Several months ago, I paid a visit to Holy
Cross Cemetery with the goal finding my maternal great grandparents grave,
Mathew & Julia Maloney.
I haven’t been to the cemetery for a long
time; it’s too close and easy to do research. I had the location and set off
looking. No such luck. There are no markers, signs, area maps or other visuals
to find a grave. Then, I headed off to
the office. I have found staff less than helpful on a variety of occasions so
my expectations were low. A nice woman
looked up the location (even though I had it and gave it to her). She looked up the name and printed out the
information.
Here is the amazing
part: She gave the paper to a man
standing at the counter and said he would escort me to the gravesite! I was astounded. He asked me to follow him in my car. We parked; got out and he pointed to a
gravestone and said, “There it is.” I
said, “No, it’s not; that says Mahoney; not Maloney. Ohh..
He gets out a walkie
talkie and asks the woman the location of where we were standing. She gave him the location; we walked back a
row and he pointed to a patch of unhealthy grass and weeds and said, “That’s
it.” There is no tombstone or grave
marker. The area is quite large. I began to take photos of the surrounding
tombstones for orientation. The one very
large raised concrete block with a center of unhealthy grass right next to the
Maloney plot had one name on it: CARROLL
I said, “Holy Sh@t!!” He walked away from me and said
something. (Didn’t hear him.) I asked
what. He said something on the order of
chastising me for language unsuitable for a cemetery.
I explained. He said, go back to the office and ask for
the names of the people who are buried in these two graves. I did and received a copy of the two
plots: Maloney & Carroll.
The graphic showed the
names and burial dates of those in each of the graves within the plot:
GRAVE 1:
Mathew Maloney 1-5-1893; Margaret Glynn (sister to Julia) 7-12-1920
GRAVE 2: James W. Maloney (son) 10-22-1894
GRAVE 3:
Mary West 5-30-1906 Julia
Maloney 8-9-1910 John Maloney 7-30-1927
And, the question
is: Who is Mary West???
I made a “contribution”
to Holy Cross to cover my good luck; then started researching the new mystery
person.
Turns out Mary West is
Mary Maloney West, sister to Mathew, native of County Westmeath. She was married to Charles West who has his
own interesting story; or more precisely, demise.
San Francisco Call -
October 25, 1897
Then, on to find what
happened to Mary West. I was able to
track her with 1900 census and city directories.
She lived in various
boarding houses in in San Francisco.
And, then there was the obituary of May 30, 1906 containing facts and an
another emigma!
No mention of a funeral
or mass or burial. The plot information
says she was buried on May 30th. Died in
April; buried late the next month?
What’s going on here?
My conclusion is she was
badly injured in the San Francisco earthquake of April 18, found and taken to
St. Joseph’s Hospital where she died on April 24th. Then, possibly put in “cold storage” along
with hundreds of other unidentified bodies until relatives could negotiate with
city authorities in the awful confusion the resulted from the quake. It’s the best I can do until I summon up the
patience, courage, and energy to go to San Francisco and negotiate the
dysfunctional office of public records to get a death certificate.
Jean Ann Carroll;
September 7, 2018
P.S. Not related to Carrolls in adjacent grave.
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