Ancestors

Samuel Dale Myres Jr.

Samuel Dale Myres Jr. was born on 16 April 1899 at Sweetwater, Nolan County, in West Texas. He was known as Ted. His father was Samuel Dale Myres, a saddlemaker who had opened a shop in Sweetwater two years earlier and would become the town's mayor. His mother was Druza Ann Rogers. A brother, William James "Bill" Myres, was born in 1903, and there was a sister, Melrose.

As a young man in Sweetwater he played the violin in concerts and was known as an orator. A 1916 yearbook titled "Yucca Gloriosa" carries his oval portrait and a full-length snapshot, the snapshot captioned "Professor Ted". The page does not name the school.

He went to three universities before he finished a degree: Trinity University, the University of Texas and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. SMU gave him a B.A. in English in 1920. His senior entry in the Rotunda, the SMU yearbook, lists Phi Kappa Psi, a fraternity, and Delta Sigma Rho, a national honor society for college debaters. He was the violinist of the Glee Club. The yearbook joked that he had "fiddled" his way through all three schools.

Probably about 1921 or 1922, he married Laura Blanche Tidwell of Ennis, daughter of the lawyer William Madison Tidwell. The record of the wedding has not been found. Their only child, Blanche Wynnell Myres, was born at Ennis on 17 April 1923. Her birth certificate describes Ted as a school teacher, aged 24, living in Sweetwater.

In 1924 he passed the Texas bar examination. He took an M.A. at SMU and then a Ph.D. at the University of Texas, which his obituary calls "the first doctorate in government ever awarded at UT Austin." By 1927 he was on the SMU faculty as Dr. S. D. Myres, teaching in the Arnold School of Government and coaching the debate team. The same year his wife took her own graduate degree at SMU.

He then won a traveling fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, a New York body that funded research in the social sciences. It paid for postgraduate work in Geneva, Switzerland, in Palestine and in other countries of the Middle East. In 1930 the census found Laura and Blanche in Ennis with the Tidwells and Ted not in the house, probably because he was overseas. He landed at New York in 1931. Blanche arrived at New York the same year aboard the Homeric, and they were probably traveling together.

Back at SMU he became a department head. His obituary adds that while teaching there "he opened several photographic stores and a school that trained nearly 3000 photographers." In 1935 and 1940 he and Laura lived in Dallas; the 1940 census has them together. The 1939 Rotunda shows him among the faculty of Arts and Sciences as "Myres, S. D., Jr., Arnold School of Gov't". He landed at New York from abroad again in 1941.

His first marriage ended in the 1940s. When he registered for the draft at Dallas on 16 February 1942, the person he named as always knowing his address was a man, Layton W. Bailey, not his wife. No divorce record has been found. He married again, to Petra, and raised a second family. A son, Robert Dale "Bob" Myres, was born in 1949. Laura never remarried and kept the name Myres until her death in 1997.

His father, the El Paso saddlemaker known as "Tio Sam", died in July 1953. Ted moved to El Paso to help run the S. D. Myres Saddle Company. He began teaching night classes at Texas Western College, which is now the University of Texas at El Paso. By 1955 he was on its faculty as Professor of Government. He became the first editor of Texas Western Press, the college's publishing house, and later headed the government department. He retired in 1970.

He wrote history in El Paso. His largest work was "The Permian Basin", a two-volume work on the oil country of West Texas that took him eight years. Publisher's catalogues also list him as editor of the Big Bend writings of O. W. Williams and of a volume on the railways of Mexico. In 1985 the press published his autobiography, "The Education of a West Texan: A Personal Account, 1899-1985".

Ted Myres died in El Paso on Wednesday, 22 April 1987, six days after his 88th birthday. Memorial services were held two days later at Harding-Orr & McDaniel. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, El Paso, in Section Z, Lot 15, beside his father. His obituary named Petra, two sons and two daughters in El Paso. It did not mention Laura, still living in Dallas, or Blanche, who had died ten years earlier.

If Samuel Dale Myres Jr. is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Samuel Dale Myres Jr. (1899-1987)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/samuel-dale-myres-jr-1899-1987-fa4773.