Frances Sanger Mossiker was an award winning Dallas author best known for writing historical nonfiction. She was born on April 3, 1906, in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of Elihu and Evelyn (Beekman) Sanger. She was the granddaughter of Alexander Sanger, one of the founding brothers of Sanger Brothers and an early Dallas settler and civic leader. She frequently visited her mother's family in France and became fluent in French and German. She died on May 12, 1985.
Frances was educated at the Hockaday School in Dallas and enrolled at Smith College but was prevented by college policy from remaining a student after she eloped with Frank Beaston, an actor, about 1922. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Barnard in 1927, did graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris, then moved to Detroit and to Hollywood with her husband; the marriage ended in divorce about 1929, and she returned to Dallas. She married businessman Jacob Mossiker on October 15, 1935. They had no children. Frances Mossiker began her writing career as a book reviewer for the Dallas Morning News in the 1930s. When WFAA radio began broadcasts she hosted a book review program and later a daily program, "Woman's World" for KGKO in Fort Worth. Her first book, The Queen's Necklace, was awarded best nonfiction book of the year by the Texas Institute of Letters in 1961. Mossiker had six books published in addition to numerous historical articles and book reviews.
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Sources:
- Tyler, Ron, ed. The New Handbook of Texas Volume 4. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996, pp. 856-857.
- Frances Sanger Mossiker Family Papers, AR423, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library.
From the guide to the Frances Sanger Mossiker Family Papers AR432., approximately 1887-1985, (Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Library)
