John Sweden McDonald

John Sweden McDonald, eldest son of Phoebe Ann Branson and William McDonald, was born 8 February 1875 in Merced, Merced County, CA. In family correspondence and lists he is given the nickname Jock. How much he used this -- and whether the unusual moniker is simply a phantom born of bad penmanship, and really should be Jack -- is not clear. All formal public records use John McDonald, John S. McDonald, or his full name. Hence, he is referred to as John throughout the rest of this biography.

John and his siblings are not to be confused with a group of grandchildren of Nancy Anne Branson, who were also named McDonald. The “other” McDonald family mentioned on this website are the children of John’s first cousin Mary Josephine Harrington and his first cousin Charles Sweden McDonald. Yes, John was a first cousin of both the husband and wife of that pair. Charles and John’s middle names spring from their mutual grandfather, Sweden MacDonald, a surgeon from Scotland who immigrated to Ontario Province, Canada as a young man in the mid-1800s. The surgeon altered his last name from MacDonald to McDonald in order to blend in better with neighbors of Irish extraction.

John’s mother died when he was only twelve. It is thought his mother’s sister Theresa Branson cared for John and his siblings for a period of time. John is also known to have been associated with his aunt Nancy Anne Branson. In 1900, John is shown as a lodger in the Merced boarding house operated by Nancy in cooperation with her sister Mary Jane Branson Johnson (the official head-of-household in that record is John Napier, Nancy’s second husband) -- John was 25 years old at this time. His stepmother Agnes Dunn, who married his father about 1892 when John was seventeen, would have played only a small role in his upbringing. It was no doubt at this boarding house that his cousins, Josephine Harrington and Charles McDonald, made their acquaintance.

As the son of a blacksmith and wheelwright, John naturally slipped into jobs that made use of his knowledge of tools, hardware, and machinery. The 1900 census shows him as a blacksmith (perhaps working for his father). In 1910, he was a hardware store saleman. Some time later in the 1910s, he became a salesman of farm implements, a career he kept until retirement.

John married Josephine Samantha Johnson, better known as Josie Johnson, in about 1902. The wedding probably took place in Merced. Josie had been born 13 February 1875 in Verona, Lawrence County, MO. (Various census records incorrectly point to birth years of 1874, 1877, or 1880.) She was the youngest of many children of James Lewis Johnson (known as Lewis) and Caroline Housley, both of Tennessee. Caroline Housley was the sister of Martha Jane Ousley, John’s grandmother, meaning that Josie was his mother Phoebe’s first cousin. Josie is not to be confused with John’s own first cousin Josephine Harrington McDonald. This is an easy confusion to make for many reasons, including that the two Josephines were only four years apart in age.

John and Josie had no children. A history of the John Sevier Branson family written in 1931 by Mary Eliza Simmons Branson (a sister-in-law of Phoebe Branson McDonald) indicates that Josie was earlier married to a man with the surname of Strand, Straul, or Stroud. (The handwriting in the original document is difficult to decipher.) No other source points to such a marriage. If such a union ever occurred, it was brief, and did not result in children.

John and Josie spent their first decade or so of married life in Merced. This would have kept John near his father, who may have had something to do with John’s job at the hardware store. This bond was severed upon the death of William McDonald in 1914. That loss, coming somewhat early as William was only in his mid-sixties, accounts for John shifting to the career selling farm equipment. That job in turn was probably the main spur behind a move away from his roots -- he may have been tapped to be a regional sales representative, and his assignment became Kern County, CA. The couple moved to Bakersfield by the middle to latter part of the 1910s. It would be nearly twenty years before they came back north.

While residents of Bakersfield, John and Josie did not plant themselves in one particular residence. Their homes were undoubtedly rentals and they stayed no more than a few years at each spot. Also, in addition to moving around within Bakersfield, they also spent an interval in Los Angeles. This interruption was brief. The only documentation that places them in L.A. is the 1920 census, and it is possible they were there no more than a few months. Alternately, they may have lived there for much of the span between 1919 and 1924. By 1924 at the latest, the pair returned to Bakersfield and remained into the early 1930s.

During the midst of the Great Depression, John and Josie came back to the heart of the San Joaquin Valley -- not to Merced, but slightly to the north, to Modesto, Stanislaus County, CA. John was still a salesman when they first arrived, and Josie a seamstress. They remained in Modesto through the remainder of John’s lifetime. He was employed there as a clerk at Stanislaus Implements & Hardware Company.

Just as they had done in Bakersfield, John and Josie continued to move from rental to rental in Modesto. The Oak Street residence in which John died was at least the fourth place the couple lived in over a span of less than seven years. John passed away in that home on Friday afternoon, 14 November 1941. He had outlived two younger siblings (Nancy and William, Jr.), but objectively speaking his lifespan was not particularly long. He was only sixty-six. Even his stepmother Agnes survived him, though this was in part because she was less than four years his senior.

John was buried in the McDonald plot in the Knights of Pythias Cemetery Monday afternoon, 17 November 1941. Knights of Pythias was one of several adjacent cemeteries that now form the Merced Cemetery District. Today the McDonald plot is home to the graves of nearly all of John’s immediate family, including his parents, stepmother, siblings Nancy and William, half-brother Ellsworth McDonald (born after John had grown up and left home), and brother-in-law Roy Ames Price.

Josie survived John by many years. A letter written 12 August 1948 from Josie to John’s first cousin Maude Branson Chamberlin is proof Josie was back in Merced by that point, and all indications are she never moved again until her death there 18 March 1964 at the age of eighty-nine. Sadly, she had withdrawn into such a lonely existence that her newspaper funeral notice states she had no known relatives (even though John’s sister Teresa Garibaldi was a Merced resident) and that burial arrangements were pending the arrival from Reno, NV of long-time friend Mrs. DeLane Harper. The latter was DeLane King Harper, a policeman’s wife Josie and John had become acquainted with during their time in Modesto. It is likely that Josie was buried in the McDonald plot at Knights of Pythias Cemetery, but if so, it would appear no one ever requisitioned a gravemarker for her.

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