William McDonald

William McDonald, second son and third child of Phoebe Ann Branson and William McDonald, was born 4 February, 1878 in Merced, Merced County, CA. He is not to be confused with his father of the same name. He will be referred to as Billy for the rest of this biography to help avoid confusion -- this was in fact the name he was best known by in daily life from the time he was ten or so years of age. (Billy is also not to be confused with his first cousin William McDonald, son of his uncle Robert Seafield McDonald, though the latter is easy to distinguish because he was born in New York.)

Billy’s mother died when he was nine years old. It is thought his mother’s sister Theresa Branson cared for the four McDonald children for a period of time, before the job was assumed by stepmother Agnes Dunn, whom William, Sr. married in April, 1892. In 1880 the household included Mary Jane Geary, Phoebe’s eighteen-year-old sister-in-law, as a servant (this information derived from the census). The youngest child of the family, Teresa, was then an infant. It could be that Phoebe required help caring for the children as early as this point.

Old family notes say little about Billy. His name appears (as William, Jr.) on a list of the four children of Phoebe and William, Sr. and he is identified on the photograph reproduced below. Other than that, there is only a comment by his aunt Theresa saying he died in young adulthood and that he had no children. Traces of him proved hard to find in public sources, so for a few years after this biography was first uploaded to the Branson/Ousley website in late 2005, he was described as deceased before 1900. Since then, more about him has turned up, including his obituary, making it possible to describe his life in far better clarity, and making it apparent that he survived until almost thirty years of age. He is still not a well-delineated figure in the history of the clan. The impression he leaves us with is of an individual who may not have followed the stable, nurturant, responsible example set by his father, and was something of a black sheep. Perhaps this is a false impression and does not do him justice, but it must be noted that he is the one child of William, Sr. and Phoebe who is not listed as an heir in his grandfather John Sevier Branson’s last will and testament, implying that his grandfather did not consider him worthy of being a beneficiary, as his siblings were. (Those three -- John, Nancy, and Teresa McDonald -- received the share of the estate that would have gone to Phoebe if she had not predeceased her father.)

At some point in his late teens, perhaps as early as 1896 when he was eighteen, Billy moved to San Francisco. What sort of life he lived there is not known -- he is not enumerated there in the 1900 census and in other sources he is impossible to sort out from the plethora of other William McDonalds who dwelled in or near the city. His relocation left him largely isolated from his family members for quite a number of years, except that his sister Nancy also became based in the city by the end of the decade. The siblings do not appear to have shared living quarters, or if so, did so only for a limited while. Billy appears to have led a thoroughly bachelor lifestyle. Nancy, meanwhile, wed San Francisco hardware-store merchant Roy Ames Price in 1903.

The great earthquake and fire of April, 1906 took its toll on Billy’s circumstances and led to his abandonment of San Francisco as a place of residence. Perhaps he had it in mind that he would come back after the city was rebuilt, but if so, that was a plan was never able to fulfill. Regardless of his long-term intentions, he came back to Merced and was taken in by his brother John and sister-in-law Josie at their home on Central Avenue. Billy became the proprietor of a cigar and tobacco store on Main Street.

Billy was still lodging with his brother and was at home when he was abruptly struck by some sort of urgent medical crisis Sunday morning, 9 June 1907. It was apparent at once he was in dire straits. John decided to take Billy to a sanitarium in southern California for treatment. The following afternoon, i.e. on Monday, 10 June 1907, John and companion George Yoakum, Sr. left by train with Billy on that quest. They had only covered a fraction of the journey when Billy’s condition worsened to such a degree he was carried off the train at the depot in Selma in southern Fresno County. He died there less than twenty minutes later, even though two physicians were at his side doing their best to keep him alive.

Billy’s fatal health episode is very likely to have been caused by hereditary haemochromatosis. This condition is a metabolic disorder that interferes with the proper absorption of iron, leading to iron overload, which in turn can lead to liver failure, heart failure, and diabetes, among other unpleasant effects. Females are less often affected, though as carriers they can pass along the gene. Haemochromatosis may well have been what caused Billy’s grandfather Sweden McDonald to die in his early forties, and the condition went on to manifest profoundly among that patriarch’s descendants. Billy and his first cousin of the same name were among those struck down very young. Other men of the family lasted longer, but were nevertheless deprived of the chance to live to a ripe old age. The group includes Billy’s father, his uncles Robert and Thomas, his brother John and half-brother Ellsworth, and his first cousin Charles Sweden McDonald and his son Robert. Modern-day male descendants of Sweden McDonald have been diagnosed with the condition, which is treatable with modern techniques and medicines.

The obituary mentions Billy had many friends among the menfolk of Merced, and describes him as particularly respectful of his elders. Two days after his death John and Josie hosted a funeral at their home. A great many well-wishers came to pay their respects. Reverend George Greig of the local Presbyterian church officiated. The remains were interred in the McDonald plot at the Knights of Pythias Cemetery (now part of the Merced Cemetery District) where his mother had been buried twenty years earlier. As the decades went on this plot would become the resting place of nearly all of his close kinfolk -- his father, mother, stepmother, siblings John, Nancy, and Ellsworth McDonald, and brother-in-law Roy Ames Price.

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