Pamela Ashworth Puryear (December 22, 1943 Navasota TX - February 26, 2005)
[From "Old Texas Rose", Winter 2018 issue, p. 4:] Pamela Ashworth Puryear was one of the organizers of the legendary Texas Rose rustlers, a loosely affiliated group of collectors and admirers of unknown local roses from Dallas, Houston, and Central Texas. On their first rose hunt in November 1979 in her hometown of Navasota, Texas, the Rustlers discovered cultivars of ‘Silver Moon’, ‘Excelsa’, Rosa multiflora, ‘White Lady Banks’, ‘Mlle Cécile Brunner’, ‘Old Blush’, and mystery roses that quickly lost their “study names” as they were identified, usually through comparison to old prints of known historical flowers. By 1980 the group had scouted down the Brazos to Belleville and Sealy, where they collected ‘Louis Phillippe’, ‘New Dawn’, ‘Skyrocket’, ‘Veilchenblau’, bush ‘Mlle Cécille Brunner’, the Chestnut Rose (R. roxburghii), the “Hole Rose” – named both for Dean Hole and for the hole in the ground where it was found, and ‘Cl. Lady Hillingdon’. Pam gave Tommy Adams, propagator for the Antique Rose Emporium a collected rose she thought was ‘Gloire de Dijon’, but Tommy realized it was slightly different and called it “Cl. Lady Pamela”. “Lavender Pink Pam” was another rose associated with Pam. Pam and her mother found “Pam’s Pink”, a China/Bourbon cross, in North Zulch, a town in central Texas that year. Pam spent most of her life living in an imposing, but decrepit, white Victorian house surrounded by pecan and magnolia trees, many flowerbeds, and a greenhouse in an advanced state of disrepair, but she was tireless in her efforts to rediscover, research, and promote the glorious tough old garden roses that were the local heirlooms. Pam was also passionate about what she called “The Old Texas Cottage Garden” and wrote extensively on old roses, perennials, native, and fragrant plants that might thrive there.
[From "Old Texas Rose", Summer 2020 issue, p. 1:] Pamela Ashworth Puryear (1943-2005) ...Pam was one of the original three founders of the "Texas Rose Rustlers" and is credited with locating heritage Texas roses given the names "Pam's Pink" and "Climbing Lady Pamela." She was born December 22, 1943, in Navasota, Texas and was raised in a multigenerational environment as a Southern Belle
