DAVIS, CLARE OGDEN (1892–1970). Clare Ogden Davis, newspaperwoman and author, was born on November 26, 1892, in Kimball's Bend, Texas, the daughter of Charles Vance and Mary (Lawrence) Ogden. She entered Baylor College at Belton (now the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor) in 1913 and graduated there; afterwards she taught history in Bonham and Cleburne high schools. Her first newspaper job was as a reporter in the Fort Worth office of the Dallas Morning News. There she was possibly the first Texas woman to cover police assignments. In Dallas in 1920 she married John Burton Davis, with whom she later collaborated on seven novels under the pen name Lawrence Saunders. The Davises had no children. During the early 1920s Mrs. Davis became manager of the Houston bureau of several Texas newspapers. From 1923 to 1925 she was in Europe, reporting on various international events; while there she met writer Joseph Conrad and obtained the last interview he granted before his death. After returning to Texas, she worked as Governor Miriam A. Ferguson's press secretary for a year before moving in 1926 to New York City, where she wrote a column on child psychology and reported on such important events as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. In 1929 her novel about a woman governor of a southwestern state who was elected on an anti-Klan platform (Mrs. Ferguson had opposed the Klan), The Woman of It, was published. She also wrote a gardening book, In Our Country Garden (1938). Clare Davis was also a public relations counselor and press agent for a national seed company for twenty-five years; she took graduate studies in horticulture and landscape architecture at Columbia University. She returned to Texas in 1951 and, as garden editor for the Austin American, wrote a column, "In My Texas Garden." She helped found the garden center in Zilker Park in Austin, and part of the center was named for her. She retired in 1965 when she suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed, and she died on May 17, 1970. She was buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery, Granger.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

Citation

The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.

William E. Bard, "ADAMS, WALTER R.," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fad08), accessed March 19, 2015. Uploaded on June 9, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.