Alvin Arthur Branson

Alvin Arthur Branson was born 2 July 1883. The third child and second son of Joseph Branson and Ellen Margaret Geary, he is not to be confused with his father’s brother Alvin Thorpe Branson. Alvin Arthur was born at and raised on his parents’ cattle ranch at Quartzburg, a few miles north of Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA.

As a child, he was able to observe as gold ore was removed from the mines only a few hundred yards away from the household’s front door. The mines were very productive, allowing the family to live a very comfortable life by the standards of the time. Perhaps it was inevitable that Alvin would view mining as an excellent means to make his own fortune. As a young man he worked at several Mariposa County mines, in particular the Organita and Princeton sites.

However, as the 20th Century progressed, Alvin was not alone in seeing that the Mother Lode was becoming played out and he could not depend on the kind of reward his father and grandfather had known. Accordingly, he set out for for Mexico in September, 1905. Apparently he found the nation little to his liking. Within a few weeks he was at Bisbee, Cochise County, AZ, where he found employment with the Copper Queen Mining Company. He was sent to the mine twenty-three miles away in Gleason, but that operation was shut down only a month or so later. Alvin returned to Bisbee and in mid-December began working the Holbrook shaft.

Exhausted from a hard shift, Alvin was killed when he fell from an elevator that had no safety cage. He was mangled between the elevator and the timbers, and then his body tumbled 330 feet to the bottom of the shaft. The accident occurred Sunday, 24 December 1905. The telegram informing his family of his death became an unwelcome Christmas present, all the more so because his grandfather John Branson had died less than four weeks earlier. Alvin’s body was embalmed in Bisbee and shipped by rail back to the Norgren funeral home in Merced. The remains arrived on the 29th of December. The funeral was held in Hornitos the following day, Rev. J. Hedgpeth officiating. The grave can be still be found today in the village cemetery, which in turn is adjacent to the Catholic cemetery adjoining St. Catherine’s Church. (The photos on this page show his gravesite and marker). His parents were eventually buried beside him. These three are the only members of the immediate Branson family in this particular cemetery, as all of Alvin’s siblings were buried near their own final places of residence, which happen to be in various other parts of California. His grandparents John and Martha Branson are buried in the Oddfellows Cemetery on a nearby hillside. The placement of Alvin’s grave was the result of a compromise. His mother was firmly Catholic, and his father was adamantly Masonic. As Joe and Ella had done throughout their marriage, they met halfway. If Joe had had his way, Alvin would have been buried right beside his grandparents in the Oddfellows Cemetery. Ella would have preferred he be placed in either the Catholic section of St. Catherine’s, or in the cemetery at St. Joseph’s Church in the town of Mariposa, beside her parents and siblings.

Alvin had not yet found a bride by the time of his early demise, and never sired children.

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