Nancy Margaret McDonald

Nancy Margaret McDonald, eldest daughter of Phoebe Ann Branson and William McDonald, was born 6 August 1876 in Merced, Merced County, CA. Nancy’s childhood was affected by the ill health of her mother, who died when Nancy was only eleven. By 1880 Phoebe was already needing help to care for her four offspring -- the 1880 census shows live-in nanny Mary Jane Geary in the household. (Mary Jane Geary was the sister of Nancy’s aunt Ella Geary, the wife of Phoebe’s brother Joseph Branson.) It is thought that later in the 1880s Nancy’s aunt Theresa Branson cared for the McDonald children, including the period immediately after their mother’s death. Merced was also the home of two other aunts, Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier and Mary Jane Branson Johnson, whose presence comforted young Nancy with the knowledge that family was close at hand. Nancy was in her mid-teens before stepmother Agnes Dunn became part of the household.

Nancy was remembered as a beautiful girl with a fine singing voice. In her early adulthood, she contracted some sort of serious illness, and was sent to San Francisco for treatment and convalescence. While there, she met Roy Ames Price. One thing led to another and at age twenty-six, Nancy became a wife -- escaping the label of old maid, which had begun to stick to her a few years earlier with the marriage of her younger sister Teresa. Roy had been born in Sacramento, CA 9 March 1878 shortly after his parents, James Greer Price and Anna Elizabeth Massey, had come west from Indiana. After spending his earliest years in Sacramento, he had lived most of the remainder of the 19th Century in Oakland, Alameda County, CA. The family had relocated to San Francisco in late 1899 or early 1900. Roy was the eldest of four kids, the others all being female. Like Nancy, Roy knew what it was like to lose a mother early. Anna Massey Price had passed away in 1893, when Roy was fifteen. Nancy and Roy’s wedding took place 6 October 1904. As the union does not appear in the San Francisco County marriage index, it seems likely the ceremony was held back in Merced.

As newlyweds, Nancy and Roy cleaved close to his father and stepmother, Caroline Geldert Price, in San Francisco. James G. Price was working then as a hardware merchant (though not as an owner), and Roy, whose job description in voter registers is hardware salesman, probably worked at the same store. Over the course of his life to come, Roy would always tend toward white collar jobs, usually directly in retail. He is known to have gone from clerking to being the manager of a hardware store, and otherwise been a cigar merchant, a clerk in an art supply store, and an accountant.

As one might expect, the great earthquake of 1906 disrupted the family’s circumstances. At least some of the Price clan, including James and Caroline, are known to have taken refuge temporarily in Burlingame, San Mateo County, CA. Nancy and Roy may have been part of this sojourn. When it became practical, everyone returned. James and Carrie found a place on Page Street. Roy and Nancy’s home was a couple of blocks away on Hayes Street.

In late 1909 or early 1910, Roy asserted his independence. He and Nancy relocated across the bay to Oakland, where they would reside for the rest of their lives. Not all of that stretch was spent in the same dwelling, however. Voter registers show them at three different addresses on Harrison Street up into the 1920s, and then on Fortieth Street during the 1930s and into the 1940s.

As a wife, Nancy does not appear to have ever been employed outside the home. This was true even though she did not have kids to raise. She never became a mother. This is likely to have been due to some sort of medical issue, perhaps related to the problem that had sent her to San Francisco. In part because of their childlessness, and in part because of their presence in the East Bay, the Prices were regular participants of family gatherings in Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda with Nancy’s first cousins George Bertrand Johnson and Alice Bretelle Johnson Fowle and their spouses and children. Bretelle’s daughter Esta Jane Fowle grew up thinking of Nancy as “Aunt Nan,” even while understanding that she was technically a cousin. Bretelle and her offspring were among Nancy’s heirs, acquiring her chinaware and associated cabinetry. Though Roy had nieces, he and Nancy must have felt it was proper to pass such items on to her female blood kin of the next generation. Inasmuch as Nancy had no daughters or nieces, Bretelle was the logical candidate. (As of this writing -- July, 2009 -- some of those heirlooms still embellish Esta Jane’s retirement apartment.) Nancy was also able to enjoy the nearby presence of another first cousin, Josephine Harrington McDonald, and her sons and their households. Josephine was not only her first cousin on her mother’s side, but had married Charles Sweden McDonald, first cousin of Nancy on her father’s side.

Nancy died 2 March 1940 at home in Oakland. Roy died 12 February 1942 of a cerebral hemorrhage at Highland Hospital in Oakland. The remains of both wife and husband were interred in the McDonald plot in the Knights of Pythias Cemetery, one of several adjacent graveyards that now collectively form the Merced Cemetery District. This is where the resting places of Nancy’s parents, stepmother, siblings John and William, and half-brother Ellsworth McDonald (born after she had grown up and moved away) can also be found.

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