Alvin Arthur Branson

Alvin Arthur Branson was born 2 November 1883. The third child and second son of Joseph Branson and Ellen Margaret Geary, he is not to be confused with his father’s brother Alvin Thorpe Branson. Alvin Arthur was born at and raised on his parents’ 1300-acre ranch a few miles north of Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA -- a parcel that in modern time sits on the eastern shore of Lake McClure, a reservoir that did not exist in Alvin’s time.

As a child, he was able to observe as gold ore was removed from the mines only a few hundred yards away from the household’s front door. The mines were very productive, allowing the family to live a very comfortable life by the standards of the time. Perhaps it was inevitable that Alvin would view mining as an excellent means to make his own fortune. As a young man he worked at several Mariposa County mines, in particular the Organita and Princeton sites.

However, as the 20th Century progressed, Alvin was not alone in seeing that the Mother Lode was becoming played out and he could not depend on the kind of reward his father and grandfather had known. Accordingly, he set out for for Mexico in September, 1905. Apparently he found the nation little to his liking. Within a few weeks he was at Bisbee, Cochise County, AZ, where he found employment with the Copper Queen Mining Company. He was sent to the mine twenty-three miles away in Gleason, but that operation was shut down only a month or so later. Alvin returned to Bisbee and in mid-December began working the Holbrook shaft.

Exhausted from a hard shift, Alvin was killed when he fell from an elevator that had no safety cage. He was mangled between the elevator and the timbers, and then his body tumbled 330 feet to the bottom of the shaft. The accident occurred on 24 December 1905. The telegram informing his family of his death became an unwelcome Christmas present. His body was shipped by rail back to his parents, and was buried in Hornitos in the Catholic cemetery adjoining St. Catherine’s Church. (The photos on this page show his gravesite and marker. His plot lies just to the left of the resting place of his mother and father. These three are the only members of the Branson family in the cemetery, but others lie in the Oddfellows Cemetery on a nearby hillside.)

Alvin had not yet found a bride by the time of his early demise, and never sired children.