Alma Branson
Alma Branson, daughter of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson and Frances Bauer, was born 27 October 1883 in Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA.
Alma was raised at the northern end of Hornitos -- a part considered to be the “Chinese” section of the village. The house and garden were along the bank of Burns Creek, where Bear Valley Road makes its first turn. This setting was only a few miles from of the ranch owned by Alma’s grandparents John and Martha Branson and another ranch owned by her uncle Joseph Branson and wife Ella.
The family was stable and well settled for decades while Alma’s father worked as a tinsmith, miner, translator, and employee of the local courthouse. It was a close-knit family, so much so as to prompt modern-day observers to wonder if the children could not bear to leave or had trouble coping with independence. The 1900 census for Hornitos shows that Alma and and all her siblings except Evalena (Lena) were still living at home, even though the oldest ones were well into their twenties and only Alma’s juniors Alexander and Inez could be said to still be in the midst of childhood. (Even Lena was not really “out on her own” yet; she was living with and assisting a recently-widowed aunt in Oroville.)
In 1902, two of Alma’s older sisters, Alice and Mabel, became wives. Alma followed suit, doing so at nineteen years of age, which bucked the trend in her nuclear family of waiting to marry or choosing not to marry at all. However, in other respects her choice was not radical. It was a safe, comfortable, and natural sort of development. Her bridegroom was Frederick William Reeb, the son of George Reeb and Rosina Hunziker. Alma and Fred had been playmates in childhood. The Reebs had long been closely associated with the Bransons and Bauers. Various members of these three pioneer families had spent decades sharing the same small community, working together as miners and probably acting as business partners in non-mining ventures. George was one of the prominent citizens of Hornitos, a major landowner and a butcher famed for his sausages, which he shipped throughout the local region (perhaps hiring John Sevier Branson and his wagon and oxen for some of that conveying) as well as sold over the counter at his storefront, the Hornitos Market. Fred and Alma’s union was echoed by the marriage of Fred’s brother George Manuel Reeb to Alma’s first cousin Elizabeth Ann Bauer, daughter of Michael Bauer and Mary Jane Geary (Mary Jane in turn was a sister of Ella Geary, the wife of Joseph Branson, Thomas’s brother.) The birth of Fred and Alma’s child Lila Frances Reeb 7 June 1905 forged a blood bond between people who had already been treating each other as family.
A bit of genealogical trivia: Fred Reeb’s sister Katherine, who became Mrs. John B. Morrison, was the grandmother of Jeanette Morrison, better known as film star Janet Leigh, mother of Jamie Lee Curtis. These two actresses may have inherited their good looks from Rosina Hunziker Reeb. A surviving tintype photograph of Rosina from the 1860s or 1870s shows her to have been a beauty.
Fred Reeb had been born 22 August 1880 in Hornitos. He died at only twenty-seven years old on 8 December 1907 of typhoid fever. Alma chose to address the subsequent dilemma of her own and Lila’s financial support by becoming a nurse in Merced, Merced County, CA. While Alma remained single, Lila lived with her grandparents, Thomas and Frances.
While in Merced, Alma met Herbert Kibby Youd, one of the five children of George Youd and Hattie (Harriet) Kibby. The Youds lived near Alma’s first cousin Teresa (Trese) McDonald Garibaldi, and this may have been how the pair came to be introduced. Herbert, a Merced native born 31 January 1887, became Alma’s second husband. The wedding took place in 1910, though not before census was taken in April of that year, because that document shows Herbert living as an unmarried lodger at an address not far from his parents’ home.
Lila joined Alma and Herbert in Merced, and the three of them spent most of the remainder of the decade there. Herbert may have adopted his stepdaughter, though if so, she retained the Reeb surname. During these years, Herbert worked for Farmers & Merchants Bank.
In about 1918, the household relocated to Contra Costa County, CA. Herbert began working for Standard Oil at the refinery in Richmond. His obituary describes him as having been a foreman there for thirty years. This can interpreted to mean he had a variety of jobs over that span, with foreman being the highest position he attained, but it could be that he worked his way up for an unspecified number of years and then was a foreman for thirty more.
Lila graduated from UC Berkeley and became an educator. After spending three years teaching in the northern Mother Lode, she settled into a long-term position on the faculty and in the administration of Richmond Union High School. She resided near her parents throughout their remaining years, though not always close enough to be in the same election precinct. Meanwhile, even before Lila obtained her degree from Berkeley in June, 1927, her place in the household (so to speak) was filled by Alma’s sister Inez, a spinster. Inez, a teacher, worked at Peres Elementary School. She would continue to be an employee of Richmond Unified School District for forty-two years, and would share a home with Alma for the rest of Alma’s life.
Lila and Inez were not the only relatives who had come to Richmond with, or near the same time as, Alma and Herbert. Alma’s uncle and aunt Michael and Mary Jane Bauer came as well, and in fact resided only three blocks away. (Alma and Herbert’s home was at 903 Barrett Avenue; the Bauers resided at 1208 Barrett.) Other locals were some of Michael and Mary Jane’s children and children-in-law, including Elizabeth and George Reeb. Herbert’s brother George Youd and his family settled there. Both Georges worked at the refinery with Herbert. To the members of these households, Richmond was the “new Hornitos.”
With her only child gone while she was barely on the brink of middle age, Alma resumed her nursing career -- it is possible she never took a hiatus at all -- and then kept working until she was about sixty. Herbert retired in his mid-sixties, i.e. in the early 1950s. Indications are the couple’s circumstances remained stable and relatively uneventful through this interval, with one possible exception. The 1944 voter register shows Alma and Herbert no longer at 903 Barrett, where they and Inez had been registered in 1942. Herbert is shown on his own apart from the two women in a separate precinct. Alma and Inez appear at 600 Thirtieth Street, a newly acquired Richmond home that would remain in the family for decades. Perhaps this is an indication of some sort of marital discord. If so, the couple succeeded in getting past it and Herbert also came to live at 600 Thirtieth.
Alma did not get to enjoy her retirement phase long. In the early 1950s, as she was reaching seventy years old, she developed amytrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She suffered from increasing debilitation for five years, and then succumbed to the disease 2 September 1958 in Richmond. Her remains were interred at Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito.
Herbert Youd stayed in the house at 600 Thirtieth for the rest of his days. At first he had the company of Inez and then the company of Lila after she was widowed, but he survived them, too. He also outlived his brother George and even Mary Jane Geary Bauer, though that venerable daughter of pioneers at one point appeared destined for immortality and ultimately surpassed 100 years of age. Eventually he was bereft of all or nearly all of the kinfolk who had come to the East Bay with him. Lonely, age ninety and possibly suffering from a terminal illness, Herbert committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage. His date of death was 11 February 1977.
Child of Alma Branson
with Frederick William Reeb
For genealogical details, click on
Lila’s name.
To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.