Discovering the Rosses

When I started working on my paternal family tree research in early 2012 I found a lot of information about the Murray and Mullane branches of my tree. After a while, I turned my attention to Ireland to investigate the Colemans and O'Learys which included learning my great great grandfather Jeremiah O'Leary married a woman named Mary Looney. I managed to discover quite a bit of information about the Colemans, O'Learys, and (O)Looneys, but for some reason I never dug into the Ross branch of the tree.

My great great grandfather John Coleman was married to a woman named Ellen Ross. All I really knew about her was that she had died in childbirth and John eventually remarried which led to my great grandfather Daniel Coleman to join the English navy at fourteen. By finding baptismal records for John and Ellen's children and then a record for John's second marriage, I was able to determine Ellen died sometime between 1861 when her last child was born and 1865 when John remarried. I rather left things like that for quite some time with the only new information I uncovered being John and Ellen's marriage record in 1850.

While talking with one of my Coleman cousins recently, she mentioned she had some information on the Ross tree that she had discovered by checking out another family tree on Ancestry. I usually stay away from those trees as many of them are poorly sourced and just link in circles to other trees with no supporting documentation, but I went and checked out the tree she had mentioned and found it to be reasonably well sourced. Upon close inspection, it identified one of her brothers as Alexander Ross. I had seen that name before in Ellen and John's marriage record. That gave me reasonable confidence that this was the right family, and I started going through the details.

Ellen's parents were named Coleman Ross (go figure!) and Mary Walsh and she was one of ten children. (The tree I found on line listed eleven children, but one sister wasn't sourced like the others and I have yet to find any information about her, so I've deleted her from my tree for the time being.) The children I was able to identify with baptismal records were:

• Alexander Ross (b Mar 1828)
• Patrick Ross (b Feb 1829)
• John Ross (b Jan 1830)
• Michael Ross (b Feb 1831)
• Daniel Ross (b Dec 1834)
• Ellen Ross (b Dec 1835)
• Anne Ross (b Mar 1837)
• Clement Ross (b Aug 1839)
• Catherine Ross (b Jan 1841)
• Elizabeth Ross (b June 1843)

That's a lot of new people to follow up on and see what new information I can find. The only thing that gives me pause is Ellen's birth year in 1835. That would mean she was fourteen and a half when she married John Coleman in July 1850, which is a little young. However, that date coincides closely with the Great Famine (or Irish Potato Famine) that ran through the late 1840s, so that may have played a role in things.

I haven't spent a lot of time on this branch of the tree yet and will need to dig into Ellen's siblings to see if I can learn more. So far, I have only discovered Ellen's sister Elizabeth's marriage record to a man named Thomas Ogden.

The online tree also identified Coleman Ross's parents and siblings, but they are not sourced like Coleman Ross's family, so while I copied the names to see if I could find matches, I am taking the information I found with a big grain of salt. Per the online tree, Coleman's father was named Alexander Ross and was born in Scotland. That does match up with some family lore that Ellen's family was originally from Scotland, but there is no evidence supporting Alexander's birth or arrival in Ireland, so it's still supposition. Still, if the information in that tree is correct, Alexander and Ellen had six children:

• John Ross (b 1785)
• Coleman Ross (b 1789)
• Margaret Ross (b 1792)
• Alexander Ross, Jr. (b 1798)
• David Ross (b 1800)
• Mary Ross (b 1801)

The birth year for Coleman appears to be correct as I found a death record for him from 1873 indicating he was 84 when he died, but there are no records to document anything about the siblings. Since they were all born in the late 1700s and early 1800s, it may be difficult to find much about them. I have managed to find a little bit of information on a couple of Coleman's siblings thus far. Both Alexander and John appear in the Irish Tithe Applotment Books between 1823-1837 and are living in the same area as where the rest of the known Ross family appears. I actually found two records for an Alexander Ross in the 1825 Tithe Applotment records which indicate they leased land within about a mile of each other. That leads me to believe one may be Alexander, Sr. and the other is Alexander, Jr. That is reinforced by the notation for one Alexander as "Alex'r Ross (No. 2)", though it is possible it could just reference two plots of land leased by the same Alexander Ross. Alexander Ross, Sr. would likely be in his mid-60s or early 70s in 1825, so not out of the realm of possibility. John Ross's plot of land appears on the same record as Alexander Jr.'s, so I'm guessing they were nearby each other. I haven't found any maps to indicate where any of the plots of land are, but I haven't dug into that much yet either.

So, I have some leads on the Ross branch of the tree and that looks like it will be my 2019 project. It will be interesting to see what I can and can't prove based on the information gained so far. With dates going into the late 1700s, it may be challenging to find anything one way or the other with out actually going to Ireland, but I have found a few records so far that are helpful and may give me some more insight to others. If I can connect Alexander Ross, Sr. back to Scotland, that may be promising as there are more Scottish records than Irish in the time frame I'm interested in.

DNA Update

At the end of 2017, my father asked that I get an Ancestry DNA test for him and since that was something I had been wanting to do myself I also got a test for myself. When the results arrived early last year, they turned out pretty much as expected -- Dad and I are pretty definitively Irish.

The test results were broken down into regions, and my test came back with the following breakdown:

• 83% -- Ireland/Scotland/Wales
• 13% -- Great Britain
• 2% -- Europe South
• 1% -- Europe West
• <1% -- Caucasus
• <1% -- Scandanavia

Recently, Ancestry updated their databases which resulted in revising areas and adjusting the test results accordingly. My new breakdown looks like this:

• 97% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 3% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe

Gone are the trace regions and I'm even more Irish than I "used to" be. Again, none of these results are surprising. The three percent that covers England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe is likely the French and German parts of my ancestry as the regions my ancestors came from are covered in the regional map Ancestry uses. The most interesting breakdown is in the 97% Irish segment. In the original breakdown, it indicated that I had a strong connection to the Munster region of Ireland. Munster is the southern province of Ireland and encompasses County Cork where I know quite a few of my ancestors were born. The new breakdown, is more specific about which areas of Munster I am connected to -- North Munster, North and East Cork, North Cork, North Kerry and North Cork. The "North and East Cork" bit encompasses the area around Kinsale and Ballincollig which is where I know my great grandfather Daniel Coleman and great grandmother Lizzie O'Leary were born. The "North Munster" bit encompasses Tipperary, which is where my great great grandfather James Dwyer was born. The "North Kerry and North Cork" bit is interesting since as of this writing I haven't identified any ancestors from County Kerry. My great great grandmother Margaret McAuliffe was born in County Cork, but I don't know exactly where, so that might be her branch of the tree. It could also be a hint to the Mannings or Mullanes since I haven't determined where in Ireland they came from yet. The Kennys are also a branch that hasn't been narrowed down beyond Ireland, but I've not spent much time on that branch of the tree.

Along with learning about these breakdowns, several of my aunts, uncles, and cousins have taken the Ancestry DNA test as well. It's fun getting notices about a "close relative" match and sending a text or email off to the matching person with a joking "I guess we are family." However, because of this my mother's older brother, who has been researching the Dwyer/Kenny side of the family for the last 25 years, sent a note to those of us who have taken the test explaining who some of the matches are. One match is a descendant of Winifred Gallagher who was the younger sister of my great great grandmother Elizabeth (Bessie) Gallagher. Winifred married a man named Robert Coleman, and when my uncle discovered this he contacted me to see if there might be a connection to my Colemans. The Gallaghers are from County Roscommon, which is in the northwestern part of Ireland -- nowhere near County Cork where my Colemans are from. Still there was an outside chance Robert Coleman was connected to my Coleman ancestors, so with the new information from the DNA tests, I hopped over to my father's test results to see if there was a match to the same person. No such luck, but even a no match is a good result. Now we know my Colemans and Robert Coleman aren't related (though, admittedly, it's still possible there's a much further back connection than the tests can identify at this time.)

Finally, I did check my father's new results to see what change might have popped up for him. Since his initial results showed he was pretty much Irish, I didn't expect to see a whole lot of variation, and I didn't. His original test results came back as:

• 93% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 3% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe
• 1% -- Finland/Northwest Russia
• <1% -- Scandinavia
• <1% -- Middle East

The new results are:

• 98% -- Ireland and Scotland
• 2% -- England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe

So, yep, Dad is still about as Irish as you can get. His Munster province breakdown is similar to mine, only adding "Southwest Munster" which is mostly the southern parts of Counties Cork and Kerry, which gives some hint that there is a possible link to County Kerry in the Manning/Mullane part of our family tree since we know the Murrays are from Galway, the McDonoughs are from Sligo, and the Colemans and O'Learys are from Cork. Perhaps somewhere down the line the DNA test will find a match with one of my Manning/Mullane relatives and we can figure out where everyone came from.

Grandparents' Day: Donald Joseph Dwyer

Last year, just as I was about to make a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, I saw a note that it was Grandparents' Day. Since a grilled cheese sandwich was my usual lunch whenever I was visiting my Dwyer grandparents, I also whipped up the required chocolate milkshake to accompany my sandwich. As I was eating lunch, it occurred to me that I should have written a post about my grandparents for Grandparents' Day. I ran out of time then, so decided to spend some time working on individual posts about each of my grandparents. This is the first of those post and, right now, the plan is to schedule one to run each Grandparents' Day over the next several years. (Grandparents Day officially falls on the Sunday after Labor Day here in the United States.) I decided to start with my maternal grandfather, Donald Joseph Dwyer (or just Grandpa to me), as he was my last living grandparent.

Grandpa was born in San Francisco on March 22, 1910 to Ignatius Dwyer and Mabel Theler Dwyer. Grandpa was their second, and last, child and was a couple months shy of three years younger than his sister Elise. Grandpa's earliest years were spent growing up in the then heavily Irish Mission District, but by 1918 the Dwyers had moved to the brand new development of Westwood Park and were the proud owners of 101 Westwood Drive. Westwood Drive would play a large role in the Dwyer family through the years, and still does today. The annual family football pool is called the Westwood Challenge and is filled with the descendants of Don Dwyer and his sister Elise Dwyer Pendergast.

Grandpa 1932, Cal grad

Grandpa attended St. Ignatius High School which was located at Hayes and Schrader Streets when he graduated in 1928. St. Ignatius would also eventually see his oldest son and three grandsons, though at different locations. After graduating from SI, Grandpa moved on to college at the University of California at Berkeley. During his freshman year he noticed a pretty girl on the ferry from San Francisco to Berkeley and eventually asked her out. That girl was Mary Audley Kenny. They dated throughout their years at Cal and eventually married on August 4, 1936. Don and Audley went on to have six children (four girls, two boys), seventeen grandchildren, and (at last count) 23 great-grandchildren. They were married for 59 years until Grandma died in 1995 from complications of Alzheimer's Disease.

Grandpa worked as an assayer for the United States Mint beginning in 1936. His first year was spent working out of what is now called "The Old Mint" on 5th Street in downtown San Francisco, before moving to the new building on Hermann Street, which is still in operation. The Old Mint was the second mint built in San Francisco and opened in 1874 after the original mint proved to be too small for the volume of gold and coins it was handling. It is one of a few buildings to survive the 1906 Earthquake and Fire and was designated as an historical landmark in 1961.

Grandpa & Grandma wedding
photo 1936

Growing up, I always knew that Grandpa had been an assayer, but did not know what that meant. Whenever I asked my mom "What did Grandpa do?" her response was always "He was an assayer." but could never explain what, exactly, an assayer DID. We visited Philadelphia last year and were able to visit the US Mint and take a self directed tour. One floor had an interactive display on how coins were made with windows that looked down on the production floor where various machines were cranking out different coins (we saw a LOT of pennies!) and along this display was a brief explanation of what assayers do (both currently and in the past.) After all these years, I finally had an idea what Grandpa did for a living! (Of course, now I've completely forgotten it, but I did know for a couple of days at least!) Grandpa retired from the Mint in 1970 and he and Grandma spent time in the late 1970s and 1980s taking tours around the US.

So, that's Grandpa's basic biography, but doesn't really describe the man who called me "chum." My mother went back to work in 1972 after taking a few years off after my brother and I were born, so we spent a lot of that year at Grandma and Grandpa's whenever both of our parents were working. I started school in 1973, so days at Grandma and Grandpa's were less frequent, but we spent a lot of weekends at the house at 2 Upland Drive when our parents enjoyed a weekend away, usually in Monterey.

Grandma & Grandpa's 50th
Anniversary party 1986

My favorite memories of those times are really just small little moments. Sitting outside on the stairs in front of the house and chatting with a neighbor and having Grandpa come outside and say "How're you doing, chum?"; driving down to Ocean Avenue in the front seat of Grandpa's red Ford Fairlane to get a special treat of Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner; sweeping up the tobacco Grandpa would spill all over the house from his pipe. (Okay, that might be more of a Grandma memory as she's the one who handed me the hand broom and dust pan and told me to sweep.) Grandpa's pipe is probably his most defining personal item. He smoked it for most of his adult life and the smell of Half and Half tobacco is still a fond memory. Despite spending a chunk of my childhood nagging my mother to quit smoking cigarettes, Grandpa's pipe never seemed to be a problem. I even remember buying him a can of tobacco for a Christmas present when I was in my teens (how I was able to do that I have no idea.)

Another defining memory of Grandpa is his love for the local sports teams. Grandpa was a die-hard San Francisco 49er and San Francisco Giants fan. He loved cheering on those great 1980s Niners with Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, and well I could probably name every player from those days and so could Grandpa. As much as Grandpa loved the Niners, it was baseball that was his first love. In the years before the Giants moved to San Francisco from New York, he was a tried and true fan of the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals. When the Giants came to town, he had regular tickets to see Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, and Juan Marichal. He'd take my mother and her siblings along from time to time and passed on his love of baseball to them who in turn passed it on to their children. And while I don't specifically remember it, I'm sure many of those days spent at Grandma and Grandpa's had Lon Simmons calling Giants games in the background while Grandpa worked on his daily crossword puzzle.

One of my strongest memories of Grandpa is a rainy weekend spent at the house on Upland Drive when I was about 10 years old. Grandpa had just bought a new all in one stereo system that in addition to the usual radio tuner and record player (no, we didn't call it a turntable then) included both an 8-track tape player (wow!) and a cassette recorder (double wow!) By modern standards (and probably even by 1970s standards) it was a pretty low tech system, but it was new and fancy for Grandma and Grandpa! Because it was a rainy weekend, I'm sure my brother and I were driving Grandma crazy since we were stuck inside all day, so we decided to test out the new cassette recorder by having Grandpa recite some poems for us and record them. Grandpa had memorized poems by Robert Service and others when he was a school boy, but my favorite was always his reciting of "Casey at the Bat." Grandpa recited that and a few others and my brother and I managed to make a mess of a couple of recordings and the tape was put away after playing it for my parents when they returned home from their trip.

Me & cousins D & D
with Grandpa on his 88th birthday

In 1989, Grandpa went through a bout of throat cancer after decades of smoking a pipe. After he came through treatment with a clean bill of health, Grandpa decided to buy a new car. This turned into a boon for me as I then wound up with his red 1967 Ford Fairlane as my first car. The car was enormous by 1990 standards and had a few quirks (leaky transmission and no functioning radio) but with a V-8 engine that car could fly. Of course, it took a bit to actually get up to freeway speeds, but once it did it was great fun to drive. I drove it for about a year and a half until keeping it maintained for my daily commute got to be too much trouble and passed it along to my brother. About a year later he crashed it into a tree, which was about the only thing that could do much damage to that car, and it was deemed a total loss. Grandpa was not happy with me.

The last ten years of Grandpa's life were a bit tough. Grandma was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in about 1991 and soon afterward the family had to move her to a board and care facility as it was too difficult to care for her at home. Grandpa was very lonely after Grandma went into care, and when Grandma died in October 1995, most of the family thought Grandpa would surely follow soon. Surprisingly, Grandpa lived another four and a half years, until June 2000. He had a lot of different health problems over those years, including a heart attack in 1999, but ultimately it was just time that caught up with him.

My parents had planned a trip to Italy in June of 2000, and they went, with Grandpa's encouragement, even though they knew it was possible Grandpa might not live to hear about their trip. Sure enough, a few days after Mom and Dad left for Italy, Mom's younger sister called me to say Grandpa didn't have much more time. I took the next afternoon off and went up to the house on Upland to visit and say my final farewell. Grandpa was still awake when I arrived, but I'm not sure he knew who I was. He drifted off to sleep not long after, so I sat and visited with a couple of my aunts and uncles who were also at the house. I was telling them about attending the Giants Opening Day at the brand new Pac Bell Park (now AT&T Park) and my trip to Boston where I got to attend a game at Fenway Park. As the conversation wound on, suddenly a voice came from the bed behind me -- "Bye bye baby!" Grandpa had called out Russ Hodges' famed home run call. It was the last thing he'd ever say. I kissed him goodbye that evening knowing it was for the last time.

Grandpa died early on the morning of June 9 and my aunt called me about 6:30 that morning to let me know. I called my mom in Italy to let her know and then went in to work briefly so I could tie a few things up before taking a few days off to help the family with arrangements. My aunt mentioned to me that my mom had found the recording Grandpa had made with me and my brother back in 1979 recently and asked me to find it at my parents' house so one of my cousins could use it for a memorial slide show. I found it and listened to it for the first time in 20 years and got a huge smile on my face as I remembered that rainy weekend listening to Grandpa recite poems for me.

I miss you old chum.