David Kirkpatrick Branson

David Kirkpatrick Branson, born 2 June 1875 near Hornitos, Mariposa County, CA, was the second child and second son of Reuben Branson and Mary Eliza Louisa Armstrong. He was named for David Kirkpatrick, a Mariposa County pioneer who worked with Reuben Branson and Reuben’s brothers and father hauling wagonloads of freight around the county and up from Stockton. Several of the grandsons of John Sevier Branson and Martha Jane Ousley were named for neighbors and friends, often for bachelors who did not otherwise have sons to pass their name down to.

Family records describe David as “not right,” that is to say, he was mentally retarded. The degree of his ailment is uncertain. It did not prevent him from living a long and vigorous life. However, his limitation may explain why he never married. He did not have children, either, though in this respect he was no different than his older brother William and four of his five sisters. The Great Register of Madera County for 1896 -- the first year he could vote -- describes him at age twenty-one as 5'9½" tall with light hair and blue eyes, and a scar over his left eye.

David grew up in various places in the Mother Lode where his father was mining for gold, including Hite’s Cove and Potter Ridge in Mariposa County, and Grub Gulch in Madera County. About the time he was reaching adulthood, his mother decided she had had enough of moving around through the foothills and established a more settled base in the quarry town of Raymond in Madera County. During the mid-1890s David lingered near there and in Coarsegold, possibly helping support his mother and younger siblings.

Like his father, David worked as a miner. In his early twenties he did so mainly in tandem with his father and/or his brothers William and Robert at sites they were digging. He kept up the occupation at least into his late forties, but given the decline in the industry in California, he often resorted to other types of work, including farmer, farm laborer, cowboy, and logger.

At the Turn of the Century, his parents gave up on Raymond and moved down to the lowlands and rented a house in the city of Madera. David’s sisters were all swept up in this move, but David was not. He preferred to remain in the Mother Lode, in a milieu he was familiar with. He and Robert briefly worked some of their father’s old claims, perhaps a tactic to keep the value active while their mother attempted to gain control over some of the family assets as divorce loomed, and then Robert went on to southern California. Soon Robert would move from there to Indian Wells Valley portion of the Mojave Desert. The census, taken in early June, 1900, shows David residing with grandparents John and Martha Branson at Grasshopper Ranch in Mariposa County. The voter register of 1900 (later in the year) shows him in Coarsegold, Madera County, and the 1902 register shows him back in Raymond. (These two registers, by the way, are the only sources of his full middle name -- other documents have it as merely Kirk or the initial K.)

Perhaps David would not have chosen to be parted from his birth family for any extended period, but the fact is, he soon ended up with no home to go back to. The marriage of his parents came apart. His father went to Indian Wells Valley and then to Hornitos, seldom staying in one place for long. His mother moved from Madera to Fresno to San Jose to Los Angeles. His sisters scattered. David clearly did not feel as though he was invited to be part of any new living arrangements any of them acquired for themselves. Aside from visits, David did not seek them out. When he did stay with relatives, it was with his grandparents, or with his uncle Joe Branson in Hornitos, or with his uncle John Branson, Jr. in Madera. He knew the latter uncle well because John and his wife Lillian and their boys Joe and Henry had been based in Raymond during some of the same years David and his family had been there.

The 1910 census shows David in Mariposa County, as a laborer on a farm belonging to Gregorio Sanchez. (This residence was next door to those of two other members of the Branson clan, one being the home of his father’s second cousin Mary M. Scott Guest, a daughter of Irena Branson Scott, the other being the home of his father’s second cousin Wiley Branson, a son of Isaac Branson.) The 1910 voter register confirms that he was in Hornitos at that time, describing him as a miner. The register also shows that he was a Republican, the only one of the many Bransons listed on the page who is not classified as a Democrat. This alone would have been enough to make his relatives think he was addled. Even though the War Between the States had been over for forty-five years, most Bransons traditionally could not bear to contemplate joining the party of Lincoln.

By 1920, David was a general carpenter living in a boarding house in Merced, Merced County. In the 1922 and 1928 registers, he is shown in Hornitos again, as a miner.

It is apparent from the above traces that David wandered about for many years without finding an ideal situation. One might have expected he would finally give up and seek out the refuge of his siblings or his mother after all. (His father had died in 1916.) He did not do so. However, one visit he made to his kinfolk in 1924 remains infamous in the family lore, because it was taken as evidence of his dim-witted nature. That year he rode a horse all the way from the gold country (probably setting out from Hornitos) to see his brother Robert, who was then living in Randsburg on the eastern boundary of Kern County. David first took an immense detour to western Kern County to see his sister Margaret Cowsert in South Taft. All in all, the journey required riding for hundreds of miles. Going by train would have been the logical and simplest mode of transport, but perhaps making such arrangements was too challenging for David, or simply did not occur to him.

In about 1929, David moved to Calaveras County, CA. He would spend the final twenty years of his life in the county, employed as a rancher and farm laborer. During much of that period he lived in rural Mokelumne Hill. His final residence was Mountain Ranch. In late May, 1949, he suffered a stroke and was admitted to Calaveras County Hospital in San Andreas, where he remained until his death 12 July 1949 at 9:45pm. He was buried 15 July 1949 at Peoples Cemetery, San Andreas. No headstone was placed there. This is surprising given that his brother Robert and sister Mabel made sure over the years to arrange for headstones for both parents and all the other siblings. Apparently no one cared enough to spend the money on a lasting memorial for David. Cost was not the issue. Both Robert and Mabel had sufficient funds at hand in 1949 that if either had wanted to take care of the matter, they could have. The development can be taken as an indication of the degree to which David had become a loner.

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