Henry Jefferson Branson

Henry Jefferson Branson, son of John Sevier Branson, Jr. and Lillian Jane Guest, was born 6 September 1893. He is believed to have been born in the quarry town of Raymond in the mountains of Madera County, but some records and a memoir written by a family member indicate the family did not reach Raymond until Henry’s infancy. In that case, his birthplace would have been in Mariposa County just north of Hornitos, on or near “Grasshopper Ranch,” the long-time home of his grandparents John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley. Grasshopper Ranch was the place where his father had been raised. This property adjoined that of the Washington Mine, which was in turn part of the Quartzburg mining outpost.

Henry and his older brother Joseph William Branson spent a significant portion of their childhoods in the Madera County hills while their father was employed in the region as a teamster, saloonkeeper, and lumberman. The family was therefore somewhat removed from the rest of John and Martha’s clan, the majority of whom in the 1890s and early 1900s were based in either the greater Hornitos area or in the town of Merced. Henry’s uncle Reuben Branson and his family also lived in Raymond in the 1890s, however.

As Henry came of age, the mining and quarrying industries were fading. Lumber was the big driving force of the local economy, with railroads penetrating to higher elevations, and flumes bringing logs and sawn product by gravity down to the Central Valley. His father took a job with Sugar Pine Lumber Company. By late 1900 this led to a position at the valley end of the flume. John and Lillian settled permanently in the town of Madera, becoming parents of a third child, Dorothy, in 1907. By the time of her birth, Henry and Joseph were teenagers. Madera, unlike the mountains, was a place where these two young bachelors could get to know a range of eligible young single women. This led to Henry finding Ada Crane, whom he married 3 June 1916 in Madera. Ada, a daughter of Edgar S. Crane and Josephine Whitney (also known as Josepine Lord, the other surname derived from the stepfather who had helped to raise her), had been born 30 October 1896 in Fresno, Fresno County, CA. Her father had died when she was a toddler and her mother when she was still a small child. After those tragedies she had been brought up partly in the home of her older brother George Crane and his wife Olive Peck, and partly in an orphanage. Within the first few years of the marriage, Henry and Ada had three children. First was a son, Beverly, then a baby boy who survived only four hours and does not appear to have been named, and then a daughter, Betty.

While his brother Joseph followed in dad John’s footsteps and immediately became a lumberman, Henry must have wanted to explore other ways to make a living. For instance, his 1918 draft card describes his occupation as clerk with Hehrmann & Metlike in Madera. (This draft card is one of the public records that indicates his birth took place in the Hornitos area rather than in Raymond.) But in the end, it seems the lumber industry was in Henry’s blood. By 1919 he was drawn back into it, and soon was transferred to the Yosemite Lumber Company side of the business, becoming the night foreman at the sawmill at Merced Falls. (Right at this point, Ada’s brother George Crane was working as a laundryman at the same mill complex.) At first Henry spent his work week at Merced Falls while Ada and little Beverly lived in Madera, but then the whole family moved.

By associating himself with Merced Falls, Henry had in a sense come full circle, because Merced Falls, which is situated along the Merced River just west of the Mariposa County line, was only a few miles away from Grasshopper Ranch. (Merced Falls still exists, but is not to be found on most modern maps. Yosemite Lumber Company shut down its operations long ago and the community is little more these days than a couple of houses and a wholesale river-rock yard. Shown at right is the mill as it once looked. The photo is undated, but probably was taken long after Henry worked there.)

On the night of 11 April 1921, less than four months after the birth of daughter Betty, Henry was killed at his workplace when the overcoat he was wearing became entangled in a pulley-and-belt mechanism of a planing mill and flung him violently to the floor. The resulting blow to his head caused a brain hemorrhage. He perished two hours after the accident. He was only twenty-seven years old. Beverly and Betty would come of age with no real memory of their biological father.

Ada and the children went back to Madera, at first taking shelter wtih John and Lillian Branson and then living around the corner from them. The latter were protective of their young grandchildren and were continually concerned for their care, to the degree that when their house burned down in the mid-1920s, they rebuilt it with an additional room separated from the main house by a narrow gap (and connected by a causeway), all so that Ada and the little ones could live there. In the intervening years, Ada tried to make a go of it in a home built for her with donated labor by the local Oddfellows chapter, earning her money by running a laundry business with her brother William Crane. (Her brothers had all grown up knowing the laundry trade, and several of them went into this profession.) The venture was not entirely successful, meaning that Ada was deeply grateful when the chance came to save expenses by moving into the addition that John and Lillian had built after the fire.

William Crane had spent the 1910s living in San Francisco, and while there had married second wife Charlotte Adaline Huddleston -- Lottie -- whom he brought back to Madera in the early 1920s. In about 1926, Lottie’s recently-widowered brother Matthew J. Huddleston paid a visit to his sister, during which he was introduced to Ada. The pair hit it off, and one thing led to another, and before the year was over Ada had agreed to be Matt’s wife, even though it meant she and the kids would become San Franciscans.

Matt was a son of English-immigrant Matthew Huddleston and Julia Canty, a Californian of Irish extraction. He had been born 23 February 1879 in California, probably in San Francisco, the city where he had subsequently been raised, and where his many siblings, including Lottie, had been born. For many years Matt had worked as a teamster, transporting equipment and supplies within the city, starting back in the Victorian era, when the career literally mean operating a team -- a team of beasts of burden such as oxen, mules, or horses -- and loads were placed on heavy wooden dray carts or wagons. By the 1920s the loads were carried by motorized vehicle. Having been so long established, the Huddleston trucking company provided the family with a secure means of financial support -- in fact, for about a year in the late 1920s, it also provided a job to Henry’s brother Joseph, who had finally ceased working for Sugar Pine Lumber Company.

The new marriage, the second Crane-Huddleston union, of course involved a relocation of Ada to San Francisco. Likewise, it was a relocation for Beverly and Betty, though they would continue to spend large chunks of time back in Madera, sometimes accompanied by their mother and sometimes left in charge of their grandparents. The family saw value in time spent away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Also, Ada and Matt had a child together, Eugene R. Huddleston (6 April 1931 - 1 May 2000) and sometimes it was easier on Ada to be able to focus on the baby. (Matt had had a son -- Matthew M. Huddleston -- with his first wife Margaret Smith, but he was already grown by the time Ada became his stepmother.)

Though they had lost their father at young ages, Beverly and Betty’s bond with their Branson side was preserved. Even in old age they remained cognizant of their Branson heritage and participated in Branson-clan reunions. (And this still applies.) Henry was not forgotten.

Matthew J. Huddleston died 10 September 1947 in San Francisco. Ada soon abandoned the big city in favor of a home near Winton, Merced County, CA (near the larger town of Atwater). She would reside there for decades. She did not marry a third time. She passed away 25 December 1987 in Madera. (Christmas Day -- ironically, her brother Frank had also passed away on Christmas Day eighteen years earlier.)

Children of Henry Jefferson Branson with Ada Crane

Beverly Orwin Branson

Male Child Branson

Betty Joella Branson

For genealogical details, click on the names.