Mabel H. Branson
Mabel H. Branson,
daughter of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson and Frances Bauer, was born 12 November 1881 in Hornitos,
Mariposa County, CA. She was the fifth of eight children born and raised in a house along Burns Creek
at the northern edge of the town where Thomas and Frances resided for more than four decades. The
family was unusually tight-knit, and most of the children lingered at home into adulthood.
At age twenty-one, Mabel wed Frank Andrew Culbertson. He was a resident of Placerville, El Dorado County, CA, where he had been born 20 March 1874 and where he had gone on to spend his whole childhood. He was one of seven children of Andrew Thompson Culbertson of Pennsylvania and Sarah Ann Epley of Michigan. His parents had begun their married lives in Wisconsin, had moved to Elko County, NV in the 1860s, and had ventured on to Placerville in the early 1870s. Andrew and Sarah were still Placerville residents at the time Frank and Mabel got together, and would remain there until their deaths, his in 1909, and hers in 1922. Given this strong connection to Placerville, it is not completely clear how Mabel and Frank got to know one another. An item in the society column of the Placerville newspaper, the Mountain Democrat, from 1902 mentions that Mabel was visiting Bertie Culbertson, a sister of Frank. This could mean that Mabel had actually come to the town to see Frank, and the reference to her staying with Bertie was just the discreet way the courtship was presented. But more likely, Bertie and Mabel had become friends somehow. Perhaps Bertie had been a school teacher who taught in Mariposa County, or perhaps Mabel had been a teacher in Placerville. In any case, the 1902 visit was apparently successful in cementing a romantic interest between Mabel and Frank. Mabel returned to Placerville for the Christmas/New Year holiday season, and if she had not already become Frank’s fiancée, she soon would be. She and Frank were wed 28 January 1903 at Frank’s parents’ home. The rites were actually conducted before sunrise so that, following a wedding breakfast, the young couple could catch the morning train for San Francisco, where they spent their honeymoon.
The young couple treated Placerville as their main home
during the first nine years of their marriage. However, because Frank was a miner and mining supervisor,
and because local mines were no longer capable of sustained production, he often had to look
elsewhere for employment. Sometimes he even had to resort to other types of jobs, as when he spent
a month as a guard at San Quentin prison. One of the places he could dependably find work was Butte,
Silver Bow County, MT. He had already spent a season or two in Butte back in his bachelor days. The
opportunity rose up again in 1903. Off he went, with Mabel, by now pregnant, at his side. The pair
remained at least into the early part of 1904, meaning that their first child, Ethelyn Inez
Culbertson, was born in Butte, the birth occurring in December, 1903. The 1903/04 sojourn was the first
of several to Montana, along with one to Idaho, interspersed with intervals spent at home in
Placerville. Second and third children, Gwendolyn Bertie Culbertson (born in 1905), and of Alma
Bernice Culbertson (born in 1908), came into the world in Placerville. When they were in California,
Mabel (and sometimes Frank) regularly visited Mariposa County to
see her parents, either in Hornitos or at the elderly couple’s temporary lodgings at Mount Bullion
mining outpost,
and her mother is known to have visited Placerville on several occasions. In those days before routine
automobile travel, the distance was too great for drop-in visits, but it was manageable compared to
the circumstances after 1912. That year, with the economy of the Mother Lode
in freefall, the Culbertsons settled long-term in Butte. Ethelyn, Gwen, and Alma finished growing up
in that community. Whether by inclination or on account of
geography, Mabel was seldom a part of the doings of the larger Branson clan once she had put California
in her past.
While Frank continued his career as a miner, Mabel was a housewife. She was active in the social scene of Butte, most especially in the form of various women’s lodge activities. This was very much in keeping with her female Branson-clan relatives, but Mabel may have been the most active female Mason of the whole group, often serving as an officer, committee head, or hostess. She reached the post of Grand Manager of Butte’s Hemlock Circle #126 of the Neighbors of Woodcraft. She was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic Whist Club, and in her elder years, the Montana Sunset Club.
Frank died in Butte 3 February 1944. His grave can be found there at St. Patrick’s Cemetery. Mabel survived him by a quarter of a century. She remained in place in Butte until at least the early 1960s, but then in her advanced old age moved to Oregon. By that point, her daughters Ethelyn and Alma had gone back to California to live, leaving only Gwen and her descendants in Montana. Mabel’s lodge activity continued in Oregon, this time with the Neighbors of Woodcraft headquartered in Portland. Mabel was a resident of Hood River, Hood River County, OR at the end of her life, though she may have passed away at a hospital in Portland. Her death date is 14 July 1969.
Children of Mabel H. Branson
with Frank Andrew Culbertson
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each of the names.
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