James Robert Branch (1877-1917)

Name James Robert Branch
Date of Birth 1877-10-16
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Date of Death 1917-09-12
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Information supplied by Arthur Branch (July 2025):

He was born on October 16, 1877. He died on September 12, 1917. He never married. The Angus Branch book says that he was killed in a fight "out West". His Find a Grave page says that he died in Saint John, NB. He is buried in the West Bathurst Cemetery.

However his death return from Saint John states that he died at the Provincial Hospital of acute enteritis and was a farmer. The records of the probate of his estate, from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan shows that he died at the Provincial Lunatic Asylum in Saint John. The death return from Gloucester County states that he died from debility caused by mental derangement from which he had suffered for three years. Presumably this means he entered the hospital c 1914. He would have been resident in the hospital at the same time as his brother Harry. It also reveals that he was a Presbyterian.

In those probate documents his father Samuel swears that his fixed place of abode was in Bathurst but that he had considerable property in Moose Jaw, in Saskatchewan. The inventory of his real estate holdings included 9 1/2 lots in the city of Moose Jaw and 1/4 interest in 1/2 of a section of land in Saskatchewan.The land was valued at $3,578 and he also left a $1,000 insurance policy.

I am guessing that the story of his death that Angus was given was an attempt to bury a family "skeleton". In my view, as a family historian, all of our stories should be told as factually as possible from the facts that we can discover. We must also be careful to recognize that, while it is important to recognize and record, oral history can sometimes be problematic as well as useful.