Martha “Mattie” Branson

Mattie Branson, fifth daughter and tenth child of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley, was born 27 February 1870 on her parents’ ranch near Quartzburg, a mining outpost a few miles north of Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA. She was named Martha after her mother, but was known lifelong as Mattie.

By the time of her birth, her parents had long resided in Mariposa County and were a well-known and popular pioneer couple, though they had acquired their ranch (“Grasshopper Ranch”) less than a year earlier and Mattie was the only one of the children to be born there. Mining was still a productive local industry, but in a quieter, steadier, more settled way than in the Gold Rush years. Mattie grew up in stable circumstances, surrounded by extended family and longtime neighbors. Her eldest siblings left home while she was small, but most did not go far at first.

Mattie attended Quartzburg District School, no doubt sharing a classroom with nephews and nieces who were not much younger than she. She remained near home upon reaching adulthood. She did not marry until 1 January 1900, when she was nearly thirty years old. Her groom was Rudolph Mueller, Jr., born April 1872 in Missouri. The Mueller family, originally from the German-speaking section of Switzerland, had come to Mariposa County after some years in New Mexico. Rudolph’s father was the proprietor of the Hornitos Hotel. The wedding was a big event in a town that was growing more and more insular and tightknit as the population dwindled. Mattie’s niece Eunice Harrington (daughter of Nancy Anne Branson Napier) served as bridesmaid (Eunice would become a bride herself later in 1900, after turning sixteen). Nephew Hugh Branson (son of Thomas H.O. Branson) acted as best man. The ceremony, conducted by Reverend J.D. Houck, was held in the afternoon at Grasshopper Ranch, and followed that evening by a masked-ball reception in Hornitos. Grasshopper Ranch was also where the couple lived during the early months of their marriage, and they appear there in the census, recorded in early June, 1900.

Mattie and Rudolph were among the few of their generation who lingered in Hornitos. Rudolph was not directly dependent on mining for a living. He was a cook -- no doubt a skill acquired while helping at the hotel. He also worked at the Victory Furnace Company, a local factory.

Mattie did not have children of her own. However, she seems to have taken a maternal interest in some of her nieces and nephews. More than one surviving photo shows her with her brother Alvin’s son Walter, who may have been her boarder in his young adulthood, during the years leading up to the 1914 relocation of the Alvin Branson family to Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA. That was a period when Walter was trying his hand at mining. Mattie may also have been an asset to her brother-in-law William McDonald when her sister Phoebe passed away in 1887, leaving four young children motherless -- though her sister Theresa, five years older than Mattie, seems to have borne the brunt of that burden.

In 1915, Rudolph suffered the loss of two young half-siblings in rapid succession -- his brother Albert Mueller on April 27th of a lung infection, and his sister Lena Mueller Jennings July 9th of peritonitis following an appendectomy. Albert was only eighteen, Lena nineteen. These blows came less than a year after the death of Rudolph’s father. At this point, Rudolph’s life seems to have fallen apart, a decline perhaps triggered by these tragedies. Family recollection is that his marriage to Mattie went sour, and they separated, and that he may have committed suicide. The state death index shows he passed away 23 March 1918 in Monterey County. He was not yet fifty years old.

Now on her own, Mattie turned to hotel housekeeping to support herself. At this point in California history, Kern County was replete with residence hotels and boarding houses needed by the many bachelors who were employed by the booming oil industry, so she moved south. The 1 January 1920 census shows her in Bakersfield, residing at her workplace. (She is listed under the spelling of Muller.) Also in the the 1920 Kern County census is Joe T. White, an employee for Standard Oil, lodging in a boarding house. He was Joseph Tilden White, and had been born in Caldwell County, NC 29 July 1876 to Ambrose White and Mary A. Tritt. He had come out to California with his twin brother Daniel Tilden White, who like him had become an employee of Standard Oil. Mattie and Joe may already have encountered each other by early 1920. Joe’s address on his draft registration card shows him at a boarding hotel in Bakersfield in September, 1918 -- this may well have been the same hotel Mattie worked at. Perhaps they met slightly later. In either case, they entered into a courtship and were wed in approximately 1922.

The couple remained in Bakersfield for a time, then settled in Pond, CA. Pond is such a small place it does not appear on most maps. It is in Kern County, located about six miles southwest of Delano. It was no doubt a community that existed as a whistlestop along the Southern Pacific railroad line. It has lessened in vitality now the main transport corridor is Highway 99, several miles to the east. When the Whites lived there, it was near an oil pumping station where Joe worked as a night watchman. Mattie raised chickens at home as a supplementary means of income.

Mattie died 29 December 1942 and is buried in Delano. Joe White survived her, probably continuing to reside in the home he and Mattie had shared. He passed away in Kern County 15 April 1947.

Note: Many web-based genealogies render Mattie’s death date as 29 January 1943. These sources probably all take that date from Ivan Branson’s Bones of the Bransons. Ivan appears to have calculated the date by using a newspaper obituary on which someone had written “January 1943” and which stated in its published text that Mattie had died on the 29th of the month. However, this clipping was from an issue released during the first week of January and the line referred to the previous 29th. The state death index shows she indeed died 29 December 1942. A different funeral notice clipping mentions was buried 31 December 1942. One would certainly hope she wasn’t buried four weeks before she died!

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