Mary was being somewhat disingenuous on the marriage license paperwork!

The other interesting bit on the marriage license is that Marshall and Mary were married by a justice of the peace and not in the Catholic Church as the family had always assumed. If she’d been married before, then not getting married in the Church, especially if she’d been divorced, makes sense.

Okay, so what happened?

One of the other items I’ve been tracing is who is the unnamed Murray buried with my great great grandmother Bridget. The records from Holy Cross say that person was buried on March 16, 1912. According to the California Death Index for 1905-1929 for fetal deaths, there is an unnamed Murray child who died on March 15, 1912 in San Francisco. I’ve yet to request a copy of that death certificate, but it would seem likely that is the unknown sister to my grandfather. I have also found a record for a Dennis E. Hayes in the 1940 Census who is about the right age as the Edward Hayes I found married to Mary Mullane in 1900 and 1910. In the 1940 Census, he is listed as divorced, and he is a patient at the Napa State Hospital and was there in 1935. I’ve yet to find any other record of him between 1910 and 1940.

That’s a lot of puzzle pieces, but fitting them together is the trick. The 1910 Census record was recorded on April 23, 1910. At that point Mary Mullane had been married to Dennis Edward Hayes for 10 years and Mary’s brother John was living with them. John died April 15, 1911, and Mary appears as Mrs. M. Hayes in his death notice. Assuming the unnamed child that was born and died in 1912 was the child of my great grandparents, does that mean Mary Mullane ran off with Marshall Murray? Did Edward Hayes abandon Mary? Assuming the Dennis Edward Hayes I found in 1940 is the same one that was married to Mary, when did they officially divorce? Under what circumstances could a woman file for divorce in 1911-1918? Did she file for divorce? Were they actually divorced? Why is Edward Hayes at the Napa State Hospital? When was he admitted to the hospital?

As always, the more answers I find, the more questions I uncover. I’m going to have to spend some time trying to work out this puzzle. I did get one bonus piece of information with this marriage license. The witness to Marshall and Mary’s wedding was John Henry Murray, Marshall’s older brother. It lists him as a resident of the city and county of San Francisco, so I at least have some record of him beyond his being mentioned in his sister Nellie’s death notice in 1909. Maybe I can pin him down soon.