Martha Jane Ousley

Martha Jane Ousley was born 2 June 1828 in Tennessee, almost certainly in Campbell County. After marrying John Sevier Branson and settling in the Mother Lode during the Gold Rush, her background became obscured. Martha Jane did not talk much about her parents and their origins, and wrote nothing down. By the time her children were all dead and her grandson Ivan Branson began assembling the first major genealogy of the Branson/Ousley family, few solid facts about her had been preserved among the California clan. It was recalled that Martha’s father’s name was Joseph and that he may not have spelled his surname Ousley his whole life. Her mother was known to have been named Phoebe, but the maiden name was uncertain -- Longmeyer being one guess. Family legend was that Phoebe had been part American Indian. Martha’s granddaughter Grace Mildred Branson maintained there was some connection to Pocahontas!

The best information that Ivan Branson collected stemmed from the 1890 book The Owsley Family in England and America by Harry Bryan Owsley. That volume mentions Joseph as a son of John Owsley, a Revolutionary War veteran. John Owsley was in turn a descendant of Thomas Owsley, who settled in the Colony of Virginia about 1680 and eventually served in the House of Burgess.

Finding this tidbit satisfied Ivan, and he did no further investigation. He did not even obtain a copy of Harry Bryan Owsley’s book and see all it contained; he knew of it only through correspondence with others who had read it. His research focus was on his patrilineal heritage. Since Martha Jane was not born a Branson, her ancestry was secondary to his goals. If he had chosen to expand his scope, he would have encountered a cornucopia of lore. Harry Bryan Owsley is only one of the many people who have endeavored over the centuries to preserve and discover information about the Owsley family. Today, the descendants of Captain Thomas Owsley of Virginia participate in on-going genealogical activities such as publishing, conferences, tours of historic sites, erection of memorial monuments, and DNA analysis as part of the Owsley Family Historial Society, an organization established in 1979. As will be described below in the section on Martha’s ancestry, the family line goes back up through Thomas Owsley’s mother Dorothea Poyntz into European royalty. That means that ultimately Martha’s line can be documented all the way back to approximately 500 A.D., either by going back to the Byzantine emperor who founded the line that Charlemagne was part of, or by going up the line of Anglo-Saxon kings to the chieftains who invaded England after the Romans had abandoned the island.

It seems incredible such a pedigree could have been forgotten, but Martha’s modern-day descendants did not discover her heritage until the early 21st Century, when the World Wide Web made it possible to connect with distant cousins (distant in the genetic and geographic senses of the word) and put the pieces together. It turns out Martha had firm reasons not to want to discuss her parentage. The answer to this mystery lies in the research done over the last several years by Floyd Owsley, an active member of the Owsley Family Historical Society and a dedicated genealogist. Floyd is descended from Martha’s brother Robert, and made it a personal quest to sort out the puzzles associated with the family of Robert and Martha’s parents, Joseph Ousley and Phoebe Jane Longmire.

First among the mysteries was whether or not Joseph really was the son of John Owsley, as stated in Harry Bryan Owsley’s book. A major piece of evidence that would argue otherwise is the family Holy Bible owned by John’s wife Charity Barton at the end of her life. In that Bible, the elderly woman recorded the names of her children. Joseph’s name is not on the list. To any responsible genealogist, a discrepancy such as that is cause for an investigation to establish beyond a doubt that the parent-child connection did exist. Floyd Owsley, among others, took up the challenge.

One of the possible explanations -- and the one that has been borne out -- is that Charity did not want to acknowledge Joseph as her son. She was known to have shown such dissatisfaction with another son, Robert, who was also missing from the list she wrote in her Bible. In Robert’s case, the reason was better known, thanks to surviving family writings. Nancy Rebecca Owsley Morris (1871-1929), a granddaughter of Robert, wrote that her grandfather had been disowned by his parents, John and Charity, because he had stopped by at a house where a dance was occurring. John and Charity, as strict or “primitive” Baptists, believed dancing was a sin. In a zero-tolerance response, they cast Robert out of the family for his transgression -- even though as far as can be determined, Robert had been unaware when he stopped at the house that a dance was going on, and did not actually enter the dwelling.

Nancy Morris goes on to mention that one of her grandfather’s brothers had met with similar treatment because he had had the audacity to marry a woman who was a half-breed Indian. The brother was surely Joseph, and the wife Phoebe Longmire. The native American aspect was known within the family. James Ousley (died 1919) often related to his granddaughter Annie Berry that his mother, Phoebe Longmire, was an Indian. Phoebe Owsley Alsup (1862-1942), a granddaughter of Joseph and Phoebe, told her descendants that her grandmother had been Cherokee. It stands to reason John Owsley would have felt he had cause to disown Joseph for his choice of bride. He disowned Robert for seemingly trivial reasons. He would not have hesitated in the case of Joseph. John and Charity’s eldest son had been killed by Shawnee warriors in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. John loathed Indians. In general, anti-Indian sentiment was at its highest extreme in Tennessee during these early years of the 19th Century, and would soon culiminate in the “Trail of Tears” forced removal of the Six Tribes to the Oklahoma territory.

These accounts are persuasive, but they still belong somewhat in the realm of “family gossip,” and do not in themselves prove that Joseph was John’s son. To put the matter to rest, Floyd Owsley, as part of an Owsley Family Historical Society project, spearheaded an effort in 2003 to conduct Y-chromosome DNA testing of male-line descendants of Joseph, Robert, and their brother Matthew to demonstrate a definite family connection. Matthew was a son of John and Charity whose name did appear in the Bible and whose descent from the couple was unquestioned. The lab results were conclusive. The odds are overwhelming that Joseph, Robert, and Matthew Owsley were all sons of John Owsley. Further testing in 2005 has doubly confirmed this, and has further shown that Joseph was definitely the brother of the rest of John Owsley’s sons -- Isaac, William, Stephen, and John (the one killed at the Battle of Tippecanoe).

However, in Joseph’s case, there was a second question of parentage, one that Y-chromosome testing could not resolve. Census records and other surviving documentation indicate that Joseph never lived in the same county as Charity Barton, his supposed mother. Floyd looked at the available information and came to the conclusion that Joseph was a bastard son. Charity lived out her childbearing years in Wilkes County, NC and then in Claiborne County, TN. Joseph appears to have been born in Grainger County, TN in 1790 and to have remained there until reaching adulthood. He is listed there as a solo head of house in the 1810 Grainger County census. He also appears a few years later in marriage records in Campbell County, where he had moved in approximately 1812, as having “given away the bride” in two weddings, one for Ann (or perhaps Amy) Housley, one for Elizabeth Housley, who therefore one can easily conclude were his sisters -- sisters who do not appear in any 19th Century list of Charity Barton’s children.

Charity’s Bible record shows the births of her first five children in the 1780s. A span of some six and a half years follows with only one birth. Later in the 1890s, the birth pace resumes with the arrival of her last two sons. The relatively “fallow” period covers the years when Joseph, Ann, and Elizabeth Ousley/Housley were being born in Grainger County, TN. Furthermore, and quite telling, is that the 1790 census shows Charity as a head of household in Wilkes County, NC, meaning Joseph was not residing with his wife. The pattern is consistent with John taking a holiday from his marriage and “shacking up” with another woman (her name is uncertain) in Grainger County, TN -- and then returning full-time to his wife, with whom he spent the rest of his days in Claiborne County. (One has to wonder if the daughter Charity gave birth to in 1792 was sired by John -- did he pay a conjugal visit to his wife, or did she find a surrogate husband during the years he was away?)

John apparently acknowledged his bastard children and probably provided financial support. He may visited them from time to time in their later childhood. Joseph was a cooper by trade, and so was John. Perhaps this is an indication John associated with Joseph enough to teach him his craft. However, it does not appear that John lived with Joseph, Ann, and Elizabeth and their mother after the mid-1790s. Whatever father-and-son relationship existed between John and Joseph was probably strained. Joseph may not have cared much what his father thought about Indians, and in any case, he was determined to marry Phoebe Longmire. Upon the marriage, John disowned Joseph. This development no doubt pleased Charity, who had probably never appreciated the existence of her husband’s second family.

If Joseph ever used the surname Owsley, it could only have been in childhood. In the 1810 census, recorded when Joseph was twenty, his name is spelled Ousley. This probably helped him blend in in Grainger County, where a number of Ousley families resided. After he and Phoebe were married in 1812, they lived for decades in Campbell County, and used Housley as their surname there, again preferring to assume a name common in their area, allowing them to avoid uncomfortable questions like, “You any relation to those Owsleys over in Claiborne County?” All eleven children probably went by Housley in early childhood. However, in general only those who remained in Campbell County during their adult lives preserved this spelling. Joseph and Phoebe reverted back to the Ousley spelling upon moving to Union County in the 1850s. Four of their children used Ousley beginning in the 1840s or 1850s, Martha included. Of course, her last name was Branson from age seventeen or eighteen onward, but in later life she cited Ousley as the right spelling of her maiden name, which had the virtue of matching the version her parents and favorite brother William had taken to using. Today descendants of Joseph and Phoebe go by all three spellings -- Ousley, Housley, and Owsley -- the latter being used by the descendants of George Washington Housley, a grandson of Martha’s brother Robert, who changed his surname to Owsley in the 1890s, perhaps because he had read The Owsley Family in England and America and believed Owsley to be the correct family name. His male-line descendants, which include Floyd Owsley, have used that spelling ever since.

(Please note that some of these spelling variations may not have been deliberate choice, but arose from illiteracy. Martha may have been literate, but her husband even toward the end of his life was signing legal documents with an “X”.)

One would think Martha knew the story of her father’s illegitimacy, but perhaps not. The circumstances may have become a skeleton in the closet even before her birth. If she did know, she in turn treated it as something not to be discussed, and her descendants were left unaware. She must have known that her father and grandfather had had a falling out. Joseph had turned his back on his heritage, and Martha does not appear to have made any attempt to restore the link. It is likely she never met her paternal grandparents.

Martha was surely aware of her Cherokee blood. However, in her day and age, one did not admit too strenuously to Indian forebears -- her mother might have been rounded up and sent on the Trail of Tears if she had not been perceived as white enough. So the details became vague and subject to speculation, leading to Grace Mildred Branson’s reference to Pocahontas. Bizarre as it may seem, that claim is not entirely attributable to Grace’s infamous tendency to invent stories out of thin air. One of Martha’s cousins married into the Harrison family, as in Presidents William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison. One of Benjamin Harrison’s ancestors is supposed to be Pocahontas, if one believes certain renderings of Pocahontas’s family tree. Grace Branson may have heard some sort of distorted version of that connection. If so, it is doubtful she heard it from Martha herself. Martha may well have refused to acknowledge her Indian blood at all. A telling instance of her denial lingers in a tale told by her son Alvin to his son Ivan, a version of which Ivan published in Bones of the Bransons. In the handwritten initial draft of Ivan’s recounting of this tale, he relates how his father Alvin, in business partnership with his second cousin Hiram Branson, was engaged in a pack-mule supply run in and out of Yosemite Valley -- this was the way the two men earned their living for the summers of 1892 and 1893. The cousins returned from the expedition accompanied by Josie Allen, then a teenager and urgently in need of shelter. Josie was a granddaughter of a Yosemite Indian chief and she had some status among the remaining native community, but her German-immigrant father had been dead for some time and her mother even longer, and somehow she did not feel secure remaining in the valley. Her first husband William Stanley -- himself half-Indian -- was for some reason no longer part of her life. When Alvin and Hiram brought her home, she arrived nearly naked and holding her completely naked infant, Ellen Stanley. (In one version of the story, told by her descendants, Hiram had rescued her and the baby from drowning in the Merced River.) Alvin and Hiram endorsed the idea that she stay in Hiram’s cabin. Alvin’s cabin was already crowded with a family that included his wife Mary and four children. But Mary must have needed extra convincing to accept the proposition that an unmarried man and woman would be cohabitating. She must have suggested that Josie be taken to Alvin’s parents’ large estate, Grasshopper Ranch, where there would be room for Josie and where there would be proper chaperonage. Alvin argued otherwise, stating, “You know how much Ma hates Indians. Says they should all be killed like wild animals.”

Maybe Alvin was exaggerating his mother’s bigotry. After all, the strategy of the moment was to clear the way for Hiram and Josie to remain together -- which they did for the rest of their lives, eventually having six children together in addition to raising Ellen Stanley. However, it is unlikely he made up a convenient lie without some sort of underlying truth as inspiration. Martha undoubtedly had on occasion said hateful things about Indians. This seems incredible given that she was condemning a group she could be said to belong to. This sort of self-hated (real or feigned) is however an extremely common syndrome exhibited by members of oppressed minorities. It is probably too convenient to judge her harshly from the perspective of the 21st Century. She was conforming to the times she lived in. At this point, what is regrettable is that her choice denied her descendants access to the true story of their heritage -- and some still are unaware of it.

Just how much Indian blood Phoebe Jane Longmire actually had is an unresolved question. Her origins are harder to document than those of Joseph, but records exist that appear to identify her as the daughter of John Longmire and Nancy Marshall of North Carolina. Both John and Nancy can be placed in family trees replete with such surnames as Clay, Britt, Connolly, Green, Mitchell, and Marston, and all eight of Phoebe’s great-grandparents appear to have been born in the British Isles. However, it was quite common for Indian and part-Indian landholders in the early years of the United States to assume the official identities of white tenants or neighbors in order to keep control of their property. Phoebe may have lived with or in association with John and Nancy and “acquired” their heritage, or she may be connected by blood. Phoebe was described as a half-breed, but may have been three-quarters white. There is also the possibility that her heritage may not be Cherokee at all -- that this is only a family legend.

If a legend, it is an old one. The question was investigated by the Owsley Family Historical Society through yet another DNA sampling. Previous DNA tests involved Y-chromosome tests to confirm male-line ancestry. This method is often definitive because Y-chromosome DNA is passed from father to son without mixing with the mother’s contribution, and so the pattern remains consistent. A similar preservation of pattern is true of mitochondrial DNA, which passes from mother to child without being altered by the father’s genetics. It took a great deal of time to track down a descendant of Phoebe Longmire along an all-female line (genealogists have a far easier time tracking male lines), but both Floyd Owsley and I (Dave Smeds) succeeded in doing so. Finding such a descendant willing to give a cheek-swab sample for testing was yet another challenge, but in September, 2005, a descendant in Tennessee (ironically with the surname Longmire) agreed to be tested. The results? Phoebe Longmire’s mtDNA shows a pattern incompatible with native North American origins, and matches the pattern most common in northwestern Europe, i.e. this line no doubt stemmed from England. If Phoebe was part Cherokee, the heritage would have had to come from her father’s side. The test was repeated in early 2006 with a cell sample from a female-line descendant of Martha, and the results were identical.

Because the Owsley family has been so well studied and because the modern research efforts are so well organized, there is no need to dwell on Martha’s extended ancestral lineage here. Anyone wishing to approach the matter comprehensively is advised to begin by looking at what is offered by the Owsley Family Historical Society, whose website can be reached by clicking here, and by consulting Floyd Owsley’s personal genealogy website. (Click here.) The O.H.F.S. publications are an excellent means to acquaint you with the details of the American generations of the Owsley Family, from Captain Thomas Owsley’s arrival in Virginia in the late 1600s through the descendants born in the mid-1800s. Earlier European forebears are historically prominent, and an even wider array of sources is to be found. If one goes back far enough, some of the relevant people will be among those included in that famous reference of England’s early Norman noble and royal families, The Domesday Book. For those who prefer a quick summary, the following paragraphs touch upon a few highlights of Martha’s pedigree.

Martha’s last royal forebear appears to have been Edward III of England -- though the way European royalty intermarried, it’s easy to miss candidates. She can claim earlier descent from Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, and many other monarchs. Many of these 9th to 13th Century figures were her progenitors through multiple branches of her lineage, not just the one flowing from Edward III. Over the next few centuries after the reign of Edward III, the descent passes through a variety of England’s high families. In brief, the sequence goes from Edward through Edmund of Langley to Constance of York to Eleanor Holand to Sir Humphrey Audley (Tuchet) to Elizabeth Audley to Sir John Sydenham to John Sydenham to Anne Sydenham to Newdigate Poyntz.

Newdigate Poyntz, through his descent from his father John Poyntz, was a scion of an old Norman house and the founder of the Poyntz family of Benefeld of Northamptonshire. Newdigate was born 1608 (christened 16 November 1608) at Reigate in Surrey. He served as a captain in the service of Charles I of England and was killed 4 August 1643 in the siege of Gainsborough by the forces of Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads -- the so-called Battle of Gainsborough. Newdigate’s name rose to the public’s attention in the early 1980s when the gossip columnists checked into the blood connection between Prince Charles and his bride-to-be, Diana Spencer. Diana was descended from Newdigate Poyntz (by his third wife Mary Parkyns), and Charles from Newdigate’s great-great grandfather Nicholas Poyntz (1528-1585).

Newdigate’s daughter Dorothea Poyntz, a child of Newdigate’s first wife Sarah Foxley, was born in late 1631 or very early 1632 (christened 3 January 1632) in Benefeld. Dorothea married John Owsley in approximately 1650. John was the son of another prominent English family whose name was derived from heritage lands along the River Ouse. In terms of caste status the match between Dorothea and John was a union of equals. John followed in his father’s footsteps and became a clergyman. (His father, also named John Owsley, was the rector of Trull parish in Taunton in Somersetshire. He was married to Edith Edwards.) John first served as a clerk at Whittlebury Church in Northamptonshire (which is probably where he became acquainted with Dorothea), then won an appointment as rector of the Stoke-Coursey parish in Somersetshire in 1652. He served there until 1660. After the Restoration following the fall of the Commonwealth, John Owsley became the rector of the parish church of Glooston in Leicestershire.

John and Dorothea lived out their lives at Glooston, John passing away 25 December 1687 and Dorothea 2 August 1705. Their union produced twelve children, the younger seven arriving after the couple were installed at Glooston. (The church is shown in the image below right. Photo taken 23 Sep 2001 by Milancie Adams and Al Tietjen. One of the reasons for the formation of the Owsley Family Historical Society in 1979 was that the parish church, founded by the early 13th Century, was falling into disrepair because the hamlet had shrunk to only a few dozen residents, and the diocese was disinclined to spend the money necessary to maintain the historic relic as a functioning house of worship. A portion of O.H.F.S. revenues go toward the upkeep of the edifice and salary of the rector.)

John and Dorothea’s fourth child, Thomas Owsley, was born in 11 June 1658. He is known to have first arrived in the Colony of Virginia by September of 1677. Over the next three years, he was engaged in some sort of enterprise that required sailing back and forth between the colony and Europe. In 1679, he was taken captive in the Mediterranean by Barbary pirates, who released him upon receiving a ransom paid by Rector John Owsley and the parishioners of Glooston. The record of names and amounts contributed has been preserved at the church. Perhaps the incarceration numbed Thomas’s enjoyment of voyages. By the following year he had settled permanently in Stafford County, VA. He led a politically prominent life, serving as a county clerk, a justice of the peace, and a captain in the county militia. He took his oath as a Burgess of Stafford County 3 March 1693 and served until his death seven years later.

Thomas wed Anne Harris, the only child of Lieutenant William Harris. It was a socially advantageous union, and their children might have followed the example had not Thomas died at the relatively young age of forty-two, passing away 10 October 1700. Thomas II, the eldest of their six children, was only about ten years old and there had not been a chance to find him a match within the highest stratum of colonial society. From his generation onward, the Owsleys no longer numbered among the movers and shakers of the colony.

However, Thomas Owsley II did well enough. Born about 1690 in Stafford County, VA, Thomas became a respected figure and like his father was a major landowner in northern Virginia. He worked as a pilot and chain carrier in some of the early surveys of the area, a duty that may sound mundane but in his time was a task entrusted to men of prominence. He was a member of Overwharton Parish, Stafford County and later a member of Hamilton Parish, Prince William county. About 1730, Thomas II married a woman named Ann, birth surname no longer known. Ann was born about 1707 in Virginia and died about 1756. The couple became parents to ten children. Thomas Owsley II died some time between 30 March 1750 and 4 July 1750 in Fairfax County, VA.

Among the ten children of Thomas Owsley II was second son John Owsley, born about 1734 in Virginia. John married Ann Stephens in about 1752. Ann had been born in the early 1730s and was a daughter of Robert and Ann Stephens. The couple lived in Loudoun County, VA, where John had inherited land from his father. John would finish his short lifetime there. Court records show John was frequently in fights, and was charged at various times in his twenties with assault, battery, and trespass. He was stabbed to death in a brawl in October 1764, when he was approximately thirty years old. Francis Kennedy was convicted of the murder, but was later pardoned and released from jail. Ann survived him by many years, dying after 1810 in Tennessee.

John Owsley has as of 2005 become the subject of a family heritage mystery. Samples of Y-chromosome DNA taken from seventeen modern-day Owsley descendants has revealed that John’s pattern does not match the pattern of his brothers, while the brothers’ pattern does match that of other Owsleys. Clearly, John could not have been the biological child of Thomas Owsley II. Among the possible explanations are that his mother cuckolded his father, or that John was an adopted son. John himself adopted his younger brother Pine Owsley (aka Pointz Owsley). John’s sister Sarah Owsley bore at least two children out of wedlock -- perhaps John was an out-of-wedlock child of his father’s sister Sarah, about whom not enough is known to be able to prove otherwise. Floyd Owsley has suggested another theory that fits the facts quite well. No one knows the origin of Ann, the wife of Thomas Owsley II. Her name is known only because in his will, he named her as one of his heirs. It could be she was his second wife. An unknown first wife might have died after bearing Thomas’s first son, Thomas III, and Ann took her place, arriving as a young widow whose baby son John had been sired by her previous husband. It makes sense that Thomas would have adopted his infant stepson and and treated him as a natural son thereafter, including giving him the Owsley name. Such a scenario -- which is not at all unreasonable to contemplate -- would explain why Thomas II’s eldest son and the younger sons all had the right Y-chromosome pattern, but John did not. Unless Ann’s heritage is discovered, we may never know the answer, and therefore Floyd’s theory remains as valid as any. In any event, John was treated as the son of Thomas Owsley II during his lifetime, and so he is treated as such here.

This brings us to another John Owsley, the one mentioned in the first few paragraphs -- the intolerant father who disowned his sons Joseph and Robert. John Owsley was the third of the five children of John Owsley and Ann Stephens. He was born 6 November 1757 in Loudoun County, VA. John was only a boy of seven when his father was murdered. Undoubtedly this meant he had to “make do” for himself from an early age and did not enjoy the same social prominence his grandfather and great-grandfather had enjoyed. An indication of his status was his eventual occupation of cooper.

John was raised in Loudoun County, and possibly did not leave the area until the upheaval of the Revolutionary War. John enlisted and fought in 1776 and 1777. His service meant he was pensioned in 1833 when Congress rewarded the surviving veterans of the conflict. Upon his death, his widow Charity Barton Owsley attempted to claim the widow’s pension, but her request was denied, allegedly because John’s record showed he had deserted in August of 1777. This may well be true, but if so, it is not clear why the black mark was overlooked in 1833. Records do show that hundreds of other soldiers deserted at this time. In the summer of 1777 the rebellion appeared doomed to failure and like many other dispirited recruits John apparently saw no point in continuing to fight. Deserting gave him the opportunity to set up a new life for himself in Rowan County, NC, where his mother Ann and step-father John Adams had settled near the community of Salisbury. The relocation resulted in John meeting Charity Barton, whom he married in Rowan County on 16 August 1778. Tax rolls confirm John and Charity living in Rowan County in 1778.

In the next few years, the couple moved to Wilkes County, NC, where they lived in or near the community of Roaring River. In 1783, John is listed as serving in Captain Enoch Osborn’s Company of the Virginia Militia from Montgomery County. (When John applied for his pension, he cited a service of one month guarding the frontiers of Virginia as one of his qualifications.) Two other members of that militia were John and Isaac Barton, Charity’s brothers. Montgomery County bordered Wilkes County, NC in that era. John’s mother and stepfather also came to Roaring River, arriving no later than 1784 -- deeds show that five sons of John Adams (by his first wife) owned vast amounts of land in the county.

Later in the 1780s, John must have been drawn to Tennessee -- and then, apparently, into an extended vacation from his marriage and the establishing of a second household in Grainger County. As mentioned, Charity appears as sole head of household in the 1790 census for Wilkes County, NC.

By the early 1890s, Charity also reached Tennessee, but she lived in Claiborne County, in close association with families who had been neighbors in Wilkes County, such as that of Fielding Lewis. John may have lived with her during this period, or perhaps not. If the answer is “not,” then he returned to her permanently in the second half of the decade. From that point forward, they remained denizens of Claiborne County. The couple’s presence can be confirmed though various land transactions from 1802 through the end of their lives in the 1840s, as well as by census records. John died 19 December 1845, and Charity 20 February 1848. It is believed both were buried in the Pleasant Point Cemetery in Claiborne County.

And so we come back to Joseph, the bastard son of John. Much of his early life is described earlier in this document. His last decades with Phoebe, all of them spent in Tennessee, appear to have been relatively uneventful, the biggest development being a move from Campbell County to Union County in the 1850s. Joseph and Phoebe’s household appears in Union County in the 1860 and 1870 censuses. In the 1880 census, Phoebe is shown as a widow living with son John Housley back in Campbell County. Joseph’s precise death date is unknown, except that it occurred between the 1870 and 1880 census surveys. Phoebe’s death date is likewise uncertain, save that it occurred after the 1880 census.

Joseph and Phoebe were buried in the Cedar Creek Bridge Cemetery, but their graves were later moved to the Baker’s Forge Memorial Cemetery when the Tennessee Valley Authority built Norris Dam, which caused Cedar Creek Bridge Cemetery to become submerged. The TVA placed markers at the graves of Joseph and Phoebe with incorrect dates on them. A new monument for Joseph and Phoebe was placed in the Baker’s Forge Memorial Cemetery 8 August 2000, by the Owsley Family Historical Society.

As stated above, Martha was born 2 June 1828 in Tennessee, probably in Campbell County. Her father (as Joseph Housley) appears on an 1813 petition filed in Campbell County to move the county seat, and he is listed on the 1823 tax list. The household he headed appears there in the 1830, 1840, and 1850 censuses. It stands to reason Martha spent the whole of her childhood in Campbell County; however, no documents have been found that absolutely place her there at birth. Joseph and Phoebe did return to Grainger County for a year or so in 1816, and it is possible they might have briefly left Campbell County at other junctures.

How Martha met John Sevier Branson is not certain. Though John was born in Tennessee, no records show him as ever residing in Campbell County, and John and his birth family were in Gasconade County, MO by the end of the 1820s -- perhaps reaching that locale even before Martha was born. The first encounter undoubtedly took place in Missouri. The most likely scenario is that Martha went as a teenager in the mid-1840s to join kin who had migrated earlier. Her first cousin Robert Housley Gilmore, the son of her aunt Ann/Amy Housley (one of the two full sisters with whom Joseph Ousley/Housley was raised in Grainger County) had settled in Gasconade County. Robert married Rhoda Branson there in 1841. Rhoda was John Sevier Branson’s sister, the one closest to him in age (two years older). Around this time Martha’s brother William Ousley (thirteen years her senior) was living in Crawford, Osage County, MO. Martha is known to have resided with William during the time she was waiting for her husband to return from the California gold fields (1849-1852). It is quite likely she was part of William’s household as a single woman earlier in the 1840s, and at some point would have been introduced to John, her cousin’s brother-in-law.

Martha and John’s marriage occurred some time in the mid-1840s, probably the beginning of 1846 (this would agree with the information provided in the 1900 census). It was yet another mingling of the Branson and Ousley/Housley clans, something that had happened several times over the 1700s and first half of the 1800s, the pairing of Rhoda and Robert having been just one occasion. There would be at least one more instance. In the early 20th Century, Martha’s grandson John McDonald would marry Josie Johnson (Josephine Samantha Johnson), the daughter of Martha’s sister, Caroline Housley.

To get a sense of the course of Martha’s life once she became Mrs. John Branson, the simplest approach is to first read the biography of her husband. Click here to go straight to John’s page. Assuming you’ve just done that and have returned to this spot, below are a few addenda specific to Martha. It’s a shame there isn’t more to offer, but in the 19th Century, the individual doings of women were not often recorded, and Martha is no exception.

Martha was obviously a hardy woman, to have ventured off across the Isthmus of Panama with three little boys in the primitive conditions endured by travellers in the Old West of the early 1850s. It is also obvious that Martha served as the nurturing and steady heart of her immediate family. Moreover, she provided for her loved ones without the benefit of female kin her own age to assist her. The stability of her household is attested to by the fact that so many of her children remained close to Grasshopper Ranch until her very last few years, and so many of the grandchildren partially grew up there.

This is the house at Grasshopper Ranch in the 1890s. Martha is the old lady in the rocking chair. The two adolescent girls are her granddaughters, Elsie and Eunice Harrington, daughters of Nancy Anne Branson.

One faint scrap of biography specific to Martha appears in Bones of the Bransons when Ivan Branson mentions that Martha was known as an accomplished midwife. Her husband’s Confederate sympathies were not enough to prevent her from lending her services to a young black woman in the late 1860s. The woman couldn’t pay Martha to help with the birth (a job which included cooking and housekeeping for the family during the post-partum phase), so Martha suggested they trade in kind, since Martha was due to have a baby herself a few months later. (Ivan Branson speculates that the resulting offspring were Louella Rogers, later a long-time postmistress of Hornitos, and John Sevier Branson, Jr. This guess is probably correct. Louella was a daughter of Moses Rodgers, who as the boss of the Washington Mine employed or would go on to employ a number of Martha’s sons and sons-in-law. Moses Rodgers can be seen in a photograph with eleven other men, one of the other eleven being John Sevier Branson, standing in front of the Hornitos Saloon in 1890. Click here to go to the page of the Mariposa County Research website that contains this photo.) One has to wonder if Martha would have been so tolerant of an Indian mother-to-be.

Martha served as a midwife as late as 1901, when she helped daughter-in-law Mary Simmons Branson, Alvin’s wife, deliver Ivan. She was then seventy-three years old, and the two-day labor took all of her stamina. On the subject of Ivan, he was initially named Donald (a name chosen by his older sister Maude as a reward for staying home to help with the birth and post-partum period instead of leaving Mariposa County to attend business school), but Martha protested strenuously that this was an old Scots name and was therefore unsuitable. What she had against the Scottish is uncertain. She was equally unhappy when her daughter-in-law changed Donald to Ivan, declaring that name to be too Russian. She later remarked that she wished she had kept her mouth shut.

Martha died 12 January 1908 at Grasshopper Ranch and is buried in the Oddfellows Cemetery in Hornitos beside John. Pictures of this graveyard are posted on the Mariposa County Research website. Click here to go the page.

One of the rare surviving photos of Martha is this one, which surfaced in February, 2008 amid the mementoes preserved by one of her great great grandsons. It was a portrait taken in about 1903, probably at a photography studio in Merced, of four generations of the Branson/Ousley clan. Those shown are Martha herself, her daughter Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier at left, Nancy’s eldest daughter Mary Josephine Harrington McDonald at right, and behind them all (probably standing on a stool, as he was only four or five years old), with his hand on Martha’s shoulder, is Josephine’s son Robert Seafield McDonald. The latter was Martha’s very first great-grandchild.

To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.