Margaret Brandy Gaver

Margaret Brandy Gaver, second of the three children of Margaret Alice Branson and her second husband Edgar Leroy Gaver, and fourth of her mother’s six total children, was born 13 October 1909 in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA, where the household was located while her father played minor league baseball for the San Francisco Seals. She was known as “Little Margaret” to distinguish her from her mother, and kept this monicker even as an adult. The 1920 census (for Taft, CA) lists her middle name as Alice, but this is an error.

In the early 1910s Ed Gaver transferred to a new team in Los Angeles, and so the family moved to southern California, a welcome development in some ways because it brought them back within close proximity of some of “Big” Margaret’s kinfolk including her mother, said relatives having already for one reason or another become based in the region. Despite that benefit, the next few years were troubled in the Gaver family. Ed and Margaret divorced. The couple reached a point of schism some time not long after experiencing a major tragedy when their third child, Sammy Gaver, passed away in the summer of 1912 at only two months of age. Ed Gaver moved to the East Coast. By 1915, Little Margaret would have a new stepfather, Jack Cowsert. Jack had already been connected to the family because he was the brother of Etta Cowsert, who was married to “Big” Margaret’s brother Robert Lee Branson.

Jack was a miner. In the early years of the marriage he became employed at a mine in Oatman, AZ. Margaret later described the locale as not much more than sagebrush and greasewood. With little money to their name, Margaret and Jack lived in a tent in the desert. In the year-round sense, this was not a suitable environment for the kids, which included not only Little Margaret but her older brother Edgar Robert Gaver and older half-brother Oliver Heitkemper. Margaret felt that her young ones would do better in circumstances where they would have proper shelter as well as be able to attend school, so in spite of the emotional ordeal, she sent them away. The boys went to live with their biological fathers, Oliver to Portland, OR and Ed to Pennsylvania. Little Margaret was taken in by her aunt Mabel Branson Latham and her husband George Latham. Little Margaret had already had the chance to experience living under her aunt’s roof in 1913, when the Gavers had shared the Latham residence in central Los Angeles.

The Lathams became based in Stoneboro, PA in 1917 (or about then). Little Margaret therefore became a Pennsylvania girl. Being there meant she was geographically quite close to her father, and she spent intervals with him, even though her aunt continued to be primarily responsible for her. This occasional presence in her father’s home would be true of her later childhood as well, meaning that Little Margaret got the opportunity to become acquainted with her younger half-brothers Paul and Harry Gaver, the children born of her father’s marriage to his second wife, Mary Arnetta Paul. In later years, though, her contact with those two siblings was infrequent.

At the end of the 1910s, Jack and Margaret’s rustic phase of existence came to an end when Jack took a job working in the extraction fields of the Honolulu Oil Company in western Kern County. The pair moved into a house on the southern outskirts of Taft, whereupon Margaret reclaimed her far-flung brood. Oliver, Ed, and Little Margaret would keep up their attachments to their fathers but Taft was now their main base, enough so that in later years Little Margaret would sometimes describe herself as being “from” Taft. (She is shown at right during the period when the family was still in Los Angeles.)

At the beginning of the 1920s the family expanded with the arrival of Louise Cowsert, Margaret’s one child with Jack. In not too many more years Oliver and Ed finished growing up and moved out. As the only remaining children at home, Little Margaret and Louise, already enjoying a special bond due to being the only girls of the family, became even closer as a result of being the only kids left in the nest. Margaret continued to be a part of the household throughout the 1920s, with the possible exception of a short period when she may have gone elsewhere in order to attend a beautician school. She is shown in her parents’ home in Taft in the 1930 census. (Aunt Etta Cowsert Branson and her children are listed living right next door.)

Little Margaret worked as a beautician for many years. Though she did so mainly in Taft, for a while during the early 1930s she was temporarily based in Los Angeles. That may have been where she met and married her first husband. Precisely when the wedding occurred has not been determined, nor is her husband fully identified. In family notes, his name is Sam Wilson. Whatever his genealogical background, he was not part of Little Margaret’s life for long. After parting ways with him in the late 1930s, she took shelter with her parents, who by that point were residents of Bakersfield. She appears with them in the 1940 census. Soon she reestablished herself on her own back in Taft.

In 1942, Little Margaret became the wife of Robert Bruce Lander. Known as Bruce, he was the youngest of the four offspring of Charles Augustus Lander and his wife Agnes Reed. This meant that Bruce had deep connections to San Bernardino. Charles Lander was a native of the community, part of a family that had pioneered the vicinity. He was still remembered as a newspaper printer. Agnes Reed Lander was a figure of even greater local renown. She had been a modiste, i.e. a fitter and seamstress of custom-tailored apparel. She had taken up this career in 1920, which is to say, after her kids were entirely grown. Associated with the Harris-family department store, Agnes had become a trusted professional known to virtually every lady of prominent social stature within the city. Charles had passed away in 1936, and Agnes in the summer of 1942, so Little Margaret did not get the chance to become acquainted with her parents-in-law, but she did know Bruce’s brother Earl and sister Lillian Eldridge. The latter was another noted professional woman of San Bernardino due to her role as number-one buyer for the Harris company. Lillian was also unquestionably the most influential member of her generation within the family. Bruce may have had the opinion that Lillian cast a big shadow.

One reason to suspect there was a “big shadow” effect in play is that despite Bruce’s ties to San Bernardino, he and Little Margaret did not reside there at any point in their decades as a married couple, not even at the beginning when they could have used a boost getting started. In general over the course of his adulthood, Bruce preferred to forge his own path independent of his birth family. This tendency had first manifested while he was a teenager. He lied about his age in order to join the U.S. Army. Among other things, this means that various public records often have his birth year wrong. The correct date is 14 June 1901. Bruce was sent overseas with the 49th artillery regiment and arrived in France in October, 1918. Within a matter of weeks the armistice was declared and Bruce came through the conflict intact and healthy and would go on to live for almost seventy further years. Ironically it was his sister Hortense, seemingly safe and sound and out of harm’s way in her home in Portland, OR, who perished. The great influenza epidemic claimed her as one of its victims 31 October 1918. After his enlistment was over, Bruce returned to his parents’ household, but lingered with them only until the early 1920s, employed as a boilermaker apprentice, a railroad-company job. His parents divorced during that decade, and this may have spurred his exit, and may be an additional reason why he subsequently avoided San Bernardino. He became a longshoreman at the Long Beach-San Pedro harbor, and then in the 1930s migrated up into Kern County, where he was based alternately in Bakersfield and Taft, probably drawn there by the presence of his brother Earl, who had long worked in the Kern County oil industry. In 1934 in the midst of this phase of his life, he wed first wife, Mary. Her story has yet to be fully revealed. She is shown as Mary McGinnis on the marriage certificate and as a resident of San Bernardino at the time the wedding took place (in Yuma, AZ), but chances are quite high that McGinnis was her prior married name. Otherwise her particulars are partially revealed by the 1940 census, which shows her and Bruce in Bakersfield, and the 1940 voter register, which shows them in Taft. If those sources can be trusted, Mary was a native of Texas born about 1905. At the end of 1940, Bruce took a job in Santa Monica with Douglas Aircraft. It seems likely he left Mary behind at that point; if not, they separated during the next twelve months. He returned to Taft, where he and Little Margaret became an item.

(At left, Little Margaret and her parents not long before their divorce.) In early September, 1942, the final decree of divorce came through and Bruce was free to become a husband again. He and Little Margaret did not waste any time. They were married by no later than the middle of the month. Just where they went through the ceremony is not known, which suggests they may have hopped across the border and got it done in Tijuana, Mexico. Aside from their affection for one another, there was a logistical reason to rush things along. As of the eighth of September, Bruce was a member of the U.S. Coast Guard. The new couple wanted to qualify for married-serviceman housing in San Diego, where he was to be based. And indeed, that was where they ended up for the greater portion of the war years. Bruce remained in the Coast Guard until 29 December 1944.

Two bits of genealogical trivia should be mentioned: 1) Both Little Margaret and Bruce had aunts named Nellie Reed. Her uncle Robert Lee Branson’s second wife was Nellie Reed, and Agnes Reed Lander’s sister was named Nellie. 2) As one might expect, Bruce’s name tended to be misrendered in print as Landers, and this is true of various post-1942 references to Little Margaret as well.

A car accident nearly claimed Little Margaret’s life when she was a newlywed. Leaving Bruce in San Diego, where he was busy with his training, she drove home to Taft on Saturday, September 26th. Apparently she was too tired to make it safely to her destination, and she lost control of her car on Grocer Grade near Maricopa, not far south of Taft. She sustained severe injuries and was hospitalized. She pulled through.

Little Margaret had not had children with Sam Wilson, and Bruce had not had offspring with Mary, but they agreed they wanted to be parents now. Unfortunately, there was some sort of impediment that prevented them from conceiving -- perhaps caused by the damage suffered by Little Margaret in the car accident. The solution was adoption. The ideal scenario was some sort of arrangement that would allow them to raise a child who was connected biologically to one or the other of them. In 1943, an option suddenly presented itself. Little Margaret was already a doting aunt to her young nieces, daughters of Louise. The little girls called her “Aunt Sissy” -- an extension of the nickname Louise had used for Little Margaret during her own childhood. In 1943, Louise found herself pregnant again, and this was a problem in that she was already separated from her husband, James Harold Walker, and was determined to finish divorcing him. To have to deal with a new baby at such a juncture was not just inconvenient, it represented a challenge that might overwhelm her. So soon it was arranged that Little Margaret and Bruce would adopt the unborn child Louise was carrying. In due course, in mid-January, 1944, a baby boy was born. He was named Robert Bruce Lander, Jr. Unfortunately the labor was complicated. Either the umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck, or he remained compressed in the birth canal too long, depriving his brain of oxygen. The result was permanent brain damage. He would never be able to live a normal life. Becoming parents of a disabled baby was not part of the plan, of course, but Little Margaret and Bruce stood by the adoption arrangement. The child would go on to be known to the family as Skipper -- a play on words, of course, but one that in his state he didn’t seem to mind.

After the war Little Margaret, Bruce, and young Skipper settled in San Jose, or more specifically its neighboring community of Sunnyvale. This and other parts of Santa Clara County would continue to be the couple’s home for the rest of their lives with the exception of an interval in the mid-1950s when they were temporarily based in Santa Fe, NM. Bruce’s regular occupation was house painter. Little Margaret’s bad luck manifested again in the mid-to-late 1950s. She had another car accident. Again she survived, but her recovery was far less complete than in 1942. She was left paralyzed from the waist down. Caring for Skipper was extremely hard to do from a wheelchair and the boy had to be institutionalized. Skipper passed away in the mid-1960s at the state hospital in Porterville, Tulare County, CA. This bitter development may have been the wedge that drove Little Margaret and Bruce apart. They did not go far from one another in the geographical sense, but they ceased living together. It could be they never formally divorced -- such a move might have meant Little Margaret would no longer be covered by his health insurance coverage plan and was quite likely something Bruce was unwilling to see happen.

Little Margaret survived with her handicap for two decades. An early 1970s directory shows her at an address in Campbell, another borough of San Jose much like Sunnyvale. She perished 31 August 1976 in Santa Clara County. She was buried in Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose. This puts her grave far apart from most family members other than the Biederman branch -- her grandmother Eliza Louisa Armstrong Branson’s sister Bertha is the matriarch of this branch, and it was Bertha’s presence in San Jose in the early Twentieth Century that indirectly accounts for Little Margaret having come into the world in that city. Bruce Lander died Christmas Day 1987 in San Jose. His grave is at Los Gatos Memorial Park.

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