Women's Collections
The Women's Collections at Baylor are comprised of materials held by the university in its Institute for Oral History; Armstrong Browning Library and Museum; Arts & Special Collections Research Center; Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society; The Texas Collection; and W. R. Poage Legislative Library. This online resource centralizes these items to highlight the contributions of women and to offer convenient searching to researchers in the areas of women's and gender studies across all disciplines.
If you have any questions about our collections, email us at womenscollections@baylor.edu.
This growing collection consists of poetry written by women in English and published from 1800 to 1900. The collection includes a few titles published in the early 20th century (1901-1919), in instances where the same poet published works in the 19th century. While the emphasis is on poetry published in Britain, works published in the United States are also included.
Embracing a wide range of styles, written by women whose station in life ranged from dairymaid to grand lady, the collection includes topics such as religion, ancient Greek and Roman myth, daily life, romance, nature, motherhood, and local and national history. Each digitized volume is searchable by keyword and is linked to a bibliographical record in Baylor's online catalog, BearCat.
More information about the 19th Century Women's Poetry Collection can be found at the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum.
Armstrong Browning Library
Baylor University Digital Collections
Maggie Welch Rose Akin, daughter of Henry and Matilda Rose, was born on July 12, 1868, in Abingdon, Virginia. In 1874, her family moved to Texas. She later attended school in Georgetown, Texas, at the Ladies' Annex, the female branch of Southwestern University. While at school, Maggie met Joseph W. Akin, son of Methodist minister Samuel D. Akin and Mary Elizabeth Kincheloe. After a three-year courtship, the two were married on January 1, 1890. Joseph studied law and eventually served as a judge in Young County and as a judge for the 30th Judicial District in Texas before becoming the mayor of Wichita Falls, Texas. Maggie wrote and published poetry. The Akins had eight children: Roberta Lee; Mary "Teel" Mathilde; Margaret Welch; Jewel "Sug" Rose; Yerger Hill; Joseph William Jr.; Henry David; and John Pohlman. Joseph died in 1946, and Maggie passed away on April 18, 1961. The Akins are both buried in the Rosemont Cemetery in Wichita Falls, Texas.
More information about Maggie Welch Rose Akin can be found in the Akin-Rose papers at The Texas Collection.
Akin-Rose papers, The Texas Collection
Svetlana Iosifovna Alliluyeva Stalina was born on February 28, 1926, to Joseph Stalin and his second wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva. Svetlana was the youngest of Stalin’s children and his only daughter. She grew up inside the Kremlin and graduated from Moscow University. After her father died, she took her mother’s maiden name.
Alliluyeva married several times in the Soviet Union and had two children, Iosif Alliluyev and Yekaterina Zhdanova. At age 41, while in India to spread the ashes of Brajesh Singh, whom Alliluyeva called her husband even though they were never allowed to legally marry, she approached the United States Embassy in New Delhi and asked for political asylum. After brief interludes in Italy and Switzerland, Stalin’s daughter entered the United States. Upon her arrival in April 1967, Alliluyeva was considered the most famous Soviet defector to date, and the press flocked around her.
Soon after her defection, Alliluyeva wrote her first book, Twenty Letters to a Friend, and a few years later published another memoir titled Only One Year. In 1970, she married William Wesley Peters, and in 1971, they had a child, Olga (later Chrese Evans). The couple divorced in 1973, and Alliluyeva received custody of Olga.
Alliluyeva became involved in Christianity and enrolled Olga in a Catholic school in New Jersey because she felt passionately that at least one of her children should receive a religious education. Alliluyeva and Olga attended the Episcopalian church from 1972 until 1982, when the two moved to England, and Alliluyeva became a Catholic. Alliluyeva credited the minister of the American Episcopalian church her first real teacher of Christianity.
In 1984, Alliluyeva moved back to the Soviet Union to reunite with her adult children. Olga, who did not speak Russian, accompanied her mother, and for the first time learned her mother’s complicated family history. After 18 months in the Soviet Union, they moved back to the United States. Following her return to America, she stayed out of the limelight as much as possible, focusing instead on writing and other academic pursuits. Alliluyeva remained an active Christian, and on October 4, 1990, contacted Michael Bourdeaux about a translating job at Keston College.
Svetlana Alliluyeva lived quietly until she died of cancer in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on November 22, 2011, at the age of 85.
More information about Svetlana Alliluyeva can be found in the Soviet Union files at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please contact the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society for more information.
Related Collections
Michael Bourdeaux papers, 1958-2020, undated (bulk 1965-1996)
Bibliography
Bourdeaux, Michael Allen. Michael Bourdeaux Papers, 1958-2020, Undated (bulk 1965-1996)., 1958.
Sullivan, Rosemary. Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva. First edition. New York: Harper, 2015.
The Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society was originally founded in 1924 by Maria Leonard, Dean of Women at the University of Illinois, as an honor society for freshmen women. In 1926, the organization became national when a chapter was charted at Purdue University. The society’s first national convention was held at the University of Illinois in 1930. In 1938, the organization decided to begin offering scholarships to promising graduate students.
Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society remained as a single sex organization until 1976 when it became co-educational in response to changes made by Title IX. The Baylor University chapter was founded on April 29, 1958, and continues to operate to this day.
Officially formed in 1924, Alpha Omega became the first female social club to emerge at Baylor University. The sorority was founded by Anna Lee Truett, Elizabeth Moncrief, Mary Robinson, and Christine Richardson at the suggestion of Dr. Charles D. Johnson. As part of their service, Alpha Omega raised $5,000 for the Women's Memorial Dormitory Fund, becoming the first organization to offer such a donation. The sorority also sponsored several social events, including the Christmas Fire Dance. Following the influence of the male social clubs that had become Interfraternity Council Greek organizations, Alpha Omega became a chapter of Pi Beta Phi on August 13, 1977. Established as the Texas Zeta Chapter, the sorority has remained involved on Baylor's campus since its official colonization.
More information about Alpha Omega/Pi Beta Phi can be found in the BU Records: Alpha Omega at The Texas Collection. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Related Collections
The Association of Collegiate Alumnae was founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1882, as a group to develop higher education for women and maintain high standards in institutions serving women. In 1921, the ACA merged with the Southern Association of College Women and formed the American Association of University Women. In 1923, AAUW worked with several institutions in Texas, including Baylor University, to recognize them as approved schools. The organization approved schools based on women's rank and representation in the faculty, housing facilities, educational opportunities, membership among the Board of Trustees (Regents), and other criteria. In 1926, Waco, along with Amarillo, Austin, Commerce, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Georgetown, Lubbock, and San Antonio, became charter branches of the AAUW Texas Division.
The Waco Branch membership was made up of women in Bosque, Hill, Coryell, Falls, Limestone, and McLennan counties. For most of the 20th Century, the Waco Branch operated in accordance with state and national guidelines promoting education and equity for women. The Waco Branch hosted the Biennial State Conference in 1930, 1945, and 1975, usually at Baylor University, which held an institutional membership. The branch consistently donated to the national AAUW Educational Foundation and provided several scholarships to young women in their senior year of undergraduate study. Declining numbers of faculty and staff participants caused Baylor University to discontinue institutional affiliation with the national AAUW in 1997. The Waco Branch remained active until 2001, when rising dues costs and membership decline caused the branch to disband.
More information about American Association of University Women can be found in the American Association of University Women, Waco Branch records at The Texas Collection.
Related Collections
BU Records: Dean of Women (Lily Russell), The Texas Collection
The American Red Cross, founded in 1881 by Clara Barton to serve people in need, began a local chapter in Waco in 1916. Initial fundraising was quite successful, and the chapter raised $1,344 to create comfort kits for United States soldiers stationed at the U.S.-Mexico border.
During both World Wars, and the time in between, the Waco Chapter of the American Red Cross assisted soldiers and local citizens with medical needs. In the 1920s, this took the form of classroom instruction on first aid and home hygiene, assistance to soldiers on active duty, and disaster response within the local area. They also changed their name in the 1920s to the Waco-McLennan County Chapter.
An increasing number of assistance programs, donations, and volunteers forced a series of moves through the years; first headquartered in the Cameron Building, they then moved to the Masonic Temple, City Hall, and then the Amicable Building. In 1949, they moved into a large house at 525 North Eighteenth Street, but outgrew it 20 years later.
The local chapter of the Red Cross began taking blood donations in 1952. This quickly grew to become one of their core programs: pints of blood donated ballooned from 5,520 in 1952 to 18,641 pints in 1975. They also provided classes on parenting and water safety, as well as expanded first aid classes. The group changed their name to the McLennan County Chapter to better reflect their countywide reach.
In 1970, the group changed names again, this time to the Heart of Texas Area Chapter, when the McLennan and Bosque county chapters merged. In 1975, the organization moved into a new building at 1124 Austin Avenue and hundreds of volunteers raised $151,000 for the local chapter.
In 1989 the group assisted victims of Hurricane Hugo by selling coupon books of local area businesses.
By 2012, the Red Cross closed their main blood donation center to concentrate on offering more community mobile blood drives.
The local chapter of the American Red Cross continues today to provide training and volunteer opportunities to community members on disaster relief, first aid, fire prevention, and blood donations.
More information about the American Red Cross: Heart of Texas Chapter can be found in the American Red Cross: Heart of Texas Chapter records at The Texas Collection.
Ann Adelia Oldham (1903-1966) was born in New Mexico to Richard and Minnie Oldham. A 1924 graduate of Baylor University, Oldham lived in Abilene, Texas, where she actively participated in music and art programs. A member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, she served on its state American Music Committee. She died on March 25, 1966, and is buried in the Abilene Municipal Cemetery.
More information about Ann Oldham can be found in the Ann Oldham papers at The Texas Collection.
Chloe Armstrong, daughter of Thomas Joseph Henry Jefferson and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Armstrong, was born in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. The family later moved to Ada, Oklahoma, where she received her primary education, then to El Reno, Oklahoma, where she graduated from high school in 1926. Armstrong attended East Central State College in Ada, graduating in 1931 with a B.A. in English and Speech. She taught in Oklahoma public schools and at Northeastern Junior College. In the summers, she attended Northwestern University, where she received her M.A. in 1941. She pursued additional graduate work at the University of Oklahoma, where she was teaching, and the University of Mississippi. In 1949, she became a professor of oral communications at Baylor University, where she remained until her retirement in 1973.
Armstrong was active in various professional, political, and civic organizations, including the Speech Association of America, Texas Speech Association, Waco Area Civil Liberties Union, Zeta Phi Eta, United Service Organizations (USO), and the McLennan County Executive Board of the Democratic Women's Association. She wrote two textbooks, contributed to two others, and wrote various articles and reviews for several speech journals. On September 22, 1977, Armstrong died in Silver Spring, Maryland, and was buried in Ada.
More information about Chloe Armstrong can be found in the Chloe Armstrong papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History.
Chloe Armstrong interview, Institute for Oral History
Chloe Armstrong Papers, The Texas Collection
Anne Luther Bagby was born in 1859 in Missouri, the eldest surviving child of John Hill and Anne Luther. Her father became the president of Baylor Female College at Independence in 1878 and followed the school when it moved to Belton. Anne served as the dean of the college and taught mathematics. While representing the institution at a State Baptist Convention, she met William Buck Bagby, a graduate of Waco University who felt a call to foreign missions. The two married in 1881, the same year the Foreign Mission Board appointed the couple to work in Brazil as the first permanently-established missionaries in the country. The Bagbys founded Baptist churches and Anne established the Colégio Batista Brasileiro in São Paulo. Anne died in 1942 after serving more than fifty years in Brazil. Anne and William were one of the longest tenured missionary couples in the Southern Baptist Convention and several of their family members continued their legacy by serving as missionaries in South America.
More information about Anne Luther Bagby can be found in the Luther-Bagby collection at The Texas Collection.
Ruth Newton Baggett was born on April 26, 1882, to James Benjamin and Olivia Evard Newton. She corresponded with James Baggett, who served in the 141st Infantry Regiment of the United States Army during World War I. The two were married on February 3, 1926. They lived the rest of their lives in Milano, Texas, where James was the manager of a lumber yard. Records do not indicate that they had any children. James Baggett died in 1959, and Ruth passed away on November 8, 1976. This collection consists primarily of letters and photographs exchanged between James and Ruth Newton Baggett during World War I.
More information about Ruth Newton Baggett can be found in the James Andrew and Ruth Newton Baggett papers at The Texas Collection.
James Andrew and Ruth Newton Baggett papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Beulah Ewing Barksdale was born in Waco, Texas in 1932. Her parents sheltered her and her siblings from the segregation of the time. Barksdale was active in the Girl Reserves, belonged to the local Young Women's Christian Association, took piano and violin lessons, and was a collector of African American dolls.
Barksdale graduated high school in 1948 and enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee later that same year. She majored in English with a Drama Speech minor and was a member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. During one summer semester, she took French at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from Fisk University in 1952 and began teaching English and Drama at Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas.
Barksdale then took a year-long sabbatical from teaching to attend Atlanta University where she earned her master's degree in library science. During the year following her graduation, she taught in the library school at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida.
Barksdale became engaged in Florida and relocated to Waco in 1956 to get married. Once back, she returned to Paul Quinn as a librarian. Throughout her career, Barksdale worked as a librarian at multiple Waco-area elementary schools, including Parkdale Elementary where she spent 18 years, and Alta Vista, where, in 1956, Barksdale became the first African American librarian at the school.
Barksdale was also a charter member of the Waco chapter of The Links, Incorporated.
More information about Beulah Ewing Barksdale can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Beulah Ewing Barksdale interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Beulah Ewing Barksdale interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Lavonia "Bobbie" Leverett Jenkins Barnes was born in Hughes Springs, Texas on April 16, 1907. She was the youngest daughter of Dr. I. Warner Jenkins and Della Seaborn Williamson. The Jenkins family moved to Waco in 1921 so that their two girls, Cecil Mae and Lavonia, could attend Baylor University. Barnes earned her degree in 1924, majoring in education and English.
Barnes attended graduate courses in journalism for one year at Columbia University before marrying Dr. Maurice Barnes in the summer of 1930. The couple had twin boys, Maurice and Warner, on November 25, 1934. While Maurice attended Columbia University to specialize in dermatology, Lavonia took courses at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1939-1941.
Upon the Barnes family's return to Waco in 1942, Lavonia focused on her passion for historic home preservation. She composed three historical books: The Texas Cotton Palace (1964), Early Homes of Waco and the People Who Lived in Them (1970), and Nineteenth Century Churches of Texas (1982). She co-founded the Waco Heritage Society, the front-runner of Historic Waco Foundation and led the charge in preserving many of Waco's historic homes including Fort House, Earle-Harrison House, Hoffman House, East Terrace, and Earle-Napier-Kinnard House.
In addition to her local efforts, Barnes also served on the Board of Directors for the Texas Governors' Mansion during its renovation from 1979 to 1989. From 1988 to 1998, she was the Director of the American Society of Decorative Arts. Barnes passed away on September 20, 2000 and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Lavonia Jenkins Barnes can be found in the Lavonia Jenkins Barnes papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History.
Lavonia Leverett Jenkins Barnes interview, Institute for Oral History
Lavonia Jenkins Barnes Papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Barcus, Nancy. Waco People...Making a Difference. Waco, Texas: Vick Publishing, Inc., 1996.
Peggy Place Bartley was born in San Benito, Texas, on August 21, 1929, and graduated from Baylor University in 1949 with degrees in education and speech. She met James Bartley while attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. The two were married in 1952 and had four children together. Three months after their wedding, the Bartleys were appointed by the Foreign Board of the Southern Baptist Convention as missionaries to Uruguay, where they lived until their retirement 41 years later. While in Uruguay, Peggy taught religious education, speech, typing, and English at the Baptist seminary, served as a director of Sunday school at their church, and was elected the president of the Women's Missionary Union. In 1966, she earned a M.A. in Religious Education from Southwestern Seminary. After departing from Uruguay in 1993, James and Peggy taught for a short time at seminaries in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina. She also helped edit a Spanish Bible dictionary for the Spanish Publishing House in El Paso and eventually retired to Waco in 1995. Peggy died on June 23, 2015.
More information about Peggy Place Bartley can be found in the Peggy and James Bartley papers at The Texas Collection.
In 1904, seven women, Mattie Sims Brooks, Kate Hayes Kesler, Laura H. Pool, Mary Augusta Newman, Jessie Brown Johnson, Viola Frizzell Hargrove, and Elizabeth Newman Eby, founded the Baylor Round Table. They wanted their organization to support the academic pursuits of female faculty members, faculty wives, and female staff members. Each month the group’s meeting featured a different topic, such as an author or historical event. Although the purpose and vision of the organization has shifted over the years, Baylor Round Table remains a thriving, robust group of Baylor women who host events such as the Membership Tea, Christmas Concert, and Style Show Luncheon. Members also raise scholarship money for current Baylor students.
More information about the Baylor Round Table can be found in BU Records: Baylor Round Table at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Baylor Round Table, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Jessie Brown Johnson
Dorcas M. Beaver interview, Institute for Oral History
Ruth M. Belew interview, Institute for Oral History
Jane A. Goode interview, Institute for Oral History
Mary Wilson Russell McCall interview, Institute for Oral History
Ann Vardaman Miller interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Ann Vardaman Miller interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
June Williams Osborne interview, Institute for Oral History
Joyce Hornaday Packard interview, Institute for Oral History
Anita Ward Rolf interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Anita Ward Rolf interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Katy Jennings Stokes interview, Institute for Oral History
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Third Set)
Dorcas Beaver came to Baylor University in 1953 when her husband became a professor in the Baylor geology department. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Round Table as one of its youngest members.
The Baylor Round Table convened twice a month on Baylor's campus in the Union Building (what is now the Bill Daniel Student Center). The women typically dressed in gloves and a hat, and their husbands were expected to leave work early to babysit their children so the women could attend the meeting. The Round Table was created to welcome the wives of the University's professors into the Baylor and Waco communities. Their traditions included an attendance requirement, receiving lines (officers would stand in a line and greet people as they came in), lavish decorations, refreshments and hostessing, covered dish suppers, membership tea, first president's reception, and international dinners.
After she was a member for two years, Beaver was appointed president of the Newcomers, a branch of the Round Table that acted as a social club for new members. While the Newcomers meetings were more social in nature, such as giving tours of campus or gifting women coupons, the Round Table was more intellectual, including lectures, outside speakers, and members' academic paper presentations.
Beaver's family left Baylor University in 1959 when her husband became a research geologist for Exxon Mobil. They moved quite often throughout the next 20 years, living in Houston, France, and England. However, in 1979, Baylor offered her husband the Chair of Geology position, and the Beavers moved back to Waco.
When Beaver returned to the Round Table, she became the Newcomer sponsor and held this position from 1979 to 1984. She was also a member of the Waco Literary Club, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and the Philanthropic Education Organization (PEO).
More information about Dorcas Beaver can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Ruth M. Belew, the daughter of James and Edith McAtee, was born in Waco, Texas on July 31, 1921. After attending the University of Texas, Ruth married childhood friend John S. Belew on June 3, 1944. Ruth served as a faculty member at Wichita State University from 1944 to 1947. She then earned her master's degree in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as a faculty member there (1949-1951).
Ruth and John had two children, Jay (born 1951) and Janet (born 1954). The Belew family moved back to Waco in 1956 when John accepted an assistant professorship at Baylor. Ruth joined the Baylor theater department in 1972 where she remained until retirement in 1992.
Throughout her life, Ruth was active in several civic and religious organizations including Baylor Round Table, the Waco Literary Club, the Waco Cotton Palace, and Seventh and James Baptist Church. Ruth passed away on December 31, 2014, six months after Ruth and John celebrated their 70th anniversary.
More information about Ruth Belew can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Ruth M. Belew interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Barcus, Nancy B. Waco People...Making a Difference. Waco, TX: Vick Publishing Inc., 1996.
"Belew, Ruth M." Waco Tribune-Herald 2 January 2015. Web. Accessed 17 September 2018.
Born in Texas in 1888, Mamie Boone was longtime principal of John H. Reagan Elementary School in Dallas, Texas during the 1950's. Prior to her time at Reagan Elementary, she was principal of James S. Hogg Elementary School in Dallas. She served as vice president of the Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association in 1922. After a long and distinguished career in public education, she passed away in 1979 at the age of 90 and is buried in Laurel Land Memorial Park in Dallas. Her niece, Mary Long, established a scholarship fund in her memory at Baylor University.
More information about Mamie Boone can be found in the Mamie Boone papers at The Texas Collection.
Pauline Breustedt was born in Waco, Texas, in 1898 where her father, William Breustedt, owned a hardware business and was director of First National Bank of Waco. Pauline was educated at Bryn Mawr College and Smith College. She fell in love with the stage at Smith College and began her acting career when she joined the Stuart Walker Company in Cincinnati. There she performed in the Grand Opera House, the Cox Theater, and The Victory Theatre Company, receiving excellent reviews in supporting roles. In 1922, Breustedt acted in the Broadhurst Theatre in New York City, the same year she was selected Queen of the Cotton Palace in Waco. As a debutante, she was active in upper-class society and enjoyed the company of wealthy friends and relatives in New York and New Orleans. She received frequent mentions on newspaper society pages. Breustedt traveled extensively, taking a world tour through Asia, Europe, Central America, Cuba, and Hawaii in 1936-1937. She eventually returned to Waco and passed away in 1978.
Pauline Breustedt interview, Institute for Oral History
Founded in 1867 while Baylor University was still at Independence, Texas, the Calliopean Society was the first female literary society organized at the university. There were already male literary societies, the Philomathesians and Erisophians, on campus. The societies held debates and competitions as part of university programs, such as San Jacinto Day. The Calliopeans utilized a leadership structure that allowed almost every member to gain leadership experience by requiring officers to hold their positions for a limited time. Members often presented essays at the meetings. Each of the societies had their own library, which they later donated to Baylor's library in exchange for scholarship money. The popularity of the societies decreased in the 1920s as more organizations and clubs came to campus, but they remain cemented in history as one of the first social activities at Baylor.
More information about the Calliopean Society can be found in BU Records: Calliopean Literary Society at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Calliopean Literary Society, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Julia Margaret Cameron (née Pattle, 1815-1879) was a nineteenth-century photographer known for her portraits of prominent Victorians and for her photographs depicting scenes from religious and literary works. Cameron was born in Calcutta, India, was educated in England and France, and was introduced to photography in 1835 by mathematician and astronomer John Herschel. She met and photographed many writers and artists, including Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and George Frederic Watts, and was Tennyson's neighbor for a time in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight. Her niece Julia Prinsep Stephen was one of Cameron's favorite models. Stephen's daughter, the writer Virginia Woolf, parodied Cameron and her social circle in a play titled Freshwater. Woolf also published a collection of Cameron's photographs in 1926.
The Armstrong Browning Library (ABL) has eleven original photographs by Cameron as well as Woolf's Victorian Photographs of Famous Men & Fair Women (Hogarth Press, 1926) and more recent scholarly volumes on Cameron's life and works. Five of the photographs in the ABL's collection are of Robert Browning who sat for Cameron in 1865 at the home Alfred Tennyson. Four additional photographs in the collection were gifts from Cameron to Browning and are inscribed by the photographer. These include a photograph of Julia Prinsep Stephen titled Stella; a photograph of English dramatist and poet Sir Henry Taylor and Cameron's maid Mary Ann Hillier as Friar Lawrence and Juliet from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a photograph titled La Madonna Aspettante, again featuring Hillier and William Frederick Gould, a boy who lived near Cameron's home; and a portrait of Anne Thackeray Ritchie, English writer and the daughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. The collection also includes a portrait of Tennyson and a portrait of Tennyson's eldest son Hallam.
More information about Julia Margaret Cameron can be found at the Armstrong Browning Library & Museum.
Baylor University Libraries
Baylor Digital Collections
Bibliography
Barlow, Helen. "Cameron, Julia Margaret (1815–1879)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004. Online edition, Oct. 2008. Web. Accessed 28 February 2018.
Cox, Julian, and Colin Ford. Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, c2003. Print.
Mary Bell Campbell was born in Brookston, Texas, on April 30, 1883. She attended Mary Connor College and the University of Texas. She also taught music and was the principal of Chicota School. She married J.B. Strong on December 21, 1911, and they had three children: Mary Irene, Mildred Campbell, and Dr. James Campbell Strong. The materials in this collection mainly relate to Mary Bell Campbell, although several scrapbooks belonged to her daughter, Mildred Campbell.
More information about Mary Bell Campbell can be found in the Campbell-Strong Family papers at The Texas Collection.
Aleph Tanner Carter was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 11, 1896. She was the eldest of three children born to Dr. John S. Tanner and Mary Barton. Dr. Tanner worked as a professor at Baylor University in the 1890's and simultaneously served as the pastor of East Waco Baptist Church. Despite an auspicious start to life, Aleph and her siblings, Aura and John, soon faced terrible trials. Dr. Tanner died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1901 at the age of 31, leaving behind his widow and three children. Shortly thereafter, Mary Tanner contracted tuberculosis and relocated to New Mexico to combat the illness. The Tanner children were shuffled between relatives and friends of the family, moving to Mount Calm (TX), Alamogordo (NM), Brazil, Corpus Christi (TX), and San Marcos (TX). While visiting her sister in Brazil, Mary passed away, leaving her three children under the care of their aunt and uncle.
Through the generosity of a family friend, Carter and her siblings were granted the opportunity to study at San Marcos Baptist Academy in 1913. Dr. Samuel Palmer Brooks, President of Baylor University and a friend of the Tanners, personally funded a portion of the Tanners' education and paved the way for Carter to attend Baylor. She graduated from the university in 1919 with a degree in history. After teaching briefly at the high school level, Carter taught history at Baylor Academy. She earned her master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Baylor, teaching Texas and English history at the college-level. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she became the first curator of The Texas Collection, one of Baylor's special collections.
While taking doctoral classes at the University of Texas at Austin, she reconnected with a former mentor, Edward S. Carter of Wichita Falls, Texas. The couple were married by J. M. Dawson on October 19, 1928 and went on to have two children: Edward, Jr. and Mary. Carter's daughter, Mary, became the third generation of her family to teach at Baylor University when she taught as an instructor of piano for the School of Music. Aleph passed away on September 15, 1987.
More information about Aleph Tanner Carter can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Aleph Tanner Carter interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
"3rd Generation Tanner Family on BU Faculty." Waco News-Tribune, 23 September 1952.
Find a Grave, Inc. "Aleph Tanner Carter." Memorial #57124567. Databases. Accessed January 11, 2019.
"Miss Aleph Tanner Weds Edward Carter in a Ring Ceremony." Waco News-Tribune, 21 October 1928.
Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir, the daughter of Reverend Thomas Henry Jenkins and Lavina Fronabarger, was born in Oak Ridge, Missouri, on November 18, 1901. The Jenkins family moved to Texas in 1908 after physicians diagnosed Lavina with tuberculosis. Once in Texas, Thomas Jenkins, a Baptist minister, wanted all five of his children to attend Baylor University.
Thus it was that Casimir came to Baylor University, majoring in education and sociology. As a student, Casimir worked at the main library's circulation desk, and when Carroll Library caught fire in 1922, she was one of the students who helped rescue as many books as possible. In her senior year, Casimir was a student assistant for Dr. Samuel Grove Dow, a professor of sociology accused by fundamentalists led by J. Frank Norris of teaching evolution to Baylor students. Casimir faced some adversity as her boss resigned amid the scrutiny he received, but she graduated from Baylor in 1922.
Following her time at Baylor University, Casimir briefly moved back to Missouri to live with her parents. She taught high school Latin and Spanish for two years in Charleston, Missouri, before moving to Jackson, Mississippi, where she taught history and physical education for two years. She then took a sabbatical from teaching to earn her master's degree in sociology from the University of Missouri at Columbia. Afterwards, in 1927, Casimir moved to Calvert, Texas where she lived for most of her remaining years. She taught high school until 1940 when she married Louis S. Casimir, the owner of a local grocery store. Following her husband's death in 1949, Casimir sold her husband's store and returned to teaching for the next seventeen years. She was active as a Sunday School teacher for the First Baptist Church of Calvert and was president of the Woman's Missionary Union.
More information about Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Anna Gladys Jenkins Casimir interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Alice Owens Caufield was born on November 5, 1907, at a farm near the present-day traffic circle in Waco, Texas. At the age of five, her mother died, and she learned to handle all operations of a farm with her father, sister, and grandparents. When her grandparents died, Caufield became the primary person carrying out all household farm chores. In 1929, she married James Caufield; Alice and James each had a son from a previous marriage at the time of their marriage to each other. She graduated from A.J. Moore High School in 1927, and then attended college at Paul Quinn College, Texas Southern University, and Baylor University, obtaining degrees in history and sociology and training in education.
Beginning her career as a teacher's aide, Caufield also served as a nurse's aide, secretary, legal aid, outreach/social worker, and eventually program director of the organization at that time known as the Young Women's Christian Association, or YWCA. Specifically, she worked for many years with the Blue Triangle YWCA in Waco, a branch of a Houston organization that sought to host safe meeting and educational spaces and events for women and girls of color. As she joined in 1938, her longtime affiliation with the group began the year after they were founded. Alice Owens Caufield passed away on March 14, 1999, and she is buried in Robinson Cemetery, McLennan County, Texas.
In 1977, writers, activists, and intellectuals banded together to petition Czechoslovakia's communist party on the issue of human rights. Inspired by the Helsinki Agreement, the informal civic organization drafted a petition titled "Charter 77," named for the year of its publication. Several women participated prominently in the movement, including journalist Otka Bednárová, psychologists Dana Němcová and Jarmila Bělíková, and author Zdena Tominová who served as a spokesperson. Signatories of Charter 77 faced severe persecution for their activism, and many were arrested in May of 1979 for "acting against the interests of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic." Despite state persecution, the group continued their crusade until the fall of the Socialist Republic in 1989, and many served in the newly formed democratic government. Tominová emigrated to England, where she published a number of works concerning her experiences as a human rights activist under an authoritarian regime.
More information about Charter 77 can be found in the Digital Archive at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Keston Digital Archive, Dana Němcová
Keston Digital Archive, Jarmila Bělíková
Keston Digital Archive, Otka Bednárová
Bibliography
Anna Chertkova was born on December 26, 1927, in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. She actively attended an unregistered Baptist church from an early age. In the 1970’s, she began teaching and advocating for religion throughout the Soviet Union.
Authorities declared her criminally insane and arrested her in August 1973. Her trial began on February 12, 1974, under article 170-1 Kazakh Criminal Code (circulation of deliberately false concoctions, slandering the Soviet State, and social order). She was sentenced to compulsory treatment and indefinite confinement in the Tashkent Special Psychiatric Hospital, which was described by a patient as a “prison mad-house for murderers.” According to the testimony of another prisoner, the staff was abusive and hostile, especially to Chertkova. For refusing to abandon her faith, they frequently subjected her to neuroleptic drugs which caused fever and paralysis and locked her in cells with “zealous atheist criminals.” Despite her tribulation, she was able to write a letter to her family during her ninth year in the hospital stating she would continue to entrust herself to God’s care and believe in His plan.
However, Chertkova’s plight did not go unnoticed. In 1985, more than 5,200 Irish Christians approached the Soviet Embassy in Dublin with a petition to reexamine her case. The petition was rejected outside the embassy’s gates and “Mr. Sergei Davidov, Second Secretary at the Embassy, admitted that in the Soviet Union the practice of the Christian faith could be seen as abnormal.” In the summer of 1987, several campaigns on her behalf were underway in Western countries, including a vigil in Birmingham, England, calling for her release.
In 1986, authorities transferred Chertkova to the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Kazan. She left the hospital in Tashkent on January 31 and arrived in Kazan on February 8 in handcuffs, despite suffering from body tremors. She was finally freed on December 1, 1987. At her release from the hospital, Chertkova was age 59 and the longest-serving prisoner at over fourteen years.
Officials took her to her niece’s house in Alma-Ata. Anna Chertkova called her sister in West Germany on December 3, 1987, asking her to thank everyone who prayed and petitioned for her release and adding Christmas greetings. Because her freedom seemed precarious in the Soviet Union, Chertkova desired to join her sister, and the two began the lengthy immigration process.
More information about Anna Chertkova can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please contact the Michael Bourdeaux Research Center for more information.
The feminist group Club Maria was founded in the Soviet Union in 1980. Soviet feminists grew in numbers during the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time underground religious activity among members of the Russian Orthodox Church increased. Club Maria combined feminism and Orthodox Church ideology.
The first Soviet free journal for women, Woman and Russia: An Almanac for Women about Women, was led by a multitude of women, including the founders of Club Maria. The Almanac circulated as samizdat and included poetry, art, and essays covering a range of subjects, from patriarchy to prisons, from matriarchy to marriage, from theology to abortion.
Shortly after the Almanac’s creation, the group split with one keeping the Woman and Russia name, and the other becoming Club Maria. Women and Russia maintained an ideology similar to Western feminists while Club Maria looked to the Russian Orthodox Church to solve issues of inequality.
On March 8, 1980, Julia Voznesenskaia, Natalia Malakhovskaia, and Tatiana Goricheva planned to officially establish Club Maria. However, in February, the Soviet authorities intervened, searching several women’s apartments and seizing ready-to-be circulated copies of the first issue of the journal Maria. In protest, the women immediately announced the creation of Club Maria.
Authorities waited until the night before the 1980 Moscow Olympics to retaliate. They arrested several feminists, including Voznesenskaia, Malakhovskaia and Goricheva, as well as the leader of Woman and Russia, Tatiana Mamonova. All were exiled.
Club Maria created the first free women’s club in Russia. The founders chose Madonna, or Maria, as their symbol representing maternal selflessness. They did not select Sofia, the Orthodox symbol of Western feminism, thus rejecting the rationalism of Western feminism and Marxism in favor of the spiritual truths of Orthodox Christianity. The women of Club Maria followed a uniquely Russian approach to feminism that emphasized community and spiritual-religious transformation.
Because of Club Maria’s strong roots in the Orthodox church, their goals aligned with the church, calling Christians to return to God and strive to follow him as closely as possible. Thus some elements of the Orthodox Church welcomed Club Maria and its ideals.
After the three founders’ exile, some continued writing for Maria. Other feminists in Russia contributed to and led the journal. Although Soviet authorities tried many times to deter these women and stop the circulation of Woman and Russia and Maria, the women persisted, believing that their cause was worth more than what could be done to them.
More information about Club Maria can be found at Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Soviet Union Orthodox Subject Files, 1922 - 2018, undated (bulk 1970-1992).
Bibliography
Irene Caufield Cobb was born on October 26, 1909, to Thomas J. and Emma Caufield. She attended A.J. Moore High School in Waco and then studied at Langston University and Samuel Huston College. She took graduate courses at Baylor University, earning teaching certificates in elementary education and home economics. She married Eddie Cobb, Jr. in 1930, and the couple had three daughters. Cobb taught in Waco area schools for 31 years and was involved in several community organizations, including the North Sixth Street Community Club. She was a member of New Hope Baptist Church in Waco. Other community activities include the People's Cemetery Association, Young Women's Christian Association, McLennan County Retired Teachers' Association, and Sigma Gamma Rho sorority. She also did a significant amount of research on her family's genealogy. Cobb died on March 14, 1989.
More information about Irene Caufield Cobb can be found in the Irene Cobb papers at The Texas Collection.
Irene Cobb papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Frances Cobb Todd
Smith-Cobb Family collection, The Texas Collection
Congregation Agudath Jacob was founded in Waco, Texas, as an Orthodox congregation in 1888 by A. L. Lipshitz and 14 other men. The congregation has occupied several synagogue buildings in Waco throughout their existence. In 1921, the congregation hired its first rabbi, Charles Blumenthal. In 1966, the congregation became affiliated with the Conservative movement which allows women equal rights to status and participation, among other opportunities, within the Jewish community.
The [Waco] Congregation Agudath Jacob “Chaverah” oral history collection contains audio and video interviews with more than a dozen members, primarily women, of the Waco Jewish community. Most of the interviews were conducted in 1984 with an addition in 1993.
More information about [Waco] Congregation Agudath Jacob "Chaverah" oral histories can be found in the [Waco] Congregation Agudath Jacob "Chaverah" oral histories at The Texas Collection.
Born on August 17, 1895, near Waco, Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner graduated from Mary Allen Seminary in 1912 and received her teaching diploma from Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College in 1914. She taught at rural schools in Texas until 1923 when she married George Sherman Conner. Conner worked closely with rural African-American families and placed specific emphasis on improving education. She earned a B.S. in Home Economics from Prairie View and a M.S. from Cornell University in 1944. She became the supervisor of McLennan County schools in 1948 and held that position until 1957. Conner was elected President of the Texas Association of Colored Women’s Club from 1955-1959. She was an active member of the community and intimately involved at New Hope Baptist Church. She died on June 10, 1972, in Waco.
More information about Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner can be found in the George Sherman and Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner papers at The Texas Collection.
George Sherman and Jeffie Obrea Allen Conner papers, The Texas Collection
Betty Wilke Cox was born on September 25, 1928, in Fort Worth, Texas, to L.A. Wilke and Viola Helen Anderson Wilke. In 1944, she graduated from Gainesville High School in Gainesville, Texas. She then attended Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees. After graduating, Cox initiated her writing career as a newspaper reporter for the Nolan County News and the Sweetwater Reporter in the late 1940s. She met her husband, Bill G. Cox, while working for the Reporter and the couple had one son, Michael. Later, she briefly taught in Dallas and Del Valle, Texas, before pursuing work in the library science field. Cox worked as a librarian at the Austin Public Library, the Texas State Library, the Texas A&M University Special Collections Library, and the Ocotillo Branch Library in Phoenix, Arizona. Following her retirement, Cox founded Woodburner Press, which she ran in conjunction with her editing business, Hudman Editing Service in Austin, Texas. Through Woodburner Press, she published fourteen of her clients' books, several of which are housed in The Texas Collection. Betty Wilke Cox passed away on August 28, 2006, in Austin, Texas.
More information about Betty Wilke Cox can be found in the Betty Wilke Cox papers at The Texas Collection.
Betty Wilke Cox papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Grace Noll Crowell was born in Inland, Iowa on October 31, 1877. She graduated with her B.A. from German-English College in 1901 and married Norman H. Crowell the same year. The couple had three children and moved to Dallas, Texas in 1919. She began writing poetry after the birth of her first child and published her first book, White Fire, in 1925. Her work won first prize from the Texas Poetry Society and marked the beginning of a prominent writing career. Crowell's poems focused on homemaking, motherhood, family, holidays, and religious themes. In 1935, she was named Poet Laureate of Texas, and she received an honorary doctorate from Baylor University in 1940. Crowell published more than 35 books, and her work garnered numerous awards and prizes. She died on March 31, 1969, in Dallas.
More information about Grace Noll Crowell can be found in the Grace Noll Crowell papers at The Texas Collection.
Daphne Norred Herring was born on July 11, 1927, in Rogers, Texas, to Alvin M. and Fleta Mae Norred. Shortly after her birth the family moved to Waco. Daphne met her husband, Jack Herring, at Waco High School, where they both graduated in 1944, and married soon afterward. The family lived in several states, including Arizona where Daphne completed her B.A. at Arizona State University. She served as Secretary to the President of Grand Canyon College and was on the staff of Camelback High School in Phoenix before the couple returned to Waco where she taught at Richfield High School and later at Baylor University’s School of Business.
While Daphne taught at the School of Business, Jack also worked at Baylor where he served as English professor and director of the Armstrong Browning Library from 1971 to 1984. The couple were both involved with Baylor international students and the Baylor Summer School for Retired Persons. They were active leaders in Baylor in London tours with fellow professors from the English and History Departments. Daphne was the director of Baylor's Parents League and was instrumental in various university programs: Mortar Board, Baylor Heritage Club, and Adult Enrichment programs. She was also involved with women's organizations on campus. In Waco, Daphne was involved with the Current Events Club of Waco and Jack was the President of the Baylor Neighborhood Association. Daphne and Jack had two children: Penny Herring Flood and Paul W. Herring.
Jack Herring died in 1999, and Daphne died in 2004. The couple are buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Daphne Herring can be found in the Daphne Herring papers at The Texas Collection.
The Sterling C. Robertson Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas was organized in Waco in April 1900, and was the ninth chapter to be chartered in Texas. Mrs. Richard Harrison, granddaughter of empresario Sterling C. Robertson, for whom the chapter is named, was the first president. The Sterling C. Robertson Chapter of the DRT still exists today and has continually supported the objectives of the association by "perpetuating the memory and spirit of the men and women who achieved and maintained the independence of Texas; preserving documents and relics; celebrating Texas honors days; and securing and memorializing all historic spots."
More information about the Daughters of the Republic of Texas: Sterling C. Robertson Chapter can be found in the [Waco] Daughters of the Republic of Texas: Sterling C. Robertson Chapter records at The Texas Collection.
Bibliography
Kelley, Dayton. Handbook of Waco and McLennan County Texas. Waco: Texian Press, 1972.
Born in Harris County, Texas, in 1861, Adina Emilia De Zavala was the granddaughter of famed Texan revolutionary Lorenzo de Zavala, who later served as the provisional Vice President of the Republic of Texas. She attended Sam Houston Normal Institute and studied music in Missouri before returning to Texas to teach. In the 1880s, she began work with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) to restore and preserve several missions in the San Antonio area, including the Alamo. De Zavala and the DRT split over questions of the authenticity of the Alamo's Long Barrack in a highly publicized controversy dubbed "The Second Battle of the Alamo." She succeeded in preserving the Long Barrack after staging a sit-in protest at the site when the governor tried to sell the property.
De Zavala preserved several other sites throughout the state and founded the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association. She was also a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association, and Governor Pat Neff appointed her to the Texas Historical Board in 1923. She served on the advisory board for the Texas Centennial Committee and wrote works on Texas history. After dedicating her life to preserving the history of Texas, Adina E. De Zavala died in 1955 at the age of 94.
More information about Adina E. De Zavala can be found in the Adina E. De Zavala papers at The Texas Collection.
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey was born on July 22, 1918, in Milam County, Texas, to Casca Jackson and Irene Addison McLerran. She graduated from Baylor University in 1938, with a double major in Spanish and journalism. In 1944, she enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Corps as a private and was stationed at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, the Santa Maria Army Air Base, and the Riverside Army Marching Base. She wrote articles for various Army publications. After the war, she worked at the Disney Studios in Burbank, California, and there she met her future husband, Charles DeLancey. The DeLanceys later lived in Houston and were generous supporters of Baylor University. Eleanor passed away on November 3, 2004.
More information about Eleanor McLerran DeLancey can be found in the Eleanor McLerran DeLancey collection at The Texas Collection.
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey collection, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones
Isabella M. Henry
Women in the Military
The Beta Tau Chapter of Delta Delta Delta at Baylor University began under a different name. Peer Club was a woman's organization at Baylor that can be traced back to 1938. Their founding principles align with those of Delta Delta Delta. In September 1959, Peer Club moved to change their name to Greek Letters. In October, "Kappa Theta" was selected by popular vote and the organization was known as such thereafter. In 1977, the organization voted to affiliate with the national Tri Delta organization.
More information about Delta Delta Delta can be found in the BU Records: Delta Delta Delta at The Texas Collection.
Born on March 11, 1944, in Liverpool, England, to Rear-Admiral Clarence Dinsmore Howard-Johnston and Lady Alexandra Henrietta Louisa Haig, daughter of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Xenia received a degree in Russian and French from Oxford University and a degree in Russian politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Her interest in Russia stemmed from her paternal grandmother whose family, the Bairds, lived in Russia from the late 18th century until 1882. In 1969, Dennen helped found, with Michael Bourdeaux and others, The Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism (later to be called Keston College and eventually Keston Institute) and became a member of its Council of Management. She began producing Keston's academic journal Religion in Communist Lands (changed to Religion, State and Society after the fall of communism) in 1973 and continued as editor until 1981.
During the 1990s, Dennen served as Keston’s Moscow representative, traveling to Russia four to six times a year and building a network of contacts. There, she met Sergei Filatov and introduced his idea of producing an encyclopedia about the contemporary position of all religions in Russia. The Keston Institute formed an encyclopedia team, and since 1999, Dennen has been actively involved in the team’s fieldwork and in producing the multi-volume Encyclopaedia of Religious Life in Russia Today.
She has chaired the Keston Institute Council of Management since 2002 and serves on the Court of the Mercers’ Company in London, which dates to the 1300s, where she is Upper Warden in 2017-2018 and in line to become the Livery's second female Master in 2018-2019. She is married to the Venerable Lyle Dennen, a retired priest in the Church of England and a former Archdeacon of Hackney (1999-2010). They have two adult sons.
More information about Xenia Violet Howard-Johnston Dennen can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
"Keston Newsletter" published by the Keston Institute, edited by Xenia Dennen, 2006-
In the summer of 1957, Baylor University's Department of Library Science began offering two courses available to summer students: Young People’s Literature and Administration of Library Services. Housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, Library Sciences had long been considered a minor course of study for Baylor students. However, in 1960, Baylor's program of Library Sciences was approved by the Texas Education Agency; this allowed the issuing of teacher-librarian degrees. At that time, Baylor was the only school in Central Texas that offered an approved course in library sciences. Headed by faculty member Zula Zon MacDonald, the department became a major undergraduate degree program in 1963. By 1965, the department began teaching curriculum that encompassed public, church, school, and special librarianship. The department was transferred to the School of Education in the 1970s, and eventually, the courses became obsolete with the changing landscape of library sciences degree requirements.
More information about the Department of Library Science can be found in the BU Records: Department of Library Science at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Department of Library Science, The Texas Collection
LaRue Gilbert Dorsey was born in Waco in 1932/1933. She was the eldest child of a minister and had four younger brothers, one of whom was Robert Gilbert, the first African American to graduate from Baylor University in 1967.
Dorsey graduated from A.J. Moore High School in 1949, earned a B.S. from Mary Allen College in Crockett, Texas in 1952, and earned a master's degree in secondary education from Texas Southern University in Houston. As she asserted in her oral memoirs, she grew up in segregated, all-black schools.
After securing her education, Dorsey became a teacher in the Waco Independent School District. When Waco public schools were integrated in 1970, Dorsey was transferred to an all-white school to ease the transition for the students. Overall, she taught for Waco ISD for thirty-four years.
Following her retirement, in 1986, Dorsey used her retirement savings to fund the creation of a preschool program in Waco, LaRue's Learning Center, in an effort to help children from minority or low-income families.
More information about LaRue Dorsey can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
LaRue Dorsey interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Barcus, Nancy. Waco People: Making a Difference. Waco, TX: Vick Publishing, Inc., 1996.
"Helping Kids Keep Interest in Learning." Waco Tribune-Herald 20 March 1995.
Interview of LaRue Dorsey by Noelle Moreno Stepp. April 6, 1993. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
"Meyers Contribute to Learning Center." The Waco Citizen 30 March 1990
Mary "Kitty" Jacques Du Congé was born on July 5, 1908, in New Orleans to Joseph and Venita Molina Jacques. She met Oscar Du Congé as a child and they were married on January 2, 1937. The couple adopted one son, Michael. While Mary finished her teaching certificate at Xavier University, Oscar studied adult education at Southern University. In 1942, he was drafted into the Army and stationed at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Mary got a job on base as a secretary and the two lived in Arizona for the duration of the war, except for the short time Oscar was stationed in North Africa. After the war, the Du Congés spent a brief time in New York and Pittsburgh before returning to New Orleans. Mary taught elementary school while Oscar got his master's in social work via correspondence at the University of Atlanta. In 1948, two years after obtaining his master's, Oscar accepted a position at the Veterans Affairs Hospital (V.A.) in Waco.
During the 1950's, Oscar left the V.A. to co-own and operate the Doris Miller Memorial Park Cemetery. Around the same time, Mary became the first African-American secretary at the James Connally Air Force Base. She would continue in government work for the rest of her career. In addition, she was an active volunteer within the Catholic community and the Waco community at large. She was involved in organizations including the Joie de Vivre Club, St. John's Catholic Church, and Caritas (a Catholic group seeking to alleviate hunger). Oscar died on July 26, 1978, and Mary followed on August 31, 1999.
More information about Mary “Kitty” Jacques Du Congé can be found in the Oscar “Doc” Norbert and Mary “Kitty” Jacques Du Congé papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History.
Mary "Kitty" Jacques Du Congé interview, Institute for Oral History
Oscar “Doc” Norbert and Mary “Kitty” Jacques Du Congé papers, The Texas Collection
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan was born on September 6, 1895, to Thomas Robert Mears and Rosa Elma Belcher Watkins. Her family moved to Gatesville when her father was elected to the Texas House of Representatives. Merle, who went by her middle name, graduated from the University of Texas in 1917 with a double major in history and science. Over the next few years, she served as a teacher in the Gatesville area. On June 1, 1920, she married lawyer William Clay McClellan, and in 1922, the couple had their only child, Thomas Rufus McClellan. The McClellan family moved to Waco to further Clay's law career, but in 1938, he passed away from cancer at the age of 48. The following year, Thomas accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Merle accompanied her son and subsequently began graduate work at George Washington University.
Duncan eventually returned to Waco where she earned a master's degree in history from Baylor University in 1941. She taught briefly at Baylor from 1941 to 1945 while also serving as the Armed Services Representative for the university. Baylor President Pat Neff appointed her to the position in the spring of 1943. Her responsibilities centered on acting as a liaison between the government and the university, particularly proposing exemptions from military service on a case-by-case basis. Merle left Baylor in 1945 when she married businessman Bruce Duncan. She eventually taught again at Baylor University from 1956 to 1960 before retiring in Waco. She passed away on September 30, 1985, at the age of 90.
More information about Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan papers at The Texas Collection. This Texas Collection finding aid is incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan interview, Institute for Oral History
Related Collections
BU Records: Armed Services Representative, The Texas Collection
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones
Isabella M. Henry
Women in the Military
The youngest of eight children, Dr. Hallie Earle was born on the outskirts of Waco on September 27, 1880. She graduated from Baylor University in 1901 with a bachelor's degree and received her master's degree the next year before enrolling at Baylor Medical School in Dallas. Earle, the only woman in the medical school, earned an M.D. in 1907. She worked as a doctor in Marlin and Waco from 1908 to 1948 and when she retired, she was one of only a handful of female doctors in the area. The U.S. government named Dr. Earle a Cooperative Weather Observer in 1916 due to her comprehensive weather observation journals. She passed away on November 1, 1963, in Waco.
More information about Hallie Earle can be found in the Graves-Earle Family papers at The Texas Collection.
Jane Elizabeth Ellis greatly influenced the work of the Keston Institute, which was founded in 1969 as the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism to be the “voice of the voiceless’ by reporting on religious persecution under communism, particularly in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. As a teen, Jane became interested in Russia after attending one of Brother Andrew’s rallies urging Christians to take Bibles to the Soviet Union. She taught herself Russian. Ellis joined the Keston staff in 1973 following her graduation from the University of Birmingham in England and immediately founded and almost single-handedly operated Aid to Russian Orthodox Christians (ARC), an organization that provided religious resources to those suffering for their faith in the Soviet Union.
Jane Ellis established herself as one of the leading scholars on religion in the Soviet Union, particularly related to the Russian Orthodox Church. Her work remained invaluable to Keston as she translated documents, published scholarly articles, gathered material for the Keston News Service, and served on the editorial board and later as editor from 1981-1986 of the journal Religion, State, and Society. She also broadcast for the BBC in both English and Russian.
Of particular importance was Ellis’ role in securing a Moscow office for the Keston Institute, which was critical for gaining crucial first-hand knowledge of the religious situation. Ellis utilized her experiences and personal contacts to publish The Russian Orthodox Church: A Contemporary History through Croom Helm in 1986. The work represents her personal connection with Orthodox Christians in the Soviet Union. Ten years later, Macmillan published her follow-up second volume The Russian Orthodox Church: Triumphalism and Defensiveness. She left Keston following its move from Kent to Oxford. Ellis died suddenly in June 1998, having given almost 20 years of dedication to Keston’s mission.
More information about Jane Elizabeth Ellis can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society and in the Center’s digital archive.
Baylor Libraries Digital Collections
Bibliography
Dr Philip Walters (1998) Obituary, Religion, State and Society, 26:3-4, 371-373, DOI: 10.1080/09637499808431835
The Equal Rights Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1921, and while its contents have evolved it has yet to be ratified. While many of our collections intersect with this long-standing call for equality for women, the focus here is on Texas congressional records that reflect the views of representatives and constituents during the peak years of support for the Amendment.
More information about the Equal Rights Amendment can be found in the Baylor Collections of Political Materials, located in the W. R. Poage Legislative Library. Please contact bcpm@baylor.edu or 254-710-3540 for more information.
John V. Dowdy, Sr. papers
Sam B. Hall, Jr. papers
Jack E. Hightower papers
W. R. Poage papers
Alan W. Steelman papers
Related Materials within the John V. Dowdy papers
Box 366. Folder 22. Legislative, 88th Congress, HJR 334, Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relative to Equal Rights for Men and Women, 1963
Box 374. Folder 25. Legislative, 89th Congress, HJR 242, Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relative to Equal Rights for Men and Women, 1965
Box 383. Folder 27. Legislative, 90th Congress, HJR 154, Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relative to Equal Rights for Men and Women, 1967
Box 392. Folder 44. Legislative, 91st Congress, HJR 208, Proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Relative to Equal Rights for Men and Women, 1969
Box 427. Folder 9. Personal, Legal, No. 13: Daughters of the American Revolution and Other papers, 1930-1945
Box 476. Folder 20. Personal, Speeches, Lion's Club, Ladies Night, Handwritten Notes, 1947 December 16
Box 478. Folder 45. Personal, Speeches, Importance of Ladies Participation in Modern Politics, Twentieth Century Reading Club, 1961 September 20
Box 480. Folder 6. Personal, Speeches, D.A.R., Lufkin, TX, 1964 February 18
Box 480. Folder 40. Personal, Speeches, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1965 April 19
Box 483. Folder 15. Personal, Speeches, Address to Women, undated.
Box 38. Folder 14. Administrative, General, Women in Government, undated
Box 38. Folder 15. Administrative, General, Women in Government, Lizzie Freeman, undated
Related Materials within the Sam B. Hall, Jr. papers
Box 341. Folder 6. Committees, Equal Rights Amendment, H.R. 638, 1978
Box 341. Folder 7. Committees, Equal Rights Amendment, H.R. 638, 1978
Box 341. Folder 8. Committees, Equal Rights Amendment, H.R. 638, 1978
Box 341. Folder 9. Committees, Equal Rights Amendment, H.R. 638, 1978
Box 327. Folder 3. Constituents, Alpha Files, Equal Rights Amendment Extension, 1978
Box 327. Folder 5. Constituents, Alpha Files, Equal Rights Amendment Extension, Hearings, 1978
Box 327. Folder 4. Constituents, Alpha Files, Equal Rights Amendment H.J. Res 1, 1983
Series 4: District
Box 275. Folder 11. District, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1979
Box A. Folder 1. Events, Democratic Women of Fannin County
Box D. Folder 13. Events, American Business Women, 1978
Box F. Folder 6. Events, Domestic Women of Fannin County, 1979
Box F. Folder 12. Events, Women Council of Realtors, 1980
Box H. Folder 6. Events, Democratic Women of Fannin County, November 23, 1981
Box I. Folder 6. Events, League of Women Voters, March 2, 1982
Box 463. Folder 2. Legislative, Equal Pay Act of 1964, 1981
Box 463. Folder 3. Legislative, Equal Pay Act of 1964, 1981
Box 463. Folder 4. Legislative, ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), 1978
Box 463. Folder 5. Legislative, ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), 1978
Box 492. Folder 9. Legislative, Women's legislation, 1978
Box 499. Folder 10. Legislative, ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), 1982
Box 506. Folder 1. Legislative, Equal employment/Equal pay acts, 1982
Related Materials within the Jack E. Hightower papers
Box 84. Folder 2. 60th Legislature, Legislation, SJR 5 – Women's Equal Legal Rights
Box 99. Folder 10. 61st Legislature, Subject Files, Women's Rights, 1965-1970
Box 175. Folder 16. Women's Equal Rights Amendment, 1973-1974
Related Materials within the W. R. Poage papers
Box 290. Folder 1. Legislation: Education and Labor: Equal Opportunity for Displaced Homemakers Act, 1975.
Box 360. Folder 2. Legislation, Equal Rights Amendment, 1951-1955.
Box 369. Folder 6. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights, 1972.
Box 373. Folder 5 Legislation, Judiciary, Women’s Lib Constitutional Amendment, Correspondence, 1974
Box 376. Folder 7. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, 1975
Box 378. Folder 4. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, 1976
Box 382. Folder 6. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment and International Women's Year, Correspondence, 1978.
Box 382. Folder 7. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence 1978.
Box 474. Folder 4. Poage Bills: H.Con.Res. 303: United Nations proclaims International Women’s Year, 1975
Box. 513A. Folder 15. Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence, 1978
Box. 513A. Folder 16. Women's Rights, Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence, 1978
Box. 513A. Folder 17. Women's Rights, Equal Rights Amendment, Articles and Newsletters, 1978
Box 775. Folder 1. Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus, Newsletters, 1978
Box 775. Folder 3. Congressional Clearinghouse on Women's Rights, Newsletters, 1978
Box 1002. Folder 1. Labor Department: Women & Work, Newsletters, 1978
Box 1047. Folder 1. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1965
Box 1047. Folder 2. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1968
Box 1047. Folder 3. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1971
Box 1047. Folder 4. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1972
Box 1047. Folder 5. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1973
Box 1047. Folder 6. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1974
Box 1047. Folder 7. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1975
Box 1047. Folder 8. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1976
Box 1047. Folder 9. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1978
Related Materials within the Alan W. Steelman papers
Box 6. Folder 6. Administrative, Schedules, Carolyn Steelman’s Schedules, 1973
Box 106. Folder 2. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, 1973-1974
Box 106. Folder 3. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (1 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 4. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (2 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 5. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (3 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 6. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (1 of 3), 1973
Box 106. Folder 7. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (2 of 3), 1973
Box 106a. Folder 1. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (3 of 3), 1973
Box 106a. Folder 2. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, Abortion, 1976
Box 106a. Folder 3. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, Abortion, 1975
Box 106a. Folder 4. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, ERA, 1976
Box 106a. Folder 5. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, ERA, 1975
Box 132. Folder 14. Legislative, 93rd Congress, Women in Combat, 1974
Box 132. Folder 15. Legislative, 93rd Congress, Women in Military Academies, 1974
Box 152. Folder 18. Legislative, 94th Congress, Women in Coast Guard Academy, 1975-1976
Box 152. Folder 19. Legislative, 94th Congress, Women in Service Academies, 1974-1975
Elizabeth Williams Estes was born on April 13, 1908, in Lorena, Texas. She is a descendent of Shapley Prince Ross, the man who established Waco in 1849. Her family was active in the Lorena Methodist Church and participated in the restoration of the Cotton Palace. Estes performed theatrical skits and dances in Cotton Palace competitions and often recounted her memories of farmers displaying their shelled corn and cotton bolls.
Estes attended school in Lorena until her senior year of high school when she transferred to Hackaday in Dallas. After graduation, she enrolled at the University of Texas where, in 1929, she received a bachelors in political science. She aspired to enter law school, but her uncle, a lawyer, discouraged her attendance, claiming that women at that time and in that part of the country would not be able to enjoy their practice--they would only be given grunt work. Disillusioned, Estes ultimately decided not to apply. Instead, Estes accepted a job at the Kokomo Steel Company as a secretary and eventually worked as a secretary for her uncle's law firm.
Elizabeth married John Claude Estes in October 1932. Her father gave them a portion of the land he inherited in Lorena, so the newlyweds started growing sugar cane and raising cattle in July 1934. Their first child was born only a few months later.
Estes was active in several organizations in her adult life, particularly in the realm of politics. She organized the Democratic Women of McLennan County, served as its treasurer, finance chairman, and co-chairman, and helped grow the organization to 1,600 members. She served on the state Democratic executive committee for two terms and was associate precinct judge.
Estes was a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas where she served as both the fourth vice president general and the secretary. Starting in 1957, she volunteered with the American Cancer Society and was the campaign chairman for McLennan County. At her church, she served as vice chairman of the board, treasurer, and church secretary.
More information about Elizabeth Williams Estes can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Elizabeth Williams Estes interview, Institute for Oral History
Olga Fallen was born on October 10, 1931, in Brunswick, Georgia, and earned her B.A. from Georgia State College for Women followed by her M.S. from the University of Tennessee. In 1956, she arrived at Baylor University to teach dance and swimming. During the course of her time at Baylor, she taught or coached almost every women's sport through her position as either assistant professor of physical education or women's athletics coordinator. Fallen led women's sports at Baylor in the transition from the physical education department to the athletics department following the passage of Title IX, a section of the Education Amendment of 1972. Throughout her time as athletics coordinator, she struggled with inadequate staffing and resources, yet several of her teams still met with great success.
Her position as athletics coordinator was not renewed after 1979, but Fallen continued to teach at Baylor in the physical education department. Prior to her death in 2009, she earned her 40-year service pin from the university and was admitted to the Baylor Athletic Hall of Fame.
More information about Olga Fallen can be found in the Olga Fallen collection at The Texas Collection.
Miriam Amanda "Ma" Wallace Ferguson, better known as "Ma" Ferguson, was born in Bell County, Texas in 1875. She graduated from Salado College and Baylor Female College in Belton before marrying James E. Ferguson in 1899. The couple had two daughters. James became involved in politics and successfully ran for governor of Texas in 1915. Due to several discrepancies in his business dealings, however, the state launched a formal investigation against James, impeached him, and barred him from holding public office. The Fergusons continued to be involved in Texas politics and Miriam became the first female governor of Texas in 1924. Her platform opposed the Ku Klux Klan and prohibition, in addition to promising to reduce government spending. Her failure to reduce spending and generous pardons created controversy during her term. She did not seek reelection in 1926, did not run in 1928, lost in 1930, and won a second term as governor in 1932. Ferguson was an important force in the Texas political scene for most of her life, but after serving a second term as governor, she retired from the public eye until her death on June 25, 1961.
More information about Miriam Amanda "Ma" Wallace Ferguson can be found in the Governors James E. and Miriam "Ma" Ferguson collection at The Texas Collection.
Governors James E. and Miriam "Ma" Ferguson collection, The Texas Collection
Florence Josephine Speight McKenney (1847-1922), the first daughter of prominent early Waco citizens Joseph and Josephine S. Pruitt Speight, was born in Mississippi on September 21, 1847. She married E.A. McKenney in in 1868. E.A. McKenney was originally from Canada, served as a Captain in the 6th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War, and later became Mayor of Waco. The couple had six children together. Florence McKenny passed away on December 26, 1922, and she is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.
More information about Florence Josephine Speight McKenney can be found in the Speight-McKenney Family papers at The Texas Collection.
Martha Virginia Estelle Forney, the daughter of Henry Seward and Ruby Isaacs Estelle, was born on December 31, 1920. Her mother Ruby grew up in Brenham, Texas and was the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant. Her father Henry was raised in McLennan County and later worked for a time as an instructor in the agriculture department at Prairie View College.
Martha graduated from Sam Swats High School in Hempstead, Texas and earned her bachelor's degree from Prairie View College in 1942. She married Samuel Alexander Forney, a veteran of World War II, in 1946. The couple had two children: Samuel Alexander Forney, Jr. and Jan Elizabeth Forney.
Forney earned a Certificate in Librarianship from Emporia State College (Kansas) where years later she returned to finish a Master of Library Science degree in 1957. Forney served as the head librarian at George Washington Carver High School in Waco for ten years before becoming an assistant librarian at McLennan Community College (1970-1974). She briefly worked as a reading specialist and tutor at Texas State Technical Institute before retiring in 1976 after her husband's death.
Forney was an active member in the community. She was involved in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Waco-McLennan County Library Commission, and St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church. She passed away on March 12, 2013.
More information about Martha Forney can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Martha Estelle Forney interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
"Forney, Martha." Waco Tribune-Herald 17 Mar. 2013. Web. Accessed September 26, 2018.
Born in 1895, Rose Lewin Franken spent her early life in Gainesville, Texas. At the age of twelve, however, her parents separated and she moved with her mother and siblings to New York City. There she completed her education and in 1913 married Sigmund Franken, with whom she had three children. She began writing novels after the birth of her second child. Franken produced from these novels a number of successful theater productions and motion pictures, including several that depicted the well-known character Claudia Naughton, a young housewife. Franken's writings frequently used simple domestic situations to offer broad social commentary. She remained an active writer into the 1960s and died in Arizona in 1988. The collection contains two synopses and two screenplays written by Franken between 1936 and 1946.
More information about Rose Lewin Franken can be found in the Rose Franken Screenplay collection at The Texas Collection.
Kate Harrison Friend was born in Boligee, Alabama in 1856, but following the death of her father, she and her mother moved to Waco, Texas, in 1885. Passionate about education, the two women opened a private school in their home. Friend worked as the editor of Artesia, Waco's society newspaper, and later as the Society Editor for the Waco Times-Herald. She started a Shakespeare class that developed into the Waco Shakespeare Club in 1899. The club became nationally recognized after one year of existence. Friend won a writing competition sponsored by the National Shakespeare Association and received a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, after which she became an internationally recognized Shakespeare scholar.
Friend cared deeply for animals and worked closely with the Waco Humane Society. Her efforts led to a grant that allowed the city to build the Waco Animal Shelter. She remained concerned throughout her life about the treatment of women and children in the community and served in a board position for the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs from 1904 to 1936. Friend's work with parks in the Waco area influenced the donation of land from the William Cameron family for Cameron Park. She died on May 14, 1949.
More information about Kate Harrison Friend can be found in the Kate Harrison Friend papers at The Texas Collection.
Katherine Lucylle Cope Fulmer was born in La Porte, Texas, in 1920. The daughter of Joe and Allene Cope, she graduated from Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, Texas, in 1937. She went on to earn her bachelor's degree from Baylor University in 1941 and her master's degree from the University of Houston in 1954. While a student at Baylor, she participated in activities including speech, drama, and radio productions. Lucylle married Herschel Barham Fulmer in 1942 in San Diego, California. They had two children, Kathie and Barham. When her husband returned from military service during World War II, the family lived in Baytown and then Nacogdoches. She taught speech, language arts, and social studies, for a total of 37 years in the Goose Creek Independent School District (Baytown, Texas) and the Nacogdoches Independent School District. Fulmer was an active member of First Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, for more than 47 years. She passed away in 2011.
The collection contains one scrapbook created by Fulmer during her time as a student at Baylor University from 1939-1941. While there are some loose photographs, most of the album consists of Baylor promotional materials, newspaper clippings, and event programs.
More information about Katherine Lucylle Cope Fulmer can be found in the BU Records: Fulmer (Katherine Lucylle Cope) at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Fulmer (Katherine Lucylle Cope), The Texas Collection
Ima Joy Chodorow Gandler was born October 25, 1929, in Waco, Texas, to Nathan and Miriam Borschow Chodorow. She was a 1946 Waco High School graduate and attended the University of Texas. Ima Joy Chodorow married Jacob E. "Jake" Gandler on June 25, 1950, and they later had three children: Sharlane Michaele, Laura, and Howard.
As an active member of Waco Temple Rodef Sholom, Gandler began collecting materials on Texas Jewish culture in the 1970s as the Temple neared its 100th Anniversary. She began with a local archive to document each confirmation class and moved on to document the history of the Waco Jewish community as well as Jewish communities across Texas.
In 1980, Gandler became a founding member of the Texas Jewish Historical Society and promoted the interest of Texas Jewish history locally, throughout Texas, and the United States. She was also an active member in organizations such as the National Council of Jewish Women, National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods, Jewish Federation of Waco and Central Texas, and the Greater Waco Interfaith Conference. Her participation often included the role of archivist, board member, or other governing title.
In addition to her religious interests, Gandler used her research skills to further her genealogical searches and help others do the same. In doing so she was able to collect several family histories from the Waco Jewish Community. Gandler was also a patron of the arts and enjoyed travel. She regularly supported the Waco Hippodrome Theatre as a season ticket holder and visited larger cities such as Dallas and New York to attend shows as well.
Ima Joy Gandler died on January 25, 2010. She is buried at Rodef Sholom Cemetery in Waco, Texas.
The Garden Clinic Garden Club was established in Waco, Texas, as an evening garden club that catered to businesswomen who were unable to attend daytime meetings. They were colloquially known as the “business women's’ garden club.” During the preliminary meetings in the summer of 1951, the organization’s name, flower (amaranthus), and color (flame) were chosen. The first club meeting was held on September 11, 1951, with fourteen charter members. That October, it was decided that the club would limit their membership to twenty-four women. Members participated in home gardening, floral arrangement, and community service.
The Garden Clinic Garden Club’s projects included “Planning and Maintaining Home Gardens,” “Plant Texas,” “Planting, Landscaping and Maintaining Home Gardens—and Water Conservation,” and “Supplying Parakeets and Cages for Crippled Children’s Hospital, Waco, Texas.” Members of the Garden Clinic Garden Club participated in various flower shows, conventions, and festivals across the state of Texas, including the annual Flower Show, the State Convention of Garden Clubs, and the Waco Council Garden Center Spring Festival. In March 1954, at the second annual Flower Show, themed "Gardens of the United Nations," the Garden Clinic won a tri-colored award for their floral exhibit inspired by Indonesia. On June 15, 1954, the Garden Clinic appeared on a local television program that advertised the activities of Waco’s garden clubs. The Garden Clinic Garden Club also helped to raise funds for the Garden Council Building in 1956. During that same year, they donated a tree to the Garden Council’s Memorial Tree Fund.
The Garden Clinic Garden Club was associated with the Waco Council of Garden Clubs, the National Council of State Garden Clubs, Inc., and Texas Garden Clubs, Inc., District V. The club was part of a large network of garden clubs in Waco during the twentieth century.
Related Collections
In the 1930s, Waco boasted several garden clubs that continued to thrive until the 1980s. These organizations provided a social outlet for women to gather and discuss not just gardening, but also the role of the hostess, details of floral design, and appropriate table decorations for various occasions. Most of the Waco garden clubs belonged to the Texas Garden Club, Inc., which was part of the National Garden Club of America. The mission of the National Garden Club of America is to "promote the love of gardening, floral design, and civic and environmental responsibility and help coordinate the interests and activities of state and local garden clubs in the U.S. and abroad."
More information about the Garden Clubs can be found in the many Waco Garden Club collections at The Texas Collection. The following finding aids are currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
- [Waco] Belle Fleur Garden Club
- [Waco] Bells of Ireland Garden Club
- [Waco] Blossom Garden Club
- [Waco] Bud and Blossom Garden Club
- [Waco] Civic Garden Club
- [Waco] Federation Garden Club
- [Waco] Four Seasons Garden Club
- [Waco] Garden Clinic Garden Club
- Waco Garden Club
- [Waco] Garden Culture Club
- [Waco] Junior Federation Garden Club
- [Waco] Round Table Garden Club
Bibliography
Dr. Diana Richmond Garland earned her B.A., M.S.S.W., and Ph.D. in Social Work at the University of Louisville before teaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. She taught there for 17 years in the Carver School of Church Social Work and served as dean and the director of the Gheens Center for Family Ministries. She married Dr. David Garland in 1970, and the couple had two children. Upon coming to Baylor University as a faculty member in 1997, Dr. Garland strove to build on its social work program. In 2001, the new Master of Social Work degree received accreditation during Dr. Garland's time as chair of the Department of Social Work in the College of Arts and Sciences. She became the inaugural dean of the newly established Baylor School of Social Work in 2005. Before she passed away in 2015, the Baylor School of Social Work was renamed the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. Throughout her career, Dr. Garland wrote, co-authored, or edited nineteen books and many articles. Additionally, she raised more than $7 million in research and program grants since coming to Baylor in 1997.
More information about Diana Richmond Garland can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the Diana R. Garland papers at The Texas Collection.
Diana R. Garland interview, Institute for Oral History
Diana R. Garland papers, The Texas Collection
Education pioneer Nina B. Glass was born in Rosebud, Texas, in 1890. She served as the principal of Sanger Elementary School in Waco from 1921 to 1958 where she incorporated new and innovative educational techniques. Following a teaching conference in Chicago, Glass created the first recognized elementary school library. She taught in the Education Department at the University of Texas and was elected as the first female Vice President of the Texas State Teacher's Association and National Education Association. Glass also helped charter Delta Kappa Gamma, a women's sorority for teachers. She died in 1977.
More information about Nina B. Glass can be found in the Nina B. Glass papers at The Texas Collection.
As a teenager, Maria Ivanovna Golovina, nee Braun, became known in the West for being imprisoned for assisting in leading an Unregistered Baptists Sunday School class. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet Union had strict laws prohibiting religious instruction of children outside of the home. In 1966, Braun was convicted and sent to labor camp for her Sunday School involvement. In 1968 and 1969, she became ill in Kungur, Perm Gulag. Following a bout of sickness, people around the world began praying for her health and release, and she was later moved to free exile in Siberia.
During her confinement, teachers, friends, and therapists were kind to her and tried to convince her of atheism. Through these interactions, she saw that atheists worked for the common good and realized the importance of supporting her country. “All this filled my soul, and there was less and less room left for God. That is how I became an unbeliever,” she said. She officially left the faith in April 1969 and was released later that year or the next. Her last major media mention seems to have been when she was interviewed for the Soviet publication Religion and Science . In the article, she recounted how she had come to faith, why she left the faith, and what her present goals were.
The fifth of ten children, Braun grew up in Omsk but moved to Kirghizia around age 16. There, she became a Christian and taught Sunday School though she offered differing accounts of her upbringing. In one public record, she stated that her parents were both Christians from their youth. In another account, she detailed how her mother came to faith, soon followed by her father who then gave up alcohol and smoking, though he remained abusive. Some articles suggest that Braun or editors simplified her account to downplay her father’s conversion.
Braun worked in a kindergarten and at a knitting factory as a teen. Her experiences helping care for girls and boys likely impacted her willingness to assist with Sunday School. Involvement with children was a recurring theme in her life. She stated, “My main task now is to complete my studies in order to give children a correct idea about life and help others throw off the bonds of religion.”
In 1970, Maria Golovina Braun entered Kemerovo Pedagogical Institute where she studied journalism. By 1973, she had married an atheist, borne a daughter, and shifted her studies to become a teacher. She and her husband also tried to convince her sister to become an atheist. One source commented that she “rejects the Christian faith as strongly as she once defended it.” Once a missionary for the Baptist faith, Maria Golovina Braun became a missionary for atheism and socialism.
Elizabeth "Jane" Anderson Goode, the daughter of R.O. and Dannie Anderson, was born on March 25, 1930, in Cotton Plant, Arkansas. Jane graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas in 1951. She married Clement Goode, who also attended Hendrix College, on August 19, 1952. Jane worked at the Open Windows Department of the Baptist Sunday School Board while Clement attended Vanderbilt University.
The couple moved to Waco in 1957 and eventually had two children, Sara and Robert. Clement joined the English department faculty at Baylor University. Jane taught elementary school before teaching freshman English at Baylor. Goode earned her master's degree at Baylor in 1965 upon completion of her thesis, A Historical Study of Reading Instruction in the Elementary Schools of the United States, 1880-1963.
Goode participated in several civic and religious organizations including the Baylor Round Table and First Baptist Church of Waco. She passed away on August 8, 2018.
More information about Jane A. Goode can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Jane A. Goode interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Goode, Jane Anderson. A Historical Study of Reading Instruction in the Elementary Schools of the United States, 1880-1963. MA Thesis, Baylor University, 1965.
"Goode, Jane." Waco Tribune-Herald 11 August 2018. Web. Accessed 18 September 2018.
Born in Russia on May 26, 1936, Natalya Evgenevna Gorbanevskaya (also spelled Natalia Gorbanevskaia) worked as a poet, translator, and editor of such émigré publications as Kontinent and Russkaia mysl’. A leader of the Soviet human rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she received multiple awards and praise for her contributions to Polish culture and its dispersion, as well as to the advancement of mutual understanding between Poles and Russians.
Gorbanevskaya helped lead the group that staged an early protest inside the Soviet Union, the 1968 Red Square Demonstration that objected to the action crushing Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. That same year, Gorbanevskaya began Khronika tekushchikh sobytii(The Chronicle of Current Events), Samizdat focusing on news about human rights and other dissident activities. She believed it her most important work, and some consider it the most important phenomenon of Soviet Union Samizdat.
In 1969, primarily due to her writing in the Chronicle of Current Events, authorities arrested Gorbanevskaya and assigned her to the Serbsky Institute, a psychiatric hospital which created false mental illness diagnoses to assist the KGB and other authorities in ensuring sane dissidents were confined to mental institutions. She spent more than two years in psychiatric hospitals.
After her release, Gorbanevskaya continued dissident activities. However, with the threat of being rearrested, she emigrated to Paris to work with Vladmir Maksimov on Kontinent, which became the leading Russian language émigré journal. She also wrote for Radio Liberty, most prominently on “East European Witnesses” which provided information about their areas to Russian speakers in Eastern Europe. In the 1980s, she wrote largely about Polish affairs for Russkaia mysl’. She also served on the editorial board for the journal, Novaia Pol’sha, published in Russian in Warsaw beginning in 1999 with the goal of establishing thoughtful dialogue between Poles and Russians.
Gorbanevskaya composed and translated poetry from Russian into Polish. One of her greatest achievements was the translation of Czeslaw Milosz’s Traktat poetycki (Treatise on Poetry).
Gorbanevskaya died at her home in Paris on November 29, 2013, and was survived by two sons.
More information about Natalia Gorbanevskaia can be found at Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Soviet Union and Russia Orthodox Subject Files. Inclusive: 1922-2018, undated, Bulk 1970-1992. Box 40, Folder 9.
Related Collections
Soviet Union and Russia Orthodox Subject Files, 1922 - 2018, undated, Bulk 1970-1992.
Bibliography
- Pereletaëiìa snezhnuëiìa graniëtìsu : stikhi 1974-1978 by Natalʹëiìa Gorbanevskaëiìa (YMCA Press, 1979)
- Kto o chem poet : aprelʹ 1996 - sentiabrʹ 1997 by Natalya Gorbanevskaya (ARGO-RISK, 1997)
- Poldenʹ : delo o demonstratsii 25 avgusta 1968 goda na Krasnoi Ploshchadi translated by Natalya Gorbanevskaya (Posev, 1970).
- Gde i kogda : stikhi : iiunʹ 1983--mart 1985 by Natalya Gorbanevskaya (Kontakt, 1985).
- Red Square at noon by Natalia Gorbanevskaya ; with an introduction by Harrison E. Salisbury ; translated by Alexander Lieven (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972).
Tatiana Goricheva, philosopher, theologian, and Russian dissident turned feminist, was an editor of the first Soviet free women’s journal, Woman and Russia: An Almanac for Women about Women, as well as a founder of Club Maria, the first free women’s club in the Soviet Union.
Goricheva considered herself a “subconscious feminist” before she joined the actual movement and began asking questions about life while receiving a philosophy degree at Leningrad University in the 1970s. The questions of women, sex, and love led her to Russian Orthodoxy and the concept of Sophia, the symbol of western feminism, considered the idea of feminism.
To answer her questions, Goricheva began a women’s study group. She and her husband also published a religious dissident journal titled 37. She was fired from at least two jobs for her dissenting views.
Goricheva’s activities in dissident and counterculture circles led to her meeting Tatiana Mamonova, an important figure of the Soviet feminist movement and a leader of Woman and Russia. Goricheva became a feminist because “the situation of women is the most evident expression of tragedy in our society” (Ruthchild 7). Along with Mamonova, Goricheva was one of the editors of the first issue of Woman and Russia. However, Goricheva and Mamonova went their separate ways. Mamonova continued Woman and Russia, while Goricheva founded Club Maria with some of the other editors.
Club Maria’s ideology rejected the rationalism of Western feminism and Marxism in favor of the spiritual truths of Orthodox Christianity. The women followed a uniquely Russian approach to feminism that emphasized community and spiritual-religious transformation. The group began the publication Maria.
Goricheva believed feminism opens vehicles for spiritual liberation. In her opinion, the issues created by Soviet Marxist ideology could only be remedied by a return to the Russian Orthodox Church, which she believed to be the most progressive force or movement in Russia. Goricheva wanted a return to traditional gender roles which reflected God as closely as possible. She believed Soviet men needed to study God and His image to be transformed.
On the night before the 1980 Moscow Olympics, Soviet authorities arrested and exiled many feminist leaders, including Goricheva and Mamonova. After her release, Goricheva attended a Russian Orthodox seminary in Paris and continued to write for Maria as well as articles for major emigre publications. She also lived in West Germany. In 1988, she returned to the Soviet Union where she remained involved in the feminist movement and wrote about her experiences.
More information about Tatiana Goricheva can be found at Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society.
Soviet Union Orthodox Subject Files, 1922 - 2018, undated (bulk 1970-1992).
Bibliography
Svi︠a︡tye Zhivotnye by Tatiana Goricheva (Vysshai︠a︡ religiozno-filosofskai︠a︡ shkola, 1993, c1992)
Julia Saccar Graham was born in Hallettsville, Texas, in 1916 and graduated from Baylor University. She married Henry Hagood in 1938, and the two were appointed as Southern Baptist missionaries to the Middle East. The pair arrived in 1945, but Henry died within a year, leaving a widowed Julia to care for their infant son. She remained in the Middle East and married missionary Finlay Graham in 1947. The couple had four daughters and served in Jordan and Lebanon. At home on furlough, Julia earned her Master of Religious Education from Southwestern Theological Seminary. Back in Lebanon, she led women's ministries and worked as a librarian, English teacher, and administrator at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary established by her husband. Graham later compiled a history of Baptists in Lebanon. Due to the Lebanese Civil War, the Grahams relocated to Cyprus in 1977. The Grahams retired in 1987 to Dallas, Texas, and she passed away in 2015.
More information about Julia Saccar Graham can be found in the Julia and Finlay Graham papers at The Texas Collection.
Julia and Finlay Graham papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Virginia and Paul Smith Missions papers, The Texas Collection
Dr. Zora Frances "Fran" Greenway was born in Ladonia, Texas, in 1928. Dr. Greenway credited her call to become a missionary to an experience she had at the age of fifteen while attending a worship service at an African-American church near her parents' farm. After graduating from East Texas State College (now Texas A&M University-Commerce) and earning an M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Dr. Greenway was appointed as a medical missionary by the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in July 1959. Dr. Greenway briefly worked in Nigeria before serving at Sanyati Baptist Hospital in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and at the Baptist Medical Center in Nalerigu, Ghana. Dr. Greenway never married and described herself as a "Baptist nun." She retired in 1994 after 35 years in Africa and died in San Angelo, Texas, in 2016.
More information about Zora Frances Greenway can be found in the Zora Frances Greenway papers at The Texas Collection.
Roxy Harriette Grove was born in Liberty, Missouri, around 1889. She graduated from Howard Payne College in 1906 when the school was a two-year college and received her A.B. degree from Baylor University in 1908. She later received her B.A. and M.A. degrees in music from Baylor and was awarded a Doctor of Music degree from the Southern School of Fine Arts in Houston. Grove served as a missionary to São Paulo, Brazil, from 1909 to 1912. From 1912 to 1913, she studied music under Arthur Schnabel in Germany. She taught at Howard Payne College and Hardin-Simmons University before accepting a position at Baylor University in 1926. During her administration as chair of the School of Music from 1926 to 1943, Baylor became the first school in Texas to attain membership in the National Association of Schools of Music. Roxy Grove Hall at Baylor was named in her honor. Grove was active in the Texas Association of Music Teachers, National Matthay Association of America, Mu Phi Epsilon music society, Waco Music Teachers Association, and the Waco Ensemble Club. She continued to teach music at Baylor until her death on January 8, 1952.
More information about Roxy Harriette Grove can be found in the Roxy Harriette Grove papers at The Texas Collection.
Johnnie Mae Hackworthe was born on November 16, 1904, in Brenham, Texas. She attended Metropolitan Business College in Dallas and worked as a secretary in Austin and Washington D.C. She also worked as a Calendar Clerk for the Texas House of Representatives from 1935 to 1936. Hackworthe married Herschel A. Watson in 1921. The couple had two children but divorced in 1926. In 1937, she married Edwin A. Schaufler and moved back to Brenham. Schaufler passed away in 1957. At some point, she began writing religious and political pamphlets and tracts, and founded the American Bible College to spread the gospel. Her mystical writings include predictions about the end of the world and various U.S. presidents as the antichrist as well as other more traditional Biblical interpretations. She ran several unsuccessful political campaigns between 1960 and 1976. Hackworthe married Gustav Adolph Eckman in 1958, but they divorced soon afterward. She died on April 13, 1980, in Brenham.
More information about Johnnie Mae Hackworthe can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the Edwin Henry Shaufler and Johnnie Mae Hackworthe collection at The Texas Collection.
Johnnie Mae Hackworthe interview, Institute for Oral History
Edwin Henry Shaufler and Johnnie Mae Hackworthe Papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Billie Huggins Harrison, daughter of G. W. Huggins and Emma Ruth Gibson, was born on May 24, 1926, in Temple, Texas. After graduating from Temple High School in 1943, Billie attended Temple Junior College (now Temple College) and received an associate degree. She also attended Baylor University and graduated in 1947 with her B.B.A. While in school, Harrison kept scrapbooks that provide insight into the life of a female student during the 1930's and 1940's. Upon graduating from Baylor, she moved back to Temple and began a thirty-year career working in the administrative offices of the Olin E. Teague Veterans' Medical Center. On November 20, 1949, Billie married Bill R. Harrison. Bill died on October 29, 1997, and Billie followed sixteen years later on December 28, 2013. The couple is buried at Bellwood Memorial Park in Temple.
More information about Billie Huggins Harrison can be found in the Billie Huggins Harrison papers at The Texas Collection.
Emma Louise McDonald Harrison was born on April 13, 1908, in Mexia, Texas. She grew up in a large family and was surrounded by a close community of inspiring friends and neighbors.
After she graduated from high school in Mexia, Harrison attended Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas. At the age of sixteen, after just one year in college, Harrison earned her teaching certificate and became a substitute teacher at her former high school. She met and married her husband while attending Paul Quinn College, then transferred to Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, Texas where she graduated with her bachelor's degree. She worked as a teacher for ten years and as a supervisor of health and physical education for thirteen years. In 1951, Harrison was invited to organize the Health and Physical Education Department for Paul Quinn College.
Later, Harrison pursued coursework at New York University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Texas, where she was the first black woman to be admitted. She enrolled at Baylor University in 1965 and taught in the psychology department in 1968. She traveled all over the world and also studied at four universities in Scandinavia.
Harrison wrote seven books throughout her lifetime concerning a variety of subjects, including teaching techniques, her sorority (Alpha Kappa Alpha), and the relationship between God's love and community. She was a member of approximately 40 boards and committees throughout Waco, the state, and the nation. Harrison passed away on January 5, 2004.
More information about Emma Louise Harrison can be found at the Institute for Oral History and in the Emma Louise McDonald Harrison papers at The Texas Collection.
Emma Louise McDonald Harrison interview, Institute for Oral History
Emma Louise McDonald Harrison papers, The Texas Collection
Helen Stella Tucker Alexander was born in 1912 to American parents living in China. She continued to live there for 30 years, except for the time she attended high school in the United States and Oxford University. Around 1928, she married John Alexander and received British citizenship through him. The couple had two children before they divorced in 1950. Stella Alexander enjoyed a wide denominational background. She grew up in the Episcopal Church but became a Quaker in the 1950s. “In 1991, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church...[while continuing] to attend Blackheath Quaker meeting.” Stella Alexander conducted extensive research on Yugoslavia and became an expert on the area and its religious life. She visited the country first in 1961; studied Serbo-Croatian at the University of Zagreb beginning in 1966; and continued long-term study in Yugoslavia between 1970-1972, before being required to leave the country.
Involved in many organizations, Stella Alexander held the roles of Secretary for the Quaker East-West Relations Committee, member of the British Council of Churches East-West Relations Advisory Committee, member of the Keston College Council of Management, member of the Religion in Communist Lands editorial board, and editor of the AKSA Bulletin. She published four major works: Quaker Testimony Against Slavery and Racial Discrimination: An Anthology; Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1979); The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (East European Monographs, 1987); and “Croatia: The Catholic Church and the Clergy, 1919-1945," a chapter in Catholics, the State and the European Radical Right, 1919-1945 edited by Richard J. Wolff and Jorg K. Hoenish (Atlantic Research and Publications, 1987).
Helen Stella Tucker Alexander died in 1998.
More information about Stella Alexander can be found in the Stella Alexander Papers collection at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please contact the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society for more information.
Related Collections
“ALE – Alexander Collection.” UCL Library Services, accessed 6 April 2023.
Publications
Quaker Testimony Against Slavery and Racial Discrimination: An Anthology
Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945.
The Triple Myth: A Life of Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac
Bibliography
“Births.” The North China Herald and Supreme Court & Consular Gazette 103 (1912): 808.
“George Edwin Tucker.” Ancestry, accessed 23 February 2023.
“George Edwin Tucker.” Findagrave.com, accessed 23 February 2023.
St. John-McAlister, Michael. “The Fascinating Life of Stella Alexander.” Untold Lives Blog. The British Library, 11 January 2018.
Born on September 27, 1910, in Waco, Texas, Isabella M. Henry enjoyed a successful career in the Women's Auxiliary Corps (WAC) of the United States military. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, took a few classes at the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated with a master's in sociology from Texas State College for Women in Denton. World War II provided new ways for women to participate in the war effort, and in August 1942, Henry enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Corps. She was appointed to the rank of Third Officer on January 9, 1943, and was later promoted to First Lieutenant on December 8, 1948. She became influential in her unit's news publication and received numerous honors for her service, including the certificate of commendation. She retired from active duty after 19 years in the WAC on January 1, 1961, and died on February 20, 1994.
More information about Isabella M. Henry can be found in the Isabella M. Henry papers at The Texas Collection.
Isabella M. Henry papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones
Women in the Military
Lonnie Belle Hodges, the daughter of Mary Persey Belle and Alonzo Belle, was born in Waco, Texas on July 24, 1898. She attended A. J. Moore High School but dropped out to marry Mack Henson Hodges in 1914. The couple had two daughters together and were married for fifty-seven years until Mack's passing on December 12, 1971.
Hodges performed several secretarial and custodial jobs in the early years of her marriage including stints at Sanger Brothers and a local post office. She also assisted her husband who was the advertising and circulation manager for The Waco Messenger, a prominent African American newspaper in Waco. Lonnie folded the newspapers, collected advertisements, and served as the society editor for the newspaper.
As she worked, Hodges attended Paul Quinn College and completed her high school diploma and her bachelor's in elementary education. She later earned a master's degree from the University of Denver. Hodges held brief teaching stints in the area, becoming, as she claimed in her oral memoirs, the second African American substitute teacher in the Waco school system after Erline Henry. Hodges lived her entire life in the Waco area, living through segregation and ultimately the integration of the Waco community and its school system. She passed away on January 2, 1999, at the age of 100 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
More information about Lonnie Belle Hodges can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Lonnie Belle Hodges interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Interview of Lonnie Belle Hodges by Vivienne Malone-Mayes. August 30, 1990. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Interview of Lonnie Belle Hodges by Courtney Williams. February 17, 1993. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Interview of Lonnie Belle Hodges by Stephanie Kay Barron. March 8, 1994. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Find A Grave, Inc. “Lonnie Belle Hodges.” Memorial #125239147. Databases. Accessed October 10, 2018.
The history of the Baylor University Home Economics Department can be traced back to 1850. Five years after Baylor was officially established in Independence, Texas, the university offered home economics classes to students. However, it was not until 1933 that the Department of Home Economics was established at Baylor. At the time, the Department of Home Economics offered three degrees: home economics education, general home economics, and fashion merchandising. Thanks to philanthropist Jesse H. Jones and his wife Mary Gibbs Jones, the Baylor Home Economics Department found their new permanent home at the Mary Gibbs Jones Home Economics Facility. In 1994, the department changed its name to Family and Consumer Sciences.
More information about the Home Economics Department can be found in the BU Records: Home Economics Department at The Texas Collection.
Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki was born on May 11, 1923, in Waimea, Hawaii. Her mother, Misuno, was a Japanese immigrant to the United States, and her father, Masaichi, was a resident of Kauai, Hawaii.
Hoshizaki attended the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and graduated in 1946. She was in class during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. While Hoshizaki's nuclear family did not face internment during the war, her uncle was detained, and the family fishing boat was confiscated for several years.
Following a car accident, Hoshizaki converted to Christianity, a source of constant tension between her and her family, who were primarily Buddhist. Determined to devote her life to her newly-found faith, she enrolled in the Women’s Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, from which she graduated in 1948. While attending school, she met Reiji Hoshizaki of California, an alum of Baylor University. The two married on May 15, 1948, in Chicago, Illinois.
The couple followed their call to ministry to Japan, serving under the Japanese Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention for over 35 years (1949-1984). All five of their children; Carol (born in 1950), Naomi (born in 1951), Sara (born in 1953), Mark (born in 1955), and Paul (born in 1962); were born in Japan.
After the Hoshizakis returned to the United States and moved to Waco, Texas, they remained active members of Columbus Avenue Baptist Church. Alice passed away on November 22, 2014.
More information about Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki can be found in the Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki collection at The Texas Collection.
The Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki Collection, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki collection, Accession #3390, Box #[203], Folder #1, The Texas Collection, Baylor University.
Alice Asano Masaki Hoshizaki collection, Accession #3390, Box #[203], Folder #4, The Texas Collection, Baylor University.
Dr. Mae Allison Johnson Jackson, better known as Mae Jackson, was born on September 10, 1941, in Mexia, Texas. Her parents, Allison Maceo Johnson and Eula Mae King, emphasized the importance of education to their children from a very early age. Her father worked as the principal of a rural country school near Teague, Texas, and her mother taught home economics for several years.
Jackson graduated as the valedictorian of Booker T. Washington High School in 1958 at the age of sixteen. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in sociology, at Texas Southern University in Houston in 1962. Jackson then worked briefly at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston before attaining her master's degree in social work from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio in 1965.
Mae married Howard Andrew Jackson, with whom she had three children. The couple later divorced, and Mae moved to Waco to work at the Veteran Affairs Hospital after her mother suffered a heart attack. As her mother's health improved, Jackson joined the National Council of Negro Women based in Washington, D.C. Under its auspices, Jackson helped to bring low-income housing to areas along the Mississippi River Delta (1969-1971).
Jackson soon returned to Waco to work at the Methodist Home. In 1985, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington. Jackson continued her involvement in the realm of social work, teaching briefly at Baylor University and the graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jackson also became active in politics in an effort to right the social ills she had experienced during her career. She served as the Vice Chairwoman of the Governor’s Commission for Women (1985-1987) and was appointed to the executive board of the Texas State Board of Pardons and Paroles by Governor Ann Richards. Locally, she served for four years on the Waco City Council, District 1. She won the mayoral election in May 2004, becoming the first African American female mayor of Waco. She passed away, however, during her term on February 11, 2005.
More information about Mae Jackson can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Mae Jackson interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Interview of Dr. Mae Jackson by Dawn K. Darwin. February 20, 1993. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Interview of Dr. Mae Jackson by Jenna deGraffenried. March 10, 1994. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Smith, J.B. "Waco Mayor Dies at 63." Waco Tribune-Herald. 12 February 2005.
Wiggins, Mimi. "Mayor Mae Jackson, 63, Dies Suddenly." Baylor Lariat. 15 February 2005.
Jessie Brown Johnson was born in Texas on March 16, 1871, and spent most of her childhood in Whitewright, a small city roughly 70 miles northeast of Dallas. Whitewright had a private school, Grayson College, where Jessie likely received her education prior to attending Baylor University. At Baylor, she was a member of the Calliopean Literary Society and graduated in the spring of 1891 with her M.A. (Maid of Arts) degree. Upon graduation, she worked at the Greenwood Male and Female Normal College in Greenwood, Texas, alongside a former classmate, Jesse Breland Johnson. Jesse left the next year to pursue a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Yale University, and Jessie returned home to Whitewright for a short time before returning to Baylor to pursue a master's degree. The two corresponded with each other and were married upon Jesse's return in 1895. The couple had ten children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. Jessie helped charter the Baylor Round Table, an organization devoted to intellectual and social pursuits among the female faculty members and faculty members' wives that still exists today. The Johnsons were active members in the First Baptist Church of Waco where Jesse served as a deacon for many years. Jessie died on November 1, 1929, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Jessie Brown Johnson can be found in the Jesse Breland and Jessie Brown Johnson papers at The Texas Collection.
Jesse Breland and Jessie Brown Johnson papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Mauriece Vance Johnston moved with her family to Waco, Texas, from Bryan, Texas, not long after she was born in 1918. She graduated from Waco High School and double majored in Bible and Home Economics at Baylor University. She continued her studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary before marrying Earl W. Johnston in 1938. The Johnstons actively participated in the Southern Baptist Convention and Mauriece served with the Women's Missionary Union. She worked with the San Antonio Baptist Association and during her time in the WMU, she served as the president or vice president at all four levels of the organization. She worked on the Board of Directors of the Baptist Standard from 1977 to 1986. Johnston also chaired the finance committee and served on the administrative committee of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. She received honorary recognition by Baylor University and passed away in 2014.
More information about Mauriece Vance Johnston can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the Mauriece Vance Johnston papers at The Texas Collection. This Texas Collection finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Mauriece Vance Johnston interview, Institute for Oral History
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones was born in Waelder, Texas, in 1920. In 1942, she entered Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. She eventually became Commanding Officer of her unit. After World War II, she made a name for herself as a runway and commercial model in New York City. She later married Lt. Colonel Jack Jones, whom she accompanied on his Air Force postings in Germany during the Berlin Airlift and then in Japan. She became the first American to perform the Japanese tea ceremony, earning her press coverage all over Japan and leading President Dwight D. Eisenhower to name her an "ambassador abroad."
Jack and Grace settled in Texas where she opened an internationally famous couture fashion store, Grace Jones of Salado. Through her many connections in the fashion industry, and a private landing strip behind the store, Jones built an international base of customers. After nearly 40 years in business, she closed her store in 2000. Twenty-five newspapers and magazines announced the closing throughout the world. Jones lived the rest of her life quietly, dying on February 16, 2008.
More information about Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones can be found in the Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones papers at The Texas Collection.
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan
Isabella M. Henry
Women in the Military
Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon (1906-1978) was a British archaeologist most well-known for her excavation of Jericho. It was at this site that she refined the stratigraphic technique of excavation that she learned from fellow archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Kenyon participated in numerous excavations throughout her career, including excavations of the ruins at Great Zimbabwe in Rhodesia. She also participated in excavations at Verulamium (St. Albans) and the Jewry Wall in England, Sabratha in Italy, Samaria in Palestine, and Jerusalem in Jordan, among others. She helped found the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London and served for a time as Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Kenyon was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, a biblical scholar and Director of the British Museum.
More information about Kathleen Kenyon can be found in the Central Libraries Special Collections.
Kathleen Kenyon Archaeology collection, Central Libraries Special Collections
The daughter of White Russian emigres, Alyona Kojevnikov was born 24 September 1943 in Yugoslavia, where her family lived beginning in 1920. From the age of 1 to 6, she lived in refugee camps in the American zone of occupied Germany. The entire family emigrated to Australia in 1950. She graduated from Melbourne University with a double major in Russian Language and Literature, then received a Diploma of Librarianship, and conducted the book exchange program between Melbourne University's Baillieu Library and libraries in the then USSR.
In 1971, Alyona and her husband, who was also of Russian extraction, received an offer to work on the news desk of Radio Liberty in Munich. In 1975, she met Michael Bourdeaux at the First International Sakharov Hearing in Copenhagen and learned about Keston College. Sometime later, she was offered the post of Information Officer at Keston, and as her husband was offered a job in the Russian Service of the BBC at the same time, they relocated to London with their 11-year-old son Alex.
While working at Keston College, Alyona was "loaned" to the BBC to present and co-author the weekly Russian language religious program. In later years she also performed this function for the Russian religious program of Radio Liberty. Apart from compiling and editing the Keston News Service, Alyona maintained telephone contact with religious dissidents in the USSR and visited the USSR twice before being declared persona non grata. Having been granted security clearance by the British Home Office, she acted frequently as interpreter for various prominent UK politicians, including the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree allowing formerly jammed Western radio stations to open offices and studios in Moscow, and Alyona was approached by Radio Liberty to go to Moscow as Bureau Chief and set the operation up from scratch. Some years later, Alyona resigned from Radio Liberty and worked as a bilingual translator for several law firms, including the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie.
Alyona Kojevnikov returned to the United Kingdom in 2013 and settled in Rye following a medical accident that resulted in the loss of sight in one eye. She was delighted to be invited to serve as a trustee of the Keston Institute, as that first meeting with Michael Bourdeaux all those years ago turned out to be one of the major landmarks of her life.
More information about Alyona Kojevnikov can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please contact Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society for more information.
Related Collections
Kojevnikov's translation of Irina Ratushinskaya's Grey is the Colour of Hope.
Keston News Service
Keston Digital Archive (search for Keston News Service)
Zoya Krakhmalnikova loved to write. Born in 1929 in Kharkov, Ukraine, Krakhmalnikova grew up reading books and writing stories as often as she could. She attended the Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow from which she earned a degree in 1954. After graduation, Krakhmalnikova began a successful literary career, working for the Soviet Writer publishing house, the Young Guard magazine, the Literary Gazette, and the Union of Journalists of the USSR. She received her graduate degree from the Gorky Institute of World Literature in 1968, and afterward was appointed a senior researcher in the USSR Academy of Science's department of philosophy, where she published numerous articles, books, and translations.
In 1971 everything changed. She and her husband, writer Felix Svetov, converted to Orthodox Christianity, and by 1974 Krakhmalnikova had been dismissed from her post and expelled from the USSR Union of Writers as a result. Soviet authorities attempted to silence Krakhmalnikova by denying her the ability to publish. Their attempt backfired, however, when Krakhmalnikova began to compile and circulate a religious anthology named Hope.
Krakhmalnikova used the words "Christian Reading" to describe the publication. She did not produce the anthology for economic or political purposes but to provide edification to anyone who was spiritually hungry, from the new convert to the lifelong believer. Hope included a wide range of materials—writings from the Church Fathers, essays on the history of Christianity, pastoral reflections, memoirs, poems, stories, and her own voice on contemporary Christian culture in the Soviet Union. Although Hope was created as Samizdat, Krakhmalnikova always signed her name to the publication.
On the night of August 4, 1982, Krakhmalnikova was arrested at her dacha. She was charged with “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda” and sentenced to one-year imprisonment in the Lefortovo Prison in Moscow followed by five years of internal exile in the Altai region of Siberia. Despite the severity, Krakhmalnikova remained hopeful, finishing her trial testimony with "Rejoice! Do not be upset, for it is all the will of God. Praise God for everything." Her husband joined her in exile in 1986 after his arrest and sentencing.
Under Gorbachev's reforms in 1987, Soviet authorities offered Krakhmalnikova clemency provided she agree to commit no further crimes against the state. She refused to sign the agreement but was released a few months later and allowed to return to Moscow.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Krakhmalnikova continued to write about religion in Russia. She published on Judaism and Orthodoxy, a biography of the religious martyr Mother Maria of Paris (Maria Skobtsova), a memoir of her experiences in prison, and a novel titled Church Bells. The book, like her life's story, testified to the power of hope. In it she marvels at the possibility of Christian joy in the midst of suffering: "Captivity, captives, a captive country and its captive bells. These are the words that the bells now sing, yet why is there still joy?" Krakhmalnikova died on April 17, 2008 after having lived a life filled with joy.
More information about Zoya Krakhmalnikova can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Xenia Dennen papers, Keston Center
Soviet Union Orthodox Subject Files, Keston Center
Nadezhda edited by Zoya Krakhmalnikova (Frankfurt am Main, 1978-1994)
Works by Zoya Krakhmalnikova
Laura Wise Maverick was born in 1878 in San Antonio, Texas, to William H. Maverick and Emilia Virginia Chilton Maverick. She attended St. Mary's Hall Episcopal school in San Antonio, and Wheaton Female Seminary in Norton, Massachusetts. On April 19, 1894, she married San Antonio doctor Amos Lawson Graves. They would have two children: Amos Maverick and Laura Maverick. She and her children moved to New York and following her divorce from Amos Graves. Maverick was a talented contralto who toured and sang throughout the United States and Canada. She sang at Carnegie Hall and debuted with the Russian Symphony Orchestra in 1912. She had a wide repertoire, singing in three languages, and was especially popular among New York and Texas concert goers. Maverick later married Carl Hahn, a cellist, composer, and conductor, and the two toured and performed together during the 1910s. They would later divorce. They had no children.
The Maverick name is synonymous with the Texas Revolution and early Texas history. Laura Wise Maverick would continue to enhance that name through her artistic contributions. In 1956, she passed away at the age of 77 and is buried in Mission Burial Park South in San Antonio.
More information about Laura Wise Maverick can be found in the Laura Wise Maverick papers at the Texas Collection.
The League of Women Voters of Texas was established in 1919 as a local chapter of the National League of Women Voters (LWV). Carrie Catt Chapman proposed the National LWV to unite all the disparate organizations working for suffrage across the country. Following the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, the league continued to focus on policy issues related to women and education. Today the league remains involved in legislative solutions to challenges facing women and encourages men and women to be informed members of the electorate.
More information about the League of Women Voters of Texas can be found in the League of Women Voters of Texas collection at The Texas Collection and amidst several collections in the Baylor Collections of Political Materials.
Texas League of Women Voters, The Texas Collection
Bob Bullock Campaigns Collection, W. R. Poage Legislative Library
Sam B. Hall, Jr. Papers, W. R. Poage Legislative Library
Jack E. Hightower Papers, W. R. Poage Legislative Library
Materials found within the Bob Bullock Campaigns collection
Box 18. Folder 30. League of Women Voters of Texas Education Fund, 1990
Materials found within the Sam B. Hall, Jr. papers
Box 275. Folder 11. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1979
Box I. Folder 6. Events, League of Women Voters, March 2, 1982
Materials found within the Jack E. Hightower papers
Box 18. Folder 30. League of Women Voters of Texas Education Fund, 199
Box 48. Folder 9. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 59th Legislature, Subject Files, League of Women Voters, 1963-1964
Box 163. Folder 5. 63rd Legislature, Subject Files, League of Women Voters, 1973-1974
Related Sites
The League of Women Voters was founded on February 14, 1920. The League, originally created to be an auxiliary to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, desires to encourage the informed and active participation of citizens in their government and influence public policy through education and advocacy. It remains a strong grassroots organization today, non-partisan and active in the democracy of community and country. The League is organized on the national, state, and local level, with the Waco Area being one of the approximately 30 chapters in Texas.
More information about the League of Women Voters Waco Area can be found in the League of Women Voters Waco Area records at The Texas Collection.
The Texas Collection and University Archives
Related Collections
Following the death of their father, Charles Otto Leuschner, in 1917, Esther and Martha Leuschner moved from Otto, Texas, with their mother and three siblings to a house at 1313 South Seventh Street in Waco, Texas. Eventually, Esther and Martha Leuschner owned and resided in the last non-student, non-faculty house on Baylor University's campus. The sisters, who graduated from the university in 1921, are remembered for opening their home to Baylor students for recreation and entertainment, and for their involvement at Seventh and James Baptist Church. Esther Leuschner came back to Baylor in the late 1920s, where she worked in the registrar's office. Martha Leuschner taught mathematics at Waco High School until her retirement in 1968. The Leuschner sisters willed their home on South Seventh Street to Baylor University when they died in 1983 and 1988, respectively.
More information about Esther and Martha Leuschner can be found in the Esther and Martha Leuschner papers at The Texas Collection and in Martha Leuschner's oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History.
Esther and Martha Leuschner papers, The Texas Collection
Martha Louise Leuschner interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Lidija Doronina-Lasmane was born in 1925 in Latvia and trained to become a nurse during World War II. After the war, the Soviets imprisoned her and her family for their resistance to the annexation of Latvia. Doronina-Lasmane was deported and imprisoned from 1948 until after Stalin’s death when she was allowed to return to Latvia. During her time in detention, Doronina-Lasmane developed tuberculosis, a condition that weakened her for the rest of her life.
In August 1970, Doronina-Lasmane was arrested and imprisoned for possession of illegal literature. including samizdat works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. After her release in 1972, she actively participated in the Baptist church in Riga. Additionally, she assisted former prisoners returning to Latvia from labor camps in the eastern USSR.
On January 6, 1983, Doronina-Lasmane was arrested again after her house in Kegums was searched, and the KGB discovered religious books, samizdat articles, and human rights documents. In August, she was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in Gulag Barashevo followed by three years internal exile. Despite her age and poor health, the dissident joined other female prisoners in hunger strikes to protest the harsh treatment of Irina Ratushinskaya. Consequently, she spent time in solitary confinement. She was also denied money to make purchases at the camp store and could not receive mail.
On March 6, 1984, in a letter smuggled out of the labor camp, Lidija Doronina-Lasmane renounced her Soviet citizenship on the grounds that she was unable to defend herself against libelous charges and was not granted the rights guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Despite her family’s efforts to convince the Soviet government to allow her to emigrate to Sweden, she served most of her sentence before being pardoned on December 25, 1986, by decree of the Supreme Soviet.
Since then, Lidija Doronina-Lasmane has resided in Riga, Latvia, and in 2018, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
More information about Lidija Doronina-Lasmane can be found in the Registered Baptists files at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society. Registered Baptists Box 1 Folder 12
Related Collections
Bibliography
Abola, Zinta. “Lettland.” Lidija Doroņina-Lasmane - Dissidenten.eu - Biografisches Lexikon, Aug. 2017, https://www.dissidenten.eu/laender/lettland/biografien/lidija-doronina-lasmane/.
Margrette "Peggy" Zuleika Grubbs Nance Lynch was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1918. She earned a B.S. from the University of Texas and an M.F.A. from Southern Methodist University. She held a teaching certification from the State of Texas throughout her life and occasionally taught speech at UT. She wrote or co-edited more than 20 volumes of poetry and her work received national and international acclaim. Grubbs and her husband founded Poetry in the Arts, Inc. in 1983 as a collaborative creative effort in Austin to encourage those supporting literature in the community. In 1991, the government of Malta knighted her as a Dame of Grace. She was named a Poet Laureate International in 2005 and appointed permanent Vice President of the United Poets Laureate International. She died on March 6, 2012.
More information about Margrette "Peggy" Zuleika Grubbs Nance Lynch can be found in the Margrette "Peggy" Zuleika Grubbs Nance Lynch collection at The Texas Collection. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Born in Waco, Texas, on February 10, 1932, Dr. Vivienne Malone-Mayes repeatedly encountered barriers to her education because of her race, yet she consistently overcame them. She graduated from A.J. Moore High School at the age of 16 and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Fisk University in 1952 and 1954, respectively. In 1961, Baylor University denied Malone-Mayes entry into the doctoral program, so she attended the University of Texas and became only the fifth African-American woman in the nation to earn a Ph.D. in Mathematics. She was then hired by Baylor University as a mathematics professor and remained in that position until her retirement in 1994. Throughout her life, she gave back to the community by actively participating in New Hope Baptist Church and serving on the boards for several organizations including Family Counseling and Children Services. She passed away on June 9, 1995, at the age of 63.
More information about Vivienne Malone-Mayes can be found in the Vivienne Malone-Mayes papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs.
Vivienne Malone-Mayes interview, Institute for Oral History
Vivienne Malone-Mayes papers, The Texas Collection
The Marlin Community Garden Club was founded in 1923 by Ida Pauleen Linthicum, who was inspired to organize the club after reading about the Philadelphia Garden Club, the first club of its kind in the United States. She also became its first president, with Mrs. J.B. Billingsley as the first vice president. The Marlin Community Garden Club was the first gardening club in the state of Texas, and because of this, became a charter member of the Texas Garden Clubs, Inc., in 1928.
By the 1950s, the club had expanded to include 175 members organized into smaller clubs around the city. During the club’s early years, many of the club’s traditional activities began, including the annual flower show that started in 1927. The club also hosted educational lectures focusing on a variety of different gardening topics, including garden design, floral arrangements, and botanical histories. The club worked to serve the community of Marlin by engaging in civic beautification projects of local highways, schools, and hospitals. The Marlin Community Garden Club has enjoyed a long history in the city, celebrating their ninety-fifth anniversary in 2018.
More information about Marlin Community Garden Club can be found in the Marlin Community Garden Club records at The Texas Collection.
The Texas Collection and University Archives
Related Collections
Sandra Trenwith Hancock Martin was born to Hugh Trenwith Hancock and Rose Alice Todd on August 7, 1940, in Washington, D.C. She attended the Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, and graduated from Lamar High School. In 1958, Martin began her freshman year at Baylor University as a theater arts major with a concentration in drama. Following a year and half of education at Baylor, Sandra transferred to her father's alma mater, William and Mary College in Virginia, where she received her B.A. in Spanish in 1962. Following her college graduation, Martin went on to receive her M.A.T. in Spanish from the University of Florida. She moved to New Jersey and became a teacher of A.P. Spanish at the high school level. After thirty years, Martin retired as a high school educator.
Martin took a position as Adjunct Professor of Spanish and First Year Seminar in the School of Humanities and Global Studies at the Ramapo College of New Jersey. Sandra Trenwith Hancock Martin married John David Martin, a physicist originally from Alexandria, Virginia, after their meeting at William and Mary College. The couple have two children, Andrew Thomas Martin and Todd David Martin.
Mary McCauley Maxwell was born in Moody, Texas, on October 8, 1884. She attended Baylor Female College (now the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor), graduating in 1904. She then attended Baylor University, where she was a member of the Calliopean Literary Society and graduated in 1908. She served as the head of the History Department at Baylor Female College until she married F. O. Maxwell in 1913. The couple later had three children.
Mary McCauley Maxwell developed an interest in Judge R. E. B. Baylor, one of the founders of both of her alma maters, and in the 1930s, and she began to collect his relics. She donated the items to Baylor University at the 90th Commencement in 1935. Because of her research and contact with the Baylor family, she persuaded them to donate several valuable family relics to Baylor University as well.
Maxwell was one of the primary people working to preserve Baylor's original campus in Independence, Texas. She also persuaded the Centennial Commission to give $14,000 to Baylor for a statue of Judge R. E. B. Baylor, eventually created by Pompeo Coppini. She was invited to join the State Historical Society in 1954. Mary McCauley Maxwell died in Waco on January 31, 1963.
More information about Mary McCauley Maxwell can be found in the Mary McCauley Maxwell papers at The Texas Collection.
Mary Wilson Russell McCall, the daughter of Quincy Wilson and Dora May Williams, was born on October 7, 1919 in Chillicothe, Texas. She graduated high school in Vernon, Texas, and enrolled at Baylor University in 1936 when she was sixteen years old. While pursuing her English degree, McCall met Lloyd Russell, senior captain of the Baylor football team. The couple married in August 1937, the same year McCall became a member of the Baylor Round Table. Over the next few years, the Russells moved around the state as Lloyd coached baseball and football teams for various colleges. As McCall neared the completion of her degree from Baylor, she transferred to North Texas State Teacher's College where she finished her studies.
When Lloyd joined the Navy during World War II, McCall moved to Denton, Texas for three years and taught high school English and mathematics at North Texas State Teacher's College. Following the war, the Russells moved back to Waco where Baylor University President Pat Neff offered Lloyd a position as the Department Chair of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. In 1965, McCall earned her Master of Science degree from Baylor with certification in guidance and counseling. She then worked as a teacher and guidance counselor in the Waco Independent School District. In 1968, Lloyd passed away from a heart attack.
On Christmas 1970, Mary married Abner Vernon McCall, President of Baylor University. As the First Lady of Baylor, McCall was charged with designing and overseeing construction of the President's home on campus. McCall remained active throughout her time at the university. She was a charter member of the President's Club and founding chair of the Baylor Round Table Scholarship Committee. McCall was active in the Waco community as well. She was a Sunday School teacher and trustee for the First Baptist Church of Waco and was a member of the Historic Waco Foundation and the Brazos Forum. McCall passed away on November 13, 2014, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Mary Wilson Russell McCall can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Mary Wilson Russell McCall interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Find a Grave, Inc. "Mary Wilson McCall." Memorial #138796654. Databases. Accessed 15 January 2019.
"Mary Russell McCall." Women's Network, Baylor Alumni Network. Accessed 15 January 2019.
"McCall, Mary Wilson." Waco Tribune-Herald, 16 November 2014. Accessed 15 January 2019.
Dorthy LaVern McCarthy was born in Gilmer, Texas, and later moved to Wichita Falls, Texas. She began writing poetry at age ten, and since then, her poetry has won more than five hundred state awards and twenty-five national awards. She has written five books and has also been published in numerous poetry publications, state anthologies, and newspaper columns.
McCarthy is a member of the Poetry Society of Texas, Poetry Society of Oklahoma, Austin Poetry Society, Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, and League of Minnesota Poets. She holds a technical degree from Draughan Training Center in Wichita Falls. McCarthy has been married twice and has eight children and stepchildren. She currently resides in Blair, Oklahoma.
More information about Dorthy LaVern McCarthy can be found in the Dorthy LaVern McCarthy papers at The Texas Collection.
Mattie Mae McKee, the daughter of Sarah Taylor McKee and John Thomas McKee, was born in Sonora, Texas, on November 26, 1938. Her uncle, Basil Halbert Taylor, employed her throughout the summers of her high school years in the Law Office of Taylor & Murray in San Antonio, instilling within McKee a love of the legal profession. After graduating from San Angelo High School in 1957, McKee earned her Associate’s degree in Business at San Angelo Junior College in 1959. She worked as a legal secretary for the firm of Kerr & Gayer where she earned her certification with the National Association of Legal Secretaries in 1966. At the time, McKee was one of twelve Certified Professional Legal Secretaries in Texas and the ninety-sixth to be certified in the nation.
In March 1968, McKee entered the realm of national politics as a congressional aide. Throughout her 21-year career in Washington, McKee worked for three U.S. Representatives and two U.S. Senators: Representative O.C. Fisher of Texas (1968-1974), Representative W. R. Poage of Texas (1974-1978), Representative Marvin Leath of Texas (1979-1980), Senator John Tower of Texas (1980-1985), and Senator John Warner of Virginia (1985-1989). Due to the significance of her positions, she met countless politicians and celebrities including George H. W. Bush, Barry Goldwater, Elizabeth Taylor, and Charlton Heston. Because Fisher and Tower were involved in the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, respectively, McKee also attended the christening ceremonies of several naval vessels and visited cadets at the military academies.
When President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower for Secretary of Defense in 1989, Tower named McKee his Confidential Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Tower's nomination failed to pass the Senate, however. Following her lengthy career as a congressional aide and Tower's unexpected defeat, McKee left Washington, D.C. and returned to San Angelo. There, she enrolled at Angelo State University, majoring in English and history. Afterwards, she worked briefly in the real estate field. She also pursued writing, co-authoring a two-volume family history, The Stories of the Taylors and Altizers: Passing It On, with her cousin, Blanche Taylor Regeon Babcock, in 2002. McKee later recounted her experiences as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C. in her 2014 book, In the Shadow of the Greats: From Texas' Square Roots to Capitol Hill's Inner Circle.
On March 15, 2018, McKee came to Baylor University and spoke as part of a panel entitled "Sharing Her Story" in which she discussed her career in the nation's capital. She is currently involved in the San Angelo Writers Club and is a member of the Standing Committee for the W. R. Poage Legislative Library. She continues to work as a legal secretary and office manager for the Charles W. King Law Firm and is an active member of Southgate Church of Christ.
More information about Mattie Mae McKee can be found in the Mattie Mae McKee papers through the Baylor Collections of Political Materials at the W. R. Poage Legislative Library.
Mattie Mae McKee papers, W. R. Poage Legislative Library
Related Collections
Marvin Leath papers
O.C. Fisher papers
W. R. Poage papers
Bibliography
Cochran, Mike. "Mattie McKee Detours Back Home After Life on Washington Fast Track." Houston Post, November 25, 1990.
Cochran, Mike. "West Texan Looks Back on Days as Washington Insider." Dallas Morning News, February 15, 1991.
Gatewood, Kandis. "Texas Asset in D.C." San Angelo Standard-Times, July 19, 1981.
McKee, Mattie Mae. In the Shadow of the Greats. Ballinger, TX: Ballinger Printing & Graphics, 2014.
Moselle Alexander McLendon was born in Waco, Texas, in 1878 to L. C. and Delix Alexander. She attended Baylor University from 1886-1889 before attending Monticello Female Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois, from 1890 to 1892. Her two sisters, Hortense and Gladys also attended the school. She married George K. McLendon of Waco on February 7, 1893. The couple had one son, Jesse S. McLendon, the next year.
McLendon was involved in numerous organizations in Waco, including the Daughters of the American Revolution, Texas Fine Arts Association, and Waco Art League. She returned to Baylor and earned her bachelor's degree in 1916. McLendon also donated the "Pied Piper" stained glass window to the Browning Room of Carroll Library in 1924. The window now resides in the Armstrong Browning Library. Moselle Alexander McLendon died in November 1961.
More information about Moselle Alexander McLendon can be found in the Moselle Alexander McLendon papers at The Texas Collection.
Annie "Ann" Laurie Vardaman Miller, the daughter of Ephraim Jeremiah Vardaman and Daisy McCullough, was born on February 17, 1926, in Dallas, Texas. After graduating from North Dallas High School, Miller enrolled at Baylor University where she earned her bachelor's degree in English in 1949. In December of that year, she married one of her former professors, Robert T. Miller, who taught political science at Baylor. The couple moved to Austin shortly thereafter. As Robert completed his doctoral studies, Ann commenced graduate studies at the University of Texas. When the Millers returned to Waco, Ann transferred and completed her master's degree in English at Baylor.
In the late 1950s, Miller started teaching part-time in the Baylor English Department, transitioning to full-time in 1961. During the 1974-1975 academic year, the Millers participated in the Far Eastern Educational Exchange Program, spending one year in Fukuoka, Japan, at the second-largest Baptist university in the world, Seinan-Gakuin University. Ann taught British literature and modern British and American poetry during the exchange.
In honor of her lifetime achievements and popularity among faculty and alumni, Miller was designated as a University Master Teacher of Literature in 1982 by Baylor President Herbert Reynolds. She was one of the first two faculty members at Baylor to be honored with the title of "master teacher." Two years later, in 1984, Miller was promoted to full professor.
A few years after Robert Miller's death, in 1998, Baylor established the Robert T. and Ann V. Miller Endowed Scholarship Fund in honor of the couple's academic contributions to the university. In 2003, Baylor awarded Miller an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. She passed away on August 12, 2006, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Ann Vardaman Miller can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Ann Vardaman Miller interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Ann Vardaman Miller interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Bibliography
Anderson, Mike. "Friends Mourn 'the Best of Old Baylor.'" Waco Tribune-Herald, 14 August 2006.
Ollie Mae Allison Moen was born in 1910 to Elbie Isle Hancock and William Patrick Allison in Osage, Texas. Her family moved to Waco in 1927, and in 1928, she met her future husband, George Moen. The pair married on May 26, 1934, and had their first son, George James Moen, on November 9, 1938. When George James, called Jim, began first grade at Provident Heights School, Ollie Mae promptly joined the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). Involvement with this organization sparked her interest in education and exposed her to the field of museum work. Her second son, Al Moen, was born on May 31, 1951. Moen began taking courses at the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio and began attending meetings of the Texas Museum Association, of which she was an early member.
Ollie Mae Moen had a passion for adapting museums for children. As a member of the Waco City Council PTA, she helped the organization open the Youth Cultural Center, which helped foster learning for the children of Waco through programming and educational materials about science, culture, and history, in 1962.
Moen retired from her position as director of the Youth Cultural Center on December 30, 1982. In 1994, in honor of her service to museum education, the Youth Cultural Center changed its name to the Ollie Mae Moen Discovery Center, which merged into the Mayborn Museum Complex at Baylor University in 2004.
More information about Ollie Mae Moen can be found in the Ollie Mae Moen papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs in our digital collections.
Born on June 11, 1912, Ruth Shick Montgomery moved with her family to Waco, Texas, in 1929. She received her first job as a reporter with the Waco News-Tribune as part of a school project and later attended Baylor University from 1930-1933; however, she transferred to Purdue after her father was relocated during the Depression and graduated in 1934. She married a businessman, Robert H. Montgomery, from Detroit in 1935 and worked for several newspapers before becoming the Washington correspondent for the New York Daily News. Montgomery quickly became a prominent writer and syndicated columnist and was the only female reporter to cover Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral. Her political reporting took her around the world.
In 1962, she focused on writing novels rather than reporting. Montgomery published three books about the time she spent in Washington D.C. working with various presidents. She also published 11 books on the supernatural and New Age movement, including her bestselling biography, A Gift of Prophecy, of known spirit medium Jeane Dixon. Ruth passed away on June 10, 2001, in Naples, Florida.
More information about Ruth Shick Montgomery can be found in the Ruth Shick Montgomery collection at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History. This Texas Collection finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Doris Wade Cummins Moody was born on March 7, 1928, in Fort Worth, Texas. She enrolled at Baylor University in the fall of 1945 and was a participant in the student-led revival movement which started in the spring of 1946. She joined the Baptist Student Union (BSU) her freshman year and became the chairman-elect her sophomore year. One of the main preachers at the revival was Jess C. Moody, whom she later married. Many local pastors were supportive of the revival, and most Baylor students participated in or attended the revival services. Doris Moody worked all four years of school in the Burleson Dining Hall and served many of President Pat Neff's meals.
The summer after Moody's freshman year (1946), Baylor students organized citywide revivals all over Texas. Moody served as the co-chairman of publicity for the revival in Fort Worth and participated in twelve other revivals that summer. During the summer of 1947, she was a member of a youth revival team and acted as a seminar leader and fellowship director. During the school year, Doris Moody worked on The Shield magazine at Baylor. She was also an assistant editor for a radio program called "Where He Leads" that was broadcast from Waco Hall.
Moody graduated in 1949, returned to Baylor University in the early 1950s with her husband, and commenced work on her master's degree in sociology. After their time at Baylor, the Moodys began pastoring a church as well as writing and producing Christian television programs.
As of 1982, Moody had been a pastor's wife for 33 years in 3 different churches across the country, working with young people, single adults, and married couples. She taught a large Bible class in California, started a single adult ministry at their church in Florida, and created a youth program for a church in Kentucky. She and her husband also established Palm Beach Atlantic College in 1968 while they lived in southern Florida. Moody passed away on February 12, 2013.
More information about Doris Wade Cummins Moody can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Doris Wade Cummins Moody interview, Institute for Oral History
Gladys Moseley was born in 1925 and grew up in Bivins, Texas. In her close-knit, Christian home, her parents raised seven children and made sure each went to college. The children's preparation for college started early. If they did not have assigned homework in the evenings after school, her parents would teach the children mathematics or spelling or would give them a book to read.
Moseley remembered the lack of supplies at her schools during and after segregation. Her school received hand-me-down books and equipment from the white school, lacked libraries or lunchrooms, and were not allocated a fair amount of money with which to operate. However, her teachers ensured that their students were given the best education possible. During her grade-school years, Moseley was involved in the Baptist's Young People's Union (BYPU), piano lessons, and her church choir.
After Moseley graduated high school, she enrolled in Prairie View A&M and earned a degree in business education. She later earned a master's degree in elementary education. She received a library science certification from Baylor University and completed coursework at East Texas State University and North Texas State University.
When Moseley finished her schooling, she married Gregory Swanson, whom she had first met in Prairie View. The couple moved to Mexia, Texas and had one daughter, Denise. Moseley taught business-related courses at Dunbar High School in Mexia until she earned her master's degree and was hired as an elementary teacher in Waco in 1962. She became a librarian shortly thereafter and spent the remainder of her career working in various Waco-area schools.
Throughout much of her working and retired years, Moseley attended New Hope Baptist Church in Waco. In addition to serving as a Rape Crisis Center counselor for 14 years, Moseley was active in several organizations including the Foundation of Truth, The Links Incorporated, the Prairie View A&M Alumnae Chapter, the Gamma Upsilon chapter of Phi Delta Kappa, and the Waco chapter of Jack and Jill of America.
More information about Gladys Moseley can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Born February 8, 1897, Katie Murray was a native of North Carolina. She graduated from the Women’s Missionary Union Training School in Louisville, Kentucky, and served as a Southern Baptist missionary to China and Taiwan from 1922 until her retirement in 1962. Murray provided relief aid to refugees during the Sino-Japanese War and had to flee the country several times due to conflicts. Her papers contain extensive information about her work as a missionary and the reception of Christianity by the Chinese people. They also document the obstacles she faced in the aftermath of World War II and the Communist takeover of the country. Murray served her last few years in Taiwan before returning to the United States. She died on October 22, 1982, and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in North Carolina.
More information about Katie Murray can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the Katie Murray papers at The Texas Collection. This Texas Collection finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Katie Murray interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
East Carolina University letter
Wu, Xiaoxin, ed. Christianity in China: A Scholars Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Elisabet Ney was born on November 26, 1833, in Westphalia (present-day Germany). She moved to Berlin at the age of 17 to study art, a rare occurrence for a young woman at that time. She later relocated to Munich to continue her art education under a famous sculptor, Christian Rauch. Ney gained a reputation as a well-known sculptor in her own right by creating busts of influential military, political, and intellectual figures from across Europe. In 1863, she married Edmund Montgomery, but continued to use her maiden name for the rest of her life. The couple had two children, only one of whom lived to adulthood. The family moved to the United States in 1870 and eventually settled near Hempstead, Texas. She sculpted the statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston that are now on display at the Texas State Capitol. Ney also carved a statue of Albert Sidney Johnston and busts of several governors. Following her death on June 29, 1907, the Texas Fine Arts Association was established in Ney's honor. Her studio in Austin remains intact today, serving as a museum for her artwork.
More information about Elisabet Ney can be found in the Ney-Montgomery papers at The Texas Collection.
Mary Frances Hodges Nichols was born in Junction, Texas, on October 13, 1902. In 1928, while working in Austin as a teacher, she met Buford Nichols just after his ordination as a Baptist minister. The couple married on February 15, 1931.
By 1937 the couple, now with two children, Buford Lee Jr, and John, were appointed by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to become missionaries in China. The couple left for Shanghai that same year. Buford and Mary Frances went to Peking and spend their time learning the language. By 1939, the family moved to the interior city of Kaifeng. Due to the dangers of World War II, the family separated in 1940, with Buford remaining in China until 1941, while Mary Frances took the family back to the states. After Buford's return, the family moved to Ft. Worth, where the couple had their third child, David. The family separated once again in 1943 when Buford decided to return to China to assist Baptist missionaries in the area of “Free China,” where the Chinese government had retreated from the Japanese invasion. There, Buford worked for the Chinese Nationalist Government, becoming close friends with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife. Mary Frances and the children, however, remained in Junction and San Marcos, Texas. Buford returned to America in 1945, and the whole family then moved back to China, arriving in Shanghai on the last day of 1946. There, Buford and Mary Frances assisted the local seminary and preached at the Old North Gate First Baptist Church of Shanghai. The family left China to escape Communist pressures in July 1950, returning to Waco, Texas. There, while Buford taught at Baylor University, the family was asked to return to the mission field, this time to Indonesia.
Buford and Mary Frances arrived in Jakarta, Java, Indonesia on November 14, 1952, and then moved to the city of Bandung for language studies. There, they assisted in organizing Baptist churches and preaching. Later, in October 1954, the couple helped found a Baptist seminary in the Javanese city of Semarang, later known as the Seminari Theologia Baptis di Indonesia. Buford and Mary Frances continued to preach and teach in Indonesia, and witnessed the political turmoil that engulfed the nation in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. They continued their missionary work until 1970’s, when the family was instructed by the Foreign Mission Board to return from the field. Before returning to the United States, however, the family worked in two more missions; first in the South American nation of Surinam from 1972-1973, and in Macao from 1973-1975.
Finally, after close to forty years as missionaries, the family returned to Waco, Texas, in 1975. They moved one last time to Houston in 1976, where the couple lived until their deaths, with Mary Frances passing away on July 1, 1982, and Buford on June 29, 1990.
More information about Mary Frances Nichols can be found in the Buford L. and Mary Frances Nichols papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs in our digital collections.
Gussie Oscar, the daughter of German immigrant Rudolph Oscar and Ella Lavine, was born and raised in Calvert, Texas. The Oscars built and owned the Casimir's Opera House and Grand Hotel in Calvert, a foreshadowing of the life Gussie would pursue.
Although the Oscars were Jewish, Gussie was educated in an Austin convent where she studied music. She subsequently moved to Waco and played piano for the Majestic Theater. Despite being in a male-dominated field at the time, Oscar excelled in the musical and theatrical arenas. She conducted the first all-female orchestra in Waco before being named the manager of the Auditorium Theater in 1915. At times, Oscar struggled with the local censor board and was arrested twice for opening the theater on a Sunday. Due to Oscar’s arrests and some closures forced by the city, touring companies began boycotting shows in Waco. The Auditorium closed in 1928.
Not to be dismayed, Oscar continued booking programs at the Town Hall, Waco Hall, and the Cotton Palace Coliseum. Over the course of her career, she was responsible for bringing many national celebrities to Waco including Eleanor Roosevelt, Will Rogers, William Jennings Bryan, Harry Houdini, the Marx Brothers, John Philip Sousa, Anna Pavlova, and Geraldine Ferrar. Oscar passed away on February 7, 1950, and is buried in the Hebrew Rest Cemetery in Waco.
More information about Gussie Oscar can be found in the Gussie Oscar collection at The Texas Collection.
Gussie Oscar Papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
McClintock, Faye. "Oscar, Gussie." The Handbook of Waco and McLennan County Texas. Edited by Dayton Kelley. Waco, TX: Texian Press, 1972.
Miller, Sarah. "Waco Auditorium." Waco History. Accessed October 22, 2018.
Porter, Catherine Rife. The Waco Auditorium and Gussie Oscar, 1899-1928. Master's thesis, Baylor University, 1980.
Wallace, Patricia Ward. A Spirit So Rare: A History of the Women of Waco. Austin, TX: Nortex Press, 1984.
Wallace, Patricia Ward. "Oscar, Gussie." Handbook of Texas Online. Accessed October 22, 2018.
Born in Waco on November 21, 1894, Esse Forrester O'Brien attended Waco High School and received a fine arts diploma from Baylor University in 1913. She completed some postgraduate work in art at both Baylor and the Arts Student League in New York City under George Bridgman. In 1917, she married John L. O'Brien and they had one son. O'Brien continued studying art until she had to give it up due to paint poisoning, at which point she began to write about art and compose poetry. She earned a B.A. from Baylor in 1934 and published her first work, Art and Artists of Texas, the following year. O'Brien was the first author to attempt a systematic survey of art in Texas during the 19th and 20th centuries. She also wrote several children's books and lectured on writing for a juvenile audience at Texas colleges. Her writing won numerous awards and she was a member of multiple organizations including the Poetry Society of Texas and the Texas Folklore Society. O'Brien passed away on May 21, 1975, near Waco.
More information about Esse Forrester O'Brien can be found in the Esse Forrester O'Brien papers at The Texas Collection.
Olga Kiselyova was a Hare Krishna believer who was imprisoned for her faith. What made her case unique and often cited as evidence of the dramatic injustice inflicted by Soviet Union authorities on the Hare Krishna believers was that she was imprisoned while pregnant.
In August of 1983, Kiselyova was arrested and seems to have spent the following six months in prison. Although the government independently confirmed that she was pregnant, she received essentially the same treatment as other prisoners. The lack of concern for the safety of her unborn child was evident because she was abused by inmates toward the end of her pregnancy.
Kiselyova’s trial took place during the first two months of 1984. Despite her delivery date being around near, officials refused to postpone the hearing. Ultimately, Kiselyova was “sentenced to 4 years in a corrective labour camp.” In an interview years later, Kiselyova stated, “I understand that the main charge against me was because of my contact with Hare Krishna devotees in the West.”
At the end of February, only a few weeks after her trial, Kiselyova gave birth to a child she named Marika. Four months later, Kiselyova began her sentence where she was separated from her daughter and prevented from seeing her for nearly the entire day. The area where her daughter and other infants lived was unsuitable due to impure air that allowed for illness to spread easily. Marika died from lung disease less than a year after her birth. Kiselyova was only given a few minutes to see her, and she was not allowed to attend the funeral.
Kiselyova was required to continue in the labour camp for another year before being "given a conditional release...with forced labour.” Ultimately, she “was conditionally released from her imprisonment two years early because of publicity and pressure from abroad.”
More information about Olga Kiselyova can be found in the Soviet Union Hare Krishna Subject Files in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Alice June Williams Osborne, the daughter of Baptist minister Luther Wise Williams and Lucile Sims Williams, was born in Marvell, Arkansas on June 7, 1931. She graduated from Eldorado High School in 1949 and earned her undergraduate degree from Ouachita Baptist College in 1953. On February 15, 1953, she married Harold Osborne, a fellow alum of Ouachita Baptist College and a long-tenured Baylor University sociology professor. The couple had three sons: Mike, Van, and Sam.
Upon the Osbornes' arrival at Baylor University in 1958, June joined the Baylor Round Table. She remained active in the group for several years and served as the organization’s president during the 1966-1967 academic year.
After discovering her passion for bird-watching, Osborne became a renowned ornithologist and wrote several articles and books on the topic. She penned a column entitled "Wingin' It" for the Waco Citizen and later for the Waco Tribune-Herald and contributed birding articles to the Baylor Line, Wild Bird Magazine, and Bird Watcher's Digest. She also authored four books: Birder's Guide to Concan, Texas (1991), The Cardinal (1992), The Ruby-Throated Hummingbird (1998), and I'd Rather Be Birding (2004). In addition to her writing career, Osborne also taught courses for Baylor's School of Continuing Education and McLennan Community College, conducted bird-watching tours, and communicated basic principles of ornithology to senior citizens through Baylor University's Elderhostel program. She passed away on August 15, 2007.
More information about June Osborne can be found at the Institute for Oral History and in the June Osborne papers at The Texas Collection. The finding aid at The Texas Collection is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
June Williams Osborne interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Interview of June Williams Osborne by Lois E. Myers. December 9, 2003. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
"June Osborne." Waco Tribune-Herald. 2007 August 17.
Osborne, June. I'd Rather Be Birding. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
Dr. Lula Pace was born in Mississippi in 1868, but her family moved to Central Texas soon afterwards. She attended Baylor Female College in Belton and graduated with a B.S. in 1890. She taught in the Temple area during the school year and worked on her master's degree at the University of Chicago during the summers. Pace earned her M.A. in 1902, and Baylor University hired her as an Assistant Professor of Biology the next year. At the time, she was one of only five female professors on Baylor's campus. She continued to take classes at the University of Chicago and completed her Ph.D. in 1907, becoming the first female professor at Baylor to hold a doctoral degree. The same year, she became the chair of the Department of Botany and Geology, a position she held until her death. Her classes were popular with students, particularly because of the various field trips she took. During her time at Baylor, Pace faced criticism from fundamentalists like J. Frank Norris for teaching evolution but received support from the Waco community and Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks. Dr. Lula Pace died in Waco in 1925.
More information about Lula Pace can be found in the Lula Pace collection at The Texas Collection.
Joyce Hornaday Packard, the daughter of John Wesley and Nora Wright Hornaday, was born on June 21, 1925, in Fordyce, Arkansas. She enrolled in Baylor University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history and education in 1952. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Baylor Round Table and was appointed as the Assistant Dean of Women. She married Robert G. Packard, a Baylor physics professor, on April 15, 1954, with Baylor President W.R. White presiding over the ceremony.
After brief stints as a teacher in Stockton, California, and Clinton, Mississippi, Packard returned to Waco, earned her Master of Science in counseling (1957), and served as Acting Dean of Women at Baylor. In the early 1960's, Hornaday left Baylor to teach American history and government at Richfield High School in Waco for three years before ultimately transitioning to the role of school counselor, a position she held for nearly twenty years.
Packard was active in several local organizations including the Baylor Round Table (for which she served as Historian and President), the Brazos Forum, Historic Waco Foundation, Brazos Higher Education, the Mayborn Museum, and Columbus Avenue Baptist Church. Joyce and Bob Packard were awarded the Legendary Mentor Award by Baylor University in 2014 in recognition of their years of teaching and service.
More information about Joyce Hornaday Packard can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Joyce Hornaday Packard interview, Institute for Oral History
Robert G. Packard and Joyce Hornaday Packard interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
"Legendary Mentor Award: Joyce and Bob Packard." Baylor Magazine. Fall 2014.
"Mrs. Packard Named Acting Dean at BU." Waco Tribune-Herald. 7 December 1958.
In 1916, the Pan American Round Table movement was established by Florence Terry Griswold at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, Texas. The driving force behind the women's organization was Griswold's reaction to the Mexican Revolution and its impact on the people in Texas and Mexico, especially those fleeing Mexico. As the movement grew through Texas, into Mexico, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere, the Alliance of Pan American Round Tables was created in 1944 at the first International Convention which took place in Mexico City. All round tables operate under the understanding that the group was formed "to foster mutual understanding, knowledge, and friendship among the peoples of the Western Hemisphere."
The Pan American Round Table of Waco was founded in 1957 by Carolyn D. Cryer. State Director, Mrs. William P. (Viva) McComb, was present at the inaugural meeting and considered it one of the "largest beginning groups" in the state. The group received state and Alliance charters in 1958. The local women's group met regularly and discussed the culture and politics of the twenty-two countries in North, Central, and South America as well as the Caribbean. In 1981, the Waco Table hosted the state convention. Sometime between 1995 and 2019 the Waco Round Table became inactive
Cynthia Ann Parker, born circa 1825, came to Texas with other members of her family in 1833. They settled near Groesbeck, Texas, building a wooden fort and farming the surrounding land. In 1836, Parker's Fort was attacked by a Native American force of several hundred warriors, long understood by eyewitnesses to be predominantly Comanche. Five Parker family members were killed and five others were captured in the attack, including Cynthia Ann Parker. Just twelve or thirteen when taken captive, she was adopted into the tribe and became thoroughly Comanche. She became the wife of Peta Nocona, a noted leader in the Naconi band of the Comanche. They had three children, two boys and a girl: Quanah, Pecos, and Topsannah. Peta Nocona was probably killed in the Battle of the Pease River in 1860. Parker was captured by Texas Rangers in this battle and was identified as the Cynthia Ann Parker who had been with the Comanche for almost 25 years. Though she returned to Texan society, Parker never recovered from her capture and made several attempts to escape back to her life on the plains. She died in 1870, and was originally buried in Fosterville Cemetery, Anderson County, but was reinterred in the Post Oak Mission Cemetery near Cache, Oklahoma, in 1910. Parker was reburied a final time in 1957 in the Fort Sill Post Cemetery, Lawton, Oklahoma. While Baylor University does not own any documents originally written by Cynthia Ann Parker, there are quite a number of collections at The Texas Collection that document her life.
More information about Cynthia Ann Parker can be found in the Jack and Gloria Parker Selden collection at The Texas Collection.
Jack and Gloria Parker Selden collection, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Parker Family/Fort Parker collection, The Texas Collection
Parker-Anglin Family collection, The Texas Collection
Quanah Parker Family papers, The Texas Collection
Barnard-Lane papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
"Documenting the Parker Family Story at The Texas Collection, Part 1"
"Documenting the Parker Family Story at The Texas Collection, Part 2"
"Documenting the Parker Family Story at The Texas Collection, Part 3"
Born in 1823, Laura Davis Perry was the youngest of three daughters in the Davis family. Prior to 1860, she married Jesse Perry and the couple had four children. Her collection contains letters addressed to Laura from various family members and provides insight into the daily life of upper-class whites during Reconstruction in Texas.
More information about Laura Davis Perry can be found in the Laura Perry papers at The Texas Collection.
Garcenina (Tina) Margarita Piazza was born in Mussomuli, Sicily, on March 10, 1903. Shortly thereafter, in 1906, her family moved to Waco, Texas. Although they attended a Catholic church in Waco, Piazza would sneak over to the nearby Baptist church across from their home to attend Sunday School. She discovered her love for singing through the hymns she learned there and continued to develop her voice by singing at the Waco Rotary Club, the Kiwanis organization, the Lion's Club, and alongside the silent-film-theater orchestra at the Hippodrome. After graduating high school in 1920, Piazza studied for four years at the Euterpean Club, where she took lessons from Baylor University professors in piano, voice, violin, sight-reading, sight-singing, and French.
Piazza moved to New York City in 1925 and enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music. After she graduated from Juilliard in 1929, she was hired to sing in multiple operas throughout New York City, including the New York Opera Comique. She took dancing and acting lessons and studied with opera coaches during this time. In 1937, she travelled to Pesaro, Italy where she and a young man named Stanley Jones took voice lessons from Arturo Melocchi, a renowned voice teacher. The three developed close friendships, and Piazza studied with Melocchi until 1940 when she and Stanley Jones married.
Jones developed cancer soon after their marriage and passed away in 1944. Piazza worked in a hospital while her husband was ill and was involved in many clinics, including hematology, pulmonary, and premature baby research.
Piazza returned to Waco in 1951 and started teaching at Baylor University in 1954. Piazza desired to become a more effective teacher, so in 1957, she visited her former teacher, Arturo Melocchi, in Pesaro and studied his teaching methods. She came back to Baylor a few months later and resumed her teaching. Following her retirement, she gave voice lessons in her Waco home. Piazza passed away on January 28, 1978.
More information about Garcenina (Tina) Margarita Piazza can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Born in October 1887, Annie Keeling Randle and her family moved to Waco in the early 1900s and resided on North Sixth Street. She attended Central Texas College, which maintained close ties to New Hope Baptist Church, and majored in education. She expressed interest in poetry and drama and participated in productions at the college. Randle also gave dramatic readings and wrote several plays and poems of her own. On July 12, 1911, she married Sarnie Randle. After attending Baylor University's teaching classes without receiving credit, Waco Public Schools hired her to teach drama and speech. She attended Baylor in 1932, long before the university officially accepted its first African-American student. Randle continued her involvement in local clubs following her retirement and died on Christmas Day in 1984. The collection contains two of the plays she wrote.
More information about Annie Keeling Randle can be found in the Annie Keeling Randle papers at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs.
Annie Keeling Randle interview, Institute for Oral History
Annie Keeling Randle papers, The Texas Collection
For the Cry from the Well
"I Will Dream of You, Russia.
In the Accursedness of Your Victories.
In the Anguish of Your Impotence.
In the Nausea of your hangover--
Why Will Fear Break Through?
All Has Been Mourned, All Have Been Sung to Rest--
Who Will You Flinch from All of a Sudden?
Though You'll Deny It, Take Refuge in Illusion,
Put All the Blame on Those Who Have Been Killed,
I Will Still Come and Stand Before You
And Look into Your Eyes."
------ 5 July 1984, written from a Moldavian Prison Camp
Irina Ratushinskaya was born without a motherland. Her family of gentrified Poles strongly supported Polish independence. Irina's great grandfather had been killed in one of the many Polish uprisings against Russia. Eventually, her grandparents were forced to leave Poland. They settled in Odesa, Ukraine, where Irina was born on March 4, 1954.
A mischievous child, Irina’s parents constantly tried to tame her free spirit and raise her in the conventional Soviet fashion. They enrolled her in Young Pioneers, the Communist youth organization. Despite living in Ukraine, she was only permitted to speak Russian. Irina's parents were atheists and forbade her grandparents to take her to the Polish Roman Catholic Church. They did not allow Irina's grandmother to teach her Polish. Her parents' efforts left Irina disenfranchised and not truly Russian, Polish, or Ukrainian. Irina would later write that this forced Russification of her childhood left her without a motherland and "broke the last threads which connected me to my family's past."
In her teenage years, Irina demonstrated an aptitude for poetry and was an avid reader. She first confronted Communism at the University of Odessa where Communist ideology effectively permeated the humanities, and students became little more than expert propaganda writers. Therefore, the young woman joined the physics department to study natural science. Her discreet decision marked one of her first acts of outward defiance towards Soviet policy.
Irina enjoyed the university experience, but she gradually devoted more of her leisure time to writing, particularly poetry. The KGB actively recruited her as early as 1972 when she refused to be an informer. Irina graduated in 1976, and the KGB contacted her again and asked her to be on the school's examination committee for entering candidates. They wanted her to identify Jewish applicants and deliberately score them lower. Her refusal led her to be demoted and eventually forced out of her job. The KGB made employment difficult, so she began cleaning apartments and repairing small appliances.
In 1979, she married Igor Gerashchenko and moved to Kiev. Irina and Igor repeatedly applied for passports to live abroad. Irina believed this was the only way she could obtain employment as a physicist. However, the couple's application was denied. Frustrated, Irina increasingly turned to stubbornly honest poetry. Her university friend Ilya Nykin later wrote, "She wouldn't relinquish this honesty even when writing about her country."
Although not political in nature, her poems were a weapon in the fight for human expression. They began to appear in underground newspapers. When the KGB obtained one of these periodicals, Irina Ratushinskaya was on a collision course with the government. On September 17, 1982, she was arrested on charges of "agitation carried on for subverting or weakening the Soviet regime." She was sentenced six months later to seven years in a prison camp followed by five years of internal exile. A day after she turned 29, Irina was deported to Barashevo, a "strict regime" camp outside of Moscow.
Ratushinskaya served four years but was released in October 1986, as a sign of good faith before the Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Iceland. She had spent nearly a year in solitary confinement and survived countless freezing nights, beatings, and hunger strikes in defense of human rights. Prison severely depleted her health. After her release, Irina was permitted to travel to England for medical treatment. She arrived there as a celebrity. Irina's poetry and dedication to human rights had gained the attention of the West. Her poems had been smuggled out of prison on rolled-up cigarette paper and were widely read in internationally circulated Samizdat journals and collectively published under the title No, I'm Not Afraid. Eventually, her popularity afforded an offer to become Northwestern University's Poet-in-Residence. When she moved to the United States, the Soviet government revoked her citizenship.
Irina and Igor had twin boys in 1993 and longed to raise them in Russia. Finally, in 1998 her Russian citizenship was restored, and the family settled in Moscow. Irina lived a comfortable life, dying at age 63 in July 2017 from cancer. By then the world had largely forgotten her tremendous sacrifice. However, she still lives as the poet warrior who dared to stand before the Soviet authorities, look into their eyes, and refuse to back down.
More information about Irina Ratushinskaya can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Grey is the Colour of Hope
No, I'm Not Afraid
Pencil Letter
Bibliography
Martha Portis Renfro, the daughter of Allan Joseph and Gertrude Laura Portis, was born in Calvert, Texas on January 16, 1913. Her paternal grandparents and father had been sharecroppers. This livelihood, supplemented by her parents’ other jobs, gave Martha and her siblings the opportunity to pursue an education. Renfro graduated as salutatorian of her class in 1931, then went on to attend Prairie View A&M College. While earning her degree, Renfro simultaneously taught at Port Sullivan School in Milam County. She married Staff Sergeant William Wilbert Renfro on May 30, 1942, but was a "war widow" for the duration of World War II.
Upon completing her degree in 1945, Renfro started teaching home economics, the precursor to family and consumer science, at Rhoads High School in Daingerfield, Texas. She then worked as a Home Demonstration Agent for the Texas Extension Service before returning to the education field. In Rockdale, Texas, Renfro established the first high school home economics department. She redoubled her efforts by designing a similar department in Washington Carver High School in La Vega where she worked from 1956-1971.
Renfro then transitioned to Director of the Blue Triangle Young Women's Christian Association in East Waco where she started the first licensed daycare and created programming for summer camps and adult education. She served in this position from 1971 to 1986.
Renfro was also an active member and Sunday school teacher at New Hope Baptist Church in Waco and, like her father, was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She passed away on August 14, 2006, at the age of 93, and is interred in Waco Memorial Park.
More information about Martha Renfro can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Martha Renfro interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Find A Grave, Inc. "Martha P. Renfro." Memorial #95845793. Databases. Accessed September 24, 2018.
Faye Elaine Wellborn Robbins was born on April 7, 1928, in Gladewater, Texas. She enrolled at Baylor University in the fall of 1945. During her years as an undergraduate student, she double-majored in drama and journalism and took additional coursework at the seminary. Robbins joined the Baptist Student Union council as well as her dorm council, served as a class officer, and sang in the Baylor Religious Hour (BRH) Choir.
Robbins was equally as involved in Baylor's student-led revival movement during her student years. She worked in youth revivals and vacation Bible schools across Texas during the summers of 1946-1948. At the Ninth Street Mission, a branch of Waco's Seventh and James Baptist Church that ministered to the surrounding community, Robbins taught Sunday school classes. Seventh and James Baptist Church hosted the Baptist Student Union (BSU) convention during her time at Baylor and was instrumental in encouraging racial unity among local Baptist churches in the Waco area.
Robbins graduated from Baylor University in 1949 with a double major in English and history and a minor in religion. After graduation, she moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where she helped organize three new Baptist Student Unions. After a few years, she returned to Baylor where she took coursework towards a master's degree in history and worked as the executive secretary for the Baptist Student Union director.
In 1955, Robbins completed her master's thesis at Ouachita Baptist College while she worked as an assistant to the school's president. Then, in 1956, she moved back to Baylor and finished her master's degree. She began her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt and completed her residency in European history. Robbins married her husband during this time and started a family.
Robbins temporarily placed her education on hold and taught at the University of Arkansas while her husband coached for the university and worked on his doctorate. Following her husband's suggestion, Robbins later enrolled in the University of Arkansas and finished her Ph.D. in American history.
During retirement, Robbins wrote for multiple periodicals in her hometown of Gladewater, Texas.
More information about Faye Wellborn Robbins can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Faye Elaine Wellborn Robbins interview, Institute for Oral History
Mary Louisa Walker Roberts was born on June 2, 1835, in Sadsbury Township, Pennsylvania. She was about to graduate from Baltimore Female College when the Civil War broke out and, although a Northerner, she sympathized with the South's cause and crossed the line into Richmond to volunteer for the Confederacy. The new government assigned her as a nurse at Howard's Grove Hospital where she served for four years. Towards the end of the war, as the need for supplies became increasingly desperate, Roberts traveled to Canada to raise money for medicine and bandages. The task was not for the faint of heart as her boat was shipwrecked, the supplies had to be transported by sled over the frozen St. Lawrence River, and the Union tightened the blockade on Southern ports. She painted the ship white in an attempt to look like a pleasure yacht and successfully broke through the Union blockade at Galveston.
After the war, Roberts returned to Baltimore to teach and was reacquainted with John Coleman Roberts. John served in the Confederacy as part of Hood's Texas Brigade and lost an arm at the Battle of Gaines Mill in Virginia, after which Mary nursed him back to health. The two began a lengthy courtship and eventually were married in 1869. The Roberts moved to Texas and settled near Bremond, where the family came to play a major role in the development of Robertson County. They were influential in bringing Polish families to settle in the region and she served as the godmother for several Polish children born in the area. The couple had one son who survived to adulthood. Roberts died in Texas on February 2, 1911.
More information about Mary Louisa Walker Roberts can be found in the John Coleman and Mary Louisa Walker Roberts papers. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Mary Allie Barton Robinson was born on December 29, 1928, in Marfa, Texas, to Frank and Thelma Mitchell Barton. In 1950, she graduated from Baylor University with a degree in English and married Baylor Law School graduate Thomas Payne Robinson, Jr. They moved to Eldorado where Robinson was active in her church and community. A speaker and writer, she was a 64-year member of First Baptist Church, where she taught Sunday School, was president of Woman’s Missionary Union, and chaired numerous committees. She served on the Boards of Baptist Memorials Ministries in San Angelo and Paisano Baptist Encampment, a cowboy camp meeting co-founded by her grandparents, and was named Eldorado’s Citizen of the Year. A seasoned traveler, Robinson visited Europe many times and had also seen all 50 states.
Mary Barton Robinson passed away on May 11, 2014, and is buried in Marfa, Texas.
More information about Mary Barton Robinson can be found in the Mary Barton Robinson papers at The Texas Collection.
The Texas Collection & University Archives
Bibliography
Born in 1943, Amo Paul Bishop Roden married George Roden in October 1987. George Roden was the son of Benjamin and Lois Roden, leaders of a Seventh-Day Adventist sect known as the Branch Davidians. Amo and George were expelled from the sect's Mount Carmel property a month after their marriage following a shootout between George and Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh). Roden and Howell competed against each other for leadership of the sect following Lois Roden's death. George Roden was convicted of murder in 1989 and sent to a mental institution, after which Amo divorced him. She used her marriage to George, however, to claim leadership of the Branch Davidians after David Koresh's death at the end of the siege on the compound outside of Waco in 1993. She wrote several manuscripts and pamphlets about Branch Davidian theology and their viewpoint of the standoff with authorities that culminated in a deadly fire. She continues to fight for leadership of the Branch Davidian sect.
More information about Amo Paul Bishop Roden can be found in the [Waco] Branch Davidians: Amo Paul Bishop Roden papers at The Texas Collection.
[Waco] Branch Davidians: Amo Paul Bishop Roden papers, The Texas Collection
Anita Ward Rolf, the daughter of Mayfield and Norvia Ward, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 27, 1930. Rolf earned her bachelor's degree from Alabama College (now the University of Alabama) and her master's degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. She then moved to Miami, Florida, where she worked two years as the youth director for First Baptist Church of Miami. Afterward, Rolf relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where she became the Director of Student Activities at the Baptist Hospital School of Nursing, a position she held for four years.
During her time in Nashville, Anita met Howard L. Rolf, a Ph.D. student attending Vanderbilt University. The couple married in 1961 and later had four children: Jim, Jennifer, Stephanie, and Rhonda. In 1964, when Howard was hired as a professor for the Mathematics Department at Baylor University, the Rolf family moved to Waco, Texas.
Once in Waco, Rolf became involved in several local organizations. She was active in the First Baptist Church of Waco, serving as a teacher and mentor for youth and college-age adults. She also acted as a deacon and board member for the First Baptist Foundation. At Baylor, Rolf was heavily involved in the Baylor Round Table, fulfilling the duties of the president in the 1986-1987 academic year. In the broader community, Rolf served on the board of Midway School for seventeen years and volunteered with United Way and McLennan County Historical Association. Rolf passed away on December 30, 2014, and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
More information about Anita Ward Rolf can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Anita Ward Rolf interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Anita Ward Rolf interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Bibliography
"Rolf, Anita Ward." Waco Tribune-Herald, 4 January 2015. Accessed 16 January 2019.
Kate Sturm McCall Rotan was born in Mount Vernon, Kentucky, in 1851 before her family moved to Waco the following year. She graduated from Waco Female College in 1865 and taught in East Waco where she met Edward Rotan. The two were married in 1869 and had nine children together. Rotan played an active role in various civic and social organizations. She was the first president of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and served as a regent for the Henry Downs chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Rotan was a member of the Colonial Dames and helped establish the Gainesville State School for Girls and the first public library in Waco. She was president of the Antoinette Rotan Home for elderly women and donated the land for Riverside Drive, which connected downtown Waco with Cameron Park. She died in Waco on October 17, 1931.
More information about Kate Sturm McCall Rotan can be found in the Edward and Kate Sturm McCall Rotan papers at The Texas Collection. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Ruth Boggess Royer was born on November 13, 1908, in McLennan County, Texas. She was the granddaughter of Albert Boggess, Baylor University’s first Department of Mathematics chair. Ruth graduated from Baylor in 1931 and married Maurice Eugene Royer. She died on November 5, 1999, in Waco, Texas. She began an endowed scholarship fund that continues to award financial aid to junior and senior mathematics students attending Baylor University.
More information about Ruth Boggess Royer can be found in the Ruth Boggess Royer collection at The Texas Collection.
The Ruth Boggess Royer Collection
Bibliography
Founded in October 1887, the Rufus C. Burleson Society was one of only two Baylor University societies that allowed women into its ranks. While the original name is unknown, the society named itself after Baylor’s then-president, Dr. Rufus C. Burleson. Reaching their peak during the early twentieth century, Baylor literary societies enjoyed competition among each other. Each society provided a means for members to socialize outside of a purely academic setting. The greatest competition came during joint debates where each group would meet and debate on academic topics. Seeing a steady decline during the Roaring '20s, the Rufus C. Burleson Society merged with the Erisophian Society, following in the footsteps of the Philomathesian and Calliopean societies who merged as brother-sister organizations. Retaining the Erisophian name, the Rufus C. Burleson Society hosted its last meeting in 1925. After a brief attempt at revitalization in 1926, the group officially dissolved in 1926.
More information about the Rufus C. Burleson Society can be found in the BU Records: Rufus C. Burleson Society at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Rufus C. Burleson Society, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Born in Kerrville, Texas, on January 24, 1887, Lily McIlroy Russell moved several times with her family before settling down in Waco. She attended Baylor University and received her bachelor's degree in 1911, after which she taught English at Baylor Academy for five years. On May 14, 1917, she married Junius Brownrigg Russell and the couple had one daughter, Mary Claudia. She and her husband later divorced, and she left Baylor for a time but returned in 1926 as Assistant to the Dean of Women. Pat Neff appointed her as the Dean of Women five years later and during her time at Baylor, she also worked as the Director of Public Relations, Dean of the Union Building, chaired the Baylor Centennial Committee, and became the official University Historian in 1950 until her death in 1958. In addition to her many roles at Baylor, Russell actively engaged with the Waco community and served on various boards and committees. Although she was unable to write a history of Baylor before her death, Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain, and Sue Moore used her research to complete her dream, entitled Baylor at Independence.
More information about Lily McIlroy Russell can be found in the BU Records: Dean of the Union Building (Lily Russell), BU Records: Dean of Women (Lily Russell), and the Lily McIlroy Russell papers at The Texas Collection.
BU Records: Dean of the Union Building (Lily Russell), The Texas Collection
BU Records: Dean of Women (Lily Russell), The Texas Collection
Devout Catholic nun Nijole Sadunaite was born in Lithuania in 1938. At the time, the Soviet Union dominated the country, and believers like Sadunaite experienced harsh persecution. She became well-known for her dissident actions and was sent to the Gulag for her faith.
Lithuania forced Soviet rhetoric on children. The government required Nijole and her brother Jonas to join the school-level communist league to indoctrinate them to Communist and atheist ideas. Once old enough, Lithuanian children had to join Komsomol, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League. The organization for ages 14 to 28 was a political tool for spreading Communist teachings as well as preparing them to become members of the Communist Party.
In August 1974, Soviet authorities arrested Nijole Sadunaite in Lithuania for her dissident activities, especially circulating The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania. The Chronicle was an underground journal that recorded human rights abuses and the heroism of the Church under Soviet rule. The samizdat periodical became the longest-running, continuous underground publication in the USSR. The eleventh issue was found on her typewriter when she was arrested.
Interrogated using old Soviet methods, Sadunaite refused to provide any information that would harm the church movement or give details of her contacts in the larger church organization. Her trial began in 1975. She refused a defense lawyer because she didn't want to risk anyone's life. She knew any lawyer defending her would be persecuted. She became a national hero for the speech she made at her trial. She stated, “This is the happiest day of my life, I’m being tried for the Chronicle, which is a protest against the physical and spiritual tyranny to which my people are being subjected” (Miles, 2). She stated she had the privilege of fighting for the rights of the people and the truth and was standing on the side of Jesus Christ.
In June of 1975, Sadunaite was found guilty and sentenced to three years in the Gulag and three more of internal exile in Siberia. Because she was considered an especially dangerous criminal, officials transported her in a separate compartment with special guards. Like all believers, Sadunaite experienced continual torture, ridicule, and harassment in the Gulag.
While imprisoned, Sadunaite frequently participated in demonstrations and hunger strikes on behalf of brutally punished prisoners. She survived her own interrogations and punishments but barely stayed alive. Authorities knew her case was closely watched by Lithuanians in the West who would be outraged if she died. After three years in the Gulag, she spent her exile as a practical nurse in a lumbering town in Siberia.
When Sadunaite completed her sentence in 1980, Soviet officials continued to harass and threaten her. They warned that if she continued her activities or wrote about her experiences, she would be forced back to Siberia. Nevertheless, the nun wrote about the events that led to her imprisonment, her experiences in the Gulag, and her time during the Siberian exile. After she went into hiding because of the threats, authorities harassed her brother, taking him to a psychiatric hospital and giving fake diagnoses to keep him in the facility. Sadunaite hid for five years before being briefly detained in April of 1987. She often disguised herself with wigs when visiting friends to avoid Soviet notice.
Sadunaite’s book detailing her experiences was smuggled to the United States in three parts. A Radiance in the Gulag: The Catholic Witness of Nijole Sadunaite is likened to a Catholic version of Anne Frank’s diary. In spite of her numerous challenges and the many attempts to crush her faith, Nijole Sadunaite’s belief did not waver.
More information about Nijole Sadunaite can be found at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics and Society.
Soviet Union and Russia Roman Catholic Subject Files. Series 2: Lithuania, 1943-2002, undated. Box 3, Folders 10-11.
Related Collections
Soviet Union and Russia Roman Catholic Subject Files, 1930-2003, undated (bulk 1971-1988, undated).
Bibliography
- A Radiance in the Gulag: The Catholic Witness of Nijole Sadunaite by Nijole Sadunaite, translated by Casimir Pugevicius and Marian Skabeikis (Trinity Communications, 1987).
- Come Sono Finita ell'obiettivo del K.G.B. by Nijole Sadunaite (Movimento Russia Oriente Cristiano, 1984).
- No Greater Love: The Trial of a Christian in Soviet-occupied Lithuania (Lithuanian R. Catholic Priests’ League of America, 1975).
Annie Jenkins Sallee was born in Waco in 1877. She earned her B.S. from Baylor University in 1897 and completed her master's degree just two years later, becoming the first woman at Baylor to ever do so. She taught at Moody Bible Institute and Decatur Baptist College before attending the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago. She completed her work there in 1905 and returned to Texas where she met William Eugene Sallee, a fellow missionary to China. The two were married in 1906 in China and were some of the first missionaries to reach the interior of the country. Sallee organized an industrial school for women before the couple returned to the United States in 1930. William passed away just one year later. Annie wrote several biographies, including one of her husband, but resumed her work in China in 1935. The Japanese captured her for nine months during World War II and Sallee came back to the United States in 1943. She remained active at First Baptist Church of Waco until her death in 1967.
More information about Annie Jenkins Sallee can be found in the Annie Jenkins Sallee papers at The Texas Collection.
A native Texan, Joan Sanger received a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College and a J.D. from the University of Texas Law School. She returned to Texas on a grant to photograph Central Texas along with fellow photographer Myron Wood. The collection primarily features photographs from this trip. Sanger later became the staff attorney for Texas State Senator Chet Edwards. She began working for State Treasurer Ann Richards in 1987 as a policy advisor to Mrs. Richards and as the Ethics advisor and program director to the Treasury. She contributed to Ann Richards's gubernatorial campaign and wrote all but three of her issue papers. Sanger began her ethics training firm in 1989 and has provided services to 23 Texas state agencies including a comedy ethics tape called, "I Want to Be Good, So Bad." Sanger is an active member of the community, serving on numerous boards and committees for charities. She resides in Santa Barbara, California, Waco, Texas, and Waterloo, Ontario.
More information about Joan Sanger can be found in the Joan Sanger and Myron Wood Photographic collection at The Texas Collection.
Joan Sanger and Myron Wood Photographic collection, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Born in England on February 20, 1948, Marite Sapiets' family had immigrated from Latvia. Although her grandfathers were Latvian, her grandmothers were Russian. Thus, her upbringing prepared her to play an important role at Keston College. She spoke English and Latvian and as a child shared a room with one of her grandmothers who taught her Russian. She gained additional fluency as an exchange student at Moscow University and also learned German. She earned a master’s degree for her study of links between religious groups and the Russian intelligentsia.
Sapiets' mother was a nurse. Her father Janis, an ordained pastor in the Latvian Lutheran Church in Scotland as well as a minister in the Church of Scotland, introduced her to Keston. In the 1970s, Rev. Sapiets headed the British Broadcasting Corporation’s research and information at Bush House and edited religious programming to the Soviet Union. Michael Bourdeaux recognized him as one of the founding members of Keston, and the College often consulted him on Soviet religious affairs.
In 1975, Marite Sapiets joined the Keston staff and became the college’s principal researcher on religion in the Baltic states. She collected materials while monitoring religious rights issues in the area during the 1970s and 1980s. Although a member of the Church of England, she also felt at home in Lutheran and Orthodox churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom that belonged to the Diocese of Sourozh during the time Metropolitan Anthony was its leader. Sapiets and her associate Michelle Mapp collected materials pertaining to Metropolitan Anthony and the Diocese.
Sapiets’ articles on Catholics, Lutherans, and Seventh Day Adventists in the Soviet Union appeared in Religion in Communist Lands, Keston News Service, Frontier, British and American journals, and World Christianity: Eastern Europe (1988). She also translated materials from Russian into English, including The Unknown Homeland, samizdat detailing the life of an Orthodox priest in the Soviet Union, as well as sections of The Chronicle of Current Events, The Case of Leonid Plyushch, and From Under the Rubble. Keston published her 1990 book True Witness: The Story of Seventh Day Adventists in the Soviet Union.
Sapiets was unable to make the move to Oxford with Keston College because of health considerations and became a freelance writer, translator, and commentator on Soviet affairs. She passed away on July 5, 2012.
More information about Marite Sapiets can be found at Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society
Marite Sapiets papers, 1882-2009, undated (bulk 1975-1995, undated)
Related Collections
- Soviet Union and Russia Roman Catholic Subject Files, 1930-2003, undated (bulk 1971-1988, undated)
- Michael Bourdeaux papers, 1958-2020, undated (bulk 1965-1996, undated).
Bibliography
Dr. Dorothy Scarborough was born in Mount Carmel, Texas, on January 27, 1873, and her family moved to Waco in 1887. In 1896, she graduated with her B.A. in English from Baylor University and continued her education by earning her M.A. in English in 1899. She taught several courses in the English department at Baylor while simultaneously taking classes towards her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Scarborough eventually received her Ph.D. in 1917 from Columbia University, where she began teaching courses and became an associate professor by 1931. She maintained a lifelong interest in the study of folklore and was a member of the Texas Folklore Society, the American Folk Song Society, and the American Folklore Society. Scarborough was also a prolific author and published collections of poetry and folk songs, monographs, and short stories before her death on November 7, 1935.
More information about Dorothy Scarborough can be found in the Dorothy Scarborough papers at The Texas Collection.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Texas Baptist Memorial Sanitorium (TBMS) sought properly trained nurses to help cure those suffering from tuberculosis. In an effort to provide well-trained caretakers for this institution, the Baylor School of Nursing was officially established as a diploma program through TBMS in 1909. Headed by Helen Holiday Lehmann, the Baylor School of Nursing became one of only two nursing programs to obtain a "Class A" rating, as determined by the New York Board of Nurse Examiners. Retiring in 1941, Lehmann was succeeded by Zora Fiedler. Fiedler paved the way for the School of Nursing to become a baccalaureate granting program through Baylor's flagship campus in Waco. Graduating its first class in 1954, the School of Nursing became part of the six degree-granting schools housed at Baylor. Baylor's School of Nursing reached new heights when it achieved accreditation for its graduate program in 1994, via the National League for Nursing. Both the undergraduate and graduate level nursing programs seek to train nurses and imbue the skills required for their profession.
More information about the School of Nursing can be found in the BU Records: School of Nursing at The Texas Collection.
Mary Kemendo Sendón, the daughter of Chris and Josephine Ground Kemendo, was born on August 13, 1901, in Waco, Texas. She was descended from Norwegian and Italian immigrants who moved to Central Texas in the nineteenth century.
Sendón attended several local schools before graduating from Waco High School in May 1919. She earned her bachelor's degree from Baylor University in 1922, the same year that she married Andrés Sendón, a naturalized American citizen from Spain who would go on to teach at Baylor University for over fifty years.
Mary Sendón served as a substitute teacher for several years, teaching English, Latin, Spanish, and French in local area high schools. In 1932, Sendón earned her master's degree in English literature from Baylor University, analyzing the use of proverbs in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590).
In addition to her teaching career, Sendón was active in a number of local organizations including Seventh and James Baptist Church, the Pan American Round Table, and the City Council of the Parent-Teachers Association. She was also a member of the Baylor Round Table for a remarkable seventy-nine years. Sendón passed away on December 3, 2001, at the age of 100.
More information about Mary Kemendo Sendón can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Mary Kemendo Sendón interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Interviews of Mary Kemendo Sendón by Lois E. Meyers. January 4-April 6, 1994. Transcripts, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
"Mary K. Sendón." Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Home. Web. Accessed October 18, 2018.
Sendón, Mary Kemendo. Spenser’s Use of Proverbs. MA thesis, Baylor University, 1932.
Emma Julia Morrill Shirley, the daughter of Lemuel Hatch Morrill and Amelia Puckett Morrill, was born in Waco, Texas on November 23, 1899. She graduated from Waco High School in 1915. In 1921, she married Newton A. Shirley with whom she had one daughter, Amy.
After some brief teaching stints, Shirley earned her bachelor's degree from Baylor University in 1923, majoring in government and minoring in English. In doing so, she became a third-generation graduate at Baylor. In the 1930s, she worked as the secretary for Pat Neff during his presidency at Baylor. She attained her master's degree from the University of Texas. Her thesis (1938) examines Pat Neff's gubernatorial administration of Texas from 1921 to 1925.
Shirley continued teaching at several institutions, including time at Baylor University where she was an instructor for the English department and head of the Secretarial Science Department. In 1942, Shirley felt compelled to join the war effort, enlisting as a sergeant in the Women’s Army Corps. Her duties centered primarily on publicity for the Eighth Service Command based in South Texas.
Following a medical discharge from the military, Shirley pursued graduate-level courses at Columbia University and New York University for writing and journalism. In 1971, she published a biography of local businessman William Hammond entitled Never Say Impossible. She wrote for several newspapers and magazines throughout her career including the Christian Science Monitor, Baptist Standard, Texas Outlook, Dallas News, Houston Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Waco Citizen. In periodicals, she often used her middle name, Julia, as her pen name. Shirley was an active writer into the early 1980s.
More information about Emma M. Shirley can be found at the Institute for Oral History and in the Emma Julia Morrill Shirley papers at The Texas Collection.
Emma M. Shirley interview, Institute for Oral History
Emma Julia Morrill Shirley Papers, The Texas Collection
Bibliography
Interviews of Emma M. Shirley by Anne Armitstead. October 18 and 25, 1976. Transcripts, Institute for Oral History, Baylor University.
Mann, Evely S. "Julia Emma Shirley: True Southern Lady, Educator, And Author." Waco Citizen. 12 August 1977.
Shirley, Emma M. Never Say Impossible: The Story of William S. Hammond, Who Has Often Been Called Mr. Waco, Texas Himself. Waco, TX: Texian Press, 1972.
Nora Elizabeth Potter Sims was born on November 14, 1914, to Samuel Potter and Margaret Ava Orr in Brandon, Texas. She had five siblings, all of whom died before her except her sister Mable. After receiving her B.S. in Elementary Education from Texas Tech College, she taught at New Deal Consolidated School in New Deal, Texas, until 1943, when she became an instructor at Amarillo Air Base. She taught pilots how to repair electrical systems on B-17s and B-29s. In 1953, Sims completed her M.Ed. degree at West Texas State College in Canyon, Texas. Prior to her retirement in 1971, she was a junior high teacher in Phillips Independent School District.
Nora married Myrle Andrew Sims on August 27, 1949. They were the first couple to be married in the First Presbyterian Church of Borger. She was a member of the Texas Education Association, National Education Association, and Texas Retired Teachers Association. Sims was also a member of #811 Order of the Eastern Star, Home Demonstration Club, and Hutchinson County Retired Teachers Association. Sims passed away on September 2, 2012.
More information about Nora Elizabeth Potter Sims can be found in the Nora Elizabeth Potter Sims papers at The Texas Collection.
Sinia Reaves Brewer Harris (1909-2004), the second daughter and third child of John Henry and Leona Ethel Dodson Reaves, was born on November 25, 1909, in Milam County, Texas. She received her B.S. in Physical Education at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos in 1938. Harris married Samuel Stephen Brewer on July 15, 1928, and the couple had one daughter together, Marion Dolores Brewer, born on April 27, 1929. Sinia and Samuel Brewer divorced in May 1941. She married Charles Louis Harris on November 26, 1942. Sinia Reaves Brewer Harris was the National Youth Administration's project director (resident supervisor) for two facilities in Texas, Brenham and Corpus Christi, as well as the summer program in San Marcos.
The National Youth Administration was a New Deal agency that provided work and education for American youth between ages of 16 to 25. At the time Harris was involved, Lyndon B. Johnson was the head of the Texas division. In Brenham, Harris oversaw the Blinn College Girls' Training School, which trained young women in the fields of recreation, office skills, and radio communication. In Corpus Christi, she oversaw the Defense Industrial Training Project at the Corpus Christi Defense Training Center, which trained women to perform the tasks of historically male-dominated jobs so the men could serve in World War II. Additionally, Harris assisted in creating co-educational programs in Waco and Inks Dam, Texas. She was the Civilian Personnel Officer at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas,and at the James Connally Air Force Base in Waco, Texas.
Harris was also a teacher in Milam County. She retired on September 30, 1968, and she passed away on June 21, 2004.
More information about Sinia Reaves Brewer Harris can be found in the Sinia Reaves Brewer Harris papers at The Texas Collection.
Born in a small Western Siberian town in 1941, Aida Mikhailovna Skripnikova came from a Baptist family. However, her pacifist father was imprisoned and shot for refusing to fight in the army when she was an infant. Although she attended church as a child, Aida's mother died when she was only eleven, and she received an atheistic Soviet education. In 1960, the teen moved to Leningrad where her brother Viktor lived. When Viktor became ill, he sought spiritual reconnection and became a devout believer. His death at age 25 influenced Aida to attend services. The inquisitive young woman converted to the Christian faith and immediately and fearlessly shared her beliefs with others and made contact with many foreigners, including several Swedes.
Though Baptist leaders discouraged her, Aida could not be restrained. Her first arrest came in 1962 for distributing homemade New Year's cards. Found guilty, she lost her job and residency but remained active in a church group. New decrees outlawing religious meetings and instruction of children especially targeted unregistered Baptists. In 1965, Soviet authorities arrested Aida Skripnikova and several fellow believers at a clandestine worship service held in a forest. In November 1965, she was sentenced to one year in a labor camp in Perm and released in November 1966.
Officials arrested Aida a third time in 1968 after she attended Easter worship services. Because of her contact with the West, the judge allowed Ms. Skripnikova to speak at her trial. Sentenced to six months, Aida was imprisoned on December 30, 1968, and suffered severely from lack of warm clothing and inadequate food. She was released on April 12, 1971, but suffered from restrictions usually assessed for major crimes. Prison aged the young woman and did not end her struggles, but Western friends relate that more than 45 years later, Aida Mikhailovna Skripnikova remains faithful, serving her Heavenly Father and inspiring others.
More information about Aida Skripnikova can be found in The Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Digitized Copy of Skripnikova Trial Transcript
Other Materials about Aida Skripnikova
List of Keston Center Finding Aids (search for Aida Skripnikova)
Dr. Cornelia Marschall Smith was born Caroline Cornelia Marschall on October 15, 1895, in Llano County, Texas. She taught high school before attending Baylor University, where she received a bachelor's degree in 1918. She then received a master's degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Smith returned to Baylor to teach biology, becoming chair of the Biology Department in 1935. She resigned as department chair after five years and became the director of the Strecker Museum, a post she held for the next 27 years. She was married to Charles George Smith, Baylor University Professor of English. After a long and successful teaching career, which included being chosen as Baylor's Teacher of the Year in 1965, being elected to the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1989, and winning the Herbert H. Reynolds award in 1991, Smith died on August 27, 1997, in Waco, Texas. Baylor University renamed the Professor of the Year award in her honor in 2004.
More information about Cornelia Marschall Smith can be found in the Cornelia Marschall Smith collection at The Texas Collection and in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History. This Texas Collection finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Cornelia Marschall Smith interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Cornelia Marschall Smith interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Cornelia Marschall Smith interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 3)
Cornelia Marschall Smith Papers
Bibliography
Virginia Walker Smith was born in Farmington, Missouri in 1930. She studied education at the University of Missouri and then worked as an elementary school teacher until 1954, when she began pursuing a master's degree in religious education from the Carver School of Missions and Social Work in Louisville, Kentucky. Virginia met Paul Smith in Louisville and the two were married in 1956. They eventually had four children together. In 1961, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention placed the couple as missionaries in the Middle East. Following two years of language study in Beirut, Lebanon, the Smiths moved with their family to Jordan, first to Ajloun and then, in 1965, to Amman. They were the first Southern Baptist missionaries to live in the capital. Virginia taught kindergarten and English at the Baptist school there.
During their furlough in 1966, Virginia and Paul both began graduate studies in Arabic at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1978 they shifted to work as teachers and the "Industrial Chaplain" in eastern Saudi Arabian towns for employees and foreign laborers of the national oil company, Aramco. The Smiths returned to the United States in 1980 after Virginia was diagnosed with breast cancer. Following her treatments, they moved to Fes, Morocco, for Paul to serve as a pastor and to teach high school and college students in secret. In 1990, Paul became the director of relief work for Global Partners in Iraq. Through this non-governmental organization, Virginia and Paul aided the Kurds who were returning to villages that had been destroyed by the Iraqi government prior to the Gulf War. The Smiths also coordinated drilling water wells, distribution of vegetable seeds, restoration of flour mills, and operation of mobile health clinics in northern Iraq. They lived in Iraq for six years.
After their retirement in 1996, the Smiths continued to travel and serve as advocates for the people of the Middle East. In 2001, the they returned to work for six months at the same church in Morocco where Paul had been a pastor sixteen years prior. From 1997 to 2007 Paul and Virginia lived two months each summer in Saudi Arabia, where Paul served as a relief pastor. They moved to Waco in 2004.
More information about Virginia Smith can be found in the Virginia and Paul Smith Missions papers at The Texas Collection.
Virginia and Paul Smith Missions papers, The Texas Collection
Mary D. Sneed was born in 1807 to William and Mary Sneed. In 1824, she married George Washington Sneed, and together the couple had seven children. At some point after their last child was born, Mary and George moved from Tennessee to Texas. George Washington Sneed died on July 1, 1851. In 1854, Mary D. Sneed remarried to James E. Patton. In the same year, her daughter, also named Mary D. Sneed, married Thomas D. Woodward. After two years of marriage, Thomas Woodward died, and Mary and James Patton were divorced in 1860. The two Marys moved to Waco, Texas, and spent the rest of their lives together there. Mary D. Sneed (the mother) lived longer than any of her children. She passed away on March 30, 1905 at the age of 97.
More information about Mary D. Sneed can be found in the Sneed-Woodward-Patton Family papers at The Texas Collection.
The Baylor Collections of Political Materials house congressional collections along with the papers of many state and local leaders. The spouses of these leaders are a substantial part of their story, and in many collections, we have schedules, correspondence, speeches, photographs, and other materials detailing the legislative experience of spouses.
More information about Spouses of Politicians can be found in various collections held by the Baylor Collections of Political Materials.
Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives Papers
Alan W. Steelman Papers
Bob Bullock Campaign collection
James R. "Jim" Dunnam papers
Edmund L. Nichols papers
Jack Hightower papers
William R. Smith, Sr. papers
Specific Folders within the Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives papers
Series 10. Speeches
Subseries 2. Campaign
Box 176. Folder 16. “A Small Moment ” by Lea Ann Edwards (HW), 1996
Box 176. Folder 22. Stump Speech for Lea Ann Edwards, 2004 October
Specific Folders within the Alan W. Steelman papers
Series 1. Administrative
Subseries 3. Schedules
Box 6. Folder 6. Carolyn Steelman’s Schedules, 1973
Specific Folders within the Bob Bullock Campaigns collection
Subseries 15. Itineraries
Box 26. Folder 21. Jan Bullock, 1990 March
Box 26. Folder 22. Jan Bullock, 1990 April
Box 26. Folder 23. Jan Bullock, 1990 May
Box 26. Folder 24. Jan Bullock, 1990 June
Box 26. Folder 25. Jan Bullock, 1990 July
Box 26. Folder 26. Jan Bullock, 1990 August
Box 26. Folder 27. Jan Bullock, 1990 September
Box 26. Folder 28. Jan Bullock, 1990 October
Box 26. Folder 29. Jan Bullock: Biographical Matl., circa 1990
Box 26. Folder 30. Jan Bullock: Form Letter & Release, circa 1990
Box 26. Folder 31. Jan Bullock: Trip Log, 1990 March-October
Series 6. 1994 Campaign
Subseries 3. Correspondence
Sub-subseries 2. Form Letters
Box 41. Folder 28. Jan Bullock Trip, 1993 March 25
Subseries 8. Itineraries
Box 45. Folder 27. Jan Bullock, 1993 February
Box 45. Folder 28. Jan Bullock, Main Street Tour, 1992 March
Specific Folders within the James R. "Jim" Dunnam papers
Series 1. Administrative
Subseries 2. Appointment Schedules
Box 2. Folder 15. LeeAnn and Michelle, undated
Katy Belle Jennings Stokes, the daughter of Thornton Lamar Jennings and Pauline Rice Jennings, was born on July 3, 1924, in Mabank, Texas. After graduating valedictorian of her class in 1941, Stokes attended Texas State College for Women (now Texas Woman's University). She later transferred to Baylor University where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and business in 1947. While attending Baylor, she met George Stokes, and the two were married on August 25, 1946.
After George earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Illinois, the Stokes family returned to Baylor University in 1952 when George joined the faculty of the communications department. Katy became actively involved in the Baylor Round Table, serving as president of the organization in 1961-1962.
Throughout her life, Stokes participated in Baptist affairs. She and George were active members of Seventh and James Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, where she served as a Sunday school teacher and the Director of the Women's Missionary Union. She also volunteered as a trustee for the Southern Baptist Convention's Sunday School Board from 1975 to 1983 and served on the Centennial Committee for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
Stokes was also an avid writer for much of her post-collegiate life. For fourteen years, she contributed for a column entitled "To the Store and Back" for her parents' local newspaper, the Mabank Banner. In 1980, Stokes wrote Paisano: Story of a Cowboy and a Camp Meeting which followed the story of preacher L.R. Millican and the Paisano Baptist Encampment near Alpine, Texas. In 1985, Stokes composed A City of Angels in honor of the work Elsie Gayer had done in the field of geriatrics in San Angelo. In 2003, Stokes compiled letters she had written to her mother throughout her lifetime and edited them for her final book, Letters from Katy. Stokes passed away on March 18, 2012 and is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.
More information about Katy Jennings Stokes can be found at the Institute for Oral History and in the George Mitchell and Katy Jennings Stokes papers at The Texas Collection. The finding aid at The Texas Collection is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Katy Jennings Stokes interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Katy Jennings Stokes interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Bibliography
Interview of Howard E. Butt, Jr. and Katy Jennings Stokes by Tom Charlton. May 13, 1982. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Interview of Katy Jennings Stokes by Lois E. Meyers. November 12, 2003. Transcript, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
"Katy Jennings Stokes." Waco Tribune-Herald. 22 March 2012.
Anna Louisa Wellington Stoner was born in 1857 to Dr. Royal Wetherton Wellington and Martha Elizabeth Foster Wellington. She and her husband, Clinton Stoner, moved from Victoria County, Texas to Uvalde, Texas in the early 1880s. The family lived in Edwards County until Clinton's death in 1884. Following her husband's death, Stoner moved her three small children to the Nueces River Canyon and bought 320 acres of land. This served as the beginning of Stoner Ranch, which encompasses more than 2,000 acres today. Her mother, Martha, joined Anna at the ranch to help her raise her family. She lived and worked on the ranch until she died in 1953.
More information about Anna Louisa Wellington Stoner can be found in the Wellington-Stoner-McLean Family collection at The Texas Collection and in the following oral memoirs from the Institute for Oral History.
Mary Margaret Stoner McLean interview, Institute for Oral History
Wellington-Stoner-McLean Family collection, The Texas Collection
Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain was born on October 9, 1906, in West, Texas. She attended Baylor University, receiving two B.A. degrees. Strain did graduate work at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin but did not receive a degree from either university. Back at Baylor by 1930, she accepted a position as professor of English. She married Lowell N. Douglas in 1931. The couple had two children together before Douglas was killed in action during World War II.
Strain served in many positions at Baylor University. Though she began as an English professor, she was also the director of the Armstrong Browning Library, director of the Historical Research Office, development officer, and Baylor Historian. Strain wrote a number of books, including Health Topics for College Freshmen, Effective Living, and Remedial English, all three textbooks, and Through Heaven's Back Door, a biography of Baylor professor and legend A. J. Armstrong. She is especially known among Baylor historians as the author of Baylor at Independence, a book about Baylor University from 1845-1886 that she wrote based on notes collected by Lily Russell. From 1961 to 1968, Strain organized Russell's notes and wrote one of the definitive texts on the university’s history.
Lois Strain married John D. Murray in 1956 in the Armstrong Browning Library on the Baylor campus. He passed away before the early 1960s. She married Arthur Strain around 1972, also the year that she retired from Baylor. He died on October 25, 1975. Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain passed away on December 18, 1998.
More information about Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain can be found in her oral memoirs at the Institute for Oral History and in the BU Records: Historical Research Office and the Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain papers at The Texas Collection.
Lois Smith Murray interview, Institute for Oral History
Lois Smith Douglas Murray Strain Papers, The Texas Collection
Joan Larie Riffey Sutton Houston was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1930. In 1935, at the age of five, she moved to Brazil with her parents, who served as missionaries with the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board). Joan returned to the United States for her undergraduate education, graduated from Baylor in 1951, and attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, after which she married Boyd Sutton. She returned to Brazil in 1959, where she and her husband served as music missionaries until 1993. Her papers were donated to Baylor between 2010 and 2016, and include a variety of materials directly related to Baptist missionary work in Brazil in the twentieth century.
The Sutton papers revolves around the life and work of Joan Sutton as a music missionary in Brazil during the second half of the twentieth century. The collection features much of her musical work in this context, as a translator of hymns and cantatas, but also her work as an educator. It contains other items, such as hymnals and correspondence from her personal archive.
More information about Joan Sutton can be found in the Central Libraries Special Collections.
Dr. Lois Marie Sutton was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1925. She graduated from Carter High School in Fort Worth, and received a B.A. from the University of Texas, M.A. from Baylor University, and Ph.D. from the University of Texas. In 1945, Dr. Sutton began teaching foreign languages at Baylor University. Over the course of her 49-year career teaching Spanish, Italian, and French at Baylor, she also served as Chair of the Department of Modern Foreign Languages. Dr. Sutton received the Baylor University Retired Faculty Service Award and the Herbert H. Reynolds Award for Exemplary Service. In her spare time, Dr. Sutton enjoyed traveling. After a long and distinguished career, Dr. Sutton retired in 1994. She passed away on June 30, 2015, and was buried in Mount Garden of Memories in Fort Worth, Texas.
More information about Lois Marie Sutton can be found in the Lois Marie Sutton Photographic collection at The Texas Collection.
Lois Marie Sutton Photographic collection, The Texas Collection
Nadezhda Teodorovich (previously Nadseja Abramawa) was born in 1907 in the Minsk Governorate of Belarus. She attended classes at the Minsk Pedagogical University before graduating from the Belarusian Medical University in 1942. Teodorovich actively promoted Belarusian nationalism, culture, and heritage from the time she lived in Belarus to when she died in exile. She lived in Belarus throughout most of the German occupation of the country during World War II. Head of the girl's division of the nationalist White Ruthenian Youth Organization, she contributed to the newspaper, "Long Live Belarus!" (Жыве Беларусь). In 1944, she participated in the Second All-Belarusian Congress and the Belarusian Central Council. Teodorovich fled to Germany in the summer of 1944 and settled in Munich where she remained after World War II.
While in exile, the doctor officially changed her name from Nadseja Abramawa to Nadezhda Teodorovich. In Munich, she spent time in a monastery and converted from Eastern Orthodoxy to Catholicism, becoming a member of the St. Nicholas Russian Catholic Church of Byzantine Rite in Munich. From 1951 through 1970, she worked at the Institute for the Study of USSR in Munich. She published a journal, "Religion and Atheism in the USSR" (Religion und Atheismus in der UdSSR) and closely monitored the Soviet press, recording acts of religious persecution committed by the Soviets. During this period, Teodorovich was known for her "nationalistic and anti-communist" views and contributed to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Teodorovich died on February 18, 1979, in Munich.
More information about Nadezhda Teodorovich can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Comprised of over 8,500 cookbooks, the Texas Cookbook Collection is filled with volumes primarily published by women for women, usually to raise funds for churches, schools, clubs, or organizations. In addition to recipes, cookbooks often offer advice to homemakers and new brides about running a household, from managing grocery budgets to domestic staff. Cookbooks also document Texas foodways and culinary traditions and show how the world and local events, such as the Great Depression, World War II, and the rise of women in the workforce, affect diets. These often-overlooked documents can provide a glimpse into the lives of women typically excluded from the historical narrative.
Related Collections
In May 1971, a group of middle-class housewives came together in London to demonstrate on behalf of a Soviet Jew named Raiza Palatnik, a Russian woman imprisoned as a Refusenik. The group demonstrating became known as “the 35s” because the 35 women, all aged 35, were protesting for the release of the thirty-five-year-old Palatnik. The 35’s, known formally as the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry, formed in response to the lack of interest by prominent Jewish organizations in Great Britain about the persecution of Soviet Jews. The goal of the campaign was to raise awareness of the plight of Refuseniks and to support individual Refuseniks in readjusting to society after their imprisonment.
The 35’s held their first protest outside of the Soviet Embassy in London in May of 1971, a 24-hour fast while displaying signs calling for Palatnik’s release. In a later series of demonstrations, the women set up tables featuring a typical meal provided imprisoned Refuseniks, inviting prominent members of British society to partake in the unappetizing food. Other popular demonstrations occurred when the 35’s rushed the stages of public performances by Soviet dancers and musicians, including disrupting the Georgia State Dance Company at the Coliseum Theatre in June 1973. The campaign took advantage of the media coverage they received and later earned the support of Parliament and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the pressure group expanded regionally across Britain, from Leeds to Horsham. By May of 1985, the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry had grown into an international organization which oversaw 36 groups in numerous countries, including the United States, Canada, Sweden, Italy, and New Zealand among others. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, the group’s focus shifted to broader human rights and welfare concerns.
More information about the Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society’s Soviet Union Jewish Subject Files and in the Keston Center at Baylor University.
Related Collections
Keston Center photographic collection, 1880-2007
Keston Center Digital Collection: “No Exit: The Jewish Refuseniks” (Video)
Keston Center digital collection photographs
Bibliography
Hurst, Mark, and Bloomsbury Press Staff. “Prisoner’s Banquets, Ghosts and the Ballet – The Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry.” In British Human Rights Organizations and Soviet Dissent, 1965-1985, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2016.
Rich, Dave. “The Activist Challenge: Women, Students, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the British Campaign for Soviet Jewry.” Jewish History, vol. 29, no. 2, 2015, pp. 163–85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24709769.
Keston News Service, No. 184, 6 October 1983. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/keston-news-service-issue-no.-184-6-october-1983/1051639?item=1051678.
Freedman, Robert Owen. “The West European Approach to the Soviet Jewry Problem.” In Soviet Jewry in the 1980s: The Politics of Anti-Semitism and Emigration and the Dynamics of Resettlement, 104-05. Duke University Press, 1989. https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.27-2956.
Ben-Ari, Shai. The National Library of Israel, 11 March 2019, https://blog.nli.org.il/en/the-35s/.
Born in Waco in 1930, Frances Cobb Todd was the daughter of Irene Cobb and a member of a prominent African-American family in the Waco community, the Smith-Cobb-Bledsoe family. Todd attended Waco High School and Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, where she graduated magna cum laude. She later earned her master's degree from Prairie View A&M. Frances married Emmitt Todd in 1953, and the couple had one daughter. Frances taught school in Waco Independent School District for over thirty years and was an active member of the community. She was involved in Phi Kappa Delta, Waco Civic Theater, Jack and Jill Incorporated, and New Hope Baptist Church. She died in Waco in 1992.
More information about Frances Cobb Todd can be found in the Frances Cobb Todd papers at The Texas Collection.
Frances Cobb Todd papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
Rosa Georgene "Jean" Furr Tolbert, was born in Fernwood, Mississippi on April 26, 1925. She grew up in Tylertown, Mississippi for most of her adolescence where her father managed a local general store and her mother worked as a nurse.
Tolbert graduated high school in 1943 and enrolled in Mississippi College in Clinton, majoring in history. While attending the school, Jean met her future husband, World War II veteran Charles Tolbert. Jean graduated with her bachelor's in 1947 and married Charles on June 2, 1949.
Tolbert taught history at Copiah-Lincoln Junior College in Wesson, Mississippi for two years before returning to Mississippi College. At this time, Tolbert performed clerical work and aspired to become a librarian. The Tolbert family moved to Waco in 1957 as Charles joined the sociology department at Baylor University. Jean initially served as the religion librarian in the Tidwell Bible Building until 1968 when she transitioned to the role of reference librarian for Moody Library. As Tolbert worked at Baylor, she earned her Master of Library Science from Texas Woman's University in 1965. She retired from Baylor University in 1991 after thirty-three years of service.
Tolbert was an active participant in several local organizations including Baylor Round Table, Historic Waco Foundation, Waco-McLennan County Library Commission, and the First Baptist Church of Waco. She passed away on April 17, 2008 at the age of eighty-two.
More information about Jean Furr Tolbert can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 1)
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 2)
Jean Furr Tolbert interview, Institute for Oral History (Series 3)
Bibliography
"Baylor Mourns Passing of Associate Professor Emeritus and Reference Librarian." Web. April 18, 2008. Accessed October 2, 2018.
In the 1840s, Baptists identified a need for a college in the new Republic of Texas and chartered Baylor College at Independence in 1845. Initially, the school was coeducational, but the male and female students were separated in 1851 after Rufus C. Burleson became president. The men relocated to Windmill Hill while the women moved to Academy Hill. Burleson and the director of the female department, Horace Clark, disagreed on the level of oversight Burleson held and the female department, Baylor Female College, became its own school in 1866. The economic landscape of Texas had shifted by the late 1880's, and after the railroads by-passed Independence, both schools changed locations. In 1886, the male school moved to Waco and merged with Waco University while the female school accepted an invitation from Belton. The Great Depression brought the school to the brink of bankruptcy, but a generous gift from John G. and Mary Hardin saved the college. In honor of their donation, the school was renamed Mary Hardin-Baylor College in 1934.
For most of its history, Mary Hardin-Baylor was the oldest college for women west of the Mississippi. In 1971, however, the school became co-educational and seven years later it was renamed the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor. Today the university enrolls around 3,000 students and works closely with Baylor University to maintain and preserve their shared heritage at Independence.
More information about the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor can be found in the [Belton] University of Mary Hardin-Baylor collection at The Texas Collection. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Related Collections
In 1912, approximately 114,652 Baptists lived in Russia. By 1927, that number swelled to over 500,000. Although ravaged by revolution, famine, collectivization, and two world wars, Baptist churches grew. By the 1960s, Unregistered Soviet Baptists (Initsiativniki) recorded over 5,000 baptisms a year. Why? Initsiativniki women did not allow Soviet restrictions against proselytizing or religious training for children to hinder their commitment.
These women secretly used printing presses made of spare bicycle parts, springs, and other pieces of scrap metal in their homes to produce religious literature. In 1963, they began the quarterly inspirational journal "Herald of Salvation" (Vestnik spaseniia) and in 1965, the monthly samizdat underground bulletin "Fraternal Leaflet" (Bratskii listok). They also wrote hymnals by hand and printed Bibles so each congregation could have a pastor with a complete Bible and mothers could teach their children at home.
Although by 1966 there were increasingly stringent laws, unregistered Baptist women expanded their samizdat activities which led to more intense persecution. Because many of their husbands were imprisoned, they supported one another and provided information about relatives through the quarterly "Bulletin of the Council of Prisoners' Relatives" which began in 1971.
These women bore the burden of working, feeding and guiding the spiritual growth of their children, and providing information about the conditions of loved ones. In many heart-wrenching cases, unregistered Baptist women had their children forcibly removed because of religious activities.
They also faced trial and imprisonment. The Keston News Service No. 266 records the 1986 trials of four Initsiativniki women who were convicted for "anti-Soviet slander" and sentenced to 2 to 2.5 years in labor camps.
Although they suffered the removal of their children, the imprisonment of their husbands, and the loss of their freedom, these unregistered Baptist women provided generations of believers the spiritual sustenance to persevere.
More information about unregistered Baptist women in the Soviet Union can be found in the Keston Digital Archive and in the Xenia Dennen papers at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Keston Digital Archive, Unregistered Baptist Women
Xenia Dennen papers, Keston Center
Related Collections
Bibliography
Bourdeaux, Michael. Religious Ferment in Russia: Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
Keston News Service, No. 266, 8 January 1987.
Masters, Peter, ed. Remember the Prisoners. Chicago: Moody Press, 1986.
Born in 1929, Valeria Makeeva became a member of a convent in Ukraine, but when the religious community was forcibly disbanded during Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign of 1959-64, she moved to Moscow.
Makeeva was arrested on July 15, 1978, and was not allowed to attend her own trial. Detailed accounts indicate that serious violations occurred in the legal proceedings . Makeeva's lawyer, Semyon Kheifets, doubted that her activity was in fact against the law, but the court twice refused to investigate his carefully argued case. Her sentence was based on engaging in the illegal production of handicrafts under Art. 162 of the Criminal Code of the RSFS “Engaging in a forbidden trade" for which she could have been sentenced to four years in a labor camp.
In April 1979, the Orthodox nun was sentenced to indefinite confinement in a psychiatric institution for the criminally insane, her fourth period of detention in a psychiatric hospital. The first was four years beginning in 1949, when she reportedly feigned mental illness to avoid a term in Stalin's labor camps. During the examination before the trial, Makeeva managed to convince psychiatrists at Moscow's Serbsky Institute that she was not schizophrenic, the original diagnosis in 1949, so they classified her as psychopathic with personality change.
Therefore, she was charged with the production of illegal crafts, particularly embroidered monastic belts containing words from Psalm 90 (Psalm 91 in common Western usage) and selling them to other believers for a price ranging from 50 kopecks to 1 ruble. She used the money to help nuns from disbanded convents and to aid other Christians in need. The Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights acknowledged that Valeria Makeeva was indeed helping those in need. By confining Valeria Makeeva, the Committee indicated that as far as the Soviet authorities were concerned, the distribution of words of prayer was an act that placed society in danger.
In October 1979, Keston College received appeals on behalf of Valeria Makeeva and was asked to pressure the Brezhnev administration to lodge an appeal on her behalf with the goal of releasing her from the Kazan Special Psychiatric Hospital. At the hospital, Valeria Makeeva was injected with drugs that undermined her health to the point of paralyzing her right arm. The appeals were sent by Abbess Magdalina (Lyubov Nikanorovna Dubinovich), the head of the disbanded community of nuns in Zhytomyr in Ukraine to which Valeria Makeeva belonged. Abbess Magdalina’s appeal stated that Valeria Makeeva was a relative of Archbishop John (Shakhovskoi) of San Francisco. Two other relatives of Valeria Makeeva included George Oksedo de’Golinsky who resided in Tampico near Mexico City and his son Benjamin de’Golinsky who had lived in Mexico but moved to London. Direct results of the specific appeals are unknown.
However, Sister Valeria was released and lived in Moscow after the fall of the Soviet Union. She passed away on February 8, 2007, at the age of 78. In Notes of a Nun (2008) and Memories (2002) the Ukrainian nun recounts her times in prison camps, psychiatric institutions, and monasteries.
More information about Valeria Makeeva can be found in the Keston News Service Nos. 68, 73, 81, and 84, and “Women of the Russian Catacombs: Monastics, Mothers and Martyrs” Part 1 by Prioress Evrosinia (Molchanova) and Sister Tatiana (Spektor), Keston Newsletter No. 13, 2011.
The Vashchenko Pentecostal Women, part of the Siberian Seven, were Christian believers who fled Moscow to avoid the Soviet Union’s increasing hostility and persecution toward religion, particularly Pentecostals. The Siberian Seven consisted of two families, Maria Chmykhalov and her son Timothy, and the Vashchenkos comprised of Peter and Augustine and three of their daughters, Lida, Lyuba, and Lila.
For several years, the Vashchenkos attempted to leave to country because of heavy persecution but were refused exit visas. For these emigration attempts, some of the children were abducted and taken to an orphanage to force atheism upon them. Both Peter and Augustina were imprisoned with Peter sent to labor camps multiple times. The entire family experienced job discrimination.
In 1963, while Peter was in a labor camp, Augustina rushed the American Embassy with a larger group of Pentecostals to plead for emigration. In 1968, Peter tried to enter the Embassy with Lida, Lyuba, and two of their sisters, Nayda and Vera. The attempt also failed.
In 1978, the Vashchenkos received an invitation to Selma, Alabama. However, the Soviet Union denied their exit visas. Peter, Augustina, Lida, Lyuba, and Lila, with their son John, decided to rush the embassy again and plead for emigration. Maria Chmykhalov joined them with her son Timothy even though they did not have invitations to America. On June 27, 1978, the eight of them rushed the Embassy. John Vashchenko was captured. The others successfully made it into the Embassy, but the Soviet Union still refused to let them emigrate. The Siberian Seven spent five years, from 1978 to 1983, living in the basement of the United States Embassy.
Several western groups began fighting for their right to emigrate. In 1983, Augustina began a hunger strike which Lida joined. Word of the fast quickly became international news and spurred outrage. The situation began to force the Soviet Union’s hand. After Lida was hospitalized, authorities granted her an exit visa. She flew to Vienna and then to Tel Aviv. The others, along with their families, were granted exit visas in the following months. Most of the Vashchenkos eventually settled in Washington state.
More information about Vashchenko Pentecostal Women can be found at Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.
Soviet Union and Russia Pentecostal Subject Files. Siberian Seven Materials, 1975-1983.
Related Collections
Soviet Union and Russia Pentecostal Subject Files, 1928-2006 (bulk 1975-1983).
Bibliography
Lida Vashchenko, also spelled Lidiya or Lydia, was the eldest daughter of the Vashchenko family that was part of Pentecostals who fled the Soviet Union to avoid religious persecution. The Vashchenkos (Peter and Augustina and daughters Lida, Lyuba, and Lila), along with Maria Chmykhalov and her son Timothy, became known as the Siberian Seven.
For years, the Vashchenkos attempted to leave the country. However, the Soviet Union refused to grant them exit visas. Peter and Augustina decided to homeschool their children to avoid the regimes’ harsh atheism rhetoric which led to them being declared unfit parents. Government officials abducted Lida and her sisters Lyuba and Nadya from their home and took them to an orphanage in an attempt to force atheism upon them.
In 1963, while Peter Vashchenko was in a labor camp because of his faith, Augustina rushed the United States Embassy with a group of Pentecostals and pled for emigration. In 1968, Peter attempted to enter the Embassy with his daughters Lida, Lyuba, Nayda, and Vera. That attempt also failed.
In 1978, the Vashchenkos received an invitation to Selma, Alabama. However, the Soviet Union denied their exit visas. Peter, Augustina, Lida, Lyuba, and Lila, with their brother John, decided to rush the embassy again and plead for emigration. Maria Chmykhalov joined them with her son Timothy even though they did not have invitations to America. John was captured in the attempt, but the other seven made it into the Embassy. The Siberian Seven spent five years, from 1978 to 1983, living in the basement.
In 1983, Augustina began a hunger fast which Lida soon joined. Word of the fast quickly became international news and spurred outrage. This began to force the Soviet Union to deal with the Seven.
Lida became so sick that she had to be hospitalized. After she regained her health, applied for an exit visa. It was granted, and Lida was the first of the Siberian Seven to leave the Soviet Union. She flew to Vienna and then to Tel Aviv. The other Siberian Seven, along with their families, were granted exit visas in the ensuing months. The Vashchenkos and Chmykhalovs settled in various places in the United States and Israel.
More information about Vashchenko Pentecostal Women can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society
Soviet Union and Russia Pentecostal Subject Files. Siberian Seven Materials, 1975-1983
Related Collections
Soviet Union and Russia Pentecostal Subject Files, 1928-2006 (bulk 1975-1983)
Bibliography
Gloria Ruiz Velez, born in 1911, was the eldest daughter of Donato, a Baptist missionary who helped found 23 churches and 37 missions throughout Mexico, California, and Texas, and Agustina Flores Ruiz. She graduated from Baylor Female College, currently University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in 1933 and from the Woman’s Missionary Union Training School in 1936. The 1940 United States Federal Census shows Gloria worked as a schoolteacher in El Paso, Texas. During this time, she stayed in the home of Agustin Velez and family. On May 22, 1978, Gloria and Augustin were married in a ceremony officiated by her father, Donato Ruiz.
More information about Gloria Ruiz Velez can be found in the Ruiz Family Papers at The Texas Collection.
In 1926, American Baptist Peter Vins traveled to Siberia to serve as a missionary. There, he met and married Lydia Zharikova in 1927. The next year, they had their only child Georgi. The secret police gave Peter the choice of giving up his preaching and returning to the United States or renouncing his American citizenship and staying in the Soviet Union. He chose the latter. However, in 1930, he was imprisoned for three years for his preaching. When released, Peter continued, was re-arrested, spent about nine months in jail, and then after his third arrest, was sentenced to 10 years. His wife Lydia was told that Peter died in the labor camp in 1943, but she later learned the authorities had actually executed him in 1937.
During those hard years, Lydia raised their son in the church. In 1959, Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union, began a sweeping anti-religious campaign. His tactics included the persecution and subsequent arrest of church officials of numerous faiths. Although educated as an electrical engineer, Georgi had followed in his father’s footsteps and was ordained in 1962. The young preacher became active in the unregistered Baptist Church in the Soviet Union despite danger from Khrushchev’s policies. Vins served as the General Secretary of the Council of Churches until his arrest in 1966 following a demonstration by members of the faith in Moscow. In all, Georgi spent eight years in prisons or labor camps.
Lydia Vins became involved in the Council for Prisoners’ Relatives in Kiev in response to her son’s arrest. She served as leader of the Council until her own imprisonment in late 1969. When her son Georgi was exiled to the United States in a prisoner exchange in 1979, his mother followed, along with his children, wife, and niece. Throughout her life, Lydia faithfully served her church and fulfilled her missionary calling by supporting committed Christians who were persecuted by the Communist government and by suffering imprisonment for her own actions of faith.
More information about Lydia Vins can be found in the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society and in the Center’s digital archive.
Baylor Libraries Digital Collections
Bibliography
Article concerning Lydia Vins and the CRP
McIntire, Carl. The Russian Baptists: Twenty Years of Soviet Propaganda: the Hammer and the Sickle on the Platform of the Baptist World Alliance. (A book concerning Georgi Vins and Russian Baptists)
Barbara Ann Walker was born in Redbird, Oklahoma in the 1940s. In 1963, she began attending Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas. When Baylor University integrated in November of that year, Walker decided to enroll as a mathematics major. She soon felt called to social work and changed her major to sociology. Walker was the first African American to join Chis, a women's service organization, and to perform in All University Sing. She graduated with a degree in sociology on June 2, 1967, making her the first African American woman to graduate from Baylor University.
Walker continued her education at Florida State University where she earned a master's degree in social work. She accomplished much in her 32 years as a licensed clinical social worker, including administration of inpatient and outpatient programs for the Department of Mental Health in California.
Her faith was and remains an important part of her life. In a Baylor Chapel-Forum in 2000, she expressed her appreciation to God for the blessings in her life and for allowing her to grow and thrive at Baylor.
Maggie Langham Washington, the daughter of Joseph Tallahassee Langham and Leta Taylor Langham, was born in Richland, Texas. When she was eleven, her family moved to the Waco area. Her father was a farmer and a Methodist preacher, pastoring various churches in Waco, McGregor, and Moody. Washington graduated from Terrell High School and enrolled in Paul Quinn College. After a few years of education, she married and moved to Chicago where she found work as a bartender and factory worker. She returned to Waco in 1947 and worked briefly as a librarian for Paul Quinn College. Following a sharp disagreement with school administration, Washington enlisted in the Women's Army Corps, receiving her basic training at Camp Lee in Virginia. She served at Fort Knox before being transferred to Germany for two years. While there, Washington worked as a member of a recapitulation group responsible for returning German-confiscated property.
After being discharged from the military, Washington returned to Waco and finished her degree in elementary education at Paul Quinn, graduating in 1955. She started working as a substitute teacher in Midland, Texas where one of her sisters lived. Due to her determination and passion for her students, in 1968, Washington was asked to be the first African American educator to teach at the newly integrated Midland Independent School District at Crockett. She was successful and remained in the position until her retirement in 1976.
More information about Maggie Washington can be found at the Institute for Oral History.
Maggie Langham Washington interview, Institute for Oral History
Bibliography
Boehm, Lisa Krissoff. Making a Way Out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 2009.
Interviews of Maggie Langham Washington by Doni Van Ryswyk and Marla Luffer. March 10, 1988-March 13, 1989. Transcripts, Baylor University Institute for Oral History, Waco, Texas.
Elizabeth Borst White worked as a medical librarian for the Texas Medical Center Library in Houston, Texas for thirty-seven years. During part of her tenure there, she served as Director of the John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center.
In addition to her career in library and information sciences, Elizabeth is also an avid cookbook collector. Over a twenty-five-year span, she collected over 2,000 Texas cookbooks for her personal collection. As the culmination of her efforts, in 2005, Elizabeth composed a research guide entitled Sweets and Meats, Early Texas Cookbooks: 1855-1936.
Most of the materials in her archival collection are cookbooks, many of which were published by Texas utility companies in the mid-twentieth century at a time when corporate publications were distributed to promote product usage. In addition to her papers, White is in the process of donating her cookbook collection, Elizabeth Borst White Texas Culinary Collection.
More information about Elizabeth Borst White can be found in the Elizabeth Borst White papers at The Texas Collection.
Elizabeth Borst White papers, The Texas Collection
Elizabeth Borst White Texas Culinary Collection
Related Collections
Hallie Maude Neff Wilcox was born on April 13, 1901, in Austin, Texas. Her father, Pat Neff, served as governor of Texas and later president of Baylor University. After graduating from the University of Texas and completing graduate work at Baylor University, she made several trips to Europe. She married Frank L. Wilcox, an accountant in Waco, who was also mayor of Waco in 1945-1946. Wilcox died on November 21, 1977, in Waco, Texas.
More information about Hallie Maude Neff Wilcox can be found in the Hallie Maude Neff Wilcox collection at The Texas Collection. This finding aid is currently incomplete. Please e-mail The Texas Collection at txcoll@baylor.edu for more information.
Bibliography
The Pier family received a land grant in Austin County following the independence of Texas from Mexico in 1836. Sarah Charlotte Pier Wiley was born on this land in 1840 and later attended Baylor's Female Department at Independence from 1857 to 1859 to study music. She was visiting family in Ohio when the Civil War started. She returned home to find that her father and younger brother both joined the Confederate Army. She met her future husband, Henry Purris Wiley, during the war and the two married in 1865. They settled on a farm in Travis, Texas, and had ten children. Sarah C. Pier Wiley died in 1920 in Waco.
More information about Sarah Charlotte Pier Wiley can be found in the Sarah C. Pier Wiley papers at The Texas Collection.
Sarah C. Pier Wiley papers, The Texas Collection
Related Collections
The Woman's Club of Waco, an educational and philanthropic club for the women of Waco, was founded on January 5, 1892. While the club began with only eight members, it grew rapidly, and soon included many of the leading women of the city. The club flower was the rose, and the club colors were red and white. In 1898, the Woman's Club of Waco participated in a meeting that formed a city federation of women's clubs. While the Woman's Club of Waco joined with other city clubs to accomplish common goals, the club has always retained a high degree of autonomy in their activities. Prominent among the club has been the ideas of self-improvement through education, as shown through their memorable motto: "If I rest, I rust." For much of its history, club members gave presentations on varied topics during monthly meetings. During World War I and II, many of the presentations had to do with the war.
During other time periods, presentations included topics of international interest, self-improvement, science, history, finances, among others. Voting rights for women was a topic of intense early interest, with the club signing a petition, along with other clubs, to be forwarded to Washington D.C. in support of voting rights for women. The club has been involved with efforts to improve the lives of Waco citizens since its founding. During the World Wars, club members visited soldiers at Camp MacArthur weekly, bringing books and food. They led a book drive to furnish the on-base library with books for soldiers, worked closely with the Red Cross to make bandages, and organized a benefit concert for soldiers in Carroll Library Chapel on the campus of Baylor University. Today, the Woman's Club of Waco continues to provide philanthropic and educational opportunities to the women of Waco.
The right to serve as part of the United States Armed Services is one of the critical gains of women in the past century. Baylor maintains collections of several women who served in the military and legislative papers from national and state leaders whose collections give insight into military service for women.
More information about Women in the Military is available through the Baylor Collections of Political Materials at the W. R. Poage Legislative Library and The Texas Collection.
Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives papers
Alan W. Steelman papers
Materials found within the Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives papers
Box 53. Folder 12. District, Military Awards, Doris Miller, Military Award, 2001-2004
Box 148. Folder 28. Legislative, 111th Congress, Veterans, Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP), 2009
Materials found within the Alan W. Steelman papers
Box 132. Folder 14. Legislative, 93rd Congress, Women in Combat, 1974
Box 132. Folder 15. Legislative, 93rd Congress, Women in Military Academies, 1974
Box 152. Folder 18. Legislative, 94th Congress, Women in Coast Guard Academy, 1975-1976
Box 152. Folder 19. Legislative, 94th Congress, Women in Service Academies, 1974-1975
Related Collections
Eleanor McLerran DeLancey
Elma Merle Mears McClellan Duncan
Grace Rosanky Putnam Jones
Isabella M. Henry
The Women's Missionary Society was an organization affiliated with one of the Methodist churches located in Wharton County, Texas. The collection records the details of their monthly meetings beginning in December 1933 and ending in December 1939. During these six years, the organization was known by three names and had only two secretaries (Mrs. J.O. Graham, 1933, 1937-1939; Mrs. Hart, 1934-1936). Initially, the group was recorded as the Missionary Society, followed by the Women's Missionary Society, and finally as Women's Christian Service beginning in July 1939. The Women's Missionary Society meetings were highly organized and followed a set schedule. Events sponsored by the organization included religious education for children, the maintenance of a women's home in Houston, and support of Methodist missionaries in Texas oil company towns and in China. In order to support these activities, the organization engaged in various fund raising initiatives. These included soliciting wealthy individuals for donations, selling brand products, and hosting teas, fairs, and special events, such as the Shirley Temple Show during the summer of 1937. These fundraising endeavors provided enough money for the organization to increase its funds during the Great Depression from $300.57 in 1933 to $1,070 in 1939.
More information about the Women's Missionary Society can be found in the Wharton County Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church records at The Texas Collection.
Wharton County Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church records, The Texas Collection
The topic of Women's Rights could be construed to span many of the resources in the collections of the Baylor Libraries and the Institute for Oral History. For the purposes of this resource, our collections focus upon legislative collections that are part of our Baylor Collections of Political Materials. Even within this range the Baylor Libraries have a wealth of resources that bring a broad perspective on the question of women's rights in the context of U.S. politics.
More information about Women's Rights can be found in various collections throughout the Baylor Collections of Political Materials at the W. R. Poage Legislative Library.
Bob Bullock Campaigns collection
James R. "Jim" Dunnam papers
Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards State Legislative Papers
Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives papers
Jack E. Hightower papers
W. R. Poage papers
Alan W. Steelman papers
Materials found within the Bob Bullock Campaigns collection
Box 4. Folder 10. 1982 Campaign, General, Equal Employment Opportunity Records, 1982
Box 4. Folder 11. 1982 Campaign, General, Equal Employment Opportunity Status Report, 1979 July 27
Box 4. Folder 34. 1982 Campaign, Endorsements, Groups, Bexar County Women's Political Caucus, 1982 April
Box 5. Folder 22. 1982 Campaign, Endorsements, Groups, Texas Women's Political Caucus, 1982 March-April
Box 16. Folder 14. 1990 Campaign, Endorsements, Groups, Austin Black Women's Political Caucus, 1990
Box 17. Folder 35. 1990 Campaign, Endorsements, Groups, Texas Women's Political Caucus, 1990
Box 18. Folder 30. 1990 Campaign, Endorsements, Pending, League of Women Voters of Texas Education Fund, 1990
Box 18. Folder 33. 1990 Campaign, Endorsements, Pending, San Antonio Women's Chamber of Commerce, 1990
Box 43. Folder 24. Women's Rights, To Actors & Actresses, 1992 February 28
Materials found within the James R. "Jim" Dunnam papers
Box 23. Folder 20. Constituents, Speeches, Texas Democratic Women, 2001
Box 23. Folder 38. Legislative, General, House Bills, Dunnam House Floor Votes, Women, 1997-2001
Materials found within the Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards State Legislative papers
Box 78. Folder 6. 69th Session, Senate Bills, Engineering Programs, Recruitment of Women and Minorities: S.B. 276 (1 of 2), 1985
Box 78. Folder 7. 69th Session, Senate Bills, Engineering Programs, Recruitment of Women and Minorities: S.B. 276 (2 of 2), 1985
Box 78. Folder 8. 69th Session, Senate Bills, Equal Employment: S.B. 597, undated
Box 109. Folder 19. 69th Session, Senate Bills, Topical, High Technology, Women and Minorities in Engineering, 1984-1985
Box 132. Folder 6. 70th Session, Correspondence, Equal Employment, 1987
Box 150. Folder 4. Senate Bills, Women and Minorities in Engineering Education: S.B. 972, 1982-1987
Box 150. Folder 5. Senate Bills, Women and Minorities in Engineering Education: S.B. 91, S.B. 182, 1981-1987
Box 150. Folder 6. Senate Bills, Women and Minorities in Engineering Education: S.B. 91, S.B. 182, 1983-1987
Box 154. Folder 14. House Bills, Women and Minorities in Engineering Education: H.B. 102, 1985-1987
Box 171. Folder 4. Topical, Women, 1985-1987
Box 176. Folder 15. 71st Session, Correspondence, Equal Employment, 1987-1990
Materials found within the Thomas Chester "Chet" Edwards U.S. House of Representatives papers
Box 178. Folder 27. Fundraiser, Women's Equality Day Luncheon (HW), 1993 August 30
Box 181. Folder 6. Meetings, Speech to Women's Business Group, undated
Subseries 10. Miscellaneous
Box 181. Folder 28. Miscellaneous, Speeches, Ann Richards, 1994 October 24
Box 181. Folder 29. Miscellaneous, Speeches, Ann Richards, 1994 November
Box 183. Folder 59. Rally, Women's Equality Day Speech- Ft. Hood, TX, 1993 August 27
Box 184. Folder 13. Rally, Bell County Democratic Women- Lea Ann Edwards, 1996
Box 189. Folder 35. Voting Record, 105th Congress, American Association of University Women, 1995-1997
Box 190. Folder 32. Voting Record, 111th Congress, Women’s Issues, 2009-2011
Box 307. Folder 7. Correspondence, 2001, Defense, Women
Box 361. Folder 5. Correspondence, 2004, Civil Rights, Women's Rights
Box 394. Folder 12. Correspondence, 2006, Health, Women
Materials found within the Jack Hightower papers
Box 48. Folder 9. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 59th Legislature, Subject Files, League of Women Voters, 1963-1964
Box 54. Folder 10. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 59th Legislature, Subject Files, Women’s Rights, 1964-1964
Box 54. Folder 11. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 59th Legislature, Subject Files, Women’s Rights, 1959-1967
Box 84. Folder 2. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 60th Legislature, Legislation, SJR 5 – Women’s Equal Legal Rights
Box 91b. Folder 7. U.S. Government, House of Representatives, Legislative Correspondence, Md: National Women's Conference, 1976
Box 99. Folder 10. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 61st Legislature, Subject Files, Women's Rights, 1965-1970
Box 163. Folder 5. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 63rd Legislature, Subject Files, League of Women Voters, 1973-1974
Box 170. Folder 21. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 63rd Legislature, Subject Files, Women in Politics, 1974
Box 175. Folder 16. Texas Government, Legislative, Texas Senate, 59th-63rd Sessions, 63rd Legislature, Legislation Files, Women's Equal Rights Amendment, 1973-1974
Box 379. Folder 9. Executive Branch, Budget, USDA-W.I.F.E., 1983
Materials found within the W. R. Poage papers
Box 290. Folder 1. Legislation: Education and Labor: Equal Opportunity for Displaced Homemakers Act, 1975.
Box 360. Folder 2. Legislation, Equal Rights Amendment, 1951-1955.
Box 369. Folder 6. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights, 1972.
Box 373. Folder 5 Legislation, Judiciary, Women's Lib Constitutional Amendment, Correspondence, 1974
Box 376. Folder 7. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, 1975
Box 378. Folder 4. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, 1976
Box 382. Folder 6. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment and International Women's Year, Correspondence, 1978.
Box 382. Folder 7. Legislation, Judiciary, Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence 1978.
Box 474. Folder 4. Poage Bills: H.Con.Res. 303: United Nations proclaims International Women's Year, 1975
Box. 513A. Folder 15. Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence, 1978
Box. 513A. Folder 16. Women's Rights, Equal Rights Amendment, Correspondence, 1978
Box. 513A. Folder 17. Women's Rights, Equal Rights Amendment, Articles and Newsletters, 1978
Box 775. Folder 1. Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus, Newsletters, 1978
Box 775. Folder 3. Congressional Clearinghouse on Women's Rights, Newsletters, 1978
Box 1002. Folder 1. Labor Department: Women & Work, Newsletters, 1978
Box 1047. Folder 1. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1965
Box 1047. Folder 2. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1968
Box 1047. Folder 3. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1971
Box 1047. Folder 4. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1972
Box 1047. Folder 5. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1973
Box 1047. Folder 6. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1974
Box 1047. Folder 7. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1975
Box 1047. Folder 8. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1976
Box 1047. Folder 9. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Legislation and Correspondence, 1978
Materials found within the Alan W. Steelman papers
Box 106. Folder 2. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, 1973-1974
Box 106. Folder 3. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (1 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 4. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (2 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 5. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (3 of 3), 1974
Box 106. Folder 6. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (1 of 3), 1973
Box 106. Folder 7. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (2 of 3), 1973
Box 106a. Folder 1. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights (3 of 3), 1973
Box 106a. Folder 2. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, Abortion, 1976
Box 106a. Folder 3. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, Abortion, 1975
Box 106a. Folder 4. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, ERA, 1976
Box 106a. Folder 5. Legislation by Committee, Judiciary, Women's Rights, ERA, 1975
Box 182. Folder 21. Voting Record, Women, 1975
The Texas Young Nurse's Photo Album features images of an unidentified nursing student at Providence Hospital in Waco, Texas. The dates of the album range from 1912-1913 and it contains 387 gelatin black and white or sepia photographs. Images of the young woman’s family, friends, and other nurses are prominent throughout the album. A section of the album also focuses on the young woman and her husband.
More information about Texas Young Nurse's Photo Album can be found in the Texas Young Nurse's Photo Album at The Texas Collection.