Other O'Learys

After having found some O’Leary relatives in California, I went to look back to see what I could find in Ireland. I had learned that my great great grandparents were Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney, so I plugged those names into my family tree and did a search of Irish birth records looking for my great grandmother Elizabeth O’Leary. What I had been told by Aunt Margaret was that Lizzie had two brothers and two sisters, so I expected to find some siblings when I searched on Lizzie’s name. What I didn’t expect was to find was SEVEN siblings!

The Irish Births and Baptisms database I found on Ancestry.com let me search for children of Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney born between 1865 and 1885. My first searches came up with too many names to easily sort through, so I narrowed my search to include only children whose father’s first name was Jeremiah and were born in county Cork. That gave me a much shorter list to look through and what I found was the following:

John Leary, born 16 Jan 1865, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

William Leary, born 12 Feb 1867, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Ellen Leary, born 4 April 1869, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Edmund Leary, born 23 December 1870, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Eliza Leary, born 18 March 1873, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Mary Leary, born 29 April 1876, Ballincollig, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney

Jeremiah Leary, born 1 September 1877, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Leary Looney

Daniel Leary, born 25 June 1880, Ballincolby, Cork, Ireland; parents Jeremiah Leary and Mary Looney Leary

I didn’t find an Arthur O’Leary as referenced in Ellen’s death notice, but now there were five names that didn’t match up with the information I had. I had Lizzie’s two sisters as Ellen and Polly, but this shows them as Ellen and Mary. Based on my experience with Mary/Mollie Murray, I suspect Mary is Polly’s given name. So, that would explain the sisters.  What about all these brothers though? There are five when I expected to find only two, and only one matches up with the names I had. It’s possible that Arthur is one of the brothers I’ve found who went by a different (middle?) name or there’s one more sibling I’ve yet to find. The birthplace definitely matches up with the family history and the dropping of the “O” in O’Leary and O’Looney isn’t anything surprising, so I’m sure I’ve got the right family.

Well this is a surprising find indeed. A good thing to do then would be to check the Irish censuses. One small problem with that however – there is no census information available for Ireland prior to 1901. The records were all destroyed. Fantastic. The other issue is that these records I’ve found are extracted records. That means that volunteers copying from microfilm and other original records compiled the database but there isn’t a way to view the original records directly on line (at least that I’ve found yet.) It’s quite possible that some of these records are transcribed incorrectly.

I’ve yet to go completely through the two Irish censuses that are available for 1901 and 1911, but I have found what I believe are records for Jeremiah and Mary in 1901 and another record in 1911. According to the 1901 census, Jeremiah O’Leary was 76 years old and working as a farmer. Mary O’Leary was 58 and their daughter Mary (Polly?) was 21. That is four years younger than the Mary/Polly I found in the baptismal records, but close enough to probably be the right family. There were also 11 lodgers/boarders living with the family. Two soldiers and their wives, one with a daughter; three men that I’m guessing were farm hands (their occupations are listed as “groom” and “joiner”); and a young widow and her two children. The original form lists the O’Learys with the “O”, however Jeremiah signs the form as the head of the family, and he omitted the “O” in his signature. That would match up with the baptismal records then.

I couldn’t find Jeremiah in the 1911 census, so I looked for Mary. I found a Mary O’Leary living in Ballincollig who was listed as age 73 and is a widow living with her daughter Marianne, age 30. Again, the ages are a bit off, so I’m not completely certain. Also, according to the record, this Mary O’Leary had given birth to six children and all six were still living. I found eight children, so that’s a conflict. This Mary is working as a shopkeeper, so I’ll have to puzzle this one out a bit. And, of course, I'll have to see if I can find the five O'Leary brothers in the Irish Censuses.

A few other things to consider. According to Aunt Margaret, Lizzie’s brother Jeremiah fought in World War I. He was born in 1877. World War I started in 1914 when he would have been 37 years old. That seems a bit old to be joining the military. It’s possible he was already in the military when the war broke out. I should probably add studying Ireland’s involvement in World War I to the list of things I need to learn more about. Also, one of these brothers is the father of Dennis O’Leary whose wife and twin daughters were invited to my parents’ wedding in 1965, but which one?

As always, answering one question opens up the door to many more questions. I look forward to delving more into these.

Onward with the O’Learys

As I mentioned in my last post, I managed to get a couple of leads to start tracing out some of my O’Leary relatives. I decided to start with the names from the invitation list to my parents’ wedding in 1965. Who were A. Ford and J. Ford and what could I find out about Catherine Dwyer and Mrs. Dennis O’Leary?

My first step was to take a closer look at the items I had taken from my parents’ house. The card from Mrs. Dennis O’Leary was signed May O’Leary and said that she and her twin daughters would be attending the wedding. Okay, so that’s four people to find: Dennis O’Leary, who presumably has died by 1965, May O’Leary, and their twin daughters. I plugged the information I had into my family tree and went on to the next. Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford also responded to the wedding invitation that they would both attend, but their daughter would be unable to join the festivities. The card was signed Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, so no full name, but another initial. I plugged them into the family tree also. Mrs. Catherine Dwyer also accepted the invitation, but by 1965 she appears to be widowed. There wasn’t a card from Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford, but they and their daughter were on the invitation list, so I entered their information too.

Before I continue, I should pause to mention that I decided when I started this blog not to mention any living people directly by name.  Now I’m at a point where I am discovering some of my father’s second cousins and as such they are probably within 10 years or so in age of my father, which means in all likelihood a good number of them are still living. Until or unless I have sufficient evidence to prove otherwise, these cousins will be referred to indirectly (e.g. Dennis O’Leary’s twin daughters.) While it is possible that some of Nana’s cousins are still living, they would all be near 100 years old or more so I’m figuring that it’s not likely.

Once I entered the information I had, I headed off to take a look at the San Francisco City Directory for 1965. This is different than the phone book that just lists name, address, and phone number for the registered owner of the telephone. The city directories often listed spouses’ names and occupations as well as home and often work addresses. A very useful tool that I was surprised to discover continued into the early 1980s! I was able to find J. Ford quickly – his full name was John J. Ford and his wife’s name was Verna and he worked for E.F. Hutton & Co. Using this information I was able to check census records to learn that in addition to the daughter that was invited to my parents wedding, they also had a son. I’ve not found out much yet on these two beyond their names and approximate birth dates.

There were several different possibilities for Mr. & Mrs. A. P. Ford, but none of the names I found in the city directory matched up with the address I had, so I decided to go back a bit further. I knew he was the son of Ellen O’Leary and the brother of John J. Ford, so I searched the census records and I found the Ford family in the 1920 census. This helped quite a bit. A.P. Ford is Arthur Ford and he was born in about 1913. John J. Ford is his older brother, born in about 1905 and they had a sister, Catherine, born in about 1906. Ah-ha! Catherine Dwyer is likely Catherine Ford! Their father’s name is also John J. Ford, born in about 1868 in Ireland. The elder John Ford worked as a galvanizer.

I haven’t been able to identify Arthur Ford’s wife as yet, but know that they had at least one child, the daughter who was invited to my parents’ wedding. I’ve also been unable to identify Catherine Ford Dwyer’s husband, but it’s been entertaining looking for him as I keep hitting records for my Dwyer grandparents and great grandparents! My mother says that there is no direct relation to her Dwyers and Catherine’s husband, and she’s probably right at least as far as we can easily identify, but perhaps somewhere in the far distant past there is a common root. I haven’t been able to learn if Catherine and Mr. Dwyer had any children.

My next search was for Dennis and May O’Leary. Since they were living in Burlingame (or at least May and her daughters were) in 1965, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find them in the San Francisco City Directory, so I worked with what I knew and looked for twin girls named O’Leary that were about my father’s age. It took a few tweaks to find them as they were a bit younger than I thought, but in looking for them I was able to find four older brothers. Having these brothers enabled me to find Dennis in the 1940 census where three of the four boys also appear.  Dennis was born in about 1907 in Ireland, unlike Nana and her Ford cousins who were all born in San Francisco.

As I was gathering more information on the Ford family, I was able to find a death record for Ellen O’Leary Ford that came from a collection of San Francisco funeral home records. Ellen died in 1932, and when I found this record I was working on my iPad, so the image file attached to the record was hard to read. When I took a look at the image on my computer I learned two things. First, that Ellen died from second and third degree burns over one half of her body area. That seriously stunned me for a bit. As I’ve been going through the family tree I’ve been finding out how various relatives died and for the most part they’re fairly common causes: childbirth, heart attack, etc. But second and third degree burns? What an awful and painful way to die. I am going to assume there was some kind of house fire as that would seem to be the most likely cause, and will definitely start digging through old newspapers to see if I can learn more about that.

The second thing I learned from the death record I found for Ellen was much more mundane, but definitely useful. There was a clipping of her death notice from the San Francisco Examiner and it said she was the “dearly beloved wife of John J. Ford, loving mother of John J. Jr., Arthur Patrick, and Catherine H. Ford. and beloved sister of Arthur O’Leary and Mrs. D. Coleman.” Ah-ha! I’ve found the missing brother!

Or at least, that’s what I thought. I’d yet to begin searching on my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. What I’ve found in those searches has me a bit more puzzled. We’ll save that for another post.

O’Learys and O’Looneys – Oh My!

After about seven months of working on my family tree, I decided it was time to see what I could find out about my grandmother’s side of the family. Nana was born Elizabeth Coleman, the fourth child of Daniel Coleman and Elizabeth (Lizzie) O’Leary. Daniel was a merchant sailor who eventually became a ship’s captain, and, according to family lore, his father John Coleman was a lighthouse keeper in Kinsale, Ireland.  Lizzie O’Leary was born in Ballincollig, Ireland and was about 10 years younger than Daniel. Again according to family lore, Lizzie’s brother was a schoolteacher who worked with Daniel’s sister Margaret and they were introduced to each other via their siblings. The story also goes that Daniel courted Lizzie for about 10 years before they were married. According to census records I found, Daniel was living in San Francisco by 1900 and Lizzie joined him there in 1904. I found a record of their marriage license in the San Francisco Call dated July 12, 1904 (which is also how I learned my great grandmother went by the name “Lizzie”.) I’m not certain where in San Francisco Lizzie and Daniel were married, but again going on family lore, think it was St. Phillip’s.

According to the stories told by Aunt Margaret (Nana's sister), Lizzie had two brothers and two sisters and she was in the middle. Her older sister Ellen married a Mr. Ford, younger sister Polly remained in Ireland. Her older brother (name unknown) was the schoolteacher who introduced her to Daniel and her younger brother Jeremiah fought in World War I and died shortly thereafter while living with Lizzie and Daniel when they were in New Jersey.

That was everything I knew when I started out looking in to the O’Leary side of the family tree. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I was recently contacted by one of my father’s Coleman cousins who is also looking into the family tree, and her questions about what I knew prompted me to do two things: (1) ask if she knew the names of Lizzie’s parents and (2) dig up some of my notes. I was delighted when she responded with the names of my great great grandparents – Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. (O’Looney?  Well, that certainly explains a few things about the family!) That will help a bunch in trying to dig up some records from Ireland.

Getting in to my notes, one I found was an email I’d sent to my mother several months ago asking about digging in to her wedding invitation list to see if there were any relatives on Dad’s side of the family that I should look in to. I called Mom to ask if I could come over and look for the list. Mom said she didn’t think she had a list of who she invited to her wedding, but I knew I had seen one several years ago when I was putting together a scrapbook for her and my father’s 40^th wedding anniversary.

I went over to my parents’ house and Mom was convinced that there was no such list, but she’d help me go through some of the boxes she had stored in the closet of my old bedroom. We pulled out the boxes that looked most likely to have what I was looking for – the repurposed shoe and gift boxes – rather than the nice photo boxes. The first couple of boxes didn’t have what I was looking for, but the third box I opened had a repurposed plastic bag that was filled with cards. I pulled one out and it was a congratulatory card for my parents’ wedding; other cards were responses to the wedding invitation. Okay, maybe what I remembered finding was this bag of cards and not a list of names. I started digging through the cards and asking Mom who people were for names I didn’t recognize. I soon found a card from a Mrs. Dennis O’Leary who lived in Burlingame. Bingo! When I spoke to another of my father’s cousins a few months ago, she mentioned visiting “some O’Leary cousins in Burlingame.” I set that card aside and kept digging through the bag. A few more cards came out that my mom identified as “someone your dad invited” and I set those aside too. Towards the bottom of the bag I pulled out several sheets of paper. A-ha! I’d found it, the invitation list I had remembered seeing a few years ago. The reason my mom didn’t remember it was because it wasn’t the list of everyone invited to their wedding, but the list that Nana had given her for Dad’s side of the family! Woo hoo! This was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. There were actually two versions of the list – one that Nana had written out by hand (that also had hand written notes by my mother and someone else – either my father or his older brother from the handwriting) and one that was typed up. There were also a couple of other, shorter lists, but those names were mostly family friends.

I scanned over the list and noted the first page was mostly names I knew – Nana’s brother and sisters and their families and a couple of family friends. Page two had a couple of interesting names – Mr. & Mrs. A. Ford and Mr. & Mrs. J. Ford. These should be Ellen’s sons, Nana’s first cousins. I also had the address for Mrs. Catherine Dwyer who was not a relative from my mother’s side of the family, but a cousin of Nana’s. Three names of people I knew to be Nana’s cousins, complete with addresses for 1965. Woo hoo a place to start searching!

The handwritten list is 4 pages long with about fifty names written on it, about half of whom I recognize. The other half I’ll have to figure out with my parents and then start digging on the names that we can’t readily identify. I did get a start on the three names and addresses I had and think I have found about two dozen O’Leary relatives who are about my parents ages or younger. I’ve also done some preliminary searching on Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney and may have some interesting information there too.  More on these items in another post!