Teresa McDonald

Teresa McDonald, the youngest daughter and youngest of the four children of Phoebe Ann Branson and William McDonald, was born 21 February 1880 in Merced, Merced County, CA. She was probably named for her aunt, Theresa Branson. However, there is no absolute clarity on the spellings of her name. On this website, the “Th” spelling is used for the aunt, and the “Te” spelling used for the niece. However, references to either woman show them under either spelling -- Theresa Branson even signed her name both ways. In Teresa McDonald's case, she appears under the “Th” spelling in the 1880 and 1900 censuses and in four different family obituaries including her own. Therefore when this website first went live, the “Th” spelling was also used here. However, most other documentation has the “Te” spelling, among them the photograph at right. (Look closely near the bottom of the image.) More to the point, “Teresa” is how it is spelled in a dozen voter registers. Inasmuch as the woman herself must have filled out her voter application, she apparently preferred to be known as Teresa. Therefore that spelling is now reflected on this website, a policy change made in May, 2009. You will note the lack of a middle name. Any middle name she had at birth is unknown, though she is likely to have had one. In married life, she used McDonald as a middle name.

Teresa’s mother died when she was only seven and may have been in ill health from the time of Teresa’s birth onward. The 1880 census shows the McDonald household even at that early stage resorting to extra household help in the person of Phoebe’s eighteen-year-old sister-in-law Mary Jane Geary. Later in the 1880s Phoebe’s sister Theresa Branson moved to Merced and it is thought she cared for her namesake and the other McDonald children, a duty that may have covered the early period following Phoebe’s death.

In 1892 William McDonald Sr. married Agnes Dunn, who became the children’s stepmother. Despite the disruption of Phoebe’s premature death, the McDonald family remained securely established in Merced throughout Teresa’s childhood. In adulthood she kept to this pattern, marrying local boy James Joseph Garibaldi, with whom she would spend the rest of her long life without ever moving out of the community. James was one of the many children of Italian immigrants Kate Commissi and Giacomo Garibaldi. By the time Teresa and James married, his mother had been deceased for a number of years, so the experience of losing a mother was something the young couple had in common. Giacomo (often better known simply as G. Garibaldi) was still alive, though. He was a grocer who had moved to Merced from the Hornitos area in the early 1870s, having originally come from Genoa, Italy earlier in the Gold Rush. It is likely the Branson and Garibaldi families were acquainted with each other during the Garibaldis’ Hornitos days.

The wedding took place in Merced on the 21st of February in either 1901 or 1902. Both Teresa’s and James’s obituaries, written in the mid-1960s, claim that the wedding year was 1900. However, in the census taken in June of 1900, James is recorded as single and still living with his birth family, and Teresa is shown as single and living with William and Agnes McDonald. It is safe to conclude the wedding happened the following February or even twelve months after that.

James, born 30 April 1876, had attended the University of California at Santa Clara before the marriage. His “educated” status gave him a greater variety of career choices than was typical in Merced, a relatively pastoral Central Valley town, and he took advantage of those choices. At first, he worked at his father’s grocery store. Within just a few years, he became a co-owner and operator of that legacy business along with his elder brother John M. Garibaldi. It is quite likely that Teresa helped at the store, especially in the period before the arrival of the couple’s only child, James Donald Garibaldi, in July, 1906.

At some point near the time of Donald’s birth, James sold his share in the grocery store. With partner William Howell, James (and Teresa) owned and operated the Central Hotel. This went on until 1913. James retired from hotel management upon being appointed county tax collector, a job to which he was reelected many times. He served twenty-one years total. Teresa’s occupation in the 1930 census is given as Assistant Tax Collector, so she not only “helped out“ her husband, but may have actually been on the county payroll with an official position. In 1939 James was appointed city clerk. In doing so, he could be said to have been carrying on a family tradition. Teresa’s uncle William Osborne Moore had been city clerk for Merced in the early years of the 20th Century, about a decade after he and wife Theresa Branson had, if rumor is correct, been temporary foster parents of Teresa McDonald and her siblings.

Merced was home to a large contingent of the Branson clan for thirty years, beginning in the mid-1870s. It was where the offspring of Phoebe, Nancy, and Mary Jane Branson grew up. However, Teresa McDonald Garibaldi was the one representative of the clan who stayed for the next sixty years as well. One effect of the isolation was that her husband’s family became the one she cleaved to in the latter portion of her life. However, when various Bransons, McDonalds, or other kin on her mother’s side did visit Merced, it was often to Teresa’s home they came. (A major alternative was the home of her stepmother, at least until Agnes’s death in 1947.)

Donald followed his father’s example of higher education and involvement in politics. He became a lawyer, a state assemblyman, a judge, and then spent nearly fifty years as one of the most powerful lobbyists in the entire history of California government. His father’s long career as a public official provided a boost in 1934, during his initial run for the Merced-area seat of the California State Assembly. Many voters did not realize the James D. Garibaldi mentioned on the ballot was not James J. Garibaldi, their familiar tax collector, and so Donald garnered more votes than a young, untested candidate normally would have.

Teresa died 27 August 1965 at a hospital in Merced. Despite being older, James survived her, not passing away until 16 April 1967. The remains of both spouses were entombed in the Evergreen Mausoleum. That choice of resting place deserves comment, because Teresa’s parents, stepmother, siblings, half-brother Ellsworth McDonald (born after she was grown and married, and thus never a part of her childhood life), and brother-in-law Roy Ames Price were all interred in the Merced city cemetery, as was James’s mother.

Child of Teresa McDonald with James Joseph Garibaldi

James Donald Garibaldi

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