Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Fearless Females, Beryl Johnston

It's Saturday Night -

time for more Genealogy Fun!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignment for this week:

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music here) is to:

1)  Lisa Alzo developed a series of Fearless Female writing prompts 10 years ago to celebrate National Women's History Month.  This year's listing of prompts is in Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Fearless Females Blogging Prompts.

2)  Today is March 14, so the writing prompt is:  "Newsmakers? Did you have a female ancestor who made the news? Why? Was she famous or notorious? Did she appear in the social column?"  If you cannot write about that prompt, choose another one from the list.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook.

Newspapers in small towns often have news about local activities of their residents, especially those of women and children. The Comanche Chief newspaper in Justine, Comanche County, Texas was no exception. I found news articles about my great-aunts, Beryl and Mildred Johnston. I also found articles about them in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune. These newspapers are digitized on The Portal to Texas History, which has papers from many Texas towns including those in Comanche County, and Stephenville, in Erath County.[1]  

In 1932, Beryl Johnston helped out with an Easter party given by her cousin, Polyanna Speed, who was almost twelve.[2] The article spoke of Beryl and Johnie Wallace helping out with the games and egg hunt. At this point, Beryl was twenty-three years old and likely Johnie was either a young adult or older teenager and older sibling of Roy Esmond Wallace the other host.

Another clipping mentioned Beryl Johnston twice. One article was about visiting with her sister, Mildred, who was by then married to I. F. Bay, who lived in Stephenville, which was in the next county over. At this time, it seems married women went by the name of their husband.  The other mention of Beryl was with her friend, Miss Isobel Bates, also from Stephenville, who spent the previous week with Beryl.[3]

Beryl was listed on the honor roll at John Tarleton College in May 1931. In order to be on the honor roll, the student needed to carry a full load and make at least a grade of B on each subject carried.[4]

As I spent most of the afternoon searching for more articles by searching on her first name “Beryl,” I discovered many articles about her. She attended John Tarleton College, a two year junior college at the time, and made honor roll a couple of times. One article said she had straight As.[5]

She was also a part of the Young Women’s Auxiliary, which was a group of Baptist young women.[6] 

She married Howard Russell 13 September 1936 and I found the newspaper article about the wedding.[8]

There were many articles about their various occupations and residences. At one time during World War II, Beryl worked in the intelligence department with the Quartermasters Corp in Dallas.[9] Later they worked for American Cyanide Chemical Corporation.[10]

I have ended up with some very nice articles to help fill in the life of my great-aunt and her first husband. This has been a great exercise.

---

[1] So the general citation would be: digital image, The Portal to Texas History (https://texashistory.unt.edu/), “The Comanche Area Newspapers.” I will shorten the rest of the citations to just the newspaper and date.

[2] “Entertains Schoolmates on Easter,” Comanche Chief, 1 April 1932, p. 7.

[3] “Personal Mention,” Comanche Chief, 21 Sep 1934, p. 8.

[4] “Fifteen Local Students Named on Honor Roll,” Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 8 May 1931, p. 3.

[5] “Records Show Five Resident Students Make Term Honor Roll at Tarleton,” Stephenville Empire-Tribune, p. 3.

[6] No title, Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 28 Nov 1930, p. 2. See also “Y.W.A. Holds Meeting at Church Tuesday,” ibid, 5 Dec 1930, p. 5.

[7] “At Home From Comanche,” Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 2 Nov 1934, p. 8.

[8] “Beryl Johnston and Howard Russell Wed,” Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 25 Sep 1936, p. 5.

[9] “Mrs. T Johnston Attends Family Reunion Event,” Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 12 Dec 1941, p 2.

[10] No title, Stephenville Empire-Tribune, 31 Mar 1944, p. 8.

Copyright © 2020 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.