Nancy Margaret McDonald

Nancy Margaret McDonald, eldest daughter of Phoebe Ann Branson and William McDonald, was born 6 August 1876 in Merced, Merced County, CA. Nancy’s childhood was affected by the ill health of her mother, who died when Nancy was only eleven. By 1880 Phoebe was already needing help to care for her four offspring -- the 1880 census shows live-in nanny Mary Jane Geary in the household. (Mary Jane Geary was the sister of Nancy’s aunt Ella Geary, the wife of Phoebe’s brother Joseph Branson.) It is thought that later in the 1880s Nancy’s aunt Theresa Branson cared for the McDonald children, including the period immediately after their mother’s death. Merced was also the home of two other aunts, Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier and Mary Jane Branson Johnson, whose presence comforted young Nancy with the knowledge that family was close at hand. Nancy was in her mid-teens before stepmother Agnes Dunn became part of the household.

Nancy was remembered as a beautiful girl with a fine singing voice. In her early adulthood, she contracted some sort of serious illness, and was sent to San Francisco for treatment and convalescence. While there, she met Roy Ames Price, who became her husband in 1903 or early 1904. Nancy and Roy established their home in Oakland, Alameda County, CA, and would remain there for the rest of their lives. Not all of that stretch was spent in the same residence, however. Voter registers show them at three different addresses on Harrison Street up into the 1920s, and then on Fortieth Street during the 1930s.

Roy, born in California 9 March 1878 (mother’s maiden name Massey), worked at a number of white collar jobs over the course of his life. He was a manager of a hardware store, a cigar merchant, a clerk in an art supply store, a salesman, an accountant. Nancy remained a homemaker -- but not a mother. She and Roy did not have children. In part because of their childlessness, and in part because they lived in the East Bay, they were regular participants of family gatherings in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda with Nancy’s first cousins George Bertrand Johnson and Alice Bretelle Johnson Fowle and their spouses and children. Bretelle’s daughter Esta Jane Fowle grew up thinking of Nancy as “Aunt Nan,” even while understanding that she was technically a cousin. Bretelle and her offspring were among Nancy’s main heirs, acquiring her chinaware and some of her furnishings. Nancy was also able to enjoy the nearby presence of another first cousin, Josephine Harrington McDonald, and her sons and their households. Josephine was not only her first cousin on her mother’s side, but was the widow of Charles Sweden McDonald, first cousin of Nancy on her father’s side.

Nancy died 2 March 1940 at home in Oakland. Roy died 12 February 1942. The remains of both wife and husband were interred in the McDonald plot at Merced District Cemetery. This is where the graves of Nancy’s parents, step-mother, siblings John and William, and half-brother Ellsworth McDonald (born after she had grown up and moved away) can also be found.

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