Category Archives: About My Ancestors
Figuring out when John Dolan Died
In my last post about my Dolan research I wrote about how my Dolan’s were getting all tangled up with the Kelly surname. I’ve been following the family of John Dolan and Bridget Kelly who lived in San Mateo, California according to the 1880 census. Bridget (Kelly) Dolan’s obituary told me that she was a …
Newspapers Tell Me A Little Bit about the Five Mile House
If you have ancestors who lived where a major calamity struck, you know that the amount of resources available to you are limited. Such is the case of my San Francisco relatives who had the audacity to show up San Franciscan shores in the 1850s. Those that didn’t survive beyond the 1906 earthquake and fire …
Grandma’s School Photo
My Grandma didn’t have many photos from her childhood. Maybe they were lost when her sister-in-law’s basement flooded or maybe her parents didn’t take many. Whatever the case, up until two or three years ago, I had only seen one. That photo was from Manzanita Elementary School in Oakland, California–Sixth Grade Class of 1924. The …