Stories from the SF 1906 Earthquake and Fire with my Great Grandmother are etched into my memory. My grandmother, aunt and mother's genealogical research have all influenced me since my youth.

I am a fourth generation San Franciscan (with 7 generations in total as longtime residents, all of whom died in San Francisco and had lived in the City pre 1870 which includes several branches of the Family.)

Family documents discovered in attic boxes during a Covid lock down revealed ties to Boston and Manchester, NH which spurred further research into establishing the first "triple" connection to John and Priscilla Alden (William Mullins), Richard Warren, and Edward Doty, all signers of the Mayflower Compact in 1620.

Marriages in San Francisco in 1880 and 1908 by my great and great great grandparents had merged other unforeseen family trees from all over New England including Marshfield, Hingham, Danvers, Fall River, Tiverton, Little Compton, Orland and Castine Maine, and Martha's Vineyard, most of which date back to the mid 1600s.

Lines connect me up to 22 Mayflower passengers in total including John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, Isaac and Mary Allerton and their daughter Mary (husband Thomas Cushman), Francis Cook, Edward Fuller and others. (We also have 11 family ancestors memorialized in the Cole's Hill Burial Sarcophagus in Plymouth who died in the first winter.)

Honored to have been accepted by the Mayflower Society in 2021, (GSMD 99,457 CA 9881) for my John Alden line, I was able to attend the Alden Kindred reunion in Duxbury later that summer and visited the New England graves of our Alden/Mullins line. Many cemeteries are in California but research with FindaGrave.com allowed me to track down the cemetery locations of the remaining ancestors of my 12 generations and was eerily guided to each of their headstones or markers sometimes without accurate plot maps. Many times I received help from random locals that created inexplicable moments that I truly enjoyed.

With so many ancestors tied to the founding colonists of America, imagine the surprise when I learned we were also tied to the early days of California with Spanish and Mexican settlers. My mother's great grandparents consisted of an immigrant orphan from Malaga, Spain that in 1876 married into his wife's "Californio" family that had lineage to Nicolas Galindo and the Pinto families who traveled in the Anza Expedition of 1775 - 1776. They took part in the founding of the Presidio of San Francisco, Mission Santa Clara and Mission Dolores (which opened two days before the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.)

Another line includes another solo immigrant from Ireland who, as a miner in Virginia City had lived a couple hundred yards from the office where Mark Twain is said to have been a newspaper man. He became a US citizen in November of 1864, ten days after the territory of Nevada had become a state, and a day before the voting day in which Abraham Lincoln won his re-election. Odd Fellows member Thomas Groves followed the next silver strike to Tombstone , AZ where one of my great grandmothers was born in 1887. (Just missed Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral?)

I have to thank Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com for providing the tools for an unbelievable journey of discovery and a special thanks to Find a Grave for its commitment to history and family legacy memorials.

As mentioned before, I grew up accompanying my grandparents and parents who lovingly placed flowers at grave sites. They kept remembrances of cherished loved one's death dates and birth dates alive and my hope is to equal their effort. It seems like there are a lot of eyes looking down.

Discover your angels, it just may strengthen your future. Those that came before you are part of you.

Good luck to everyone in finding some special connections.
Carl Olson

Stories from the SF 1906 Earthquake and Fire with my Great Grandmother are etched into my memory. My grandmother, aunt and mother's genealogical research have all influenced me since my youth.

I am a fourth generation San Franciscan (with 7 generations in total as longtime residents, all of whom died in San Francisco and had lived in the City pre 1870 which includes several branches of the Family.)

Family documents discovered in attic boxes during a Covid lock down revealed ties to Boston and Manchester, NH which spurred further research into establishing the first "triple" connection to John and Priscilla Alden (William Mullins), Richard Warren, and Edward Doty, all signers of the Mayflower Compact in 1620.

Marriages in San Francisco in 1880 and 1908 by my great and great great grandparents had merged other unforeseen family trees from all over New England including Marshfield, Hingham, Danvers, Fall River, Tiverton, Little Compton, Orland and Castine Maine, and Martha's Vineyard, most of which date back to the mid 1600s.

Lines connect me up to 22 Mayflower passengers in total including John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, Isaac and Mary Allerton and their daughter Mary (husband Thomas Cushman), Francis Cook, Edward Fuller and others. (We also have 11 family ancestors memorialized in the Cole's Hill Burial Sarcophagus in Plymouth who died in the first winter.)

Honored to have been accepted by the Mayflower Society in 2021, (GSMD 99,457 CA 9881) for my John Alden line, I was able to attend the Alden Kindred reunion in Duxbury later that summer and visited the New England graves of our Alden/Mullins line. Many cemeteries are in California but research with FindaGrave.com allowed me to track down the cemetery locations of the remaining ancestors of my 12 generations and was eerily guided to each of their headstones or markers sometimes without accurate plot maps. Many times I received help from random locals that created inexplicable moments that I truly enjoyed.

With so many ancestors tied to the founding colonists of America, imagine the surprise when I learned we were also tied to the early days of California with Spanish and Mexican settlers. My mother's great grandparents consisted of an immigrant orphan from Malaga, Spain that in 1876 married into his wife's "Californio" family that had lineage to Nicolas Galindo and the Pinto families who traveled in the Anza Expedition of 1775 - 1776. They took part in the founding of the Presidio of San Francisco, Mission Santa Clara and Mission Dolores (which opened two days before the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.)

Another line includes another solo immigrant from Ireland who, as a miner in Virginia City had lived a couple hundred yards from the office where Mark Twain is said to have been a newspaper man. He became a US citizen in November of 1864, ten days after the territory of Nevada had become a state, and a day before the voting day in which Abraham Lincoln won his re-election. Odd Fellows member Thomas Groves followed the next silver strike to Tombstone , AZ where one of my great grandmothers was born in 1887. (Just missed Wyatt Earp and the OK Corral?)

I have to thank Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.com for providing the tools for an unbelievable journey of discovery and a special thanks to Find a Grave for its commitment to history and family legacy memorials.

As mentioned before, I grew up accompanying my grandparents and parents who lovingly placed flowers at grave sites. They kept remembrances of cherished loved one's death dates and birth dates alive and my hope is to equal their effort. It seems like there are a lot of eyes looking down.

Discover your angels, it just may strengthen your future. Those that came before you are part of you.

Good luck to everyone in finding some special connections.
Carl Olson