Doris Margaret Curtis

Doris Margaret Curtis, the only child of Maude Ethel Branson and John Davidson Curtis, was born 22 June 1909 in Stone Canyon, Monterey County, CA.

Doris’s father left the Salinas Valley in favor of his former home in Georgia while she was a toddler so that he could be cared for by members of his birth family while he suffered through the final stages of a case of tuberculosis. He did not take Doris with him out of concern for her own health. Maude did come to Georgia, but did not stay full-time. During this period, Doris was a member of the household of her maternal grandparents Alvin Thorpe Branson and Mary Eliza Simmons in Mariposa County. This arrangement continued for another year or two even after the death of John Curtis on 6 November 1912.

In 1914, Alvin and Mary Branson settled permanently in Stockton, San Joaquin County, CA. This became Maude’s choice of venue as well, and so Stockton was where Doris spent the remainder of her childhood. There was still a certain amount of upheaval, however, as Doris’s next two stepfathers came and went from her life. First her mother married Fred Leo Murray, who died in 1918 only four years after the wedding. Next she married Clyde Leroy Miller, whom she divorced in 1925.

During the marriage to Clyde, Maude obtained ownership of a residence located at 410 Monterey, next door to her parents at 420 Monterey. She would live at 410 for the next two or three decades and then move in with her brother Walter Henry Branson, who had inherited 420 after the deaths of Alvin and Mary. This state of affairs meant Doris always had a home to come back to that felt permanent and familiar. Ironically, Doris herself would prefer not to stay in Stockton. (She did eventually come to own the house at 420 Monterey, however, as she was the only heir of both her mother and her uncle. She sold this property to another uncle, Ivan Thorpe Branson, in the 1970s.)

During the 1920s Doris came to know local boy Richard Jay Fette, a son of German immigrants Fred Fette and Anna Schimdt. (The name Fette rhymes with Betty.) Richard, born 23 June 1907 in Stockton, was an ideal age to be Doris’s suitor, and when he relocated to Illinois as a young man (the 1930 census shows him in Peoria, working as an engineer at a tractor factory), the couple found they missed each other too much to be separated any further. Doris and Richard were married 9 May 1931 in Chicago.

Doris and Richard stayed back East for at least half a dozen years, residing on Ellwood Street in East Peoria, IL. Richard continued to work for Caterpillar Tractor Company for a while, but eventually -- no doubt due to the Great Depression -- he was obliged to become a clerk. Doris worked as a stenographer and/or secretary for a variety of employers including (in chronological order) the law firm Hamilton, Black, Holtgreve, & Klatt, then the law firm Herget & Hoffman, and then Illinois Mutual Casualty Company. The pair returned to California in the late 1930s, settling in at 455 W. Second Street, Downey, Los Angeles County, CA. Doris would never reside anywhere else. Nearly fifty years after first acquiring the home, she would pass away within its walls.

Richard found a job as a supervisor at a pump company. Doris worked as a bookkeeper for a thermostat manufacturer in the early period after she and Richard first came back to California, but she was eventually able to get on at First Federal Savings and Loan Association in Long Beach, starting as an assistant secretary. The bank was her employer for many years, taking her all the way to retirement. In the latter portion of her tenure, she held the position of vice president.

Doris and Richard may have separated in the mid-1950s. This parting-of-the-ways is still unverified, but no public sources place them together after that point. Richard died 22 September 1974 in San Bernardino County, CA. Doris passed away 27 July 1987. Arguing against the possibility of marital estrangement is the fact that Doris and Richard are buried in adjacent graves at Stockton Rural Cemetery, right next to Doris’s mother.

Doris’s death had an unintended genealogical fringe benefit. Because she had no offspring nor any siblings (therefore no nieces or nephews), she designated her first cousins and their descendants as her heirs. As the executor went about tracking down names of relatives and their current addresses, the process had the halo effect of putting various descendants of the Alvin Branson - Mary Simmons clan in better contact than they had managed for a number of years.

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