The Name Game

I knew when I started digging in to the family tree I was likely to run in to duplicate names. Even without the information on my mother’s family that my uncle has collected over the years (which includes at least one great grandaunt being named after a deceased older sister) I could have guessed I’d run into duplication just by looking around at my living relatives. There are names that repeat across the board on both sides, some are deliberate while others are coincidence and others still are just common names found in millions of families. My current favorite – the daughter of one of my second cousins on my mother’s side has the same first name as the daughter of one of my first cousins on my father’s side. I got very confused on Facebook one day wondering why my first cousin was posting baby pictures of her now six-year-old daughter before I realized, wrong cousin.

Still, it’s one thing to be able to keep track of living people with similar names, but a whole different animal when it comes to keeping track of ancestors with similar names. More than once in the past few months, I’ve found a record for one relative and attached it to the other and later realized I’d gotten confused. Usually, it’s something like finding a record for my grandmother’s brother Daniel and associating it with their father Daniel or it’s the whole Marshall Edward/Edward Marshall scenario of my grandfather and great-grandfather. My latest discoveries, however, are going to give me no end of fits.

After talking with my father’s cousin recently, I was able to confirm my earlier suspicion that the John Coleman I’d found in the 1900 census was my great-grandfather Daniel’s older brother. John Coleman married Sadie (Sarah) Meyers in about 1895 and they had five children who survived long enough to turn up in public records: Gladys, John, Ileen/Aileen, Marion, and Noel. Now we take a quick look at my grandmother’s family. Her siblings were John, Eileen, Daniel, and Margaret. Notice any similarities? I know my grandmother’s brother John was born in about 1905 and died sometime between 1910 and 1918, so I don’t expect to run into many conflicts with my grandmother’s cousin John who was born in about 1899 and who I’ve been able to track up to 1930 so far. However, when I saw Ileen’s name pop up and that she was born in about 1904 my first response was “you’ve got to be kidding me.”  Aunt Eileen, you see, was born in 1907. First cousins, born three years apart, in the same geographic region with nearly identical names. This is going to give me fits I’m sure, especially since the elder cousin spells her name both Ileen and Aileen in the records I’ve found thus far (and I’m praying that they aren’t actually two different people.)

On the upside, I suspect it’s also a clue – family lore has my great-great grandmother’s name as Ellen, could she perhaps also be Eileen? It may also reduce some research time as both names will likely show up in the same searches. Still, you can imagine the confusion that will arise as I search for information on the following people:

John Murray (my great-great grandfather)
John Henry Murray (my great granduncle)
Marshall Edward Murray (my great-grandfather)
Edward Marshall Murray (my grandfather)
John Coleman (my great-great grandfather)
John J. Coleman (my great granduncle)
John Coleman (my grandmother’s first cousin)
John Coleman (my grandmother’s brother)
Eileen Coleman Doheney (my grandaunt)
Ileen/Aileen Coleman (my grandmother’s first cousin)
Daniel Patrick Coleman (my great-grandfather)
Daniel Jerome Coleman (my granduncle)
Elizabeth O’Leary Coleman (my great-grandmother)
Elizabeth Coleman Murray (my grandmother)

Not confusing at all. Nope.

I think I need a glass of wine.

The Mystery of Mary Mullane

After hitting a couple of road blocks that required field trips during work days, I turned my attention to my grandfather Edward’s mother, Mary Mullane. I’d found a death record for her in 1940 and it gave her middle initial “J” and her mother’s maiden name as Manning. Armed with these bits of information, I sent off for her death certificate and then started looking elsewhere to see what I could find.

Having had success with the San Francisco city directories already, I started there to see if she might turn up. I found a Miss Mary J. Mullane living on Belcher Street in 1896 and 1897. There were quite a few other Mullanes at the same address, all men. My best guess is one is her father the rest are brothers, but which ones are which I can’t really tell. Having an address will make it easier for me to find her in the census records, so I head off to check out the 1900 census.

Huh. Well, this is weird. In 1900, Mary Mullane is still living at the address on Belcher, but now she’s Mary Hayes and she and her husband Edward Hayes are living with her brothers Joseph, Patrick, and Edward. Did I find a different person with the same name and about the same age or was my great-grandmother married twice? I decided to check the 1910 census, maybe Edward Hayes died? I find her again, though this time her husband is listed as Dennis E. Hayes and another brother, John, is living with them. Curious.

Maybe I’m wrong and I’ve found the wrong person. There aren’t a whole lot of Mullanes listed in the city directories though, and most of the ones that were listed were all in that house on Belcher in the late 1890s.

I decide to go looking for more information on Mary Mullane, and that means newspapers. First I checked the San Francisco Call on line and found a notice in the April 21, 1900 edition for marriage license issued to Denis E. Hayes and Mary J. Mullane on Belcher Street. I also stumble upon a death notice for a Mrs. Mary Mullane, who seems to be the mother of Mary J. Mullane. (Why, oh, why are there so many repeating names!) It lists her children as John, Mary, Joseph, Thomas, Phillip, and Patrick and mentions she is the niece of “J. Manning.” Seems to be the right family, but still…

Next stop, it’s off to the San Mateo library and the microfilm for the San Francisco Chronicle. Let’s see if her death notice provides any insight. There is no mention of Dennis Edward Hayes, which I didn’t expect, but there is a mention of two brothers, Phillip and Patrick. Those brothers show up in the death notice for Mrs. Mary Mullane and I can find them living at the same address on Belcher in the late 1890s, so the odds are I have found the right person.

So, if Mary Josephine Mullane was married to Dennis Edward Hayes as late as 1910, what happened? I haven’t been able to find a death notice for Mr. Hayes, but if I’ve found the right Mary Mullane she was married to Marshall Murray by 1914 when my grandfather Edward Murray was born.

I asked my father if he’d heard any stories of his grandmother having been married before, and he said he hadn’t. As I kept poking around I was aware that the 1940 census records were about to be released, so I decided to brush up on what information I could find there. I wasn’t really planning on mining much information from the 1940 census – I know a lot about the people that would likely turn up in it – but a bit of explanation caught my eye.

For all women who are or have been married:
·     Has this woman been married more than once? (Yes or No)
·     Age at first marriage.

Well, what do you know? So now I have a reason to look for the 1940 census. It won’t be as easily searchable right away, but I have the information I need and I should be able to find the right page to see if there is an answer to this question. My only fear is that the census enumerator didn't survey the Murray family before my great-grandmother Mary died in July 1940 and therefore the information got missed.

April 2, 2012, can’t wait!

Finding John Murray

When I first discovered my great-great grandmother Bridget Murray in the 1900 census, she was listed as a widow and living with her five children. Who was her husband? What happened to him? As I dug around in the records looking for Bridget, I found several possibilities for her husband. There was a James & Bridget Murray in the 1870 census, but that Bridget was a bit older than the one in 1900 and they had no children. There was a “Bridget Murray, widow (Thos.)” in the 1915 San Francisco City Directory, but is that the same Bridget I’d been tracking? The best option I found was a John and Bridget Murray in the 1870 census. The age for Bridget was about right and they had a son named John who was 1 year old, which would be about right for the John Henry I found in the 1900 census. Still, I needed to confirm which one of these candidates was the correct one.

When I found Bridget’s death notice in a 1907 edition of the San Francisco Call, I was able to eliminate two of my three candidates. According to the notice, she was the widow of John Murray. Excellent, that meant I could go back to the 1870 census record I’d found and try to determine if this was indeed the right John & Bridget Murray.

1870 Census Record for John & Bridget Murray
(ancestry.com)

When I looked at the 1870 census record, I jotted down all the information listed. John & Bridget and their son John Henry were living with another couple – John and Margaret Feechan. I could read that John Feechan was a shoemaker, but could not decipher the listed occupation for John Murray. I looked at the writing for the other records on the page and still couldn’t quite decipher the word. The best I could come up with was “Nephalstener” which made no sense whatsoever. Obviously there’s no such word as “nephalstener”, but maybe there’s some odd 19^th century occupation that I can’t quite figure out, maybe the “p” is an “f”, maybe it’s supposed to be two words? Well, that’s another item to figure out in the long list of things to figure out. While muddling over this, however, I did get further confirmation that I was on the right track when the death certificate I’d ordered for my great-grandfather Marshall arrived in the mail – his parents were listed as John Murray and Bridget McDonough.

Back to tracking down John in the census, I had discovered a second source for San Francisco City directories that included years not available at Ancestry.com, but the search function left much to be desired and meant a more manual search. I decided to start with the 1870 directory since that would hopefully match up with the census record. Unfortunately the 1870 census records didn’t include house addresses, so that meant logging all of the John Murrays in the directory and try to cross-reference them through the years. There were 17 John Murrays listed in the 1870 directory, but the 14^th entry was intriguing. This John Murray was living at the “corner of Leavenworth and Broadway” and was an upholsterer. Hmm, let’s look at that 1870 census again, could “nephalstener” actually be “upholsterer”? Now that I have a word to compare it to, it’s clear that it is upholsterer. To be extra sure that I’d found the right John Murray, I flipped back in the directory looking for John Feechan. I didn’t find a John Feechan, but I did find a John Feehan living at Leavenworth and Broadway. Well, it looks like I found the right one.

I followed John Murray through the years, but he disappears after 1891. In 1894 Bridget shows up as widow living on Tehama, which is where I found her in 1900. I haven’t located an 1893 directory yet and there are 5 different listings for “Bridget Murray, widow” in the 1892 directory but none are for addresses that I am certain are the right family. My best guess then is that John Murray died between 1891-1892.

Having found John Murray from the 1870s on, I decided to look backwards and see if I can figure out when he arrived in San Francisco. He first appears in 1867 working as mattress maker at the Occidental Laundry. Since I know he is married with a child by 1870, I wonder when he and Bridget met – was it in San Francisco or back in Ireland? Starting with the 1867 directory, I decide to look for Bridget under her maiden name, McDonough. Jackpot on the first try – Bridget McDonough is working as a laundress at the Occidental Laundry.

So now I’ve gotten more information and have time lines to search for other information. Each piece of the puzzle makes the picture clearer than it was before. Bridget McDonough and John Murray worked at the Occidental Laundry prior to September 1867 (the date the directory was published.) They were married with a one year old son by June of 1870 (when the census was taken), which makes it likely they were married in 1867 or 1868. There is one bit of curiosity though, neither John nor Bridget show up in the 1868 city directory, but John pops back up in the 1869-70 directory and appears consistently through 1891. Were they missed when the directory information was collected or were they living elsewhere that year? If they were living elsewhere, where were they and why?