Elsie Margaret Harrington

Elsie Margaret Harrington, daughter of Nancy Anne Branson and Peter J. Harrington, was born 11 November 1882 in Merced, CA. She was the fourth child of seven, but that tally includes her slightly older brother Michael Harrington, who passed away within days of his birth. Elsie was therefore in practical terms the third of six children. (Shown slightly below at right is Elsie with her sister Eunice in the late 1880s. This was one of many formal family photographs taken during the 1880s at the studio of Merced-based photographer William Edwards. It was scanned from a print preserved in the collection of Elsie’s first cousin Ivan Thorpe Branson. The print was brand new when Nancy Branson Harrington gave it to her brother Alvin Thorpe Branson. The dog is a stuffed prop, not the family pet.)

Elsie’s father died not long after her seventh birthday, leaving her mother a widow with great big bunch of children to support, all of them under the age of twelve. Nancy dealt with the challenge by combining forces with her sister Mary Jane Branson Johnson, whose husband had run off, never to return. The two women operated a boarding house in Merced. Nancy was the housekeeper and cook, while Mary handled laundry after working shifts as a clerk at a drygoods store. Elsie and her siblings, along with Mary’s youngest two children, spent the majority of their childhoods within that boarding house, which Nancy and Mary continued to run until approximately 1902. Mary’s eldest son, Clarence Johnson, lived next door as a ward of Theresa Branson Moore and her husband Will Moore.

In late 1896 Nancy married John James Napier, known as “Babe” Napier. He would remain Elsie’s stepfather thereafter, though it does not appear he was heavily involved with the raising of the Harrington children, and was often gone on mining expeditions, including at least one trip to the gold fields of Alaska. Probably the only interval when he served as a somewhat traditional head of the household was after he and Nancy reestablished themselves forty miles to the northwest of Merced in San Joaquin County outside the town of Manteca. By the time that happened, Elsie was nineteen years old. There is no sign she was part of that particular relocation. She chose to remain in Merced.

The turn of the Twentieth Century was not a time when single young ladies of good reputation usually lived entirely on their own, so it is likely Elsie boarded with kinfolk after her mother and stepfather left. In particular, her aunt Theresa and husband Will or her uncle William McDonald and his second wife Agnes were well established in Merced and would not only have had room for her, but would have been delighted to have her join them for a spell. However, it could be she was more independent than that, perhaps renting a room in a boarding house much like the one in which she had been raised, and paying for it out of her wages. What sort of job Elsie might have had -- if indeed she had a job at all -- is not known, but by the time she came of age, American women were no longer bound to stove and bedpost and often worked as retail clerks, stenographers, hotelkeepers, waitresses, and even shopkeepers. What is abundantly clear is that she had the personality that lent itself to such a lifestyle. All of Nancy’s girls were progressive and able to assert themselves, Elsie perhaps most of all. She would wait the longest of the five to become a wife. She would become a mother later than any of the others, and when she did, have only one child. (Though the prevailing mode in her generation was toward small families, none of her sisters had so few as that.) As is clear from the photographs on this page, she was a very good-looking woman in her twenties and probably had confidence in her ability to snag a husband when the time came. In the meantime, she stretched her wings, finally freed from the ceaseless lack of privacy she had known during her upbringing.

One sister who emulated her example of independent lifestyle was Irene, but she carried it to an even greater extreme by heading off to Los Angeles. This was entirely too much initiative to suit their mother. Nancy (increasingly known by this point as simply Nan) began scheming of ways to turn both of her wayward daughters into honest women. Nan was quickly establishing herself within the social and political life of Manteca. This was a way of saying she became friends with women of the Cowell and Salmon families. These pioneering clans had migrated west from southwestern Wisconsin in the late 1850s and early 1860s and founded the farms that would get Manteca on the map. Prominent among those individuals was Joshua Cowell. Local historians would eventually label him the Father of Manteca. His role was so central the settlement was known as Cowell’s Station in its earliest days. It was renamed Manteca so as not to be confused with a Cowell’s Station near Tracy, named for Joshua’s brother Wright Cowell. (The name is unfortunate in that manteca is the Spanish word for lard. Nonetheless the name stuck.) Joshua had fathered six daughters (counting two who died young) but only one son, Otis Marion Cowell. Born 9 August 1877, Otis was the “most eligible bachelor” of Manteca during the early years of the Twentieth Century, especially given that he had not rushed into marriage and was by then in his late twenties. Perfect, thought Nan. She began steering Elsie in Otis’s direction. At the same time, she steered Irene toward Joshua’s good friend Claude Salmon, grandson of Manteca’s other main founder, the late Cutler Salmon.

The scheme worked, leading to a pair of weddings in the autumn of 1906, both events held in Stockton and officiated by the same clergyman, Reuben Henry Sink. Rev. Sink had served in the same capacity a year earlier at the wedding of Elsie’s youngest sister Nina Harrington, and would do so again in the mid-1920s at weddings of Irene’s daughter Wanda Salmon and Elsie’s daughter Norma Cowell. Irene and Claude went first, tying the knot in early October. Just thirty-two days later, on 4 November 1906, Elsie and Otis became husband and wife. (The wedding date was misrecorded as 20 November 1906 in genealogical notes made in the 1940s, after both Elsie and Otis were dead. That erroneous date was used within this website biography until corrected in May, 2013.)

Elsie is shown here front and center. On the left is her first cousin John Clarence Diah Johnson. On the right is her husband Otis Marion Cowell. The two woman standing behind are, left to right, Elsie’s sisters Irene Anne Harrington Salmon and Nina Frances Harrington Riddell. This photo, from an album that belonged to Elsie’s eldest sister Mary Josephine Harrington McDonald Baysinger. All of the photos featured on this page, except the one of Elsie and Eunice as kids, were derived from that same album. This one was taken about 1906. The occasion may even have been Elsie and Otis’s wedding.

Elsie had lost a father young. Otis could emphathize with that, having lost his mother, Vinnetta Rachael Graves Cowell, when he was only six. The main maternal figure through most of his upbringing had been his stepmother Emily Francelia Sanders Cowell, who had wed Joshua not long after Otis had turned seven. Otis’s youngest sibling, Hattie, was a product of that union. It may well have been Hattie’s marriage that paved the way for Otis and Elsie’s trip to see Reverend Sink. Otis’s other sisters had become wives all the way back in the first half of the 1890s. Once Hattie was hitched in late 1905, Joshua and Emily Cowell could direct their full attention to the matter of bringing their boy’s bachelorhood to an end.

Elsie and Otis spent their entire twenty-eight-year marriage (which ended with Otis’s death) in Manteca living near his father and stepmother (until their deaths in the mid-1920s). Merced had held such a claim upon the Nan Branson Harrington Napier clan, it is remarkable how little that was the case from 1906 onward. Manteca was now “home” and would remain at the heart of the family’s doings for decades. Now that Elsie and Irene were in place, Eunice and her husband Winfred Converse moved up from Merced County, providing Nan with three local daughters and eventually a clutch of seven grandchildren to surround her. By the early 1910s Manteca lured Nan’s siblings Theresa and Thomas and their families. Two of Elsie’s first cousins, Clarence Johnson and Alice Branson Williams, rooted in particularly firmly. Elsie’s eldest two siblings, John and Josephine, often came for long visits during the 1920s. And for many years, youngest sister Nina and family were based just a bit to the north in Stockton.

The bond between Elsie and Otis and Irene and Claude was particularly tight-knit. All it takes is a glance at the genealogical ties to make it apparent why this was the case: Claude was not only Otis’s friend and the husband of his wife’s sister, but a cousin-in-law as well. Otis’s sister Meda had -- until her untimely death in 1900 -- been married to Claude’s double first cousin James Vincent Salmon. (“Double” means that not only were Claude’s and James’s fathers brothers, but their mothers were sisters, two brothers of the Salmon family having married two sisters of the Sperry family.) Otis’s sister Mary was the wife of another first cousin of Claude, Charles L. Salmon, a brother of James Vincent. Small wonder that the people selected to sign as witnesses on Otis and Elsie’s marriage certificate were Claude and Irene. (The photograph of a family picnic shown at left is evidence of the affection of these relatives. Otis Cowell is the man in the center. Elsie is in the foreground draped over his knee, Irene fondly leaning on her brother-in-law’s shoulder. The woman on the left of Otis is unknown, but may well be his sister Mary Edna Cowell Salmon. The man in back must be Claude, and the old woman his mother Sophronia Sperry Salmon.)

Joshua had land and invested in various local properties and ventures. Otis no doubt played a role at times. Certainly he farmed while in his twenties and thirties, and this was no doubt on his father’s land. Elsie and Otis may not have had a farm of their own, waiting instead on inheritance to take care of that. However, Otis did not live entirely in his father’s shadow. He “became his own man.” (Probably his father wanted him to be his own man.) By the time Otis reached his late thirties (i.e. the mid-1910s), his main occupation was drayman. That is to say, he hauled goods and helped move such things as furniture and building materials. This was the era when some people still did such work with teams of mules, horses, or even oxen. Being from a well-to-do family, Otis probably acquired a truck before some of his competitors, but it is safe to say he was familiar with the old-fashioned methods in a first-hand sort of way. A photo in Josephine’s collection shows three of the female members of the clan in their Ragtime Era dresses trying to deal with a stubborn burro, which may well have been one of Otis’s draft animals.

Elsie gave birth to daughter Norma Emily Cowell 14 November 1909, a full three years into the marriage. As mentioned above, Norma was an only child. As a consequence, Elsie did not have small children underfoot for year after year the way women of her grandmothers’ generation had experienced. She could have managed a career outside the home if she had been so inclined. She does not appear to have ever been tempted by that option once she became a housewife. If she did earn income, it came from being a landlady. The Cowell residences were spacious. Joshua and Emily often housed lodgers. Elsie and Otis did so as well on at least one occasion. The 1910 census shows Leopoldi Nicholas, a middle-aged Swiss immigrant, sharing the home. Mr. Nicholas, a dairy milker, was probably an employee on the Cowell farm and it is an open question whether he had to pay rent. In any case, having an extra person at the dinner table and extra laundry to wash meant Elsie’s boarding-house experience came in handy.

Elsie was active in ways other than career. All of the women of the family, including Nan, Theresa, Elsie, Eunice, Irene, Alice Branson Williams Henry, and Clarence Johnson’s wife Lillian -- and in later years the females of the next generation, Emily Cowell, Wanda Salmon, and Josephine Converse -- were heavily involved in the local chapter of the Native Daughters (aka the Rebekah sorority), known as Phoebe A. Hearst Parlor #214.

Elsie was born at just the right time to truly understand and appreciate what it meant for women to vote, having been unable to do so during her early adulthood. She may not have been as vocal a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement as was her mother or, say, her first cousin Inez Branson, but she did not hesitate to register to vote as soon as it was possible. In California, that threshold was reached with the election of 1912 (though of course, being registered did not yet mean California women could vote at the federal level). Nor was she like some wives who simply echoed their spouses’ preference. Elsie registered as a Democrat in 1912, while Otis registered as Republican. (In later years, they would register the same, sometimes as Democrats, sometimes as Republicans.)

In 1920, Elsie’s sister Josephine was widowed. Over the next few years Josephine, whose children were recently grown up and out on their own, spent quite a bit of time with her mother and sisters in Manteca. This inevitably led to Nan engaging in some further matchmaking within her social circle, this time undoubtedly with Elsie’s active participation. The ladies pointed Josephine in the direction of Daniel Baysinger, a carpenter and contractor who had built nearly all of Manteca’s commercial structures and many of its residences -- including for example the fine house occupied for many years by Otis’s half-sister Hattie and her husband Maxie Mewborn. Dan had never married and was a bit long in the tooth to be a suitable match for Josephine, but thanks to his long association with the Cowells and their crowd (Dan had not just done business with Joshua, but had lodged for years with him and Emily), Elsie and Nan and Irene had faith he would make Josephine happy. Their encouragement paid off. Josephine and Dan became husband and wife, remaining together until his death in 1942. (The photo of Elsie at right was cropped from a larger picture that shows her with Josephine in the 1930s.)

Norma did not follow her mother’s example of waiting for marriage. At the beginning of July, 1927, at only seventeen and a half, she wed Theron Hodson and was out of the house. Elsie and Otis must have found themselves a bit shocked by how quickly their circumstances had changed. Joshua Cowell had still been alive just a couple of years earlier, and Emily Sanders Cowell was only eight weeks in the grave. Now the couple were sending their daughter out the door to her new life. The Cowell homestead was suddenly a much emptier place. Elsie had yet to turn forty-five years old, but in terms of her life story, she had hit the peak and was headed downhill.

In late 1932, Elsie became a grandmother for the first and only time. She may have seen it as a much-needed bright spot, given the anxiety all around springing from the Great Depression. Unfortunately such bright spots were few and far between. It was a period of winnowing, including losses such as uncle Will Moore in 1931, and much-loved cousin Clarence Johnson the following year, gone much too young. And then came the worst blow. Otis died 26 September 1934 in Stockton at only fifty-seven years of age. His passing apparently soured Elsie’s affection for Manteca. In the late summer of 1936, she relocated to Alameda, moving in with Josephine and Dan Baysinger. Josephine’s son Elton McDonald and his little girl also shared the home. A couple of years earlier, Josephine’s daughter-in-law Tonia had committed suicide, and Josephine had taken over maternal care of her granddaughter while Elton spent his workdays in San Francisco as a chief clerk for Western Pacific Railroad. The shared accommodations were a good arrangement for the sisters. It meant Elsie no longer had to live alone, and Josephine had female help with childcare and housekeeping. Being in Alameda also put Elsie near other relatives such as George Bertrand Johnson, a first cousin with whom she had grown up in the boarding house and whom she viewed as a kind of brother.

Like her husband, Elsie only survived into her late fifties. This was a considerably shorter lifespan than her sisters enjoyed, and was even shorter than that of her brother, Jack. Still, she lasted a half-dozen years as a widow. She passed away 3 August 1940 in Alameda. Cause of death is listed as the delayed effects of a cerebral hemorrhage, probably as the result of a stroke. Her mortal remains were interred with those of Otis at East Union Cemetery in Manteca.

Elsie, at left, is shown standing with her sisters Irene Anne Harrington Salmon, center, and Mary Josephine Harrington McDonald Baysinger, behind their mother Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier, in 1931. Nancy is holding the new baby of the family, Irene’s grandson Robert “Bobbie Lee” Patrie.

Child of Elsie Margaret Harrington with Otis Marion Cowell

Norma Emily Cowell

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