Theresa Branson

Theresa Branson, the fourth daughter and eighth child of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley, was born 24 October 1865 in the Merced River gold-mining community of Phillips Flat, Mariposa County, CA. Her parents were illiterate and were therefore not in a position in the 1860s and 1870s to tell clerks and census enumerators what spelling of her name to use. In the 1870 census it is Terresa, and looks more like Terrisa, and in 1880 is is a scribble that looks somewhat like Terrisa. Unfortunately several genealogists have used this as their source and this variation has propagated over the World Wide Web. Additionally, family members apparently were not sure how the name was rendered, and they used at least four versions -- the standard spellings Theresa and Teresa, as well as her nickname as “Aunt Trese” and “Aunt Threse.” Theresa herself was educated -- some of that schooling no doubt taking place at Quartzburg District School -- and was in a position to insist on one version or another, but she does not seem to have enforced consistency. Most public documents after 1880 use Theresa. That is the reason why you see that form used on this webpage. For example, a promissory note from 1894, when her father borrowed money from her to complete a land transaction, using the “Th” option and she does not seem to have protested. It is always Theresa on voter registries, of which many are available. On the other hand, the informant for her death record used Teresa, and that form appears in the California Death Index. A photograph of her that turned up in late 2006 -- about a year after the initial uploading of this webpage -- is signed on the back, “Yours, Teresa.” (!) Suffice it to say that she might not have cared what she was called as long as she wasn’t called late to dinner.

Theresa was a redhead, apparently vividly so because this fact is mentioned in multiple descriptions of her written by nephews and nieces. She also was clearly someone who enjoyed having her picture taken. This places her in a much different category than, say, her brothers. Posing for photos back in her youth was not a casual process. One usually had to go to a studio. One had to put up with holding poses much longer than is necessary today. And, because photo sessions were special occasions designed to capture individuals at their best, a lady was obliged to prepare her hair and garments just so. Theresa did not seem to mind all the fuss required, and as a consequence, there are more surviving photos of her from the late 1800s and very early 1900s than any of the other nine children of John and Martha Branson. (Only a few of that trove of images appears here on the website.)

Theresa grew up in Mariposa County, first at Phillips Flat. At three years of age, she moved with her family to the Williamette Valley of Oregon. The following year the household returned to Mariposa County, this time settling permanently a few miles from Hornitos, near the mining outpost of Quartzburg, on property that came to be called Grasshopper Ranch.

Theresa came of age at Grasshopper Ranch. Though all three of her older sisters married promptly and became mothers in their early twenties, Theresa took a different path -- or one might say, a path was laid out for her. In the 1880s, perhaps even in the early years of the decade when Theresa was still a teenager, the health of her oldest sister, Phoebe McDonald, began to fail. Theresa was tapped to serve as a nanny in Phoebe’s home in the town of Merced. In accepting this burden, Theresa left Grasshopper Ranch. Whatever her expectations may have been at that juncture, she would never again live in the Mother Lode.

Theresa’s role expanded to that of surrogate mother upon Phoebe’s death in August of 1887. How long this arrangement lasted is no longer known, but it may have continued even after Theresa married William Osborne Moore on 15 January 1890. Final release from the obligation may not have come until Phoebe’s widower William McDonald married his second wife, Agnes Dunn, in late 1891 or early 1892.

Theresa was not done being a foster mother, however. By the time the four McDonald children gained their stepmother, Theresa’s other two older sisters, Nancy Harrington and Mary Jane Johnson, had lost their husbands. In the early 1890s they were struggling as single mothers -- Nancy with six children, Mary Jane with three. The two sisters founded a boarding house in Merced as a means of subsistence, with Nancy on site round the clock as cook and housekeeper and Mary Jane doing the laundry after her full-time shifts as a clerk at a drygoods store. Mary Jane’s situation was particularly overwhelming, so Theresa stepped in to help by taking the eldest child, Clarence Johnson, as her ward. She and Will finished raising Clarence as a member of their household. They lived only three doors down from the boarding house, so Clarence was never far from his birth mother and his two siblings.

Will, as he was known, served as a Merced city clerk and as a deputy sheriff. (The former was a post held decades later by Theresa’s niece’s husband, James Garibaldi.) Will was a few years older than Theresa (born August, 1860) and appears to have been a steady presence -- the most constant and lasting of all the original husbands of the five daughters of John and Martha Branson. (His middle name is spelled Osborn in a few sources.) He and Theresa made a nurturant couple, yet ironically they would never be parents of biological offspring. Whether this was due to infertility or an act of choice is no longer known. Surviving photographs show that Theresa was thin to the extent of looking frail. (The photos on this webpage tend to show her at her plumpest and most robust.) Her grandniece Alice Corkins recalls that she had asthma. (She smoked a medicinal type of cigarette to combat this, one of the touted remedies for asthma in her era.) She apparently had other health problems, though obviously not as dire as what Phoebe succumbed to.

In the early years of the Twentieth Century and culminating in 1906, the majority of the Branson clan left Merced. By then, the children of Nancy and Mary Jane had reached the age when they were setting up their own households, and they all chose to do so in other parts of the state. One of the lures drawing the young men of the clan away was Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1906, many young men of Merced, one of the hubs of Southern Pacific, accepted company jobs rebuilding the railway infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area after the great earthquake. Among those who answered the call were the two sons and the son-in-law of Mary Jane Branson Johnson, including Clarence. The exodus brought to a close more than three decades of major family presence, with only a few holdouts, such as two of Phoebe’s children, John McDonald and Teresa Garibaldi, whose homes remained in Merced for decades to come. The Moores went as well. According to the January, 1908 obituary of Martha Jane Ousley Branson, Theresa and Will were at that time residents of Kennett in Shasta County, CA. What brought them that far north is unknown, though at that point, Theresa’s niece Maude Ethel Branson (daughter of Alvin) was also known to have been residing there. Kennett seems to have been a temporary haven. The couple soon fled south to San Bernardino County. This shift seems to have been spurred by medical needs. A post card survives in the genealogical memorabilia of Theresa’s nephew Ivan Thorpe Branson (brother of Maude), sent by Mary Jane Branson Johnson from her home in Redlands, San Bernardino County, to her niece Maude in Stone Canyon, Monterey County, CA. (Mary Jane had moved to Redlands to live near her daughter Bretelle and son-in-law Gifford Fowle, who had recently had their first baby. Maude had left Kennett in 1908, had become the wife of John Davidson Curtis, and had temporarily settled at Stone Canyon.) Dated 11 June 1909 and signed “Aunt May,” the full text reads, “Will write you as soon as I can. Aunt Teresa and Will here. She has been out of the hospital about ten days but is still in bed. Will write all about it later.”

Whatever hospitalization Mary Jane was referring to seems to have been a successful episode, because Theresa would go on to live another thirty-two years. Her convalescence may have been lengthy, though, because she and Will remained in San Bernardino County for at least another year. It’s also possible they lingered simply because they liked the area and decided to try living there. Leaving Mary Jane in Redlands, Theresa and Will moved into a place at 456 Baldridge in the town of San Bernardino. Both the 1910 voter register and the 1910 census place them there, with Will’s occupation listed as cigar store proprietor.

(Theresa, left, with sisters Mary Jane, center, and Nancy, right, at the gathering held 4 July 1930 at Oak Park in Stockton, CA to celebrate the fiftieth wedding anniversary of their brother Alvin Thorpe Branson and his wife Mary Eliza Simmons.) By 1916, Theresa and Will were in San Joaquin County, where they would spend the remainder of their lives. The 1916 voter register shows them as residents of Manteca. It is likely they were drawn there to be near Clarence. In the midst of setting up family life with his bride Lillian Elvira Brown, Clarence had moved to Manteca in 1910. He would remain permanently, at first in town and then, in the early 1920s, acquiring a farm just east of the community, in the Summer Home district. San Joaquin County had in a more general sense become the new “headquarters” of the family. Among those members of the Branson clan who dwelled within its boundaries were three of Theresa’s siblings -- Nancy (now Nancy Napier), Thomas, and Alvin. Many of the offspring of these three had settled either in or near Manteca or in Stockton. Theresa and Will’s house was inside the actual town of Manteca at 604 W. Yosemite Avenue. The 1920 census and voter registers from the mid-1920s describe Will as a bookkeeper. However, it is possible that when they had first come back to central California that he had briefly resumed his job as city clerk of Merced. His obituary states that he did not quit that job until 1914. Presumably, that means he and Theresa resided in Merced during the early 1910s, but perhaps not. He may have commuted from Manteca. The trip to and from Merced would have been an easy ride along the main Southern Pacific line.

Will retired from his bookkeeping position in the late 1920s. His health collapsed in 1931 and he spent his final two months in San Joaquin General Hospital in Stockton before passing away 5 July 1931.

Nine months later, Clarence Johnson also died, which undoubtedly left Theresa feeling abandoned despite the nearly presence of the extended relatives. When her sister Nancy passed away in 1939, niece Maude Branson (Chamberlin) in a letter to her cousin Grace Mildred Branson Warner described “Aunt Trese” as “prostrate with grief.” Theresa did at least have the comfort of being able to continue residing at the 604 W. Yosemite Avenue residence for six or seven years after being widowed. For at least some of that time she had the companionship of her daughter-in-law Lillian Brown Johnson and, at times, all three of the grandchildren as well as great-granddaughter Phyllis Wampler. Toward the end of the 1930s Theresa moved to the small community of Lathrop, about two miles to the northwest of her former home. Why she moved is uncertain, but it may have been to enter a nursing home.

Theresa passed away in Lathrop in her sleep the morning of 12 July 1941, having been attended by her sister Mary Jane for the last two weeks of her life. She was laid to rest in Park View Cemetery, San Joaquin County, where Will and Clarence had been interred.

This is a picture of Theresa and Will Moore at Yosemite Valley, taken some time between 1890 and 1910. The couple are to the lower right, standing on a small wharf that projects into the lake. Other photos of Will Moore probably survived, but alas, this is the only one on which his name is written, and at this point, it isn’t known what he looked like.

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