William Proctor Branson


William Proctor Branson, eldest son of Thomas Henry Ousley Branson and Frances Bauer, was born 24 August 1873 on his parents’ rural property near Quartzburg, a mining outpost (a settlement that would often be better known in the late 1870s and early 1880s as Washington Mine) a couple of miles north of Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA. This home was quite close to or perhaps even a section of “Grasshopper Ranch,” the homestead of his grandparents John and Martha Branson. He is not to be confused with his first cousin William Henry Branson, son of Reuben Branson. It is somewhat easy to confuse them because William Henry was born only a month before William Proctor and they share a number of biographical details, including an abbreviated life and lack of children. William Proctor is also not to be confused with William Wyatt Branson, his father’s second cousin. The latter William, son of John Sevier Branson’s first cousin Isaac Branson, was born in 1871, and he, too, would never produce offspring. All three Williams were born at Quartzburg. They may have been born in different houses, but all three houses would undoubtedly have all been in view at the same time to anyone standing on the ridge that overlooked the little settlement. That the name William would be used so often among the local Branson clan in the early 1870s is apparently coincidence. In the case of William Proctor Branson, he was probably named in honor of his father’s uncle, William Ousley, with the middle name said to have been taken from a family friend. (Despite research, the precise identity of that friend has not been determined.)

William enjoyed a stable and nurturant upbringing. His father worked variously as a tinsmith, blacksmith, carpenter, miner, and Chinese-English interpreter for the Mariposa County court. For an interval in the mid-1870s, the family home may have been in Merced, Merced County, CA, where Thomas Branson co-owned and operated a tinsmithing-and-hardware firm, Branson & Barcroft, but otherwise William was raised entirely in Mariposa County. Until 1897, that home was in Quartzburg, but after his uncle Joe Branson purchased the property in order to expand his already-sizable cattle ranch, William and his seven younger siblings and his parents relocated into Hornitos. Their house there was quite possibly the former home of his uncle Michael Bauer and family. The residence was along Burns Creek in a part of Hornitos considered to be the “Chinese” section of the community -- a natural place to choose to live given that Thomas Branson had learned to speak Chinese while growing up in the Gold Rush mining camp of Phillips Flat.

William remained unusually close to his parents. He would in fact never truly live apart from them except in the sense that during the period from 1902 to about 1908, his father worked off-and-on at the Mount Bullion mining outpost, and lived in the barracks. Frances was often with her husband, leaving William to be the “head of household” back in Hornitos.

Back when his parents were still based at Quartzburg, William had taken care of the family cattle, and had undoubtedly done other ranching work. After the move to Hornitos, he worked as a miner and prospector. Coming of age as he did in an era when folk of lightly-populated areas such as lower Mariposa County had to create their own social entertainment, William was part of the village orchestra. He played bass horn. His brother Hugh, a violinist, was also in the orchestra.

Many of the Branson men were known for their stature, and William was one of them. He grew to be 6'2" tall. His size and his strength and health may have been what eased his way into the life of a miner, but this occupation proved to be a curse. He spent too much time down in the shafts of hardrock mines, breathing air thick with moisture and silicate dust, and ended up contracting tuberculosis. He suffered from the disease for many years. Just when he became symptomatic is not completely clear. He was still feeling good enough to accompany his brother Hugh to the Seattle Exposition in September, 1909. In 1910, he was still putting in wage-earning hours as a miner, and in his off-hours was serving as an officer of the Hornitos Oddfellows lodge.

The gold-mining industry went into a severe decline and Thomas and Frances decided there was no point to remaining in Mariposa County. In 1911, they moved to the rural fringe of Manteca, San Joaquin County, CA, finding a house not far from where Thomas’s sister Nan Napier and a number of other relatives had become based over the preceding ten years. Had William been healthy, he might well have chosen that moment to establish himself as an independent being, but he was no longer doing well. Faced with the alternative of entering a sanitarium, naturally he preferred to stay with his parents, which is what they preferred as well.

Three of William’s sisters took an active role in keeping him going. Alice Branson and her husband John H. Williams had their own Manteca farm, and so she was there to lend a hand at a moment’s notice. Alma Branson Youd, a nurse in Merced, could be counted on for professional-level advice and treatment. And youngest sister Inez, a bachelorette school teacher, made a policy of spending her winter and summer breaks back home. In the summer of 1916, it was Inez who took William for a two-month stay in Yosemite Valley. It was to be the final summer of his truncated life, and both he and Inez probably realized that.

Unfortunately, Frances Bauer Branson’s health declined along with that of her son, though from kidney issues and other problems, not from TB. Ultimately they succumbed on the same day. Frances died at 12:30 in the early afternoon of 5 December 1916. William died that evening at 7:30. Both deaths occurred within the family home in Manteca.

William was buried in Stockton Rural Cemetery, Stockton, CA near his mother. Eventually, the remains of his father, some of his siblings, uncles and aunts, and many of his cousins would also be interred in that cemetery, most of them in the same section.


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