Robert Lee Branson

Robert Lee Branson (shown left at age sixteen), son of Reuben Branson and Eliza Louisa Armstrong, was born 26 January 1880 in the Sierra Nevada foothills at Fresno Flats, Fresno County, CA. His place of birth in a sense no longer exists. In 1890, the part of Fresno County that included Fresno Flats became Madera County. Also, the spot eventually was renamed Oakhurst. (The modern-day Oakhurst is a long-established town along Highway 41 between the city of Fresno and the southern entrance of Yosemite Park.) Robert was the fourth child of the family, following William, David, and Mamie. His full name may have been Robert E. Lee Branson, after the famous general of the Confederacy. This longer version rarely appears in surviving documents, but the name is rendered that way on at least one voter register, and it makes logical sense that he would have been given such a name. The sympathies of the Branson clan had been Confederate during the Civil War.

During Robert’s infancy, his father worked as a blacksmith at Hite’s Cove in Mariposa County. The household is shown there in the 1880 census, and Hite’s Cove is listed in multiple records as Robert’s birthplace. Over the next twenty years, as Robert’s younger siblings Mabel, Mattie, Maggie, and Gertrude came into the world, the family migrated from one set of rustic accommodations to another, living near mining and lumber-industry outposts in Mariposa and Madera Counties, including Potter Ridge, Grub Gulch, and Sugar Pine. Though Reuben would occasionally take non-mining jobs, from blacksmith to sawmill operator to wood hauler, Robert grasped these were only stopgap measures intended to makes ends meet until another chance came along to pursue the dream of the big bonanza. Robert grew up with mining in his blood. Just as his two older brothers had done, he began mining himself as soon as he was old enough to do so.

By the turn of the century, Reuben temporarily gave up on the Mother Lode. With Louisa and his younger children in tow, he moved to Randsburg in the Indian Wells Valley of eastern Kern County. Robert and David (William was by then deceased) stayed behind at first, attempting to keep their father’s claims active at the Little Maggie Mine and the Gertrude Mine and possibly others, but the excavations were not worth the effort. Robert soon followed his parents and, in reaching the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, found the region he would call home for the great majority of his long life.

With his father, Robert worked as a miner in Indian Wells Valley at the Yellow Aster Mine in Randsburg. This was the period when Reuben and Louisa’s marriage crumbled. Within a few years, the couple had divorced. Louisa would raise her final child, Herbert, in San Jose and then Los Angeles. Reuben would leave Randsburg and return to the Mother Lode. Robert, meanwhile, kept his job at Yellow Aster Mining Company.

Having seen the high number of hardrock miners who succumbed to tuberculosis and other unpleasant health conditions after too many years spent working in confined spaces underground (it is quite likely that the health problems that led to his brother William’s early death were a prime example of this phenomenon), Robert touted the blacksmithing skills he had learned from his father so that he could obtain an above-ground job with the company. The strategy succeeded, and over time led to a position maintaining Yellow Aster’s water supply infrastructure, which not only served the mine but the entire community of Randsburg. Robert spent a total of seventeen years with Yellow Aster.

Robert stated in later life that he had lived in Indian Wells Valley all but the first twenty years of his life, but in fact he spent some of the interval between 1904 and 1910 -- the early years of his first marriage -- in southern California. The wedding took place in Los Angeles itself 21 July 1904. The birth of Donald Huntington Branson, the couple’s first child, happened in Huntington Beach, Orange County in early 1909. And the 1910 census shows the household of three then living in Burbank. Robert’s occupation in that census is described as “fruit peddler.”

Robert’s first wife was Mary Etta Cowsert. Etta, the daughter of John William Cowsert and Margaret Ann Taylor, had been born 20 October 1884 in Pocatello, Bannock County, ID. Etta and Robert had a tumultuous relationship. Their relative dearth of children reflects that friction -- though the small number also may have had to do with the very first pregnancy having gone awry, resulting in a late miscarriage or stillbirth some time in the 1905-1908 time frame. After moving back to the desert because the more humid climate near the coast bothered Robert’s asthma, Robert often spent his days off mining and keeping apart from Etta, somewhat of an echo of his father’s pattern. Etta was later characterized as a difficult woman to live with. The second and last living child they produced was Majorie Lee Branson, born in the spring of 1917.

By the time of Marjorie’s birth, Robert and Etta’s home was located in Keeler, Inyo County, CA, a small town on the shore of Lake Owens. The birth did not actually occur in Keeler, though. Marjorie was born in Winkleman, AZ, though what caused Etta to be in that place at the end of the pregnancy is not clear. It may have been that Robert and Etta had gone separate ways by then. Certainly neither spouse remained in Keeler past 1917. Bidding good-by to Yellow Aster Mining Company, Robert took a job at the Diaz Ranch on the shore of Lake Diaz just south of Lone Pine, Inyo County, CA. Robert’s 12 September 1918 draft registration card confirms his presence there, and describes his occupation as farmer. Etta, meanwhile, began working as a cook at the Spark Plug Mine outpost in Jeffrey, near Bishop. The latter spot was also in Inyo County, but nearly to the Mono County line, and quite separated from Lone Pine. The fact that husband and wife chose this divided living arrangement even while they had a new baby to care for paints a picture. If the relationship had not already become unsalvagable, it soon would be.

The timing of the marital friction was somewhat ironic, because the bonds between Robert and Etta had been reinforced by the marriage of Robert’s younger sister Margaret (Theresa Margaret Alice Branson) to Etta’s brother Jack Cowsert (John Patton Cowsert) in the mid-1910s. It seems any positive influence this second Branson/Cowsert union had upon Robert and Etta was not enough. From the vantage of ninety years later it is impossible to uncover all that transpired between Robert and Etta, but the push-comes-to-shove issue seems to have been Etta’s infidelity. Robert may even have been unsure he was Marjorie’s biological father. Inasmuch as Marjorie’s birth and death records cite Robert L. Branson as her father, this is assumed to be a mistaken assumption on his part, but it does appear he had reason to have such doubts. Once Robert and Etta were no longer living in the same place, Etta entered into a relationship, or perhaps strengthened an existing relationship, with lover William Thomas Ray. By early 1920 she was openly cohabitating with him. This situation and the adultery it implied became the mechanism through which Robert successfully sued for divorce. Judge C.J. McFadden of White Pine County, NV granted the petition 9 Jun 1920. Robert was given permanent custody of Donald. Custody “until so ordered otherwise” of Marjorie was given to Etta due to Marjorie’s tender age -- it was not an era when small children were separated from their mothers without extreme cause.

Robert does not appear to have ever forgiven Etta, and did not make contact when he could help it, though this preference was complicated by the fact that they remained siblings-in-law. Etta would go on to marry William Ray and have a son by him. For more details about the remainder of Etta’s life, see the end of this biography.

Despite the divorce decree, Robert did not actually take full-time custody of Donald. The boy, now entering his teens, spent his school terms with his mother in Colorado, and lived with Robert during summer vacations. It would seem that to at least some degree, Donald’s presence was a reminder to Robert of a marriage gone sour, and he found it hard to be as warm to his son as he would otherwise have been. When Donald was with him, Robert had a tendency to take on the role of a coach instructing his offspring in the various ways to work hard and be independent. It was no doubt identical to the sort of “tough love” he had received from his own father. Donald stopped attending school after graduating eighth grade, and Robert’s reaction was to find paid jobs for him to do, even if those employment situations required the youngster to live in worker barracks rather than at home. In some ways, Donald’s link to his Branson kin was maintained through spending his late teens in Bakersfield, Kern County, CA next door to his aunt Margaret Branson Cowsert, after Etta, having been abandoned by William Ray, moved there to be near her brother Jack and family.

Robert appears to have taken the approach that, when it came to sharing his life with a wife and kids, he might as well start over from scratch. And so he did. His second wife was Nellie Margaret Reed, whom he married 17 March 1923. In a sense, Robert had waited for Nellie for more than twenty years. Nellie had been born in Randsburg 31 January 1901. She was the daughter of Tilden Hancock Reed and Caroline (Carrie) Susan Frakes -- conceivably a couple Robert had met shortly after arriving in Indian Wells Valley.

Nellie being only twenty-two at the time of the wedding, offspring were a natural consequence of the union. Over the course of the 1920s, Gloria, Norma, and Daniel were born, making Robert the father of five children altogether. This means Robert was unusually fecund for one of the children of Reuben Branson. Six of Robert’s siblings had no offspring at all. Robert was matched only by his sister Margaret, who also had five. (The tally does not include the miscarriage or stillbirth that Robert and Etta endured early in their marriage. It also ignores the possibility that Margaret may have been the mother of her “brother” Herbert Raymond Branson -- for more on that possibility, see Margaret’s biography on this website.) Robert cleaved to his second family, not taking for granted the chance to be a husband and father.

With his “new start” underway, Robert settled in in a big way. He did so geographically as well as domestically. He and Nellie spent some of the 1920s residing in Randsburg. Later in the decade they relocated a few miles west to acreage near Cantil, just outside Red Rock Canyon State Park. As before, Robert’s main gig was maintaining pumps and other water-supply infrastructure. Then came the 1940s and the military build-up associated with World War II. The Indian Wells Valley area became one big Navy Air Corps boomtown. In 1943, Robert took a job with Haddock Construction, one of the contractors who had been hired to build the new China Lake base. Nellie went to work that same year for the California Institute of Technology at Salt Wells. At this time, the couple bought a house in Ridgecrest (formerly Crumville), where they would remain for the duration of their lives.

Robert and Nellie’s children came of age and all set up households in Indian Wells Valley, working for local businesses, and at the China Lake base. Robert remained employed until age seventy-five. He was extraordinarily vigorous and clear-headed throughout his elder years. He continued his prospecting hobby until his late seventies. In early February, 1978, an article in a Ridgecrest newspaper profiled him, hailing him for his health -- credited in part to the virtues of desert living -- and noting that he had just celebrated his ninety-eighth birthday.

Robert died 3 March 1978 in Ridgecrest, ironically only one month after the article praising his longevity had appeared. His body was laid to rest at Desert Memorial Park on Tuesday, March 7th. Nellie survived him, passing away 10 December 1982. At the time of his death, Robert was grandfather to fifteen, and great-grandfather to seventeen. Of his children, only Margie predeceased him. (Margie had passed away in 1932 at age fifteen of leukemia.)

As for Etta Cowsert Branson, as mentioned above, she married William Thomas Ray. He had been raised in Waco, TX. The wedding appears to have taken place in the latter half of 1920. They remained spouses about five years, though it is said William was seldom at home during that period. Assuming Marjorie was not a product of their liaison, then their one child was James Ray (shown in photo at right), born in Rolapp, Carbon County, UT 23 August 1922. William left for Colorado in approximately 1925 and apparently never saw his son and ex-wife again. Etta resumed using the surname Branson, and James Ray became James Ray Branson. The boy much admired his older brother Donald and was impressed by “Daddy” Branson and wanted to have the same last name. Donald in turn looked at Jimmy with as much pride in his accomplishments as if Jimmy had been his son instead of his half-brother. Jimmy was very much a part of the Branson family during his brief lifetime. He died while serving in World War II, when the U.S.S. Fogg, the escort destroyer on which he was an electrician’s mate, was struck by an enemy torpedo, which caused it to founder near the Canary Islands, 20 December 1944.

Etta and the kids lived on the southern outskirts of the town of Taft in western Kern County during the late 1920s, which kept her near her brother Jack and sister-in-law-two-ways Margaret Branson Cowsert and their kids. The 1930 census shows the two households next door to each other. In that census, Etta’s occupation is described as cook at a hotel. In the early 1930s Etta moved to Los Angeles County, in part because Marjorie was succumbing to her leukemia and Taft lacked the kind of medical treatment the teenager needed.

It was probably during the years of the Great Depression that Etta met and married her next husband, Cleburn Carter Chambers. Cleburn had been born 2 April 1886 in Arkansas. (He would pass away 23 September 1977 in Los Angeles County.) This may have been Etta’s longest-term marriage, but it did not end any better. Cleburn filed for a divorce 22 June 1954 in South Gate, Los Angeles County. Etta moved to Lone Pine, CA, where she could be near Donald and his young family. On 17 October 1955, slightly more than ninety days after the divorce from Cleburn became final, Etta married Dennis M. Ward of Greenville, CA. The ceremony took place in Reno, NV. The couple moved into a retirement community in Fresno, CA. This marriage also ended in divorce. Etta returned to Lone Pine and spent her dotage in a convalescent home there. This meant that in her final years she was living not that far from Robert. She nearly matched him in total lifespan. She passed away in the convalescent home 8 February 1980. Her remains were interred five days later near those of her daughter Margie at Woodlawn Cemetery, Compton, CA.

Children of Robert Lee Branson with Mary Etta Cowsert

Donald Huntington Branson

Marjorie Lee Branson

With Nellie Margaret Reed

Gloria Susan Branson

Norma Lee Branson

Daniel Robert Branson

For genealogical details, click on each of the names.

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.