Myrtice Vera McCaskill (left, in 1922) was born June 15, 1896, in DeFuniak Springs. She was the daughter of the first City Marshal (1901-1903) Malcolm McCaskill and his wife Mary Stanley. Malcolm was born in Knox Hill in 1861 and was the brother of John Jette McCaskill and the uncle of R. E. L. McCaskill. Mary was born in Eucheeanna in 1867.
At some point in the 1910s, Mary and Malcolm McCaskill moved to Perry in Taylor County and ran the Greystone Hotel on North Jefferson Street. Myrtice, or “Myrt” as she was called by her friends, attended the Florida State College for Women in Tallahassee where she received her Bachelor’s degree in 1915. She was president of her class while a junior and was active in several clubs and societies. After graduation, Myrt taught school and remained active in the community.
Women received the right to vote in 1920, which meant they could also run for office. When the state representative for Taylor County decided to run for the state senate, Myrt was encouraged to run for the Florida House of Representatives. In 1922, she and Katherine Bell Tippetts of St. Petersburg were the first two women to run for the Florida House. Myrt ran unchallenged until attorney W. T. Hendry entered the race at the last minute. Myrt lost to him, 835 to 197 votes.
After losing the House race, Myrt became a successful insurance agent and was reading law for admission to the Bar when she married James Jordan Tyson of Montgomery, Alabama, in 1923 in Jacksonville. James was a lawyer and the son of a former member of the Alabama Supreme Court who was at the time of the marriage a United States Congressman from Alabama. Myrt and James Tyson had three children, but little else is known of Myrt’s activities after her marriage. It is known that she was living in a nursing home in Mobile, Alabama, at least two years before her death in 1985. Her husband died in 1966.
Source: Morris, Allen, “Florida’s First Women Candidates,” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 4 (April 1985), pp. 406-422.
Burial: Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama