Fuzzy Findings

I’ve been following several trails through the Murray family trying to figure out some unanswered questions.  Right now, the best I have are suppositions and guesses that need a bit more information to find out if I’m on the right track or if I’ve identified the wrong people.

For starters, one of the unanswered questions I have right now is who was Joseph’s wife?  He shows up in the 1920 census as married, but his wife isn’t living with him.  Who is she?  Where is she?  I’ve done some digging around in the city directories trying to find all of the Murray siblings between 1900 and 1920, and it’s rather hit or miss, especially when I’m trying to track John, Joseph and Mollie (Mary).  I’m never quite sure if the person I’ve found in the directory is the right one.

However, I did find a Joseph S. Murray working as a driver in 1911, which seems a good bet.  I can track him through to 1917, and from 1914-1917 he shows up with a wife named Agnes.  I’ve yet to find any record of their marriage, so I don’t know Agnes’ maiden name.  Despite not being certain this is the right Joseph, I did a search for Agnes Murray in the 1920 census to see if I could find her.  I found two that might fit.  The first Agnes Murray shows up living in San Francisco, but is single.  She is about 45 years old, from Scotland, and working as a cook.  Joseph Murray would have been about 40 years old in 1920, so it’s possible this is the right Agnes, but I don’t think it’s likely.  The second Agnes Murray shows up in Napa.  This Agnes is also about 45 years old, married, and was born in California.  She is also a patient at the Napa State Hospital.  I suspect this is the correct Agnes.  So, if this is the right Agnes and she was married to “my” Joseph S. Murray, what happened between 1917 and 1920 that would put her in the state mental hospital?  Historically, that would be the end of World War I and coincide with the flu epidemic of 1917-1918.  Could something have happened related to those events that would cause some kind of mental breakdown?  I’m not even certain what would cause someone to be hospitalized in the early 1900s when mental illness was no where nearly as well understood as it is today.  I’ve found what I believe is a death record for Agnes in Napa in about 1926, and need to do some more digging to see if I am on the right track.

Another avenue I am exploring is what happened to John Henry and Mollie?  I know that as of 1909, when Nellie died, they are both still living.  Mollie is probably unmarried in 1909, but that is about all I have figured out.  I have no idea where she was living or how she was supporting herself.  John Henry is an equal mystery.  Other than his name appearing in the death notices for Bridget and Nellie, I can’t find a definitive record of him after 1901.  Part of the problem is that by the 1910 census, the four surviving Murray siblings – John Henry, Mollie, Marshall, and Joseph – are all in their 30s and 40s and as best as I can tell unmarried.  Their parents are dead, so I’m looking for four single people living in a city of over 400,000 people.  That’s assuming they stayed living within the city borders.  Talk about a needle in a haystack!  I haven’t been able to find any of them for certain yet in the 1910 census, and the only thing I know for certain is that they are not living together.  The 1920 and 1930 censuses are even less help at least for John Henry and Mollie (and Joseph in 1930) since by then I don't even know if they are still living.

And then there are the McDonoughs.  I still have no idea if Thomas, Betsey, and/or Patrick McDonough are related to Bridget.  There are bits and pieces that point to Thomas and Betsey as possibly being family.  I believe I have found Thomas in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1858.  Betsey also shows up in Chelsea in 1870, though her name is listed as Beesey.  I know Bridget must have had some family in Chelsea as her death notice in the San Francisco Call asked that Chelsea, MA papers be copied, but I can’t find any definite connection between Thomas, Betsey/Beesey, and Bridget.  It’s also not clear if Betsey is a sister or a sister-in-law of Thomas, but I’m fairly certain that those two, at least, are related.  If they are related to Bridget, I do have Thomas’s parents’ names, which will be a world of help.  Patrick was a bit easier to trace through the records, but there is nothing I’ve found about him that would definitely tie him to any of the others.

I’m still waiting for an answer to my request for my great grandmother Mary Mullane’s death certificate, which I’m hoping will tell me what her parents’ names were.  That might help me unravel some of the Mullane mysteries.  I still can’t figure out if the Mary Mullane I found is my great grandmother and if it is what the heck happened to Edward Hayes.

Finally, there are the things I doubt I’ll ever find out.  In the 1900 and 1910 censuses, women were asked how many children they had and how many survived.  In the 1900 census, Bridget Murray said she had six children, five of whom survived.  Based on the ages of her children, I suspect there was a child born between Mollie and Marshall.  That would have been in about 1872, and since that child does not appear in the 1880 census record he or she would have died before then.  A similar situation exists with Sadie Coleman, my great grandfather Daniel’s sister-in-law.  She had three children who did not survive, one born between 1895-1900, the other two between 1900-1910.  I keep my eyes peeled for any of these lost children while I comb through newspaper records looking for other people, but the odds of me being able to find them are not good.

The more I search, the more I realize there is so much more to learn and that some of the information may be lost to time.  I have many library hours ahead of me as some of the information I’m looking for just isn’t easily found online.  And I’ve barely started on the Coleman/O’Leary side, so it’s about time to start digging further into Irish records to see what I can turn up.

1880 Census

As you may recall, the Murray family was missing in the 1880 census -- the pages I believed they were recorded on were missing from the microfilm. I sent an email to the National Archives in Washington, DC asking if they still existed and if so how I could obtain a copy. About a week later I received a reply that the original pages were not stored in DC and I should direct my query to the Missouri State Archives. This struck me as a bit odd, but I followed the link provided and submitted the query again. I got a response back that they only kept records for Missouri (which makes sense) and I should contact the California State Archives (which also makes sense.) 

I sent off my query for a third time, and on Wednesday I came home from work to find a message on my machine from the CA Secretary of State. They had found the pages and would send them to me at the address I had provided in my email request. Well, that sounds promising! (Not to mention surprising -- I expected to have to pay for copies!)  I didn't want to get my hopes up in case what was sent was the first four available pages (5-8) rather than the pages I was looking for (1-4.) 

I arrived home tonight to find an envelope from the CA Secretary of State in my mailbox, and inside were four sets of 11" x 17" pages stapled together in groups of two. I looked at the top of the first page, and found "Page No. 1, Enumeration District 196, San Francisco." Woo hoo! I scanned down the first page and saw Harry Place on lines 8-18 -- wow, they should appear on page 1! They're not on the first sheet, so I turn to the second sheet for lines 19-50. Line 20 -- there they are! John (age 38), works at a laundry, Bridget (37) is keeping house, John H. (11) and Mary A. (9) are at school, and Marshall E. (5) and Ellen A. (2) are at home. Joseph isn't born yet.

This confirms a few things for me, the first being that the 1870 census record that I found was indeed the right family. It looks like Mollie's proper name was Mary, so I'll have to keep searching on both names. Nellie apparently shaved a few years off her age when she married Edward Nelson since she shows up as 2 years old in June 1880. Since she was born in July, that would mean she was born in 1877, which is a year earlier than the age for her in the 1900 census. I have 8 other sheets of paper covering pages 2-4 of the Enumeration District and I plan to look them over to see if there are any other clues that might be useful. So glad to know I was on the right track and was able to find my family despite the missing records.

Death Certificate Discoveries and Disappointments

Back in February after I discovered the death notices for Bridget McDonough Murray and Ella (Nellie) Murray Nelson, I sent off for their death certificates in the hope that I could learn more about them. A couple of weeks ago I came home to find a plain white envelope from the Department of Public Health in my mailbox. I opened it up and saw that it was the death certificate for Nellie. As I read it over, I found that it had a lot of useful information.

According to the certificate, Nellie was born on July 4, 1883 which would have made her 25 when she died on March 4, 1909. According to the 1900 census record, she was born in July 1878 and figuring out her birth date is one of the things I was hoping to learn from the 1880 census record, but at least I have the day and a range for the year. According to the death certificate, she died in childbirth and from what I can decipher it doesn't appear that she delivered the child. Having spent a lot of time combing through the birth/marriage/death notice sections of the San Francisco Call, it didn't come as a surprise (and actually was what I suspected happened) as death in childbirth was fairly common. It's amazing how far we've come in the 100 or so years since Nellie's death. Where once it was commonplace for women to die in childbirth, it is now a rare circumstance (at least in the more developed parts of the world.)

I also learned that she and her husband Edward Nelson were living at the Overton Hotel in Santa Rosa, but had only been living in Santa Rosa for 4 months at the time of her death. I'll have to figure out where they were before then as I've yet to find a definitive record of them in San Francisco. I suspect Edward was working for the hotel because in the 1910 census I found a record for an Edward Nelson who is listed as widowed and is living with several other people with job titles like "porter" and "housekeeper." The death certificate also has Nellie's parents listed as John Murray and Bridget Donohue, but I suspect that is an error as the information would most likely have come from Edward. I'll make a note of it just in case though.

As you can see, there is a lot of information that can be learned from a single piece of paper. So you can imagine my excitement when, a week after Nellie's death certificate arrived I came home to find another plain white envelope from the Department of Public Health. When I opened it up the cover page informed me it was in response to my inquiry about Bridget Murray. Alas, when I turned to the second page I found it was a notice that the death certificate could not be found. Well darn. I had hoped that Bridget's death certificate would help identify her parents and thus allow me to dig up more on the McDonoughs. For now, I'll have to see if the other McDonoughs I've identified are relatives and try to track down the relative in Chelsea, Massachusetts and hope one of those will lead me to the family back in Ireland.

I've not given up all hope on finding Bridget's death certificate as I have found a record for her in the California Death Index for 1905-1939, so I hope that by requesting the record again and providing the additional information I found it will help dig up the record. It's still possible I'll be disappointed again and that the record has been lost in the 105 years since her death, but if there's one family trait that I've inherited it is Irish stubbornness!