Phoebe Ann Branson

Phoebe Ann Branson, the fourth child and first daughter of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley, was born in the mid-1850s, probably in the Livermore Valley where her father was temporarily trying to be a potato farmer. Family notes give her a birthdate of 8 February 1854. There is some uncertainty whether this date is correct. The family Bible was lost to a house fire in 1904, and is not available to consult, nor does any surviving record made during her lifetime pin the date down with precision. It may be 8 February 1854 was what someone reconstructed rather than something they obtained from a robust source. The date is somewhat too early to fit well into the known sequence of events. For one thing, it is not at all clear her mother had arrived in California by May, 1853, when Phoebe would had to have been conceived in order to be born by 8 February 1854. The date does align well with the 1860 census, which lists Phoebe as six years old, but censuses are notorious for inaccurate age reporting. An alternate birthdate of 7 March 1855, which is the one that appears in her obituary and on her gravemarker, seems somewhat more likely to be the right one.

Phoebe was named for her maternal grandmother Phoebe Longmire (Ousley). Regardless of what precise date she sprang from the womb, she was the first baby of the family native to California, and the only one of John and Martha’s ten offspring not born in either Missouri or the Mother Lode. She is not to be confused with her second cousin Phoebe Ellen Branson, daughter of Isaac Branson, who was over a dozen years her junior. Phoebe Ann and Phoebe Ellen lived right next door to each other in the early 1870s and their life histories share other similarities.

When Phoebe Ann was an infant the household moved to Mariposa County, CA, where her father resumed his career as a gold miner in the gravel beds along the Merced River. Though John had met with only temporary success in his early mining sojourn in the Trinity Mountains of northwestern California, he fared better along the Merced River. The gold deposits there were robust, and a man willing to work hard could eventually build up a nest egg. In his case, it required fifteen years to do so. This gold-camp existence was the life that Phoebe knew as she was being raised.

John tried several spots -- Harte and Johnson’s Flat the first year or two, then upstream to Barrett City, a major mining center. The family lived as close as practical to his worksites, in cabins and at times in tents. By 1859 they had settled on the east side of the river at Phillips Flat. The gravel beds here proved to be especially productive, and Phillips Flat became the household’s base of operations for about a decade. Today it is not possible to visit Phillips Flat or Harte or Johnson’s Flat; the sites lie at the bottom of Lake McClure, a reservoir. You can still find Barrett (minus the city designation) on maps, shown as slightly offshore -- in the water.

Phoebe was in her early teens when John and Martha, having hoarded the income from the Phillips Flat years, decided that they wanted a new life. They relocated in 1868 to the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where John became a farmer and rancher. This was an occupation he would keep for the rest of his life, but doing so in Oregon proved to be temporary. Martha found the climate too wet for her taste, so back the family came in 1869 to Mariposa County. John bought a ranch a few miles east of Phillips Flat. This acreage was not far from Hornitos and touched the parcel belonging to the large mining outpost of Quartzburg. There he raised cattle and feed and hauled wagon loads commercially. He prospected only occasionally as a sideline. The couple resided on this land, affectionately known as Grasshopper Ranch, for the rest of their lives, raising their younger children there.

As one of the older children, Phoebe did not call Grasshopper Ranch home for long. She married William McDonald 24 February 1874. (One source states it was the 23rd; there is a possibility this is correct.) The wedding took place in Hornitos. The couple settled immediately in Merced, a quickly-growing railroad town just to the west of Mariposa County in the Great Central Valley. (Shown below left is their wedding portrait. This was no doubt taken in Merced, where so many early photos of the Branson clan originated, particularly the ones from Edwards Studio.) William had been born born 12 March 1850 (his gravemarker states 1852 -- while this birth year cannot be ruled out, it is less consistent with other sources) in Ontario Province, Canada, where his father, Sweden McDonald, a surgeon from Scotland, had settled with his wife Allison. (Being from Scotland, the good doctor’s family name had of course originally been spelled MacDonald, but he changed it to the Irish version, McDonald, so as not to alienate potential customers within his largely Irish-immigrant neighborhood.) William had grown up in Grey Township, Huron County, Ontario, then come to the United States in 1866, probably spending a few years in the Buffalo, NY area, then venturing on to California. William was a blacksmith and carriage maker by trade -- another description would be wheelwright. Skills in harness making and saddlery ran in the family. His brothers Robert Seafield McDonald and Thomas Hayes McDonald had worked at such jobs back in Ontario and New York during their early adulthood, though both later went on to become doctors like their father. Among William’s career distinctions, perhaps referring more to the 1880s than his bachelor days, is that he built and repaired stagecoaches for the Yosemite run. When his shop first opened on 17th Street, Merced could only lay claim to having five other storefront businesses, the community having still to climb up out of its pioneer phase.

The move to Merced set a precedent in Phoebe’s family. Her sister Nancy came as well, marrying Peter Harrington in the mid-1870s. Eventually two more Branson girls, Mary Jane and Theresa, would settle in the town. Theresa may have come initially in order to help Phoebe to care for her children, a brood that came to consist of four offspring, John, Nancy, William, and Teresa, born from 1875 to 1880. The help might have been necessary because Phoebe’s health began to fail. Even as early as 1880 she had help in the household in the form of “servant” (as described in the 1880 census) Mary Jane Geary. (Mary Jane, eighteen years old in 1880, was Phoebe’s extended sister-in-law. Mary Jane’s sister Ellen Margaret Geary had married Phoebe’s brother Joseph Branson in 1879.)

Phoebe died 9 August 1887, the event almost certainly occurring in Merced. (The death date has been mis-recorded in many sources. In Bones of the Bransons by Ivan Branson, it is shown as 10 July 1889, which is wildly off. Unfortunately even the “good” family notes still had the day wrong, i.e. as the eighteenth rather than the ninth. The eighteenth was probably the day her obituary was published. Unfortunately, the eighteenth was used even within this website biography until October, 2008, when double-checking of her obituary and her gravemarker showed that it was in fact the ninth.)

After her passing, her husband and children maintained their bond with the Branson clan. This was particularly true of the initial twenty years following Phoebe’s demise. The offspring of Nancy and Mary Jane Branson (one of the latter being taken as a ward by Theresa Branson) grew up in close association with the McDonald children. (It was not until 1900 to 1906 that this Merced-native younger generation began to disperse to other communities in order to establish their own households.) The photograph below right is William as a widower -- a photo preserved in the memorabilia of his Branson in-laws.

William McDonald went on to marry Agnes Dunn in about 1892. Agnes had been born 19 March 1871 in Minnesota. Having such a young woman as his new bride might have been a recipe for William to quickly sire a whole second family. The pair made an attempt to do so, but fate thwarted their plans. A boy was born at the end of 1892, but lived only a month, dying 16 January 1893. The anguish of losing this baby was apparently enough to make William and Agnes content to leave things be in the short term. Finally, after all four of William and Phoebe’s children had reached adulthood, the couple must have wanted to relieve the emptiness of their home. Son Maurice Ellsworth McDonald (best known by his middle name) was born 20 September 1902.

In the late 1890s, William’s nephew Charles Sweden McDonald, son of the late Robert Seafield McDonald, came out west from his home near Buffalo, NY. A romance sprang up between Charles and Phoebe’s niece Mary Josephine Harrington, followed by marriage, uniting the Branson and McDonald clans a second time.

William passed away 7 June 1914, and therefore did not get to see Ellsworth become a grown man. As a widow, Agnes stayed put in the family home. Through the rest of the 1910s and into the 1920s she played grandmother and “Old Auntie” to the members of the younger generations who had sprung from Phoebe and her sisters. Agnes passed away 20 July 1947, having dwelled in Merced over half a century. Over the course of his life, Ellsworth had also chosen to remain a denizen of Merced, but with his mother’s death, relocated to San Francisco. He died there 3 April 1949 of a heart condition. By all accounts, Ellsworth never took a wife nor became a father.

Most of the members of the William McDonald/Phoebe Branson family were interred in the McDonald plot at the Knights of Pythias Cemetery. (Today this graveyard is one of several, such as the Oddfellows Cemetery, that make up Merced Cemetery District -- look for the latter name if searching for gravemarker photos on FindaGrave.com.) The group consists of William, both his wives, and children John, Nancy, William, and Ellsworth, along with son-in-law Roy Ames Price. The remains of daughter Teresa were entombed in Evergreen Mausoleum in Merced with those of her husband, James Joseph Garibaldi.

From the time this website was launched in late 2005 until late 2008, Phoebe’s line of descent was described as extinct. This was because, though Phoebe was survived by four healthy children, she had only one grandchild, James Donald Garibaldi, and family records indicated Don did not have offspring. Recently it has become apparent from public sources that Don did in fact have one child, who appears to still be alive today. So Phoebe’s line persists after all. It has yet to be confirmed whether further descendants have been born in the last half century.

Phoebe, right, with her sister Theresa. This image was scanned directly from a tintype created in the 1880s. Perhaps you will agree that Phoebe appears unhealthy. At the time this picture was taken she may well have been suffering from the condition that led to her death.

Children of Phoebe Ann Branson with William McDonald

John Sweden McDonald

Nancy Margaret McDonald

William McDonald

Teresa McDonald

For genealogical details, click on each of the names.

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