Mabel Grace Branson

Mabel Grace Branson, daughter of Reuben Branson and Eliza Louisa Armstrong, was born 29 October 1882 in Mariposa County, CA, probably at or near a gold-mining camp where her father was working. Hite’s Cove is a possible precise location, as the census shows the family there in 1880. Mabel, an identical twin of Mattie Branson, is not to be confused with her first cousin Mabel H. Branson, daughter of Reuben’s brother Thomas, born at Hornitos almost exactly one year earlier, nor is she to be confused with her first cousin Grace Mildred Branson, daughter of Reuben’s brother Joseph, born near Hornitos in 1885. Some within-the-family records spell her first name Mable, but most official documents use Mabel.

Mabel was raised in the foothills of Mariposa and Madera County. (While Mabel was a small child, Madera County did not yet exist; the territory it is now comprised of was then part of Fresno County.) The family frequently shifted its base from various mining sites or the places Reuben worked as a lumberman, sawmill worker, and blacksmith. These places include the Potter Ridge and Grub Gulch areas. By the middle of the 1890s, as William and David, the oldest sons of the family, became old enough to help with financial support, Louisa chose to stop moving about -- even though Reuben continued to roam in search of opportunities -- and settled into a house in the quarry town of Raymond in Madera County.

During the Raymond years Mabel, along with her twin sister, must have been increasingly called upon to be a young woman of the household. One reason for this was her comparatively robust health. Her eldest brother William died of pneumonia, her brother David was somewhat mentally retarded, her older sister Mamie became hampered either by polio or an untreated hip dislocation. Thus, even though Mabel and Mattie were middle children, they were expected to be responsible. Mabel also worked outside the home as a live-in domestic servant, as did all her sisters at one time or another due to the family’s weak financial circumstances.

In the latter part of 1900 Reuben Branson took a job with the Yellow Aster Mining Company in the Indian Wells Valley on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, in Kern County near the corners of Inyo and San Bernardino Counties. The family moved to Randsburg, a company town. Mabel was old enough to be out on her own but it is thought she came along, being still a teenager. However, the dawn of the 20th Century brought the dissolution of Reuben and Louisa’s marriage. If she had not already departed, Mabel left some time during this period of tension. In 1902 Mattie Branson died of pneumonia. It is probable that Mabel was close to her sister the way that twins often are, and this loss contributed to Mabel establishing an independent existence.

Mabel went to Los Angeles, where she wed Jerome Clarence Harter 8 June 1903. Better known at that point of his life as Clarence J. Harter, he was a son of Joseph M. and Jennie Harter, a couple from the Ohio River Valley who had settled in Joplin, Jasper County, MO in the 1890s. Born 16 March 1882 in Indiana, Clarence was only seven months older than Mabel, meaning he was the only one of her husbands to be close to the same age as she. They seemed to have been well suited to one another in terms of life circumstances, both coming to the marriage as young singles far from their point of origin and out in the world on their own, yet it was not a lasting marriage. In fact, Mabel erased it from her life story so thoroughly that knowledge of the union was not part of this biography when it was first uploaded in late 2005; the facts surfaced through follow-up research undertaken in the autumn of 2009. However, the pair seem to have stayed together a good half a dozen years. Clarence appears in the 1910 census as a lodger in a home in Kern County, CA, and while he and Mabel were no longer living together at that juncture, he is still categorized as a married individual. Assuming that categorization was correct, the divorce occurred soon after, perhaps as early as the latter part of 1910, but certainly by 1912. Clarence went on to marry Margaret Mortenson in 1913 and settle into a life with her in Bakersfield, Kern County, CA, where he was employed for many years as a house painter. With Margaret, he sired two children, Stanley Morrison Harter and Gertrude A. Harter, in the mid-1910s. Clarence -- by then going by Jerome C. Harter or even just J. C. Harter -- passed away young, perishing 20 September 1927 in Bakersfield.

By 1910, Louisa and many of her younger children had also chosen to settle in Los Angeles County. It may well have been Mabel's presence that helped bring them there, though her whereabouts between 1903 and 1910 have not been verified and it could be she temporarily went to Kern County with Clarence. By 1910, single again though perhaps still not quite divorced in the technical sense, Mabel entered into a romance with George Elisha Latham. A son of Samuel T. Latham and Myrtle Gadsby (aka Myrtle Louette Gadsby), George had been raised in Sandy Lake, Mercer County, PA and had come out to southern California as a young man and become a barber in Pomona, Los Angeles County, CA. He had been born 19 February 1887. This means he was four-and-a-half years younger than Mabel. She may have been self-conscious of this age difference. This seems to have been part of her personality. Throughout life she often mis-reported her age, making herself seem younger. Even on the 1903 marriage license, she shrank her age by a year. While married to George, she took this tendency to an extreme, reporting (in the 1920 census) that she and he were the same age. The couple were married 12 September 1912 in Los Angeles. At the time of the wedding, George was attempting to make a living as an oil driller, having given up the occupation of barber. He must not have found the oil-industry work to his liking, because he resumed being a barber within a couple of years.

Reuben Branson sought the shelter of Mabel and George’s Los Angeles home in the spring of 1916, as he was dying of abdominal cancer. Mabel and George were at that point dwelling in a neighborhood that could be described as being in the eastern section of Inglewood or western section of Florence. (Mabel and George are shown in front of their residence in the photo at right.) George registered to vote at that address in 1916. Those two specific, dated events establish that Mabel and George were still in California in 1916, but within the next two years, they relocated to Mercer County, PA, into the fold of George’s kinfolk. George’s World War I draft card, filed on 12 September 1918, confirms the couple were then living in Stoneboro.

Mabel and George remained spouses for some time -- “about twenty years” total is what relatives would later recall. During the time they were in Pennsylvania -- and perhaps coinciding with their arrival there -- Mabel took in her niece, Margaret Brandy Gaver (“Little Margaret”), an arrangement that relieved her sister Margaret Alice Branson of childcare responsibilities while Margaret was living in a tent in the desert in Arizona, far from schools. Mabel’s nephew Edgar Robert Gaver may have been part of the package as well. Sending the two Gaver kids to Mabel was a way they would still be connected to their maternal family, yet be near their father, Edgar Leroy Gaver, who had come back east after divorcing Margaret Branson.

Being a surrogate mother was as close as Mabel got to being a parent. It seems quite clear she was infertile. This may have been why her first marriage crumbled. Family gossip strongly implies it was the factor that ended her marriage to George as well. Childlessness was apparently not a condition George wished to endure. After divorcing Mabel, he went on to marry Emma Strawser and father a daughter, Georgine. He died April 1973 in Grove City, Mercer County, PA.

Single again, Mabel must have “gone home to Mother.” That is to say, she moved in with her mother while deciding what to do with the rest of her life. By this point, Louisa was living in Milton-Freewater, Umatilla County, OR, having moved there in the mid-1920s after marrying her second husband Joseph “Papa Joe” Eagle. Being in Oregon must have been the means through which Mabel met Alfred Wallace Bayn, the man who would become her next husband. Alfred, subsequently remembered mainly by his informal moniker of “Doc Bayne,” was introduced to Mabel by Alene Reid Branson, first wife of Mabel’s younger brother Herbert Raymond Branson. Herbert and Alene had come north with or shortly after Louisa and Papa Joe and were residing not too far away in Washington state.

Doc was a widower. His wife of over forty years, the former Grace Estelle Bussing, had perished 23 April 1931. Though Mabel and Doc possibly met up in Milton-Freewater, once they were married (the wedding taking place some time between 1931 and 1934), they settled in Doc’s home near Bend, Deschutes County, OR. (Earlier, Doc and Grace, both from Michigan, had also lived just over the county line in the Powell Butte area of Crook County, where they raised two daughters.) Mabel, Doc, and Mabel’s sister Mamie operated an inn. (Mamie’s legs may not have been the same length, but she did not allow that handicap to stop her from living an active life.) The inn may have been known as Bigelow’s, perhaps after a former owner. The partnership lasted only a short time, because Mamie died in early 1935 and Doc passed away just over a year later. (He died 26 February 1936 in Bend.)

Why Alfred Bayn was nicknamed Doc is a mystery, as he does not appear to have earned a doctorate in any discipline, much less medicine. A son of Francis Bayn and Helen E. Ganson, he had been born 14 November 1870 in Jackson County, MI. He had married Grace Bussing in about 1890 and some time during that decade the couple had come to Oregon, first to Portland, then to Crook County before 1910. The family name is rendered as Bayn, Bayne, and Bean in very old records, and even Alfred himself was not consistent about the “e” on the end. His signature appears both ways, and some public records use one version, some the other. In general, by the end of his life he seems to have tended to use Bayne.

The marriage to Doc had a lasting effect on Mabel’s existence despite the limited time they had together, because she inherited a considerable amount of property from him. (One can only imagine what Alfred’s offspring thought of losing any part of the estate to a woman who had been part of his life for no more than a small fragment of a decade.) The endowment left Mabel in as comfortable a circumstance financially as she had enjoyed to that point in her life. It also cemented her loyalty to Oregon, where she would remain for most of the remainder of her days.

Because Mabel was Oregon-based, she was obliged to spend a certain amount of time helping care for her aged mother. Louisa ultimately contracted cancer that cost her a finger and then an arm, both through amputation in an effort to curtail the spread of the disease. Louisa died in 1939. One of the things Mabel is famous for among the clan was her determination to bring her mother’s body back to California to be buried next to family members, a move opposed by Joe Eagle. Subterfuge was necessary to accomplish this feat.

Mabel’s fourth and final husband was Bill Henry, a preacher. (Whether he was connected to the Milton Henry who was married to Mabel’s first cousin Alice Branson, daughter of Thomas, is not known. It is not likely as Mabel and Alice do not seem to have ever associated with one another to any close degree.) The timing of this final marriage is uncertain, but probably began in the 1950s and ended with Bill’s death, which must have been no later than 1970. Family correspondence from 1963 refers to her and Bill in such a way as to confirm they were both alive and together as husband and wife at that point. Bill was probably the William Isa Henry who is listed in the Oregon Death Index and Social Security Death Index. If so, then these public records establish that Bill Henry was born 8 March 1885, and died 15 August 1969 in Milton-Freewater, Umatilla County, OR. The O.D.I. indicates the name of William Isa Henry’s spouse was Mabel.

As she reached extreme old age, Mabel became senile. This was probably Alzheimer’s Disease. She began to be a target of confidence men, frittering away money. At one point she took in her newsboy, practically adopting him. Her brother Herbert -- Blondy -- came to the rescue, settling her estate and bringing her south to live in a rest home in Long Beach, where he could check on her regularly. Blondy passed away in 1974, but his widow Marion Mattice Branson continued to tend to Mabel. Mabel finally expired at the Long Beach rest home 19 April 1975. (The death certificate -- Marion Branson serving as informant -- confirms that Mabel was a widow.) By the point of her demise, Mabel had reached ninety-two years of age and had outlived all her siblings except Robert, who survived a few more years and ultimately died at age ninety-eight. She was buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park, Whittier, CA.

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