Laura Blanche Tidwell
Laura Blanche Tidwell was born at eleven in the morning on 11 October 1902, at 301 South Dallas Street in Ennis, Ellis County, Texas. Her father, William Madison Tidwell, was 36, born in White County, Arkansas, and described himself as a "lawyer, practicing law". Her mother, Laura Blanche Taber, was 29 and born in Ellis County. She carried her mother's full name. At the time of her birth her parents gave their home as Ferris, a town in the north of the county.
Her birth was not registered when it happened. Her father filed a delayed certificate for her in 1940, the kind made years after a birth that was never registered. He signed it at Ennis. It states that her mother had borne two children. The other was her brother, William Edward Tidwell, born at Ennis on 27 February 1896.
In 1910 the family lived in Waxahachie, the county seat. The census lists William M., Blanche, William E. and Laura B. Tidwell, aged seven.
Probably about 1921 or 1922, she married Samuel Dale Myres Jr., known as Ted, the son of a Sweetwater saddlemaker and a graduate of Southern Methodist University. Their daughter, Blanche Wynnell Myres, was born at Ennis on 17 April 1923, on South Dallas Street, where Laura herself had been born. Laura was twenty. Her husband was then a school teacher living in Sweetwater.
Ted joined the SMU faculty, and Laura studied there too. By 1927 she had a B.A., and that year she took a graduate degree at SMU with a thesis titled "The Public Defender". A public defender is a lawyer paid by the public to defend people who cannot afford one. Her husband coached SMU's debate team the same year.
In 1930 Laura and Blanche were living in her parents' house in Ennis. Ted was not there, probably because he was abroad on a research fellowship in Geneva and the Middle East. By 1935 the couple lived together in Dallas, and the 1940 census finds them there.
The marriage ended in the 1940s. In February 1942 Ted named a man, not Laura, as the person who would always know his address. He later remarried and raised a second family in El Paso. No divorce record has been found. Laura did not remarry. She kept the name Myres for the rest of her life and lived on in Dallas.
Her father died in University Park in 1949 and her mother in Ennis in 1966. Both were buried in the Tidwell plot at Myrtle Cemetery in Ennis. Her daughter Blanche died in 1977 at 53 and was buried in the same plot.
Laura Blanche Tidwell Myres died on 4 February 1997, aged 94. She was buried beside Blanche in the Fourth Addition of Myrtle Cemetery. Her marker is carved with praying hands and reads "LAURA BLANCHE TIDWELL MYRES / OCT. 11, 1902 / FEB. 4, 1997".
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Cite: Heirology, "Laura Blanche Tidwell (1902-1997)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/laura-blanche-tidwell-1902-1997-0ec181.