The owner of a purse that had been missing for more than six decades after it was lost under the floorboards of a Texas school has been identified.
While League City School was undergoing renovations last year what appeared to be a child’s purse and wallet was discovered, but upon closer inspection it was so much more. It was someone’s diary complete with photos and personal journal entries.
The League City Historical Society recently announced that after sharing the contents online, they identified the owner: Beverly Williams. Unfortunately she passed away in 2016.
When her family learned about their mother’s hidden treasure, they were “blown away.”
Last year League City School, which last housed elementary school students in 2018, began undergoing a renovation as a community center. During construction workers found a small purse.
“The purse was full of what looked like a wallet and it turned out to be a diary,” Richard Lewis, vice president of the League City Historical Society, said, according to KHOU. “Picture it as today’s Facebook: you’re putting everything down. She wrote about her love life, who she broke up with.”
The wallet was jam-packed with photos, notes, and a calendar that dates back to April 1959.
The name “Beverly Williams” appeared many times inside the wallet and other clues led the historical society to believe it belonged to her, but they were unsure how to get in contact with Williams.
“One of the photos in there was her at 9.5 months and it said 1946 on it, so that approximates her age at 76 years old,” Lewis said. “She’s the youngest of four sisters. The mother signed a note as Mrs. Frank Williams, so we have a picture of [the dad] but we don’t know her first name.”
There was also things linking her to Clear Creek ISD – students used to attend the school before and after CCISD was consolidated in 1948 – but they were unable to find Williams in any yearbook.
So the historical society turned to social media.
Not long after they shared the contents of the bag on Facebook, they announced they were able to identify the purse’s owner.
Sadly, the historical society learned Williams died in 2016.
Lewis spoke with one of Williams’ nine children and said “she was blown away with what we told her.”
What made the discovery even more special was that the purse had been found around October 5, which would have been Beverly’s 76th birthday.
The family intends on retrieving their mother’s long lost purse and wallet in the coming days.
How special it must be for this family to finally have their mother’s notes and photos from when she was a young girl!
Please share this heartwarming story.
