Herbert Raymond “Blondy” Branson

Herbert Raymond Branson, last of the nine children of Reuben Branson and Eliza Louisa Armstrong, was born 18 February 1903 in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA. He was nicknamed Blondy, and this name was associated with him to such a degree it appears on his funeral program.

Herbert arrived in the world amid a period of turmoil in the marriage of his parents. Herbert did not get to enjoy the experience of having a father in the home with him. In fact, he is so little associated with Reuben that an independent genealogist would have a difficult time proving the relationship through public records alone. His conception might have been the result of a final attempt at reconciliation between his mother and father. They had been on poor terms for years, a circumstance surely having to do in part with Reuben’s tendency to spend frequent lengthy intervals off in the hills of the Mother Lode without his family. Ostensibly, Reuben spent that time out of the house in order to earn money as a miner or timberman or blacksmith, but he was deep in a milieu where many a where many a man would deliberately sustain a bachelor existence, the better to spend his wages on drink, games of chance, and prostitutes. It is impossible to know to what degree Reuben might have indulged in this lifestyle, but it is a fact that he was often not “there” for his offspring during their formative years. By 1900, Louisa seems by property transactions to have been attempting to gain power-of-attorney over Reuben’s assets, perhaps in preparation for divorce. It is also possible that these transactions were measures to put as much of his estate in her name as possible to protect it from Reuben’s debtors. The couple do seem to have made one last go of it by moving to Randsburg Ranch, a “company town” mining outpost in easternmost Kern County, near the borders of San Bernardino and Inyo Counties. Reuben worked there for the Yellow Aster Mining Company, accepting a wage-earning job and giving up on his hopes of a bonanza in the Mother Lode -- perhaps doing so to please Louisa and keep his family intact. However, the effort did not succeed, and the pair probably were already living apart by the time of Herbert’s birth, as implied by Herbert’s birthplace, San Jose, a locale Louisa probably chose because her sister Berthalina Biederman had settled there. Reuben did not speak of his wife and children in the last few years of his life, and Reuben was seldom mentioned by his ex-wife and offspring. Herbert might not have seen his father after the age of six or so, and by the time Herbert was thirteen, Reuben was dead.

Louisa was as steadfast a part of Herbert’s life as Reuben was not, and yet there is one odd detail that calls into question their status as mother and son. Louisa reached forty-five years of age a month after Herbert’s conception. This is an unlikely age for any woman to still be fertile, particularly one whose previous child had been born when she was in her early thirties. From the vantage point of a century later, it is tempting to think perhaps Herbert was not her biological child. But if this possibility is to be entertained (if only out of the need of a genealogist to ask the questions that must be asked when examining an individual’s life history) then the issue arises, where did Herbert come from? Was he perhaps an illegitimate child born to one of Louisa’s older children -- most of whom were of childbearing age by 1902, but none of whom had yet found spouses -- that Louisa adopted and raised as a son rather than a grandson? The behavior of her daughter Margaret during her adolescence is consistent with her being the cause for such an arrangement to be necessary. Herbert was born three weeks after Margaret turned sixteen. However, in later years Herbert’s family members, from Louisa to older sisters Mabel, Mamie, Gertie, and Margaret, to older brother Robert, all treated Herbert as the little brother of the family, and referred to him as such. Any change in his official life story must be set aside, at least until such time as new evidence emerges.

Herbert’s childhood was spent in three main locales. Randsburg was one, but at times he and Louisa lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (certainly in San Jose, but perhaps also in San Francisco or Oakland). Los Angeles County was the third. His mother operated a boarding house while in the desert. Reuben remained employed by Yellow Aster Mining Company off and on until approximately 1910. Herbert’s older brother Robert was also employed by Yellow Aster. Louisa -- now calling herself Louise, perhaps part of adopting a new identity as an independent woman -- had a romantic involvement with a man named Charles R. Hines, a divorced carpenter born about 1870 in Ohio, in the years around 1910. She did not marry Charles, but she and Herbert are shown as part of Charles’s household in the 1910 census of Pasadena.

Herbert’s daughter Iris recalls that her father told her his first job was selling newspapers as a youngster on the streets of San Francisco (or perhaps in the San Francisco Bay Area). This might have been immediately after the Charles Hines phase of Louisa’s life. Later in the 1910s Louise and Herbert were back in Randsburg. Herbert is listed in the 1 January 1920 census of Randsburg as a mechanic in an auto garage, sharing a home with his mother. He is described as the head of the household at age eighteen. He was in fact not quite seventeen, but is likely to have falsely reported his age so as not to be challenged by the enumerator. In this respect he was following his mother’s example. She reported herself to be radically different ages than reality in most censuses, making herself older in the early days, perhaps to disguise how young she was when she married Reuben, and then making herself younger in the censuses of the 20th Century, probably so as not to appear to be so much older than her boyfriend or husband, or such an aged mother to her son. She is listed as forty-four in the 1910 census (when she was actually fifty-two) and fifty-four in the 1920 census (when she was actually sixty-two), and sixty in 1930 (when she was actually seventy-two).

In about 1924, Herbert married Alene Estelle Reid (shown at right, later in life) in a ceremony held in Santa Ana, Orange County, CA. Alene, daughter of Missouri-born farmer Archer Warren Reid and his Pennsylvania-native wife Eva Emma Sanders, had been born 8 June 1904 in Delta County, CO. (The name Alene being unusual, it tends to be misrendered in records. For example, in the 1910 Delta County, CO census, she is listed as Aileen. Other variations crop up, but Alene is the correct spelling.)

With her blue-eyed boy having set out on his own, Louise at last brought an end to her quarter century as a divorcée and widow. By 1925, if not sooner, she married Joseph (“Papa Joe”) Eagle. Very soon thereafter they moved to Milton-Freewater, Umatilla County, OR. Herbert and Alene also settled in the region. The timing makes it unclear whether Herbert was following his mother, or whether Louise wanted to stay near the place where Herbert had gone. In any event, Herbert found work in the gas fields on the other side of the Columbia River gorge, near Walla Walla.

While in Walla Walla, Herbert and Alene became parents of Iris Irene Branson. It was the second time Alene had given birth. She had earlier done so in her teens, resulting in a son, Harmon Ladon Weigart. Harmon did not consistently live with his mother. He does not, for example, appear in the 1930 census as a member of the household with Herbert, Alene, and little Iris.

By the time of that 1930 census, the family home was located in Benton City, Benton County, WA. (This census incorrectly lists him as Herbert R. Bronson, age thirty -- age twenty according to the Ancestry.com index.) Herbert’s listed occupation was “drill dresser.”

In the summer of 1930, Herbert showed his colors as a son of Reuben Branson and grandson of John Sevier Branson – he became a gold miner. He, Alene, and Iris moved to Circle City, Alaska. Later they would move to Fairbanks. The climate was a drastic change from the southern California desert milieu of his youth, but Herbert met with enough success that he found it worthwhile to endure that hardship. This success was, however, not enough to justify endangering the health of his family. When Alene developed tuberculosis in about 1935, he sent her back to southern California, where in those pre-smog days the air was better for her. Herbert worked out the summer season, placer mining in the streams until they froze over, and then joined his family.

The Bransons lived in Huntington Beach through most of the rest of the 1930s. Herbert worked as a “roughneck” in the local oil fields. About 1940 the chance came to move up to superindendent of an oil spring at Santa Fe Springs, near Whittier. This is where Iris finished her schooling. She married just after turning eighteen in late 1946 and established an independent existence in a nearby community. Herbert and Alene were on their own. As happens with many couples when their offspring have fledged, they chose not to stay together. By 1947 or 1948, they had separated. Herbert spent the following year or so in an interim relationship (it may have involved a so-called “Mexican marriage,” i.e. the couple lived as spouses, but never obtained a license recognized within the United States). This lady’s name is not recalled. By 1950, the relationship was over, and Herbert soon married Frances A. Rumsey, who had been born 21 March 1906 in Dodge City, Ford County, KS. Frances had been the wife of another Los Angeles County oil worker, Hep Currie, and therefore was part of the social circle that Herbert and Alene moved in. With this marriage, Herbert would remain permanently in southern California, acquiring a house in Long Beach.

(Poor Alene went through quite a bad-luck phase in the late 1940s. First her marriage to Herbert broke up, then her father passed away in November, 1948, then in October, 1949, she and her mother were struck by a reckless driver while crossing Long Beach Boulevard as pedestrians. Alene suffered critical injuries, including a broken pelvis, broken leg, broken shoulder, and contusions to her head, including to her face.)

Frances and Herbert were together for about ten years -- a relationship essentially spanning the decade of the 1950s. They had a relatively happy marriage, but for one reason or another it was not sustainable. Frances went on to marry Hep Currie’s cousin Courtlyn Bartlett Currie (born 12 February 1908 in Iowa, died 23 June 1993 in Hemet, Riverside County, CA). Frances and Courtlyn continued to associate with Herbert. Herbert, meanwhile, went on to wife number three, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. The wedding occurred 10 April 1961 in Los Angeles County. His new bride was Marion Maxine Mattice. She had been born 5 January 1906 in Colorado. She had been previously married to John Mason and had offspring by him, so Herbert became a stepfather once again.

John Mason had worked in the local oil business and Marion knew Alene and Frances. Marion’s father had invented a type of valve used in the industry and had founded a company to manufacture it. His efforts were starting to pay off very handsomely. Contracts had been secured with customers in Saudi Arabia. However, he died shortly after his daughter and Herbert became husband and wife. Herbert took over the business. As a consequence, Herbert’s final dozen years of life were spent as a well-to-do man.

Herbert’s sister Gertie lived in Long Beach during this mid-20th Century period. Her presence there may have been one of the incentives that led Herbert to settle in the city. Gertie passed away in 1963. Several years later Herbert would bring his surviving sister Mabel from her home in Oregon to reside in a nearby rest home, since she had become too afflicted with Alzheimer’s to look after herself. Herbert himself did not live long enough to have to suffer his own decline into senility. He passed away from heart disease in Long Beach 23 November 1974. His remains were interred in the Garden of Remembrance section of Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, CA.

As a widow, Marion continued to live in their home. She passed away in Long Beach 28 June 1985. Meanwhile Alene spent her final years living with Iris in the foothills east of Sacramento. She passed away 20 October 1986 in Penn Valley, Nevada County, CA. Frances passed away 26 December 2004 in Glendale, Maricopa County, AZ. Harmon Weigart, born 6 September 1921 in Colorado, married and had two children and passed away 1 January 1986 in Pine Grove, Amador County, CA.

Child of Herbert Raymond Branson with Alene Estelle Reid

Iris Irene Branson

For genealogical details, click on Iris’s name.

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