Sunday, June 29, 2025

15-Year-Old Bride Doesn't Mind Sentence; Says Her Husband is a "Scarecrow," June 30, 1925

Wild Shelby Girl 15 Years Old Says Hubby a Scarecrow

A news item in the Charlotte News of Saturday will be interesting to Shelby people.

Mary Lee Royster, little 15-year-old girl with bobbed hair and flashing eyes, had been in hot water ever since she was 9, but when she [married] a Gastonia man a short while ago, she jumped out of the boiling kettle into the fire. Local welfare officials have been having trouble with Mary for six years and Friday afternoon, juvenile Judge Wade H. Williams sentenced her to Samarcand.

The little brunette lass said she didn’t mind going to Samarcand one big, declaring that her husband looked like a scarecrow and that she was glad to get away from him. She will leave for Samarcand Monday with Mrs. Marion B. Munn of the public welfare office.

The conventional rules of society have never appealed to Mary, and she has been breaking them right and left for several years. Welfare officials have on previous occasions sent her to the Mecklenburg county home, several private homes and to the state sanitorium.

Mary’s father, Charlie Royster of Shelby, is dead, and her mother’s address was given as the Cleveland county jail, but Mary has known nothing of her whereabouts for some time.

From the front page of the Cleveland Star, Shelby, N.C., Tuesday, June 30, 1925

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn97064509/1925-06-30/ed-1/seq-1/#words=JUNE+30.+1925

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