Oliver Charles Heitkemper

Oliver Charles Heitkemper, son of Margaret Alice Branson and Charles Edward Heitkemper, was born 8 January 1905 in San Jose, Santa Clara County, CA. His birthplace was later misremembered by relatives as being in San Francisco. No birth certificate has surfaced, but all other documentation such as directories, censuses, and voter registers, as well as the marriage certificate of his parents, places family members in San Jose in the years surrounding his birth.

Oliver was known by his first name in his childhood and appears as such in the 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940 censuses; however, he gradually became annoyed by his first wife’s habit of calling him “Ollie” and took to using his middle name. He eventually came to be known so thoroughly as Charles that his California Death Index entry reads Charles Oliver Heitkemper. (He will consistently be referred to as Oliver in this biography so as to conveniently distinguish him from his father.)

Oliver was the product of an elopement by a pair of teenagers. Margaret’s parents Reuben and Louisa Branson were recently divorced and she had less oversight than was good for her. Also, Louisa was running a boarding house as a means of financial support, and this put Margaret in proximity to far too many young bachelors. Charles Edward Heitkemper, who had been born 27 April 1886 in Nebraska and raised in Portland, OR, was probably one of the boarders at the establishment. Once both sets of parents discovered that Margaret and Charles had been secretly married, they stepped in and put through an annulment. Their action occurred too late to prevent the pregnancy. However, the young father was not informed of the conception. By the time Margaret knew she was pregnant, Charles was back in Portland, where his parents -- Gerhard Heitkemper and Mary A. Boerge -- could keep a closer eye on him. Gerhard and Mary probably urged their son to consider his fling with Margaret an indiscretion best forgotten. It was not long before Charles moved on and founded a new family. On 18 June 1906, barely over eighteen months after Oliver had been born, he married Clara Olive Moore, who had been born 17 May 1885 in Washington. They became parents of a child, Mary Alice Heitkemper, in 1910. Charles and Clara lived out their lives in Portand and/or nearby parts of the Pacific Northwest. They died on the same day, 29 November 1964, a synchronicity of mortality that implies they were both killed in a car accident. They were at least elderly before their lives were truncated -- their poor daughter Alice, though, passed away before her fourteenth birthday.

Margaret soon caught the attention of a young tailor, Edgar Leroy Gaver. Edgar was also a minor-league professional baseball player, at that time playing for the San Francisco Seals, part of the newly-formed Pacific Coast League. Ed and Margaret became husband and wife. Oliver therefore had a stepfather, and within a few short years also had two half-siblings, Edgar Robert Gaver and Margaret Brandy Gaver. The family lived in San Jose during those infancies, but a change of baseball teams uprooted the household. The family moved to the heart of Los Angeles, CA in either the last half of 1910 or some time during the year 1911.

In May, 1912, Ed and Margaret’s third and last child, Samuel Derr Gaver, was born. Little Sammy -- as he was known -- survived only a matter of weeks, dying in early July, 1912. No more than two years later Margaret and Ed called a halt to their marriage. Ed, who had been born 20 June 1886 in Maryland, went back East. He continued to play baseball into the 1920s. He married again and had two more sons while living in Pennsylvania. He died 22 March 1977 in Tampa, FL.

With the need to provide for herself and three surviving children, Margaret wasted no time finding a third spouse. She must have come home to her mother -- who was probably in Los Angeles County at that point, though she may by then have moved back to Randsburg -- and undoubtedly spent more time with her brother Robert Branson and his wife Mary Etta Cowsert. Etta’s brother John Patton Cowsert, better known as Jack Cowsert, became Margaret’s live-in lover. (The couple pretended to be married, but in fact did not wed until 1919.) Jack was a son of John W. Cowsert and Margaret Ann Taylor. He had been born 9 August 1892 in California shortly after the family had moved into the state from Idaho. Jack was therefore notably younger than Margaret, but given that he was already family, he was someone with whom she could have a future, and the relationship was long-lasting. Oliver would continue to maintain contact with his Cowsert-side step-relatives well into his later years.

Jack was a miner. The first part of this career was probably spent in Indian Wells Valley, but during the early years of his time with Margaret, he was 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 and the kids lived in a tent in the desert. For Oliver, this rustic phase coincided with his pre-adolescent years and must have lent his existence both a sense of adventure and a sense of isolation. It may have represented a little too much isolation and lack of opportunities for formal education. Perhaps for that reason, Margaret finally informed Charles Edward Heitkemper of the existence of his son, and told Oliver of his birth father’s identity. Oliver was about thirteen when this occurred. Thereafter he spent a portion of his time with Charles and Clara in Portland. Both Charles Edward Heitkemper and his father Gerhard were jewellers. During the Portland visits, Oliver picked up the family trade, and this would draw Oliver into his chosen career in the jewelry business.

Before the end of the decade Jack Cowsert took a job working in the oil fields of western Kern County. The family moved into a house near Taft. The job and the house meant a new level of stability had been reached and by now the couple were legally husband and wife, so Margaret and Jack chose this point to have a child, their only one with each other. The new baby, born 24 December 1920, was named Gertrude Louise Cowsert, though she came to be known as Louise. Louise would later be a doting aunt to Oliver’s offspring, the eldest of whom were her near contemporaries despite literally being members of a different generation.

Coming of age in the 1920s, Oliver struck out on his own. This phase may have included a further interval in Portland as an apprentice jeweller, but if he indeed chose this course, he came back to California within a short time and settled in Los Angeles. He would eventually become a jeweller, but in the meantime, he got a job as a machinist working with lighting equipment. He became a married man at age twenty-one.

Oliver’s first wife was Ruth Ellen Dyer (shown at right in her late thirties), daughter of William Allen Dyer of Missouri and his wife Jessie Orena (aka Orena Jessie) of Georgia, whose maiden name is uncertain, appearing as Haralson, Bray, and Rogers depending on the source. Ruth had been born 12 August 1910 in Modesto, Stanislaus County, CA and therefore came into the marriage at just barely sixteen years of age. The wedding took place 30 August 1926 in the city of Los Angeles, officiated by Rev. Charles E. Maltos, Rector of Epiphany Church.

Oliver and Ruth had three children over the first half-dozen years of their union, then another, Patricia Ruth Helen Heitkemper, in 1939. Though the couple remained based in southern California, they changed addresses a number of times and do not appear to have ever purchased a home of their own, perhaps due to the financial challenges of the Great Depression, which was not an era when people spent a lot of money on jewelry. By the end of the 1930s they moved in with Ruth’s parents in rural L.A., where William Dyer was at that point a beekeeper.

At about the time of Patricia’s infancy the marriage of Oliver and Ruth dissolved. Oliver left Ruth at her parents’ home and moved out in late 1940 or in 1941. He began a relationship with a divorcée, Donna Beryl McShannock. Born 3 April 1907 in Muskegon, Muskegon County, MI, Donna was a daughter of George Edwin Redick and Grayce Belle Spicer. She and first husband, automobile repairman Robert Victor McShannock, had come out from Michigan to Los Angeles County in the first half of the 1930s. After their separation, Donna had moved in with her parents, who had followed in her wake to California in the second half of the 1930s. At the time Donna met Oliver, her father was the proprietor of a sandwich and milkshake shop in Wilmar. She became pregnant at the very beginning of 1942. Oliver and Ruth may still have been legal spouses at that point and given that it would have taken some time to complete a divorce, Oliver and Donna were not able to apply for a marriage license (in Mohave County, AZ) until 12 September 1942, eight and a half months into the pregnancy. The wedding may have taken place that same day, but this has yet to be verified.

In addition to welcoming a son barely half a month into the union, Donna gave birth again two years later. This was quite a contrast to the childlessness of her first marriage. It also means that, in terms of posterity, Oliver sits in the family tree as the father of six kids total, making him one of the major contributors to the count of the grandchildren of Margaret Branson. He is surpassed only by his half-sister Louise, who had eight. This fecundity was counter-balanced by his other half-siblings. His older half-brother Herbert Raymond Branson had only one child. Edgar Robert Gaver had only two, and that includes a baby who died at six months of age. Margaret Brandy Gaver had only an adopted son, and no biological offspring, and of course Sammy Gaver had no issue at all.

Oliver and Donna went on to spend many decades together, residing in the eastern portions of Los Angeles County, such as the communities of Wilmar, West Covina, and Monterey Park. Oliver died 21 November 1993 in Alhambra.

Donna survived Oliver, spending some of her final years in Rogue River, Jackson County, OR. She passed away 22 November 1999 in Alhambra. Ruth Ellen Dyer Heitkemper married Spurgeon Monroe Kirby (5 March 1884 TN - 12 December 1952 CA, son of Elisha W. Kirby and Maggie Mitchell) in the mid-1940s; she had two sons with him. She passed away 7 December 1967 in Los Angeles as Ruth Ellen Kirby.

Children of Oliver Charles Heitkemper

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