Who was Pamela Ashford Puryear?

“This book is dedicated to our late friend and Mater Rosa, Pamela Ashford Puryear (1943-2005). Without her dogged curiosity, Texas-sized vision, and boundless enthusiasm, the Texas Rose Rustlers, the Antique Rose Emporium, and this book would never have existed. There will never be another like her. Not even close.” Those were the dedication remarks of co-author Greg Grant of the book, The Rose Rustlers, published in 2017 by Texas A & M University Press.

Grant continued, “When I was studying horticulture in the Brazos Valley at Texas A & M University in the 1980s, my mentor Bill Welch (co-author of this book) introduced me to the most fascinating person imaginable. I met her on the front porch of the once-grand two-story home her great grandfather built in sleepy Navasota, Texas, during an early meeting of the famed Texas Rose Rustlers. She lived with her elderly mother, Missy (Laura). They both had slow southern drawls that flowed like ribbon cane syrup on a frosty morning. Pam was a historian, genealogist, artist, calligrapher, and self-proclaimed princess. She was undoubtedly the most eccentric person I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something as I’m not exactly normal myself.”

We wager there are dozens of Navasotians who grew up with Pamela, and many others who crossed her many paths, who would basically say the same thing about Pamela - her brilliance countered by her quirkiness and idiosyncrasies.

Pamela, an eighth generation Texan, was the last known descendent of Jesse Wallace Youens and Annie Ashworth-Youens to live in the historic Jesse Youens’ family home located at Holland Avenue and Wood Street in Navasota. She never married, but over time nurtured dozens of cats.

“Pam unfortunately passed away in 2005 but certainly left a lasting impact on me, Bill, and the world of horticulture. After all, she was one of the three founding members of the Texas Rose Rustlers. Without the Rose Rustlers, there is a good chance there never would have been an Antique Rose Emporium in Independence, Texas,” Grant proclaims.

Thomas Christopher in his earlier book, “In Search of Lost Roses,” also described Pamela as “one of the most colorful of rose rustlers. She was a well-educated but reclusive Texan lady who lived in a crumbling mansion her great grandfather had built according to a pattern purchased from a magazine. Pam used to carry an old cavalry saber with her while out rose hunting to ward off the snakes.”

The Smithsonian magazine also recognized Pamela in a July 1982 issue, telling the story of Pamela along with a “big, bearded man” being observed trespassing in an East Piedmont yard near North Brosig in Navasota. They essentially were “committing a crime of robbery” as they took rose cuttings. A passerby asked, “What are you doing?” With their simple answer of “we’re rose rustling,” the passerby supposedly asked, “if it was a hangin’ offense?”

Pamela claimed that “a rose should exist to please you, not to please it.” It was as early as 1969 when she first spotted a rose in front of an abandoned log cabin. It was ‘blooming its head off in the thick August heat of central Texas, and it hadn’t rained for months,” she related. She dug up the “flowering pink prize” and transplanted it in her yard. It continued what she called, “its promiscuous blooming ways,” where as a hybrid tea rose she had been nurturing truly became “three brown sticks” for her efforts.

Pamela is also renowned for co-authoring with Nath Winfield, Jr. the book “Sandbars and Sternwheelers.” The book is praised as a most credited history of Steam Navigation on the Brazos. Pamela, no doubt, is a legendary Navasotian Texan.

Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworivers heritagefoundation.org website for more info and membership.