About 45 years after her death, Patsy Winn Neff is still remembered as a cosmetologist who radiated an inner beauty while helping her clients acquire outer polish and pizazz.

From 1911 until her retirement in 1956, she operated a beauty shop — Parlor of Scientific Beauty Culture — in the ALICO Building.

She embarked on the career to provide for her children after becoming a widow at age 31. Her 44-year-old husband, rancher Edward Lewis Neff, died Feb. 2, 1900, of pneumonia, leaving her with four young children to raise. She held on to the ranch as long as she could before moving to town in 1911 to seek work.

Edward Neff was the eldest child of Noah and Isabella Shepherd Neff, who came to Texas in the early 1850s. He was born Dec. 31, 1855, near Eagle Springs in Coryell County.

Edward’s youngest sibling was Pat M. Neff, who would later serve two terms as Texas governor. (Patsy Neff was one of Pat Neff’s political confidantes, his biographers say.)

Edward Neff’s future bride, Patsy, was born Dec. 25, 1868, in her grandfather’s home near Gallatin, Tenn., to Robert Sales Winn and Samantha Park Winn.

She and Edward Neff were married on Oct. 31, 1889, in McLennan County. They had five children: James Morris, Mary Isabella (known as Mai Belle), Samuel, a daughter named Edward and an infant son who died soon after birth.

“She started her own business and earned enough money to raise her children alone. She never thought of marrying again,” said David L. Scott, one of a trio of biographers of Pat Neff behind 2007’s The Land, The Law and The Lord. “It was very rare during those times.”

Patsy Neff’s granddaughter, 86-year-old Patsy Crowell Britton of Houston, recalled coming to Waco from Wichita Falls with her mother, Mai Belle, to visit her grandmother — and having to live up to her grandmother’s high standards of behavior and appearance.

“She was upset with anyone who wore shorts. And she thought all women ought to wear hose,” Britton said.

“I spent many an hour in her shop with my paper dolls or whatever they could find to entertain me,” said Britton in a telephone interview.

Pat Neff was a regular customer at the beauty shop in the ALICO, where he maintained a law office as well. Several Baylor University professors also patronized the shop during Neff’s years as president (1932-47).

After she retired in the autumn of 1956, Patsy Winn Neff moved in with her daughter Mai Bell and her daughter’s husband, attorney Charles Crowell, in Wichita Falls. She died there on May 29, 1964, at age 95.

Her body was returned to Waco, and she was buried at Oakwood Cemetery next to her young daughter, Edward Lewis Neff Jr. The child had died Jan. 11, 1912, after contracting spinal meningitis during an epidemic that swept through Waco schools.

The disease outbreak was so severe, Scott says, that Waco was quarantined and people could not enter or leave the city. Patsy Neff wanted to bury her daughter next to her husband and the rest of the Neffs in the family plot at Post Oak Cemetery in Coryell County but was refused.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

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