Eldridge Geary Branson
Eldridge Geary Branson, son of Joseph Branson and Ellen
Margaret “Ella” Geary, was born 4 September 1891 on his parents’ ranch north of Hornitos, Mariposa
County, CA. He and Ernest were twins -- probably genetically identical, but like many of that type,
they could be told apart, and Eldridge often got credit for being the more handsome of the pair.
Along with Ernest, Eldridge was the last of a brood of six children raised on the ranch, a 1300-acre parcel that contained two gold mines. As a boy, he was able to observe as hoppers of ore-bearing rock were brought up out of the ground only a few hundred yards away from the main house. In its heyday, the place bustled with a barracksful of miners, a barn, a blacksmith shop, a caretaker’s house -- it was almost a small town.
The veins were exhausted about the time Eldridge came of age -- not just at the ranch, but throughout the Mother Lode, knocking down the pillars of the old economy. Like all his siblings and the vast majority of his peers, Eldridge left the region in order to make his way in the world. He is known to have joined the military. Perhaps this happened in his early adulthood, meaning he may have held an upper rank by the time World War I broke out.
Though along with Ernest he was the youngest of the family, Eldridge appears to have been the first of the four boys to marry (depending on the date of his older brother John’s first marriage, which is still unverified). The wedding occurred 17 September 1913 in San Bernardino, CA. The bride was Clara Elvaria Jackson, who had been born in Mill Creek Canyon, San Bernardino County, CA, on 27 August 1892. Clara was one of eleven children of farmer George Jackson, a long-time resident of San Bernardino County, and his wife Ollie Clemence Brown. How Eldridge met someone from a place so far from the Mother Lode is no longer known, but it is tempting to speculate that Eldridge’s military service brought him either to southern California, or put him in proximity to one of Clara’s brothers who suggested he “come home and meet my sister.” Once the couple found one another, they do not appear to have ever made their home anywhere but in San Bernardino.
Clara gave birth early in the marriage to sons Hugh Geary Branson and Joseph Eldridge Branson. And then, though she was still only in her mid-twenties when Joseph was born, she had no more children. The small family size was a choice shared by a great many of this generation of the Branson clan, a dramatic shift from the ample households of the 1880s and 1890s. By siring two, Eldridge actually exceeded the average number of offspring produced by his siblings and first cousins. He was also the only child of Joseph and Ella Branson to have male children -- John, Marguerite, and Grace had only girls, and Alvin and Ernest had no children at all.
Likewise bucking the trend of earlier generations, Clara did not limit her occupation to homemaker. She worked as a real estate agent. She is shown as such in the 1930 San Bernardino census. Eldridge is described in that census as a salesman at a feedstore/fuel depot.
What Eldridge and Clara occupied themselves with after 1930 is only vaguely known. His obituary reveals that he was a warehouseman in the years leading up to his retirement. Over the course of the middle decades of the 20th Century the couple got to welcome the arrival of grandchildren and eventually great-grandchildren. On the bleak side, they suffered the loss of both sons -- Hugh in 1955, and Joseph in 1962. Something in the combined Branson/Jackson genetics may have carried a legacy of ill health. At least three of the grandchildren would ultimately die far short of old age, and another succumbed in infancy.
Eldridge died 31 March 1972 in San Bernardino. He had held on to his twenty percent undivided share of his parents’ ranch until death. In 1973, Clara arranged for the share to be sold for the benefit of the grandchildren. Half of it was purchased by Horace Meyer, the rancher who had leased the acreage since the 1920s, and the other half was acquired by his surviving sister, Grace, which increased her portion of the whole to thirty percent. As near as can be determined, the transaction was the last time there was face-to-face contact between Eldridge’s family and the rest of the Branson clan.
Clara died 6 October 1974 in Inglewood, CA. She was laid to rest beside Eldridge and many of her other relatives at Montecito Memorial Park, San Bernardino, CA.
The postcard shown here was sent by Ernest Branson to his new sister-in-law Clara in the summer of 1914. Though Clara and Eldridge had been married for about nine months by then, she had apparently never seen Ernest, and wanted a photograph so as to see how much the twin brothers resembled each other. This card appeared on eBay in August 2006 and was spotted there by Clayton Guest, a descendant of John Sevier Branson’s cousin Irena Branson Scott, who alerted Dave Smeds to the auction. Dave was the only bidder and now owns the item. The seller was an antiques dealer who had probably acquired the postcard through a series of estate sales. Given the tendency of the descendants of Eldridge and Clara to die prematurely it is not surprising this heirloom would have slipped out of family possession.
Children of Eldridge Geary Branson with
Clara Elvaria Jackson
For genealogical details, click on
each of the names.