Thomas Henry Ousley Branson

Thomas Henry Ousley Branson, second child and second son of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley, was born 29 April 1848 in either Gasconade or Osage County, Missouri. His first name was given him in honor of his grandfather Thomas Branson. Ousley naturally came from his mother; he is the only one of the ten children of his parents to possess the “double” surname, however. (In some public records, it is Housley rather than Ousley. Housley is a common variation of the family name, and one that the majority of Martha Jane’s siblings ended up using. Ousley is the version that Martha Jane herself preferred, but some of Thomas’s children apparently thought the initial “H” in their father’s name was for Housley, not Henry.)

Thomas was still an infant when his father left for California as part of the Gold Rush. He and his brothers Reuben and Joseph were small boys in 1853 when they came west themselves via the Isthmus of Panama, travelling with their mother and Charles Alonzo Sutton, a friend of the family.

Martha and the children found John Sevier in the Livermore Valley in the Coast Range, where he was trying to make a go of it as a potato farmer. The newly reunited family remained there for at least a year, long enough for John and Martha’s fourth child, Phoebe Ann Branson, to be conceived and born, then they crossed the Central Valley to the Sierra Nevada foothills. John resumed his hunt for gold in Mariposa County -- at that point the most populous county in California (it is now one of the most vacant, not counting the hordes of tourists visiting Yosemite National Park). Thomas grew up in a variety of mining camps and makeshift villages along the Merced River, sharing rustic accommodations with an expanding brood of siblings: In the mid-1850s the family stayed near the gravel-mining claims John was working at Harte and Johnson’s Flat, and shortly thereafter moved upstream to Barrett City, a major mining center. By 1859 they moved slightly downstream to the eastern side of the river, to Phillips Flat. The sites just mentioned now lie beneath the waters of Lake McClure, a reservoir behind Exchequer Dam.

The bench gravels of Phillips Flat were apparently productive, and so the household finally had a place to stay put. It was probably during this period, which lasted until 1868, that Thomas got to know his future wife, Frances (sometimes rendered as Francis even though she was female) Bauer. Frances was the daughter of Egidi (baptized as Aegidius, and sometimes known in the gold camps as Egide and as Gideon) Bauer, a German immigrant through Missouri, where Frances was born 7 August 1851.

By 1868 John Sevier Branson had set aside enough money to finance a relocation to the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where he again aimed at being a farmer. 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 north of Hornitos, near the mining outpost of Quartzburg, a site only a short horse ride east of Phillips Flat over a ridge of low hills. He raised cattle and feed and hauled loads to mining sites, and thereafter prospected and dug only occasionally as a sideline. The couple resided on the property, called Grasshopper Ranch, for the rest of their lives, completing the raising of their younger children there.

Thomas was an adult by the time Grasshopper Ranch was founded. He did not live there long. He is shown still there in 1870 when the census was taken. His occupation is listed as teamster, so he was probably hauling freight with, or in the manner of, his father. However, Thomas might not have gone to Oregon. He perhaps lingered in Mariposa County, which would mean that 1868-1869 was the only interval during his first sixty years of life that he did not live in close proximity to his mother, and usually his father as well.

Thomas married Frances Bauer 2 June 1872 at Grasshopper Ranch. The ceremony was officiated by Justice of the Peace Samuel W. Carr, who served in such a capacity at many Branson-clan weddings from the 1860s into the 1880s. Had Thomas been Catholic, the ceremony probably would have taken place instead at St. Catherine’s Church in Hornitos (built in 1851, the church still stands today). The Bauers had by this point also abandoned Phillips Flat. They had settled in Hornitos. (It is possible Thomas and Frances did not meet until both families were living there, but this has a low probability given that Phillips Flat was so small it would have been nearly impossible for the clans not to have mingled there during the 1860s.) The newlyweds soon found a longterm home on the bank of Burns Creek at the north end of town, where they would remain until all their eight children were grown. The north end of Hornitos was where nearly all of the local Chinese families lived. This seems to have been one reason why Thomas and Frances established their residence there. Thomas had developed a closeness with the Chinese miners who had worked beside him. The bond was deep enough that Thomas was fluent in the dialect of Chinese they spoke.

Frances seems to have held her family very close throughout her life. At first, this meant living within walking distance of her parents and her brother Joseph Bauer. Thomas, of course, was living only a few miles away from his parents’ ranch, and his brother Joseph’s ranch was just across the road from that. Thomas and Joseph Branson’s families would become even more connected than they were by virtue of descending from siblings. Frances’s brother Michael Bauer married Mary Jane Geary. Mary Jane’s sister Ellen Margaret (Ella) Geary married Joseph Branson.

(For more about the family of Egidi Bauer, please click on the link here to access a report written by one of Egidi’s great-great-granddaughters. It’s a colorful account of life in Gold Rush California and contains such intriguing bits of family history as the description, drawn from newspapers, court transcripts, and family letters, of Egidi’s murder by one of his neighbors as part of an argument over a pig. Learning more about the Hornitos generation of Bauers is highly useful in putting together a picture of the world of the Bransons during the second half of the 19th Century.)

Tall, blue-eyed, with a fine head of auburn hair (though like his brothers Joseph and Alvin, his hairline receded as he approached middle age), Thomas was once described as being the handsomest man in the San Joaquin Valley. He had an ability to work with and get the best out of people. Though self-taught, he developed a fluent understanding not only of Chinese, but of Spanish, too. (Hornitos had originally been founded by Mexican miners and many lived in the town throughout Thomas’s lifetime.) Thomas also probably knew German as a result of his connection with the Bauers. Thus, he was able to earn a significant amount of his income as a translator. He could deliver oaths and translate testimony in court for speakers whose English was poor; this made him particularly valuable when a knowledge of Chinese was involved. He spoke for petitioners of the court, helped conduct bilingual business negotiations, and reviewed letters of agreement. When not able to earn money that way, he was a tinsmith. (According to the 1872 Great Register of Voters of Mariposa County and other sources, tinsmith -- or “tinner” -- was often his primary occupation.) Naturally, he also spent time digging and prospecting for gold, but he seems to have done much less mining than, say, his brothers Reuben and Alvin.

(At least two of Thomas’s brothers-in-law also showed an affinity for languages. Frank Bauer, who moved from Hornitos to Vallejo in the early 1870s, attracted a steady flow of Chinese customers to the butcher shop where he worked because he could speak to them in their native language. Michael Bauer shared housing with Chinese friends Ah Sing and Ah Fong -- the names appear together in the 1880 census.)

As the 20th Century dawned, the economy of the Mother Lode went into a steady and severe decline, leading to much less demand for Thomas’s skills as a tinsmith and translator, and forcing him to take bone-wearying mining jobs of the sort he seems to have eschewed earlier in his lifetime. In 1902, he spent so much time away at Mt. Bullion, one of the remaining deep-rock mines of the area, that he stated Mt. Bullion as his address when he registered to vote for the 1902 election. A 1908 newspaper item in the Mountain Democrat of Placerville, El Dorado County, CA refers to Frances having returned to Mt. Bullion -- not to Hornitos -- after a visit to see daughter Mabel H. Branson Culbertson, then a resident of Placerville. Whenever they were at Mt. Bullion, Thomas and Frances probably stayed with daughter Alice and son-in-law John H. Williams rather than occupying a dwelling of their own. The Burns Creek place was still the official home. The 1910 census shows Thomas (occupation given as carpenter) and Frances and several of their children still ensconced in their usual spot, next door to their longtime Chinese friends, the Ah family. However, the Hornitos period of Thomas and Frances’s lives was already drawing to a close. Many acquaintances and colleagues had already departed. The couple conceded they could not stay. Mariposa County courthouse records illuminate one step in the process of letting go -- on 12 October 1910 Thomas and Frances sold a placer claim at Phillips Flat to Charles R. Arthur (Charles was an extended in-law; he was married to Elizabeth Ann Geary, a sister of the aforementioned Ellen Margaret Geary and Mary Jane Geary). When the last of the preparations and divestments were completed -- a process which may have taken until the early part of 1912 -- Thomas and Frances moved north and west to San Joaquin County. They came to Manteca. Daughter Alice and her family did the same, probably at the very same time, settling on a farm outside town. William remained with his parents. Other children found homes within the county.

Looking back with a hundred years’ perspective, the winnowing of the Mother Lode region and the exodus of so many neighbors from Hornitos was the only spur that would ever have driven Thomas and Frances and the majority of their children from their sanctuary. The 1900 census shows all but one of the family still in Hornitos, still in the same house, even though by that time eldest son William Proctor Branson was 26, second son Hugh McErlane Branson was 24, and others were of an age they might have already been gone had they behaved like some of their peers in this pioneer town. Only the two youngest offspring, Alex and Inez, could still have been called children in 1900. Even the child who was not living on-site, eldest daughter Evalena (Lena), was still unmarried and was helping newly widowed aunt Elizabeth Powers Bauer (Mrs. Frank Bauer) manage her brood of half-orphans in Oroville (Ophir Township), Butte County, CA. The 1910 census provides a similar picture. William P., age 36, Alex, age 22, and Inez, age 20, are still at home. Alma’s child Lila Frances Reeb is also among the household. Hugh is next door living in Ah Sing’s boarding house. Thomas and Frances’s kids do not seem to have been easily able to cut the apron strings. This could be a testimony to the loving and nurturant quality of the Branson/Bauer family. Nephew Ivan Branson describes in his book Bones of the Bransons the welcoming atmosphere he found when he and his parents dropped by the Burns Creek house -- as they often did -- and Ivan compliments Frances as a wonderful cook with a pot of soup always on the stove. However, the living arrangements also raise the spectre of an unusual level of dependency. None of Thomas and Frances’s sons would go on to have children, nor did their daughter Inez. The total number of grandchildren came to only nine, mostly the children of Mabel and Alice. The implication is that as a group, Thomas and Frances’s offspring felt more comfortable functioning in the world as children than as parents.

In the case of William, there may be a specific reason why he stayed at home. He contracted tuberculosis, and suffered from it for many years. His mother was his chief nurse and caregiver. Frances and William died the same day -- 5 December 1916 -- in the Manteca house. William, as expected, died of TB. He survived his mother by about seven hours. The death certificate of Frances lists Chronic Brights, a severe cyst-prone inflammation of the kidneys, as the primary cause of her demise, with cancer of the heart as a contributory factor. Cancer of the heart is extremely rare and this detail is to be taken with a grain of salt. Chronic Brights is a condition that afflicted more than one Gold Rush pioneer in old age. The disease is seen among people who have been exposed to toxic levels of metals. It is quite possible the water Frances consumed all those years in the Mother Lode poisoned her.

Suddenly alone after a lifetime spent as either an elder brother of a large family or the patriarch of another, Thomas was at loose ends toward the end of his life. He spent some of his remaining time back in Hornitos. He is listed as a householder there in the 1920 census, occupation carpenter.

Thomas survived until 29 May 1924, passing away at Stockton State Hospital of heart disease. He was laid to rest 2 June 1924 at Stockton Rural Cemetery, where Frances and some of their children are buried. The graves of Thomas’s brother Alvin Thorpe Branson and some of his children can also be found at that site.

Children of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson with Frances Bauer

William Proctor Branson

Hugh McErlane Branson

Evalena Branson

Alice Branson

Mabel H. Branson

Alma Branson

Alexander Hamilton Branson

Inez Branson

For genealogical details, click on each of the names.

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