Inez Branson

Inez Branson, last of the eight children of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson and Frances Bauer, was born 5 March 1890 in Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA.

Inez spent her childhood in the family home along Burns Creek in the part of Hornitos known locally as the Chinese section. This was a residence her parents had moved into in the early 1870s and would not abandon until the early 1910s. The family was strikingly tight-knit, with several children lingering in the household as adults. Inez shared the tendency to cleave to kinfolk. That was true even as she rapidly became the one female member of the group most able to pack her bags and forge on as a solo being, should she choose to do so. In fact, by her mid-teens, she was already spending long intervals away from home. She had decided to become a teacher. There were no teaching-credential programs available near Hornitos. One of the nearest, if not the nearest, was in Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA, obliging her to find a suitable boarding situation there. Given her parents’ protectiveness, it was not an option to live with strangers. Happily, her older first cousin Mary Josephine Harrington McDonald and family had moved to Stockton, and so Inez lodged with them at their home at 16 N. Union Street. The photo at upper left was taken in the front yard of that house 19 May 1907. In the uncropped version, Inez is standing near the whole McDonald family and some visitors they were entertaining that day.

After getting her credential (probably in 1907), Inez began teaching in small rural schools in the Mother Lode. One of her earliest assignments was in Calaveras County. The family home in Hornitos remained her official address and was where she could be found when school was out of session. The 1910 census includes her as a member of the household, and the 15 June 1910 Mariposa Gazette includes an article welcoming “local girl” schoolteachers such as Inez home for the summer. This pattern of living elsewhere during the school year and then coming home to her parents continued into the mid-1910s.

In taking up her career, Inez was pursuing a family tradition. Her first cousins Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bauer Reeb, Ethel Bauer, and Eunice Bauer (later to become Eunice Fipps), daughters of her uncle Michael Bauer, a Hornitos liveryman, and his wife Mary Jane Geary, were among those who taught in Sierra Nevada rural schools during the early 20th Century. So were her other first cousins, Marguerite Ellen Branson Thistle and Grace Mildred Branson Warner, daughters of her uncle Joseph Branson and his wife Ellen Margaret Geary (sister of Mary Jane Geary).

During the middle of the 1910s, Inez is known to have taught in the town of Mariposa, as evidenced by two surviving photographs preserved by one of her students, Bernice Castagnetto (later to become Bernice Turner). One of those photos is reproduced in full below, courtesy of Bernice’s granddaughter-in-law Jacque Turner. Unfortunately a child scribbled on the original. The damage may well have been the work of Bernice herself, who was a first grader the year the photo was taken and may have simply been wanting to embellish the picture. Bernice is the little girl second from the right, seated. Inez is, of course, the adult woman standing between the benches. When making a note on the back of the photo in her old age, Bernice wrote down Inez’s name as Inez Bauer. This was an easy mistake to make, given Inez’s family connections, but it also may be a hint that her full name was Inez Bauer Branson.

In 1912 or about then, Inez’s parents and her still-at-home invalid brother William Proctor Branson relocated to Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA, and so that was the home Inez returned to for the next few summers. In the 18 May 1914 issue of the Oakland Tribune, Inez Branson “of Manteca” is described as the corresponding secretary of the central California chapter of the Federation of Parent-Teacher Clubs, a precursor of the national PTA. The article shows she was active in the pursuit of greater influence of women in education policy. The article’s main topic is the organizing taking place to pressure the county board of eductation in Stockton to add a woman to their number. She was not alone among the Branson women in this attitude. Her aunt Nancy Branson Harrington Napier was the vice president of the San Joaquin County chapter at that time, and was part of the campaign.

The last time Inez returned to Manteca was 1916 -- assuming she had not already broken the habit -- because her mother and brother died late that year. Their deaths marked the dawn of a new era in Inez’s existence, and put her on track to immerse herself in a considerably more urban milieu than she had known. After a transitional period that covered the late 1910s and lasted at least into the early 1920s (what she did with herself during those years is unknown), she moved in with her sister Alma and brother-in-law Herbert Kibby Youd. Alma and Herbert, who had spent the first part of their married life in Merced, had relocated to Richmond, Contra Costa County, CA during the World War I years. Once becoming part of their household, Inez never left. Not long after her arrival, her niece Lila Frances Reeb, Alma’s daughter, born in 1905, finished getting her teaching degree from UC Berkeley. If Lila had not already moved out by the time of her graduation in June, 1927, she did not linger beyond that summer -- she left to teach at a small rural school in the Mother Lode as Inez had. Alma clearly appreciated having a sister with her to keep the home from being too much of an empty nest.

A 1926 Oakland Tribune article places Inez in Richmond no later than that year. (The article was about activities of the female Masonic organization, the Order of the Eastern Star. Inez is described as one of thirty-five local lodge respresentatives to attend a function held in Oakland.) She became part of the faculty of Peres Elementary School. It is possible she remained at Peres for the rest of her long career. If she did shift to other campuses, they were also within Richmond Unified School District.

The lives of the three housemates settled into the same sort of stability and relative quiet that the Thomas Branson/Frances Bauer household had enjoyed for so many decades in Hornitos. As mentioned, Inez’s employment circumstances were steady. Alma spent many years as a hospital nurse. Herbert Youd was a foreman at the Standard Oil Refinery. Another aspect that echoed the Hornitos environment was that a large number of kinfolk lived nearby. Lila returned in 1930 and became a teacher and counsellor at Richmond Union High School. Other relatives from Hornitos had made Richmond their base of operations in the late 1910s or early 1920s. Inez and Alma may not have had their parents with them, but they did have their beloved uncle and aunt, Michael and Mary Jane Bauer (who resided just three blocks away on the same street, Barrett Avenue), along with Bauer/Geary first cousins and other familiar figures such as George Manuel Reeb, whose brother Frederick had been Alma’s first husband (and father of Lila), and whose wife was Lizzy Bauer, their first cousin.

One curious aspect of this entire group was the dearth of further children. Inez neither married nor had offspring. Lila was Alma’s only child, and Lila herself was childless, though she became a wife well before forty. Of the others, only George Reeb and Lizzy Bauer reproduced, and they had only one child, Marian Reeb, born in 1919, who in turn never became a mother. Perhaps the absence of any significant propagation of the clan kept the bond unusually tight between the extended family members who had chosen to settle in Richmond. They all remained until death or the brink of it. Aside from the inevitable winnowing of their numbers as everyone grew older, the only hiccup in the harmony during the span from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s may have been a brief estrangement between Herbert and Alma in the mid-1940s, which if it occurred, seems to have been quickly resolved.

Alma developed Lou Gehrig’s Disease in the 1950s and passed away from its effects in 1958. Inez remained in the home at 600 Thirtieth Street in Richmond. She and Alma had moved into that house in 1943 or 1944 (temporarily without Herbert, that being the point when the apparent estrangement happened). Herbert, too, remained at 600 Thirtieth after Alma’s death. Inez did not last many more years after losing her beloved sister. She perished 13 November 1964. Her remains were interred at Stockton Rural Cemetery, Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA, where the resting places of many of her Branson relatives can be found.

(Inez is not to be confused with her extended sister-in-law Inez Lilley. Inez Lilley, born Inez Youd, was the sister of Herbert Kibby Youd.)

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