I think it's significant that she's got a telephone directory. If she only knew what was coming with cell phones!

 

A missing purse found under the stage of an old school building chronicles what life was like for a teenage girl in the 1950s. But the whereabouts of the girl it belonged to remain a mystery.

While ripping up the floorboards of the League City School building to create a new community center, contractors uncovered a purse filled with memories and mementos dating back to 1959.

“There was a mini calendar and the dates and entries stopped in April 1959 so we assume it was lost in April 1959,” said Erika Fernandez, communications specialist with CCISD.

Going through the purse with Clear Creek ISD staff revealed the possible identity of the owner of the purse was finally revealed.

“We presume from some of the photos that the owner of the wallet is Beverly Williams and she was born in 1946; so that would put her at 76 years old,” Fernandez said.

The contents of the purse were childhood photos, notes and memories that could piece together the lives of the girl and her family.

“I started looking through it myself, being careful, and I found a lot of old pictures in it,” said Sarah Osborne, director of communications and community engagement for League City. “I also found a calendar, pencils, a handkerchief, a nail file set and a note that said ‘Please let my daughter Beverly Williams ride the bus home,’ signed Mrs. Frank Williams.”

Photos of the girl's father, sisters, and male crushes were also found in the purse, along with her mini diary and wallet.

Richard Lewis, vice president of the League City Historical Society, gave details on the identities of the girl’s family uncovered through photos in the purse in the news release.

“She’s the youngest of four sisters,” Lewis said. “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.”

In the notes Beverly wrote in her notebook, Osborne learned about dances she went to, the boys she liked, and the life of a teenage girl in the 1950s.

“It was like we were living through somebody’s social media page of today,” Osborne said.

The purse was found in summer 2021, during renovation for the League City Community Center.

The League City School is the oldest building in Clear Creek ISD. It opened in 1938 and has housed students since before the district was consolidated in 1948, according to a news release.

Fast forward to 2019, students were temporarily housed in the school while a new elementary school was being built. Once it was built, the plan was for the League City School to be torn down.

“In 2019, Clear Creek ISD refreshed the building to house elementary school students there for a year…,” Osborne said. “When we learned they were going to tear it down, we realized we could turn it into a community center.”

In summer 2021, the building was leased to be used as a community center and hold the Camp by the Creek Summer Camp.

When renovations for the building began, and that’s when the contractors began ripping up the floorboards that were originally there since 1938.

“We realized that in the gymnasium there was a huge stage, but it was covered up by a wall. So we said ‘let’s tear down the wall and check the stage out because this could be a good location for our youth theater program,’” said Osborne.

Once the wall was torn down they chose to keep the stage, but decided that the floor could not be saved. And it was when the floorboards were being pulled up that the purse was discovered.

The contractor passed it onto the facility manager, and it landed in Osborne’s hands.

City officials and CCISD have been searching Clear Creek yearbooks and records and have not been able to find more information about Beverly Williams or her family.

In a video by Clear Creek ISD, the contents of the purse also showed pictures of Williams and her sisters, as well as her father, and boys who attended Clear Creek. But the school that Williams attended, and what happened to her family after the purse was lost, is unclear.

As of now, the purse is in the city’s possession while the search for her family is underway.

“It [the purse] is ultimately going to come to the historical society and be put on display and put in the archives of the museum if we cannot find the family,” said Lewis.