Maude Ethel Branson

Maude Ethel Branson, eldest daughter and first child of Alvin Thorpe Branson and Mary Eliza Simmons, was born 24 February 1884 at Quartzburg, Mariposa County, CA, where her father was working as a miner. Maude grew up in Mariposa County in the communities of Quartzburg, El Portal, Mariposa, Hornitos, and at a cabin along the Merced River where the Exchequer Dam would eventually be built. She is known to have attended Quartzburg District School with many Branson and Simmons relatives of her generation, but at other times she went to class in Mariposa.

At age seventeen, it was her dream to obtain higher education, but her mother unexpectedly became pregnant a fifth time, and the anticipated cost of the baby laid claim to the funds her parents had intended to devote to Maude’s school expenses. She remained in Mariposa County, helped bring her little brother Ivan into the world on 9 November 1901, and then stayed home to attend to a considerable number of domestic duties because her mother had suffered health complications as a result of the birth that required an operation and a total of more than a year of recuperation. Much of this interval was spent in the town of Mariposa where the family regularly rented a house belonging to the Gann family.

Maude enjoyed courtship and romance. She had a number of suitors while she was still in Mariposa County, the first serious one being William Howard Bassett (1882-1924), son of Jacob Trenathan Bassett and Elinor “Nellie” Witter. Another was Jay Cook Bruce. In a way it’s a shame Maude did not end up with him, because Jay went on to have a long-term marriage and a substantial brood of kids and lived a long life (some of it spent as a mountain lion hunter for the California Fish & Game Commission), a set of accomplishments Maude was unable to garner from any of the men whose rings she accepted in matrimony. Alas for Jay, when Maude finally was able to head off to the San Francisco Bay Area to go to nursing school, she went. She was apparently determined to see something of the world before she settled down. The latter motivation, in fact, seemed to mean more to her than the career prospects. Although she eventually supported herself as a psychiatric nurse, her focus once she obtained her training does not seem to have been to pursue her profession, but to pursue men. Over the next thirty years, she would proceed through five marriages.

The first of those marriages was brief. The fellow was Edward James of England. Born 20 December 1871 (or perhaps 1872 or 1873), Edward had come to the United States in 1890 or 1891 while in his late teens. He became a gold miner in Mariposa County, and became a resident at the locally-famous Gordon Hotel. The fact that he dwelled there could well have been the reason he first met Maude. The Gordon Hotel was operated by Mariposa County pioneer Peter Gordon and his wife Maggie, whose son John Francis Gordon was married to Maude’s first cousin Lula (aka Luella) Spagnoli. Of all Maude’s many cousins, Lula was one of those who made it a point to keep in touch with Maude and her mother Mary Simmons Branson. Whether Lula did any direct matchmaking is not known. Maude could easily have met Edward simply because he was local to Mariposa. By the time Maude was seventeen, Edward had ceased being a miner and was operating a men’s clothing and hat store. (In keeping with the turn-of-the-century mode of merchandising, the inventory was not limited to wearables as would tend to be the case in men’s clothing outlets today. Among other items, Edward also sold cigars and grooming accessories.) Maude would have known him as one of the handsome unmarried men of the community, with a bit of an exotic air due to his British Isles accent. The fact that he was a dozen years Maude’s senior meant he had the “older and more experienced” aspect going for him as well. When Edward sold his store in February, 1903 and moved to San Francisco, that may have given Maude the extra incentive she needed to head to the Bay Area to attend nursing school. By early 1903, her mother had just about recovered from Ivan’s birth, and Maude was at liberty at last.

Maude and Edward may have started dating not long after their mutual departure from Mariposa, i.e. in 1903. If so, their courtship was leisurely, allowing Maude to get her education done. However, when the wedding rolled around, it took a form that implies it was urgently arranged. The ceremony took place 18 August 1905 at the home of the best man, F.H. Eastey, at 200 S. Seventh Street, San Jose, CA. The rites were witnessed by only a few friends of the couple and no family. Reverend Dr. Hudson presided. The bridesmaid was Allean Bond, one of Maude’s good friends from Mariposa County, Allean being the daughter of Coulterville jeweller John Bond. The whole business gives the impression of a shotgun wedding, but if so, either Maude had a miscarriage or she was mistaken about being pregnant. No child was born to the couple, and with that lack, the urge to stay together was not as compelling as it would otherwise have been. Maude and Edward spent less than a year together before pursuing a divorce, which family notes say became final December, 1906. Strictly speaking, it was probably an annulment rather than a divorce. Surviving postcards sent by Allean Bond to Maude in February, 1907, when Maude was living in Merced, Merced County, CA, are addressed to Maude under her maiden name. Maude’s move to Merced may have occurred while she and Edward were still together, but Merced may well have been the place she fled to after the separation. Until that move, she and Edward were based once more in Mariposa, a natural choice given that they both were so familiar with the town. An article in the 12 May 1906 edition of the Mariposa Gazette mentions a visit Maude made to see her third cousin Belle Peard at Mt. Bullion Mine, and refers to her as Mrs. Ed James of Mariposa.

After the split, Edward went on to Woodland, Yolo County, CA, where in 1912 he married Letha Loretta Shinkle, daughter of John Clark Shinkle and Susan Melvina Eskew. The pair soon had two daughters, whom they raised in Woodland, then in San Francisco, and finally in Oakland, CA. Edward died 20 October 1944 in Alameda County. Genetically speaking, it is unfortunate Maude did not have offspring with him, because his eldest daughter lived to be almost ninety-eight years old and the other, as of this writing (June 2015), is over one hundred years old.

Though based in Merced in the winter of 1906/07, Maude surely visited her parents at the Gann house in Mariposa on a regular basis. This allowed her to catch the attention of a young man named John Davidson Curtis, who soon became her beau. (It is reasonable to wonder if the two might have met earlier, and that leads to the question of whether such an acquaintance may have hurried along the dissolution of Maude’s marriage to Edward James.) John, a son of Thomas Westlake Curtis and Margaret F. Catherine Hall, had been born 29 May 1874 in Fannin County, GA. He had come west as a young man and had become a Mariposa County miner. Sometimes known as Jack Curtis, he would become Maude’s second husband and would be cherished by her both in person and in memory. It would be one of the tragedies of her life story that the couple’s marriage did not have the chance to thrive. John unfortunately had one flaw as a suitor. His health was compromised. Like many miners, he had caught tuberculosis. And so despite the pair’s affection for one another, the courtship proceeded slowly. In the late spring of 1907, Maude departed for Kennett, Shasta County, CA, at that time a copper-mining boomtown. (Years later Kennett would be inundated when Lake Shasta was created.) Maude appears to have gone to help her friend Allean Bond through a period of grief. Allean and her parents had moved to Kennett in early 1907. In early April, John Bond had caught a seemingly minor cold that unexpectedly turned into pneumonia. The infection had claimed his life. It is unknown whether Maude stayed right in the home of Allean and her widowed mother. She may have been quartered with her own aunt and uncle, Theresa Branson Moore and William Osborne Moore, who had also recently settled -- albeit temporarily -- in Kennett.

John Curtis, meanwhile, headed off to Pueblo, Pueblo County, CO to enter a sanitarium for treatment. An affectionate postcard, sent in the summer of 1907 from John in Pueblo to Maude in Kennett, survives within the genealogical collection of Ivan Branson. On that card, John mentioned having just left the hospital and that he was feeling good -- and in the hope of proving his point, included the photograph reproduced at left, taken four days after he was discharged. With a clean bill of health -- unfortunately an overly optimistic verdict -- John returned to California and in due course Maude agreed to marry him. Unfortunately, mining was what he knew, so he returned to that profession, making what must be viewed in hindsight as the worst decision possible. He became a coal miner. Deep rock gold-bearing quartz ore mining had its propensity to cause miner’s lung, but coal mining was notorious for doing so. Nevertheless John began working at the coal diggings at Stone Canyon in the Cholame Hills of southern Monterey County. The outpost was a rather remote place to have a wedding, so when it came time, the rites were held in Salinas in the northern and far more accessible part of the county. The event occurred 20 October 1908. Maude went to live with Jack in Stone Canyon. Eight months after the wedding, she gave birth to daughter Doris Margaret Curtis -- fated to be an only child.

It was not long before Jack came down once again with active symptoms of tuberculosis. However healthy he may have seemed in late 1908, he either had not been cured or had tempted fate too much and had come down with a fresh case. His condition deteriorated, and soon he was unable to work. An invalid, he sought the shelter of his birth family in Blue Ridge, GA. His parents were both deceased, but Jack was the baby of the family and had older siblings to turn to. His spinster sister Alice became his prime caregiver. Maude was also on hand off and on, but she split her time between Georgia and California. She may have been worried about exposing Doris to TB, so when she went on her sojourns, as a rule Doris was left in the care of Alvin and Mary Branson in Mariposa County. Maude herself is shown as a member of her parents’ household in the 1910 census. Maude was, however, at her husband’s side when he perished at the home of his brother James Y. Curtis near Blue Ridge. The death date cited by Maude in family history notes was 6 November 1912 and that is the date on his gravemarker. The local paper, the Blue Ridge Summit, states it was one day earlier. John was buried on the seventh at Harmony Baptist Church Cemetery in Harmony, GA.

(At right, Maude and daughter Doris in the late 1920s or early 1930s.) With her nursing training to call upon, Maude knew she could get by as a single woman if she had to, but she wanted a man in her life and preferred to be a housewife. Her next husband was Fred Leo Murray, whom she wed in 28 May 1914. The ceremony was held in Fresno County, but the couple immediately settled in Stockon in San Joaquin County. The latter community was on the verge of becoming the new base of the Alvin Branson/Mary Simmons clan. Alvin and Mary themselves relocated from Mariposa County to Stockton in June, 1914. The mining economy had collapsed back in their old stomping grounds. Meanwhile they knew Ivan would have better educational opportunities in Stockton. Maude may have met Fred Murray in Stockton, but this is unclear. He is somewhat of a mystery figure. He can be tracked in public records during the few years he was married to Maude, but with a somewhat common name, it is impossible to be certain of his origins. It is vaguely possible he had some connection of Joseph Albert Murray, who spent the first few years of the 1900s working as a barber in Mariposa before moving on to southern Oregon. Joseph’s wife was Lura Allean Morse. A 1928 postcard from this “other Allean” survives in Maude’s papers. (Yes, incredibly, Maude had two friends named Allean.) This suggests a lasting bond with the Murray clan. However, a genealogy of the family to which Joseph Albert Murray belonged has not yet been discovered. At the moment, research would suggest Joseph did not have a relative named Fred Leo Murray. So where Fred came from is unknown. What is clear, though, is that Fred was not a man of means. In the 1916 voter register, in which he and Maude appear as residents of 728 Lindsay Street in Stockton, his occupation is “waiter.” On his draft card, filed 12 September 1918, his occupation is described as “unemployed clerk.”

One reason Fred was unemployed in September, 1918, was that he was dying. The address on the draft card is 420 E. Monterey Avenue. This was Maude’s parents’ address, and it is apparent from context that the couple had sought shelter with Alvin and Mary. Fred died 18 September 1918, only six days after the draft card was filed. The cause of death is not known, but tuberculosis again seems likely, as Fred was only thirty-seven years old when he perished. His draft card shows a birth date of 20 May 1881.

Maude did not remain single long. By no later than the end of 1919, she was a wife again. Her new husband was Clyde Leroy Miller, son of John Curtis Miller and Georgia Cummings. Clyde was born 9 August 1882 (sources vary as to the year, but 1882 fits best and is what is reported in his California Death Index entry), probably in or near Hollister, San Benito County, CA. His mother died in 1894, the year he turned twelve years old. Though he maintained contact thereafter with his father (who eventually moved to Morrison, Noble County, OK), his upbringing was completed in Pacific Grove, Monterey County, CA by his maternal grandmother Lucy Ann Goold Cummings and his music-teacher aunt Emma R. Cummings Lofland. In his late twenties Clyde began to roam California, his first stops being Santa Barbara and San Francisco. He may have gone to the latter locale because his uncle Orlando Chester Miller was based in that city. Clyde remained in San Francisco about two years. For some of that sojourn, he appears to have been a married man, though the identity of the wife remains undetermined. The best evidence that Clyde was not a bachelor is in the form of a postcard found in Maude’s surviving memorabilia. The postcard, sent 5 May 1911 to Clyde by a friend with the initials D.O., appears to be congratulating him on becoming a married man. Details of the union are otherwise unknown, except that it must have lasted no more than a year. In the wake of the split-up, Clyde left the Bay Area and after a short stint as a farm laborer near Stockton, came to Mariposa County, where he became a teamster based in El Portal. The 1 March 1913 edition of the Mariposa Gazette includes a notice of his marriage the preceding Tuesday in Merced to Anna M. Burch of Yosemite. Aside from this lone mention, Anna is otherwise a mystery figure. Again, the marriage was very brief. Clyde did however linger in El Portal for a few years, though apparently not with Anna. One person he did grow to be on good terms with was Maude’s brother Jim. When Jim was released from San Quentin Penitentiary in mid-1918, having spent a year there, it would appear that one of the first buddies Jim tracked down was Clyde, and the two spent a number of months thereafter employed as miners in Placer County, CA. When Jim made visits to see his kinfolk in Stockton, Clyde may have tagged along, and this may have been how he and Maude caught each other’s eye. However, it is possible the two had first met years earlier in Mariposa, prior to the Branson family’s 1914 migration to Stockton. Maude may have wanted to marry Clyde in 1913, but was unable to because he was at that juncture the husband of Anna Burch.

(At left is Maude with her brother Walter Henry Branson in the 1930s or 1940s.)

Maude and Clyde stayed together six years, and then it was a few years further until the divorce decree was processed. Short as the relationship was, it represents Maude’s most enduring marriage. The break-up may have been inevitable. Maude was a demanding person, and all it takes is a little reading-between-the-lines of Clyde’s life story to conclude he was a man who tended to drink too much. On the other hand, it could be they might have managed to hold it together if some development had given them the boost they needed -- say for example the addition of children to the household, or the landing of a truly steady, good-paying job on Clyde’s part. But no such developments occurred. The spouses’ patience ultimately wore thin. That said, Clyde definitely tried harder with Maude than with either of his previous wives, and she stuck it out longer with Clyde than with any of her other husbands.

During those six years (1919-1925), Clyde was employed variously as a mechanic and a driver. The couple moved at least three times, but were always based somewhere in Stockton, residing first on E. Flora Street, then on E. Church Street, and then by 1924, they took possession of a home at 410 E. Monterey Avenue, next door to her parents and brother Walter at 420. Maude would keep the house at 410 after the separation. Clyde went on to become a miner in Yuba County, then returned to the Stockton area in the first half of the 1930s. The 1940 census shows him as a live-in farm hand on the Dent Township farm of Leona Verdon, a divorcée. Clyde passed away 29 November 1941 in San Joaquin County, possibly at the Verdon farm.

After Clyde left, Maude was not entirely alone at 410 E. Monterey. Her daughter was still with her, and this was the case all the way to the end of the 1920s and a bit beyond. After leaving school, Doris found work as a stenographer, and did not head out from beneath her mother’s roof until she was twenty-one years old, at which point she followed her boyfriend Richard Jay Fette to Chicago, where they were wed in the spring of 1931. (After a number of years in Chicago and Peoria, the couple returned to finish their lives in California.) The echoes of her own footsteps in the empty house appears to have been too much for Maude. She coped with it in her usual way -- she got married again. Her fifth husband was Roy Albert Chamberlin, son of Lewis Albert Chamberlin and Sophia Walton. The wedding, held in Carson City, NV, took place 8 October 1931.

Roy was born 4 June 1889 in Dinuba, Tulare County, CA. (On his draft card, he described his birthplace as Reedley, Fresno County, CA. Reedley is about five miles from Dinuba. Perhaps the family home was in the rural zone between the two towns.) He grew up in various parts of California, including Visalia (not far from Dinuba), San Diego, and finally Stockton, where he wed first wife Lenora Alma Shipman 9 April 1911. The marriage lasted six to eight years. It was childless. During the course of it, the couple moved to Bakersfield, Kern County, CA, where Roy supported himself, his wife, and his widowed mother as an express messenger for Wells Fargo. That occupation suggests a means whereby he might have become acquainted with the Branson family. Ivan Branson worked as a Western Union messenger boy in the mid-1910s in Stockton -- Roy may well have been one of his collagues or even his supervisor, prior to Roy’s move south.

By the end of the 1910s, Roy came back to San Joaquin County. At first he was not based in Stockton, but farther west in the small town of Tracy, where he worked as a railroad car inspector. By then, the marriage to Lenora was a thing of the past. He came back to Stockton, where he was a service station attendant. He wed second wife Jessie Minerva Craven 22 November 1925. She was recently divorced from first husband William Fielding Morrison. Roy became a stepfather to her children George and Dorothy Morrison, ages five and three at the time of the wedding. Unfortunately, this marriage -- the second one for both spouses -- was short-lived. Precisely four years after she had become Mrs. Roy Chamberlin, Jessie became Mrs. Frank Owens. She would marry a fourth time in the late 1940s. Roy seems to have become used to the idea of being a surrogate father, though. He took in his nephew, Archie Reed Cowan, the eldest of the eight children of his sister Mattie, giving the young man a chance to get out of a crowded household. In addition, Roy took in another boarder, which helped him weather the tough early years of the Great Depression. He himself was continuing to drift from job to job. The 1930 census shows him as a mechanic at a hardware store.

Roy turned out to be no more satisfactory a husband for Maude than his predecessors, and he appears to have found her no more satisfactory a wife than Lenora or Jessie. They stuck it out for less than four years, separating 21 September 1935. The final divorce decree was issued 30 September 1938. It was probably a good thing Doris was based in Illinois during those years, avoiding having to witness her mother go through yet another trial by matrimony. The final divorce decree was issued 30 September 1938. Roy moved down to Hanford, Kings County, CA, where he was a truck driver. Eventually he ended up in Sonora, Tuolumne County, CA, where he died 16 July 1966.

Apparently five attempts at wedded bliss were enough. Maude was finally content to remain single. When her mother died in 1940, she moved in at 420 Monterey, joining her bachelor brother Walter, who had inherited the property. (The image of Walter and Maude shown above was taken in front of that home.) Inasmuch as Walter had no offspring, Maude would eventually inherit the house from him. At the very end of her life, Maude moved into a care facility. She died of cancer in Stockton 8 January 1972 and was buried at Stockton Rural Cemetery three days later. Her parents and brothers James and Walter had earlier been buried in that cemetery, but with Walter’s funeral the original immediate-family plot was filled. Maude’s grave is therefore not adjacent to theirs, though it is only a minute’s walk away in the same general part of the grounds. Years after her death her daughter and son-in-law were buried next to her. The house at 420 Monterey was inherited by Doris, who sold it to her uncle Ivan in the 1970s.

A Note of Appreciation: The creation of this website might not have been possible without the initial genealogical efforts of Maude Branson Chamberlin. Maude was at the right place at the right time to keep up her connection to the greater Branson clan, and she did not ignore the opportunity. Many of the children and grandchildren of John and Martha Branson lived in San Joaquin County during the first half of the 20th Century, either in Stockton like Maude, or in and around Manteca, or at points inbetween. This group included Alvin Thorpe Branson, Nancy Anne Branson Harrington Napier, Thomas Henry Ousley Branson, and some or all of these three siblings’ offspring, as well as Theresa Branson and her foster son, Clarence Johnson, son of Mary Jane Branson Johnson. Maude also kept in regular touch with members of the lines of Phoebe (in Merced and Oakland), Joseph (in Mariposa and Fresno Counties), and John, Jr. (in Madera and Fresno). Judging by the correspondence, photos, memoirs, and genealogical lists that have survived in her brother Ivan’s collection, Maude took it upon herself to try to assemble a current and complete record of the Branson clan as of the late 1940s. By that time, Maude was reaching her mid-sixties, and her parents’ generation was dying off. The only two of her uncles and aunts who still survived were Mary Jane Branson Johnson, who died in 1949, and John Sevier Branson, Jr., who passed away in 1951. Had Maude been like her cousins and ignored the chance to ask relatives for their birthdates, marriage dates, etc. while the bonds of shared descent were still knotted, there would have been no convenient foundation for later research. As it was, she got a very good start and eventually passed along a thick cache of notes to Ivan as he began his family-history endeavors in the early 1950s. Maude continued to help her brother until her final months. Her contributions ultimately proved critical, because Ivan concentrated upon the male lineage -- those relatives with the surname Branson -- which meant that the lines of John and Martha’s daughters and granddaughters received short shrift from him. (The only two children of Ivan’s aunts to be mentioned by name in his book, Bones of the Bransons, are Eunice and Elsie Harrington, and only in the caption of a photograph, because the two girls, then in their childhood, had been standing next to Martha when a picture was taken of the elderly matriarch sitting in her rocking chair on the porch of the house at Grasshopper Ranch.) Because Maude’s work lay waiting among Ivan’s papers, enough names and dates and places surfaced to put together the structure of the whole clan in 2005 and then update it, resulting in this website and the larger, privately-kept archive. Well done, Maude.

Child of Maude Ethel Branson with John Davidson Curtis

Doris Margaret Curtis

For genealogical details, click on Doris’s name.

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Branson/Ousley Family main page, click here.