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.

Kiss Me I'm Irish!

I haven't done much research since the holidays, so haven't had much to share here for a bit. With St. Patrick's Day upon us, I thought I'd do a quick look to see just how Irish I am. To date, none of my research on my paternal side has countered the belief that I am 100% Irish on that side. I believe I've identified all eight of my great great grandparents and all eight were born in Ireland.

On my maternal side, I have to go back an extra generation to my 3x great grandparents to find all the countries of origin. On that side, thanks to the research done by my uncle, we know that thirteen of my sixteen great great great grandparents were born in Ireland. I have two 3x great grandparents who were born in Germany and one who was born in Quebec, Canada. My French Canadian great great great grandfather Joseph Belduke married Mary Kiely who was born in Ireland. This makes my great great grandmother Emily Belduke half Irish and half French Canadian. (Getting all of the Quebecois back to France goes much further back than the rest of my ancestors as my uncle has manged to trace the Beldukes back to the early 17th Century. My 8x great grandfather Louis Bolduc was the first born on the North American continent in 1669!)

Add up the number of Irish (and half-Irish) great great grandparents on both sides of the family, and the total is 14.5 of 16. That makes me 90.63% Irish, 6.25% German, and 3.13% French Canadian. There's a scene in the movie "Stripes" where Bill Murray's character says "We're Americans... You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. ... We're mutts." And it's pretty much true -- Americans can trace their ancestry back to every corner of the world. So I have to admit, I'm pretty amazed that after having ancestors living in the United States for at least 100 years, that I am still overwhelmingly Irish American.

Between what my uncle has uncovered on my maternal side and what I have uncovered on my paternal side, I am able to trace my family back to seven of the 32 counties of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) -- Galway, Sligo, Cork, Tipperary, Tyrone, Down, and Roscommon. Those counties cover the North, West, and South points of the island and three of the four provinces. I still need to know where the Mullanes and Mannings originated and I'm not sure if my uncle has figured out where the Kennys are from (I don't have it in my records!)

More O'Learys?

Back in September, I started looking through the Irish Census records and the church records that are available on line for County Cork to start piecing together some of the O’Leary branch of the family tree. I started first looking for my great great grandparents Jeremiah O’Leary and Mary O’Looney. When I found them in the 1901 Irish Census, I culled the information available and added it to my database. Similarly, when I combed through the baptismal records looking for my great grandmother Lizzie O’Leary and her siblings, I added the information found there to my files.

Those searches gave me approximate birth years for my great great grandparents and possible aunts and uncles for my great grandmother. Using that information, I went back to the Irish Genealogy site that has the pre-1900 church records for Counties Cork, Kerry, and Carlow to see if I could track down more information on that group of ancestors. I started with Jeremiah O’Leary. According to the 1901 Census, he was 76 years old which means he was born in about 1825. I plugged his name and approximate birth year into the search engine for the Cork & Ross diocese church records, and up popped 34 baptismal records. Not all were for a child named Jeremiah O’Leary, so I immediately eliminated them. That left me with five possibilities, only one of which was in Ballinhassig (the parish where my great grandmother and her siblings were baptized.) The other parishes I found were Kilmurry, Ovens & Aglis, and Cork South Parish. I looked at the record for the Jeremiah (Jerry) O’Leary who was baptized in the Ballinhassig parish first. His parents’ names were Timothy O’Leary and Joney Neville, so I used that information to see if I could find any siblings that matched up with the names I had found as godparents to my great grandmother and her siblings. I didn’t find any certain siblings. Hmmm. If my guess that the godparents for my great grandmother and her siblings were aunts and uncles, I needed to find a Patrick and Edmund O’Leary. Mary O’Leary was another possibility, but as she and Edmund were both godparents of my great grandmother’s brother (also named Edmund) I suspect Mary is Edmund’s wife.

What I needed was a map. While I’ve visited Ireland, I am not familiar enough with the geography beyond a general knowledge of where the various counties are. The parishes (both civil and religious) and towns are harder to identify without a map. Unfortunately, the Irish Genealogy site doesn’t have a map of the various parishes, so I had to go search for one. I was able to find a variety of maps at the Irish Times. It would be easier to work out which parishes border each other if the Catholic parishes map weren’t broken into three regions, but from what I could work out Ballinhassig parish is bordered by Ballincollig, Innishannon, Clountead, Douglas and Carrigaline parishes. None of those turned up in my search for Jeremiah, but I did notice the parish Ovens located next to Ballincollig. I had a Jeremiah O’Leary baptized in the parish of Ovens & Aglis in my search, that seemed like a good one to check out, so I clicked on his record. His parents were John O’Leary and Joan Mulcahy. I searched again using those options and found an Edmund O’Leary whose parents were named John O’Leary and Joannah Mulcahy who was baptized in the Ovens & Aglis parish in 1829. Hmmm. Joan and Joannah are fairly close, and Edmund O’Leary was one of the godparents I found.

While I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, it’s a strong possibility, so I noted down all the information in both baptismal records for Jeremiah and Edmund. I’ll have to do some more digging to see if I can confirm this find, which will definitely be challenging without census records, but hopefully some of the census alternates will prove helpful.

I had no luck searching for a Patrick O’Leary who was about the same age as my great great grandfather Jeremiah. There were several, but none with the same parents or in the same parish.  Perhaps Patrick was a cousin instead of a brother or maybe the record is missing. I don’t have enough information to know either way yet.

Having had reasonable luck with Jeremiah, I turned to my great great grandmother Mary O’Looney.  According to the 1901 census, she was 58 years old which would have her born in about 1843. Nothing turned up with that information, so I looked at the 1911 Census record. The Mary O’Leary I found there is a 73 year old widow which would have her born in about 1838. I tried that date, again no luck. I tried searching with out a date, which gave me many more options and the ability to filter by parish and decade. I found a Mary Looney baptized in February 1835 in Ballinhassig parish. This might be a possibility. Her parents were named Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson.

As I did with Jeremiah, I did a search on those two last names to see if I could come up with any of the suspected siblings. I came up with 6 names – all children of Timothy Looney and Lydia Johnson in Ballinhassig parish: Mary Looney (17 Feb 1835), Lidia Luony (24 Jan 1837), Timothy Luony (15 April 1838), Eliza Luony (31 March 1841), Margaret Looney (13 June 1847), and George Looney (30 Nov 1852.)  I had found an Eliza Looney in the baptismal records as the godmother of my great great grandmother’s brother William.

Again, I’m not completely certain I’ve found the right family, but it is a strong possibility and I’ve noted all of the information I found. I definitely have some digging to do this year to see if I can find any other information that will support these finds.

I’ve yet to do the same kind of searching on the Colemans, but have that on my to do list for this year as well. That to do list is getting longer by the day!