From day one, I was told that my ancestor, Martin Kelly, owned a boardinghouse, maybe two. Family lore was that he and his wife made a living renting rooms to people coming up to the city of San Francisco. They owned a “mile” house which marked how many miles the traveler had to go to…
Category: Land and Property Research
Why Wasn’t Martin Kelly Living in His Boardinghouses in the 1870s?
Yesterday, I wrote a post for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks concerning my 3rd great grandfather, Martin Kelly. As with all things genealogy, I started writing about an attempted murder and I ending up thinking about boardinghouses. Specifically, the boardinghouses Martin Kelly owned. In the San Francisco Chronicle article about the shooting, it stated…
Oh, the Pain
I’ve been on the hunt for my 3rd great grandfather’s land records this week. I went through the indexes for San Mateo County, California and hit a gold mine. It turns out Martin Kelly owned more land than I ever dreamed possible. The family lore said that he owned “a boardinghouse in San Francisco”. That…
This ain’t no genealogy bingo, it’s a jackpot!
I’ve spent the last few weeks working on my Azorean ancestors. While I still have work to do in Achada, Nordeste, I decided to take a break from reading Portuguese records. I saw that new records had been added at familysearch.org in the San Mateo County collection. I wanted to see if I could find…
