Madame Isabelle
Isabelle “Belle” Young Niess claims to have been clairvoyant, having recognized in childhood that she had a gift for prophecy, something a friend disclosed to a Dallas Morning News reporter after Belle’s death.
In 1940, when she was 61 years old, Belle lived alone in a house she once shared with her husband and son on Marion Street in Dallas. When the census taker arrived in the spring, Belle identified herself as a “spiritualist” who gave readings, for which she reportedly earned $500 that year.
Did Belle also share with him that, within the year, she would be dead?
It’s unclear how Belle’s clairvoyance worked, if it worked at all. Had she been able to see into her own future, she surely would have opted not to marry — and divorce — four times. Had she foreseen the murder of one of those husbands, she could have prevented it.
And, 20/20 foresight might have saved her only child from a heartbreaking personal loss and incarceration in a Huntsville prison.
Isabelle’s mother, Mary Jennie Cole (1849–1913), was the daughter and granddaughter of Tennessee farmers. How Jennie came to live in Texas is not a certainty, but in 1868, her name is linked to Charles Annes on a Hunt, Texas, marriage document. By 1881, she was in Dallas, married to J.C. Hughley. And, at the time of her death in 1913, she was the widow of Fred Ratzlaff.
Between her mother’s first two marriages, Belle was born June 4, 1878, in Obion County, Tennessee. Her father was named Pinkney Young. That information comes — not from a birth certificate, census record, or marriage license— but from a 1923 Michigan document, on which Belle, then 35 and marrying for the third time, was asked to provide her parents’ names.
Multiple marriages may have been Jennie’s legacy to her daughter. Belle first exchanged vows with one H.S. Miller, a steel bridge contractor 20 years her senior. The Dallas Morning News shows they divorced September 27, 1903, a development Miller resisted to his own detriment.
Belle fell in love with a younger man, William Henry Niess, the son of German immigrants and a sign painter for Schuler Woltz Company. He was not only younger than Miller but four years younger than Belle. They married in 1904.
In the early afternoon of August 3, 1904, Niess, then 23, approached Miller at a boarding house near the First Methodist Church on Commerce Street. Niess spotted Miller in a hallway and shot two bullets through a screen door, striking Miller once in the abdomen. Miller was heard to say, “I’m badly hurt. I’m killed.”
Within ten minutes of the shooting, Niess appeared at the police station and surrendered, according to multiple news accounts. He was charged with assault to murder and locked up for a few hours. Miller was taken to St. Paul Sanitarium, where he died.
When asked why he targeted Miller, Niess replied, “I married Miller’s divorced wife, and he is making trouble for us. That’s why I shot him.”
Eight years later, on May 13, 1912, a Dallas judge dismissed the charge of murder against Niess, declaring there was insufficient evidence for a conviction.
In those years between the shooting and the dismissal of charges, Niess appears to have been a steady husband and father. He worked as a sign painter for decades, employed in 1909 by Browne Electric Sign Company, and later, at an advertising company and a paint company. As young-marrieds, he and Belle purchased a home at 912 Marion Street, and shared it with their son, William “Willie” Lee, born in 1905.
The 1910 census shows Niess, then 29, still fully employed, living with Belle, 31, and Willie, 5, in their mortgaged Marion Street home. Belle was engaged in the community: In November, 1912, she received good notices as a supporting player in a theatrical production, Reaping the Harvest, to benefit St. Joseph’s Church.
That the Niess family otherwise escaped notice from the press suggests theirs had become an ordinary life. The 1920 census reveals not much had changed for Belle’s small family, except Niess had paid off the mortgage and young Willie, 15, had gone to work as a filing clerk for a mail-order house.
By 1922, there were big changes: Belle and Niess, 40, divorced and, in December of that year, Niess married Pearl Ruth Foster, a 24-year-old schoolteacher in Panola, Texas. The couple moved into a house on Valencia Street in East Dallas. Belle, 44, remained in her home on Marion Street with son Willie.
Without Niess, Belle found an occupation. The revival of interest in spiritualism in the 1920’s spurred the popularity of Harry Houdini, seances, Ouija boards, and the reading of palms, cards, and tea leaves. For Belle, it was a a timely trend. She turned to her gift, styling herself as a clairvoyant named Mme Isabelle; she was able to work from her home on Marion Street.
Belle then gave marriage a third try. It’s unclear how she met Sylvester Watters, a 55-year-old Detroit plumber, but on June 16, 1923, they signed the marriage register in Michigan that made them man and wife. Two years earlier, Watters had lost his wife of 32 years; it’s clear he wasn’t ready for wedding bells to ring again so soon. He and Belle divorced less than eight months after they wed. Watters subsequently identified himself as a widower, thereby erasing his union with Belle.
Belle didn’t let that failure discourage her. Records show she married a D.L. Phillips on March 4, 1929. By the time the census taker knocked on the door in April 1930, Belle already was divorced. Then 52, she was working for wages as a hat trimmer in a department store, probably to supplement what she made as a fortune teller.
Marriage may have been Belle’s way of giving herself not only an income, but also a family, something she mostly lacked. Her mother, Jennie, died from pneumonia in 1913, and her only other close relative was her son, Willie, whose personal troubles could not have brought her comfort.
Willie shared Belle’s home on Marion Street until 1925, when he was 20. In October that year, he married Eunice M. Parker, 19, who had grown up in Terrell, Texas. They settled on Pine Street and started their family with a baby girl. On July 9, 1927, Eunice, then 21, killed herself by ingesting Lysol; she died within an hour at Parkland Hospital.
Willie spiraled out of control. He was indicted twice in federal court for violating narcotics laws. In 1945, he was arrested for burglary. Four years later, on June 28, 1949, he was incarcerated at the Wynne Farm State Prison, the state’s first prison farm. His record identifies him as a painter and a widower. His sentence expired March 1, 1951.
That was 10 years too late to comfort his mother. Belle was suffering from multiple metastases of cancer when her heart stopped on May 11, 1941, at Baylor Hospital. She was 62 years, 11 months, and seven days old.
Her obituary stated: “Mrs. Niess had no known relatives.”
Belle Young Niess is buried next to her mother, Jennie Ratzlaff, in section 2, lot 50 at Oakland Cemetery.
NOTES: Despite her subsequent marriages, Belle Young Niess retained the surname of her second husband and the father of her only child. William Henry Niess (1882–1952) remained married to Pearl Ruth Foster (1893–1980), with whom he had a daughter, Thelma Ruth Niess Coleman (1924–2019). Niess and his wife are buried in Restland Memorial Park.
