Escape, Survive and Flourish:
A Family’s Tale of Resilience
By Janet Gallin
I
t has been generations of
escaping, surviving and
flourishing for the family of
Bay Area artist Joseph Mack
Branchcomb, whose maternal
great great-grandfather Frank
Wanzer escaped from the Virginia
plantation where he was brought
from Africa as a slave. Not satisfied
with just his own release, at the age
of 30, and with his whole life ahead
of him as a free man, he returned
to that plantation 19 times to free
other slaves. But even with the help
of the Underground Railroad and
the Blackfoot tribe, this bolt for
freedom was no slam-dunk.
As a fugitive slave, he had to shoot
his way past posse after posse of
vicious slave-catchers that chased
him through New Jersey up to
Oswego and all the way to Canada,
where Branchcomb’s descendants,
thanks to Frank Wanzer’s three
marriages and many children, live to
this day, flourishing as professional
people in higher education, law and
medicine.
Along with his maternal ancestry,
and its large helping of genetic
power and diligence, the other
side of Branchcomb’s family has
its own history of strength, success
and escape. After the Civil War,
when Virginia was a free state for
African-Americans, in the late 1920s
his paternal grandfather opened
Branchcomb and Sons Movers, a
company that, because they knew
how to pack valuables, boasted
clients such as the Rockefellers.
The family was thriving, but when
Branchcomb’s father developed a
new business selling cosmetics to
34 MARIN ARTS & CULTURE
Joseph Mack Branchcomb
black businesses, a different family
was displeased with the family’s
success—the Mafia. So when they
were told to get out of Manhattan,
Branchcomb’s grandpa knew they
meant business, so he packed up
lock, stock and barrel and moved to
the Bronx.
Branchcomb’s father, an engineer
in school, was hit with a new brand
of forced labor once he joined the
army. Because he was black, his
only choice was to take care of the
horses and the stables. Despite this
treatment, his father had such a
strong sense of patriotism that he
went to Canada to be able to fight
in World War I on the side of the
United States.