Mabel H. Branson
Mabel H. Branson, daughter of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson and Frances Bauer, was born 12 November 1881 on ranch land in the immediate vicinity of the mining outpost of Quartzburg, Mariposa County, CA. At the time of her birth, this community was far better known as Washington Mine, in honor of its most active deep-rock gold mine and the stamping mill and small community associated with that enterprise. The name Washington Mine would fade away not long after Mabel reached adulthood, as would the name Quartzburg after another two or three decades.
The middle initial in Mabel’s name is intriguing. Her brothers all had middle names, but none of her sisters are known to have had any at all. It is quite possible the “H” stood for Housley, which was one of the variations of her grandmother’s maiden name. Unfortunately, no document has been found that confirms or refutes this possibility.
Mabel spent most of her childhood in the house in which she was born, but in 1897, as she approached her sixteenth birthday, her father sold his acreage to his brother Joe, who simultaneously bought out his parents as well. The old folks, though they were no longer owners, continued to live in the home they had established three decades earlier, but Tom and Frances moved about two miles southward to the village of Hornitos. They reestablished themselves in a house along Burns Creek, to which they would keep title until 1911. That house may have previously been the residence of Frances’s brother Michael Bauer and his family. It was in the so-called Chinese section of Hornitos. Both Tom and Frances had often been looked after and mentored by the Chinese cooks at 1860s placer-mining camp at Phillips Flat along the Merced River. Tom could speak Chinese. Frances often cooked Chinese cuisine -- something Mabel may have done in her turn. The family therefore fit in quite well.
Mabel was the fifth of eight children. The family was tight-knit, but Mabel may have suffered a bit of middle-child syndrome, never feeling like she was in charge, but denied the sort of extra pampering the littlest ones got. Perhaps that is why she fled the coop earliest and furthest of any of her siblings. “Early” does not mean she was a teenager, as one might expect, though. She was a full twenty-one years old before she departed. She chose the typical means available to a woman of her era -- marriage.
Mabel’s bridegroom, who was to be the one and only husband she would ever have, was Frank Andrew Culbertson. He was a resident of Placerville, El Dorado County, CA, where he had been born 20 March 1874 and where he had gone on to spend his whole childhood. He was one of seven children of Andrew Thompson Culbertson of Pennsylvania and Sarah Ann Epley of Michigan. His parents had begun their married lives in Wisconsin, had moved to Elko County, NV in the 1860s, and had ventured on to Placerville in the early 1870s. Andrew and Sarah were still Placerville residents at the time Frank and Mabel got together, and would remain there until their deaths, his in 1909, and hers in 1922. Given this strong connection to Placerville, it is not completely clear how Mabel and Frank got to know one another. An item in the society column of the Placerville newspaper, the Mountain Democrat, from 1902 mentions that Mabel was visiting Bertie Culbertson, a sister of Frank. This could mean that Mabel had actually come to the town to see Frank, and the reference to her staying with Bertie was just the discreet way the courtship was presented. But more likely, Bertie and Mabel had become friends somehow. Perhaps Bertie had been a school teacher who taught in Mariposa County, or perhaps Mabel had been a teacher in Placerville. In any case, the 1902 visit was apparently successful in cementing a romantic interest between Mabel and Frank. It could be that it was a love-at-first-sight sort of thing. Surviving newspaper references make it clear that Frank simply wasn’t around for any sort of extended courtship. First he had been off serving in the Spanish-American War, and in the first couple of years of the Twentieth Century, had often been employed at mines in British Columbia. Maybe it was just that Mabel was determined to become a wife.
Mabel returned to Placerville for the Christmas/New Year holiday season, and if she had not already become Frank’s fiancée, she soon would be. She and Frank were wed 28 January 1903 at Frank’s parents’ home. The rites were actually conducted before sunrise so that, following a wedding breakfast, the young couple could catch the morning train for San Francisco, where they spent their honeymoon.
The young couple treated Placerville as their main home during the first nine years of their marriage. However, because Frank was a miner and mining supervisor, and because local mines were no longer capable of sustained production, he often had to look elsewhere for employment. Sometimes he even had to resort to other types of jobs, as when he spent a month as a guard at San Quentin prison. One of the places he could dependably find work was Butte, Silver Bow County, MT. He had already spent a season or two in Butte back in his bachelor days. The opportunity rose up again in 1903. Off he went, with Mabel, by now pregnant, at his side. The pair remained at least into the early part of 1904, meaning that their first child, Ethelyn Inez Culbertson, was born in Butte, the birth occurring in December, 1903. The 1903/04 sojourn was the first of several to Montana, along with one to Idaho, interspersed with intervals spent at home in Placerville. Second and third children, Gwendolyn Bertie Culbertson (born in 1905), and of Alma Bernice Culbertson (born in 1908), came into the world in Placerville. When they were in California, Mabel (and sometimes Frank) regularly visited Mariposa County to see her parents, either in Hornitos or at the elderly couple’s temporary lodgings at Mount Bullion mining outpost, and her mother is known to have visited Placerville on several occasions. In those days before routine automobile travel, the distance was too great for drop-in visits, but it was manageable compared to the circumstances after 1912. That year, with the economy of the Mother Lode in freefall, the Culbertsons settled long-term in Butte. Ethelyn, Gwen, and Alma finished growing up in that community. Whether by inclination or on account of geography, Mabel was seldom a part of the doings of the larger Branson clan once she had put California in her past.
While Frank continued his career as a miner, Mabel was a housewife. She was active in the social scene of Butte, most especially in the form of various women’s lodge activities. This was very much in keeping with her female Branson-clan relatives, but Mabel may have been the most active female Mason of the whole group, often serving as an officer, committee head, or hostess. She reached the post of Grand Manager of Butte’s Hemlock Circle #126 of the Neighbors of Woodcraft. She was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic Whist Club, and in her elder years, the Montana Sunset Club.
Frank died in Butte 3 February 1944. His grave can be found there at St. Patrick’s Cemetery. Mabel would go on to survive him by a quarter of a century. For more than the first half of that span, she remained in place in Butte. This is not as obvious a choice as one would think. Of her daughters, only Gwen remained. Mabel’s other two girls -- as well as half of her grandchildren -- were by then residents of California. Given Mabel’s personal history, one would think California would have been quite a lure. The deciding factor appears to have been her almost single-minded focus upon lodge involvement. The situation did not change until 1960. At nearly eighty years of age, Mabel needed to think about how she was going to spend her “frail” years. At last, she did in fact move to California, joining her daughter Alma and son-in-law Carl Richey in Sacramento, CA (or at least, finding a place to stay not far from their home).
Mabel’s surviving female first cousins, who recalled her as a sweet and loving girl and part of their shared experiences at their mutual grandparents’ Mariposa County ranch in the 1880s and 1890s, were disappointed with how little Mabel wanted to reconnect. Said cousins only heard of her second-hand through the intermediaries of her surviving sisters, Alice and Inez. A telling example of the phenomenon was when Mabel paid a visit to Alice in Manteca, but did not bother to go an additional fraction of a mile out of her way to pay her respects to her first cousin Eunice Harrington Converse, who was not only one of the cousins she had best known, but who had shared a passion for lodge activities. It was an opportunity not to be wasted. Eunice did not survive much longer.
Alice and Inez both passed away in the early 1960s. Mabel apparently was not satisfied with the company of children and grandchildren. She wanted her peers. Accordingly, she took advantage of the opportunity to spend her final days in the bevy of her lodge sisters. Neighbors of Woodcraft had taken over the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River, Hood River County, OR in 1952, converting the building into a home for its elderly members. It was often known as the Woodcraft Home. In 1978, it would be acquired by new owners and reopen as a hotel the following year. In the 21st Century, it is not only a hotel, but is nationally recognized as a historic landmark. It lasted as a retirement venue long enough to serve Mabel’s needs. While still healthy enough to do so, Mabel participated in lodge functions at the Neighbors of Woodcraft headquarters in Portland, but the Hood River facility was where she dwelled, and it was there that she passed away 14 July 1969. The funeral was held a few days later in Hood River. Her grave is however neither in Hood River, nor in Butte with Frank, but in Sacramento. This is a somewhat odd choice, but given how organized a person Mabel was, it seems likely she chose and purchased the cemetery plot herself in the early 1960s when she assumed she would pass away in that city. The cemetery is probably East Lawn Memorial Park, which is where Carl Richey was eventually laid to rest, meaning in turn that it is probably where Alma Culbertson Richey’s grave is located.
One of Mabel’s rare visits to California occurred in 1943, at which time all six surviving children of Thomas and Frances Branson got together for a reunion and posed for this photo. The venue is the yard of the home of Alice Branson and her husband Milton James Henry, on their farm near Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA. Hugh Branson, a lifelong bachelor, lived upstairs. From left to right, Mabel, Alice, Inez, Alma, Evalena, and Hugh.
Children of Mabel H. Branson
with Frank Andrew Culbertson
For genealogical details, click on
each of the names.
To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.