David Kirkpatrick Branson

David Kirkpatrick Branson, born 2 June 1875 near Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA, was the second child and second son of the nine children of Reuben Branson and Mary Eliza Louisa Armstrong. He was named for David Kirkpatrick, a Mariposa County pioneer who worked with Reuben Branson and Reuben’s brothers and father hauling wagonloads of freight around the county and up from Stockton. Several of the grandsons of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley were named for neighbors and friends, often for bachelors who did not otherwise have sons to pass their name down to.

Family records describe David as “not right,” that is to say, he was mentally retarded. The degree of his ailment is uncertain. It did not prevent him from living a long and vigorous life. However, his limitation may explain why he never married. He did not have children, either, though in this respect he was no different than his older brother William and four of his five sisters. The Great Register of Madera County for 1896 -- the first year he could vote -- describes him at age twenty-one as 5'9½" tall with light hair and blue eyes, and a scar over his left eye.

David grew up in various places in the Mother Lode where his father was mining for gold, including Hite’s Cove and Potter Ridge in Mariposa County, and Grub Gulch in Madera County. About the time he was reaching adulthood, his mother decided she had had enough of moving around through the foothills and established a more settled base in the quarry town of Raymond in Madera County. During the mid-1890s David lingered near there and in Coarsegold, possibly helping support his mother and younger siblings.

Like his father, David worked as a miner. In his early twenties he did so mainly in tandem with his father and/or his brothers William and Robert at sites they were digging. He kept up the occupation at least into his late forties, but given the decline in the industry in California, he often resorted to other types of work, including farmer, farm laborer, cowboy, and logger.

David remained behind when his parents and some of his younger siblings relocated to Randsburg in eastern Kern County in 1900 -- apparently David preferred to stay in the Mother Lode, in a milieu he was familiar with. He and Robert briefly worked some of their father’s old claims, perhaps a tactic to keep the value active while their mother attempted to gain control over some of the family assets as divorce loomed, and then Robert went on to Indian Wells Valley. The census, taken in early June, 1900, shows David residing with grandparents John and Martha Branson at Grasshopper Ranch in Mariposa County. The voter register of 1900 (later in the year) shows him in Coarsegold, Madera County, and the 1902 register shows him back in Raymond. (These two registers, by the way, are the only sources of his full middle name -- other documents have it as merely Kirk or the initial K.)

The 1910 census shows David in Mariposa County, as a laborer on a farm belonging to Gregorio Sanchez. (This residence was next door to those of two other members of the Branson clan, one being the home of his father’s second cousin Mary M. Scott Guest, a daughter of Irena Branson Scott, the other being the home of his father’s second cousin Wiley Branson, a son of Isaac Branson.) The 1910 voter register confirms that he was in Hornitos at that time, describing him as a miner. The register also shows that he was a Republican, the only one of the many Bransons listed on the page who is not a Democrat. This alone would have been enough to make his relatives think he was addled. Even though the War Between the States had been over for forty-five years, most Bransons traditionally could not bear to contemplate joining the party of Lincoln.

By 1920, David was a general carpenter living in a boarding house in Merced, Merced County. In the 1922 and 1928 registers, he is shown in Hornitos again, as a miner.

It is apparent from the above traces that David wandered about for many years without finding an ideal situation. One might have expected he would finally give up and seek out the refuge of family members. He does not appear to have ever done so. However, one visit he made to his kin in 1924 remains infamous in the family lore, because it was taken as evidence of his dim-witted nature. That year he rode a horse all the way from the gold country (probably setting out from Hornitos) to see his brother Robert, who was then living in Ridgecrest on the eastern boundary of Kern County. David first took an immense detour to western Kern County to see his sister Margaret Cowsert in South Taft. All in all, the journey required riding for hundreds of miles. Going by train would have been the logical and simplest mode of transport, but perhaps making such arrangements was too challenging for David, or simply did not occur to him.

In about 1929, David moved to San Andreas in Calaveras County. Here he would spend the final twenty years of his life as a rancher and farm laborer. He died 12 July 1949 at Angel’s Camp, Calaveras County. He is buried near there at Peoples Cemetery, San Andreas.

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