Ancestors

Blanche Wynnell Myres

Blanche Wynnell Myres was born at two o'clock on 17 April 1923 in Ennis, Ellis County, Texas. Her birth certificate gives the place as "S. Dallas St." in the 2nd Ward of the town. Her mother had been born on South Dallas Street too, in 1902, which makes it probable that Blanche was born in the house of her mother's parents, the lawyer W. M. Tidwell and his wife Laura Blanche.

Her father was Samuel Dale Myres Jr., known as Ted. The certificate calls him a school teacher, aged 24, living at Sweetwater in West Texas. Her mother was Laura Blanche Tidwell, then twenty and described as a housewife. Blanche was their only child. Her father went on to become a professor of government at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and later a historian in El Paso.

In the 1930 census Blanche was six and living in Ennis. The household was her grandfather William M. Tidwell's. It held her grandparents, her mother, Blanche herself, and a man born in Canada named Harry J. McBrierty. Her father was not in the house. He was probably abroad on a research fellowship that took him to Geneva, Palestine and other countries of the Middle East.

In 1931 Blanche arrived at New York aboard the liner Homeric. She was about eight. A Samuel Dale Myres, born in 1899 at Sweetwater, also landed at New York that year. The two were probably father and daughter coming home together from his year overseas, though it is not proven that they were on the same sailing.

In November 1938, at fifteen, Blanche married Grady Cade Wilson at Corsicana, the seat of Navarro County, the next county south of Ennis. He was 23, born in Ellis County on 8 October 1915. A deputy county clerk, Gordon A. MacInnes, married them, so it was a civil ceremony rather than a church wedding. The clerk wrote the groom's middle name as "Code".

The marriage probably lasted about three years. When Grady registered for the draft at Ennis on 16 October 1940, the person he named as always knowing his address was "Blanche Wynnell Wilson". By February 1942 he had a son with another woman, Marjorie Ann Harper, born in Travis County. No divorce record has been found, and no child of Blanche and Grady. He died on 23 August 1968 and is buried in Myrtle Cemetery at Ennis, in the Second Addition.

The Social Security Administration later carried Blanche under four names. One of them was Blanche Myres Graves. No marriage to anyone named Graves has been found, and the Social Security file does not say when she used the name. It may belong to a short marriage in the 1940s between Wilson and Roach, or to the years after 1971. She died under the name Roach, which slightly favors the earlier years.

Blanche's longest marriage was to Malcolm Bruce Roach, a Navy officer during the Second World War. Where and when they married is not known. It was by 1948. They lived in Dallas and had three children there: Laura Blanche Roach in 1948, James Coleman Roach in 1950 and Wynnell Madison Roach in 1954.

Blanche and Malcolm divorced in Dallas County on 7 July 1971, after more than twenty years of marriage. He married Doris Peterson in Harris County in August 1975.

Blanche Wynnell Roach died in Dallas County on 7 March 1977. She was 53. She was taken home to Ennis and buried in Myrtle Cemetery, in the Fourth Addition, in the Tidwell family plot. Her grandparents William Madison Tidwell and Laura Blanche Taber Tidwell already lay there under a TIDWELL family stone. Her mother was buried beside her twenty years later. Blanche's flat granite marker gives her maiden name and her last married name together: "BLANCHE WYNNELL MYRES ROACH / APR. 17, 1923 / MAR. 7, 1977".

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Cite: Heirology, "Blanche Wynnell Myres (1923-1977)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/blanche-wynnell-myres-1923-1977-890136.