Cousins Day

Murray Cousins, Summer 1979 Lake Tahoe

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

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

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

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

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

So, Happy Cousins Day to all my crazy cousins.

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

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

Another Holy Cross Visit -- November 2015

It's fairly time consuming to head up to Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma to try to track down where all the many relatives I have buried there are located.  It helps tremendously that I have a list of locations from the Cemetery Index at SFGenealogy.com so have a list of where I need to go and which family members are buried near each other.  I always make a plan ahead of time as to which sections I'm going to visit and who I'm going to look for.  I had some time off last November, so I planned to spend a morning at Holy Cross.

For this visit, I planned to hit Sections J, K, and M which are more or less in the center of the cemetery.  I parked my car near the Priests Plot and paid a quick visit to Uncle Eddie and waved at Joe DiMaggio's grave in Section I before trekking through Section J looking for some of my Mullane relatives.

This was the first trip I remembered to stick my phone into my search bag (which usually contains gardening gloves, my camera, a bottle of water, a clipboard with my search list, and a gardening shovel in case uncovering a headstone requires a bit more work than my hands can manage) and it proved handy.  Section J is one of the older sections and the row numbering is somewhat perplexing.  After some cross-checking on the phone that I was headed in the right direction, I was able to find the grave I was looking for -- that of my great grandmother's brother Phillip J. Mullane and his wife and three children.  Phillip and Mary Agnes Greeley Mullane had four children, but only one lived to adulthood.  Edward, Nora/Norine, and Phillip Clayton are the only ones whose names appear on the headstone.

Next it was over to Section K to see if I could find Thomas Joseph Mullane and his mother Margaret Shanahan Mullane.  Margaret was married to my great grandmother's youngest brother Edward.  Edward is buried over in Section F with his parents and other family members, and based on what I've been able to find at SFGenealogy.com, it appears Thomas and Margaret are buried with some Shanahan relatives.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get properly oriented in this section and wasn't able to locate the grave.  It was particularly frustrating because my Theler great-great grandparents are also buried in Section K and I've located their grave previously and I couldn't find them either to help with my orientation.  I'll need to head back to find them.

I walked up the hill next to see if I would luck out in Section M and find a headstone for my grandfather's sister Mollie Murray Johnson.  I knew from a previous visit looking for her mother and sister in the section that there weren't a lot of headstones in this older part of the cemetery and that the ones that were there are much newer.  With so many rows containing very few headstones it was a trick trying to find the right approximate location.  I walked around the area I thought I should be looking for any headstone I could cross-reference on my phone and I couldn't find anything for Mollie.

Since it was a nice day and I had struck out on most of the folks I was looking for I decided I was close enough to walk up to the St. Rose of Lima section where several of my aunts are buried.  After saying hello to Helen, Diane, and Betty (all conveniently within a few rows of each other), I headed down the hill to the San Lorezno section and visit my aunt Pat and got my first look at my cousin Mark's headstone.  It was a little bit sad to walk through these sections as they all were people who impacted my life directly -- much more so than all of the other folks I had been looking for but had never met (or even knew about until recently!)  I miss them all.

As I headed back to my car I realized I was going to have to cut across Section G to get there, so I made my way down to Section G2 to make a quick visit with Nana and Grandpa Murray.  While this wasn't a particularly productive trip in locating ancestors, it was a nice way to spend a warm fall morning.

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! 

Returning to Holy Cross Cemetery -- October 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Photos

I've been in the process of setting up a new computer this week, so didn't upload all the pictures I received from Letty and Cici (partly because I needed to install a new scanner to copy a few of them.) Here are the rest with what information is available. I have uploaded them as I received them save for some minor cropping of white space. I plan on cleaning up what I can of them (saved as a revised version!)

Lizzie O'Leary (standing) with
her sister Polly and mother Mary
about 1903 Ireland

John Alexander Coleman
1905-1913
Daniel & Lizzie's oldest child

Daniel J. Coleman (Uncle Dan)
about 1920

Eileen, Lizzie, Daniel J.
& Elizabeth (Bess) Coleman

Margaret, Daniel P., &  Lizzie Coleman
aboard ship about 1920

Margaret, Daniel P., & Lizzie again

Daniel J. & Elizabeth (Bess) Coleman
(we won't ask what Nana did to her hair)

Family Photos

Growing up I spent a lot of time at my maternal grandparents' house, which had a large room downstairs off the garage.  When my mother was growing up, this room belonged to her two brothers, but I knew it as the family room where Grandma kept a lot of the toys for her many grandchildren. When my grandparents converted it from a bedroom to a family room, they hung a variety of pictures on the wall. Most of the pictures were early photographs of their parents and grandparents. I never really knew who was who in those pictures, but I always knew they were family and the stories related to the various people pictured.

After my grandparents and my grandaunt Elise (my grandfather Dwyer's sister) passed away, my mother's older brother and cousin started going through the family photo albums and scanning pictures for the rest of the family to share. So over the years I've acquired copies of pictures of my grandparents as children (though mostly of my grandfather), my mother and her siblings throughout the years, and so forth and so on. There are lots and lots of pictures of the Dwyer side of my family.

The Murray side, however, is a completely different scenario. For most of my life I've only ever seen about a dozen photographs of anyone on my father's side of the family that were taken before my parents were married. There are a couple of pictures of my dad in high school, a few more from when he was in the army, a picture of Nana and Grandpa Murray taken when my uncle Ed was ordained a priest, another of my father and three of his four brothers taken when my dad was about five, and one or two of my father’s brother Dan after a hunting trip. That’s it. The Dwyer family was big on photography. The Murray family, not so much, and for all I knew there were no other photographs.

At this point in the story, it has become necessary to talk about living people. When I started this blog, I decided not to name any living people, however the narrative starts getting confusing if I keep referring to several people as “cousin.” For this reason, I will be using aliases when referring to living relatives as I continue the story.

About five years ago, however, my father's cousin Letty sent some pictures to Uncle Eddie. He asked one of my cousins to duplicate them for the rest of the family, and suddenly I had about a half dozen new photographs. They look to have been taken in about 1942, based on the one shot with my father in it. There are two pictures that are particularly good. The first is of Nana and Grandpa Murray who are in their late 20s and standing arm in arm in front of the summer rental house they were staying in. The second photo is of my great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary Coleman with Grandpa Murray, my father, and his two older brothers Ed and Dan. Lizzie is wearing a hat in the picture, which makes it difficult to see her face, but it’s nice to see a picture of my grandfather as a young man and my father sucking his thumb!

Lizzie O'Leary & Daniel  
Coleman (seated)
on their wedding
day in 1904

These new found photos are precious to me, and I have the two I mentioned framed and hanging on my living room wall. Then about two months ago, my father's cousin Cici, with whom I have been corresponding about my Coleman/O'Leary research, sent me a scanned file of a photograph of Lizzie O'Leary and Daniel Coleman on their wedding day! Holy smokes!  There are more photographs!

Lizzie O'Leary on her wedding day

When I told her I had received the photo with out any problems, she sent me several more. I have also been in contact with Letty about my research and she too sent me some photos, in this case, hard copies. Some of the pictures I received from Letty were duplicates of the ones I received from Cici, but all told, I now had about a dozen photographs from about 1900-1920 of my Coleman relatives! Wow!

Lizzie O'Leary Coleman 
at her house in Bernal Heights 

Granted, photography has only been around for a little over 150 years and mass-produced cameras weren't readily available until the end of the 19^th century, but it is amazing what having a photograph of someone can inspire. The questions about who the person was, what did she do for a living, what was life like for him, and so much   more just multiply when you have an image of a relative long past. Having these few family photographs further cements that these people existed and had lives and hopes and dreams like we all do and that they aren't just stories of forgotten ghosts.

 

The Colemans on board ship circa 1920
Uncle Dan, Lizzie,
Aunt Margaret (on Lizzie's lap),
Daniel, and Nana

Aunt Eileen & Uncle Dan
I'm guessing their
First Communion
circa 1915