Alice Bretelle Johnson (Bretelle
Johnson)
Alice Bretelle Johnson was the third child and only daughter of
Mary Jane Branson and Alonzo Diah Johnson. She went primarily by her middle name, which appears to
have been derived from the name of her father’s sister, Bretelle C. Johnson Eastman. As this was often
pronounced “Bur-tell,” some family members spelled the name Bertelle or Burtell, but Bretelle is
correct. She was only occasionally referred to as Alice, mostly late in life.
Bretelle was born 8 September 1887, probably in Merced, CA, but perhaps in Mariposa County. Her father died or disappeared when she was a child, perhaps even before her birth. As a result, Bretelle grew up in somewhat unusual circumstances. Her mother chose not to remarry. Instead, Mary Jane worked full-time as a clerk in a drygoods store. She also owned and helped run a boarding house with her sister Nancy Anne Branson Harrington, probably beginning in 1890 after Nancy was widowed. While Nancy stayed on site as cook and housekeeper, Mary Jane did the boarding house laundry in the evenings (and often into the night). Though Mary Jane made sure to take the time to see that Bretelle was dressed nicely and made bows for her hair, Bretelle had to learn a certain amount of self-sufficiency among a household that included her mother, her aunt, her aunt’s six children, a number of lodgers, her brother George, and by 1895, her aunt’s second husband, John Napier. Bretelle’s eldest brother, Clarence, lived three doors down as a ward of an aunt and uncle, Theresa Branson Moore and William Moore.
While at the boarding house, probably in her teens, Bretelle spent some weeks or months dealing with debilitating pain in her legs, for which she received injections of some kind. There is at least one reference in a family memoir of her being “crippled.” This was a reference to this temporary problem, from which she recovered. She was probably fortunate to do so as quickly as she did. In the 1890s, some attempted “cures” were themselves more likely to injure health than simply leaving the patient alone.
In the early 1900s, a teenager named Gifford Mecklenberg Fowle (born 30 July 1885) moved into the boarding house. Gifford was the eldest of the three sons of John P. Fowle of Massachusetts and Cora Mecklenberg, whose German-born parents had been early settlers of Calistoga in Napa County. Cora had divorced John before 1900, creating a broken-home situation that led to Gifford setting out on his own at a younger age than he otherwise might have. After graduating eighth grade and before turning fifteen, Gifford had obtained a job with Southern Pacific (a company his father may have worked for), and this had brought him to Merced, a major hub of the railway. He worked his way from station sweeper to station agent at the depot there, achieving the latter level by age seventeen. He later became the night agent. When he was twenty, he and Bretelle, age eighteen, decided to get married. The wedding took place by early 1906.
By becoming a family man, Gifford gave up his night shift, which he had enjoyed. However, there was an ample opportunity to find a worthy replacement position, because Southern Pacific needed a large number of employees to move to the San Francisco Bay Area to replace and repair the railway infrastructure damaged in the great earthquake. A great deal of the railroad infrastructure needed to be replaced or repaired, and Gifford was tapped for this enterprise. The young couple spent the first fraction of their marriage living in Berkeley; Gifford rode the ferry daily to his job site in San Francisco. The same burst of job opportunities appear to have lured Bretelle’s two brothers to the Bay Area at this time as well, though Clarence would soon move to San Joaquin County.
The earthquake damage was dealt with relatively swiftly. Gifford was reassigned to a depot in Redlands in Redlands in San Bernardino County. He and Bretelle moved there no later than 1907. First child Gifford Benjamin Fowle was born in Redlands in early November of that year.
Bretelle’s mother Mary Jane also came to Redlands and either lived in the household or nearby. It is not known if she also had been with her daughter and son-in-law during the Bay Area sojourn. It is known that she remained behind in Redlands when Bretelle and her two Giffords moved back north. The 1910 census shows Mary Jane in a boarding house in Redlands, while Bretelle and her family were established in Oakland.
In that 1910 census, Gifford Sr.’s occupation is described as “auditor” for the railway, and over the years he would have various accounting and otherwise clerical jobs for the company, moving up to those with more and more supervisory authority. However, he seems to have found his early positions limited and also tedious compared to the excitement of participating in the post-earthquake restoration. Later in the 1910s, after the births of children Esta Jane Fowle and Voyle Johnson Fowle -- the latter occurring in November, 1913 -- he tried other employment. He became a buyer for an agricultural produce company -- “buying beans” is how one family memoir describes his duties. The job drew the family south again, this time to the outskirts of the town of Lompoc in Santa Barbara County. His 12 September 1918 draft registration card shows Bretelle and the family in Lompoc, while Gifford’s job (described as “company manager”) was in nearby Santa Maria.
During World War I, Gifford served in the Home Guard, the equivalent of a reserve unit of the National Guard. He did not become a regular soldier nor did he go overseas. However, in one sense, the war nearly did him in. With the returning soldiers came the so-called Spanish Flu. Gifford was one of those who contracted this pandemic disease in late 1918. His doctor declared him doomed. His doctor then proceeded to die of the flu himself. Gifford recovered.
(Shown at right is Bretelle standing in front of
the Grizzly Giant.) Regaining his health and eager to capitalize on the second chance fate had
offered, Gifford went to
night school in order to make up for his lack of high school education. Esta Jane wrote seventy years later
of her recollection of doing homework in the evenings at the dining table beneath their Lompoc home’s
chandelier, her father studying his own assignments next to his children. Seeing him pore over books so much
may have been one of the formative reasons why all three offspring grew up to be avid readers.
Having increased his chances of better jobs within Southern Pacific, Gifford went back to work for the company in approximately 1919. The 1920 census shows the family in a house in Santa Maria, with Bretelle’s mother living with them. Gifford, in fact, was not there at the time, though the census describes him as the head of household. He was in Oakland. The 1920 census has a second entry for him, showing him living as a lodger in the home of George Fox, next door to Bretelle’s brother George Bertrand Johnson and his first wife Elizabeth. His job had apparently brought him back north. Why Bretelle did not come with him immediately is a subject of family gossip; at least one account suggests Mary Jane had to have a “little talk” to remind her daughter of the ordeal she had gone through raising children as a single mother. If so, the advice worked. Bretelle and Gifford remained lifelong partners.
By the early 1920s the family had put down roots permanently in the East Bay, at first residing on Claremont Avenue in Oakland. Soon the household shifted to Merced Street in a neighborhood in the northern part Berkeley. The kids all remained in the home until the early 1930s. The 1920s and early 1930s was a particularly steady, happy period for the Fowles. Holiday gatherings were festive and well-attended. Sometimes these were held in Merced or Manteca with extended-family members there, but in the main, the feasts were local affairs occurring in rotation among three regular locales. When not held at the Fowle house, they were hosted by either George Johnson and his second wife Bessie at their home in Alameda or by Bretelle’s first cousin Nancy McDonald Price and her husband Roy in Oakland.
Some time later, probably after all their children had left the household, Bretelle and Gifford moved back to Oakland and resided there for the rest of their lives. During those decades their sons both lived in the area as well -- their daughter, however, would spent two years in China and Macao and then move to Calaveras County and on to extreme northern California.
Bretelle is the woman in the center in this photograph. On the left is her daughter-in-law Evelyn Marie Tanner Fowle, wife of Gifford Benjamin Fowle. The man behind on the left is her son-in-law Robert Kennedy Service, husband of Esta Jane Fowle. Behind on the right is her husband Gifford Mecklenberg Fowle. On the far right is her daughter Esta Jane Fowle Service. This photo was taken near Esta Jane and Robert’s home in Chester, Plumas County, CA some time between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s.
Bretelle played piano and was in general artistically inclined, but this trait was better expressed in her descendants. She was part of a generation in which women remained housewives unless some sort of disruption, such as the type her mother had experienced, required a more varied role.
Bretelle and Gifford both died 21 September 1962. The identical date is not an error. Gifford spent his final days in the Southern Pacific hospital dying of leukemia. When he breathed his last in the early hours of the 21st, his son Gifford had the sad duty of going to the family home and fetching his mother to the hospital to view the body. He found her difficult to awaken, and disoriented even after she got up. She collapsed completely within a few hours. The recorded cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage. It seems possible the knowledge that she was soon to lose him may have led to her collapse; she was literally unable to go on without him.
Children of Alice Bretelle Johnson with
Gifford Mecklenberg Fowle
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