Sawyer, Byrd Fanita Wall, 1895-1981

Historian, teacher, and writer Byrd Fanita Wall Sawyer was born May 5, 1895 in Missouri. She traveled around the United States; received her Master of Arts degree in American History at the University of California, Berkeley; and finally settled in Reno, Nevada in 1923 where she married Dr. Harry Sawyer. They subsequently moved to Fallon, Nevada, where Wall Sawyer worked as a midwife in the 1930s and 1940s. In the late 1940s, Wall Sawyer returned to education, working as a history teacher and librarian at Churchill County High School in Fallon for seventeen year. They moved back to Reno in the late 1950s, and in 1961, Dr. Harry Sawyer passed away. Wall Sawyer continued to work as a librarian, writer, historian, teacher, and political activist throughout Nevada, the United States, and internationally until her death on October 15, 1981 in Carson City, Nevada.

Sawyer's stepsons were "Pete" Harry W. Sawyer, Jr., obstetrician and chief of staff at St. Francis Hospital in San Francisco, California; Milo Sawyer, Baptist minister in Toledo, Ohio; and Grant Sawyer, Nevada Governor and Las Vegas, Nevada lawyer.