Elizabeth Scott Neblett
Confederate Woman Writer

ELIZABETH SCOTT NEBLETT, (1833-1917). Elizabeth (Lizzie) Scott Neblett, diarist, was born in Raymond, Mississippi, to James and Sarah (Lane) Scott on January 17, 1833. In 1839, when she was six years old, the family moved to Houston, Texas. The following year they moved to Fanthorp Springs, three miles east of the site of present Anderson in Grimes County. The area was sparsely populated, and the first school Lizzie attended was held in a small log cabin. On May 25, 1852, she married William H. Neblett, a Texas farmer, planter, and aspiring attorney. The couple spent their first three years of married life in Anderson and moved to Corsicana in 1855. There William Neblett practiced law, edited the Navarro Express , and farmed property three miles outside of town. The family returned to Grimes County in December 1861.

Mrs. Neblett kept a diary from March 1852, two months before her marriage, until May 1863, shortly after her husband left to serve the Confederacy. She wrote, "I can never gain worldly honors. Fame can never be mine. I am a woman ! A woman! I can hardly teach my heart to be content with my lot." She found one of her greatest hardships to be childbirth; she had six children and asked her husband to let her use artificial birth control. She was an avid reader of literature and poetry and saved copies of favorite poems and stories in bulging scrapbooks. Her diary, combined with her letters, scrapbooks, and a memoir she wrote about her deceased husband, provide a picture of a mid-nineteenth-century Texas woman. Following her husband's death in 1871, she lived most of her remaining years in Anderson, where she died on September 28, 1917. Her diary and letters were published in 2001.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Irene Taylor Allen, Saga of Anderson-The Proud Story of a Historic Texas Community (New York: Greenwich, 1957). Kathryn G. Berger, The Diary of Lizzie Scott Neblett, March 16, 1852 to May 1, 1863 (Honors thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1981). Erika L. Murr, ed., A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett, 1852-1864 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001). Lizzie Scott Neblett Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

June Melby Benowitz

 
A REBEL WIFE IN TEXAS offers a singular glimpse into nineteenth-century southern culture through the eyes of a captivating and complex woman who, as a product of that culture, both revered and reviled it.

Elizabeth Scott Neblett was raised in a slaveholding family in eastern Texas. Despite the frontier conditions, she was very much a southern belle who embraced conventional dictates and aspired to the "cult of true womanhood." Neblett entered romantic marriage and motherhood with optimism, but over time her experiences as a wife and mother made her severe and increasingly despondent. While the Civil War ripped away the existing social structure and took her husband away from home, she was pressed to assume many of his responsibilities, including managing the family property and its eleven slaves. Frustrated by a growing sense of powerlessness and inadequacy, she frequently railed in anger against herself, her husband, and her children.

Skillfully edited and annotated, A REBEL WIFE IN TEXAS is a rich resource for anyone researching the nineteenth-century South, not least for its observations on slave and class relations, regional politics, lynching, farm management, medical practices, mental illness, and the Civil War in Texas. It also offers an uncommonly intimate perspective on marriage during that era. The frankness, desperation, and detail with which Neblett discusses birth control and child rearing makes this a unique collection of letters.

Elizabeth Scott Neblett's autobiographical record is the fascinating tale of one woman's life--a life both ordinary and extraordinary. It is also, in important ways, the wider story of a culture rent by turmoil from within and without.

Books
Civil War
Womens Subjects
Young Readers
Military History

DVDs
VHS
Civil War Games
Music CDs

American Civil War Women
Womens Civil War Reading Titles
American Civil War Recipes
Civil War Exhibits
Civil War Timeline
State Battle Maps

Young Heroes of History Series -Reading level: Ages 9-12

Send 'Em South is an adventure story that brings the two conflicting worlds of North and South together. In the years just prior to the Civil War, David Adams grows up in the middle of two worlds. His father is an Irish immigrant who is ridiculed and ignored by the people of Boston. His mother is an abolitionist who has dedicated her life to ending slavery. David, as the son of these two, finds himself an outcast amongst his friends and even his family.
The second in Alan N. Kay's Young Heroes of History series, On the Trail of John Brown's Body, is every bit as good as the first. Whereas that book juxtaposed the plight of a slave family and a northern family filled with abolitionists and sympathetics, this book follows the adventures of two boys and their fathers as they journey to the Kansas Territory in the days when John Brown cast the longest shadow in the land.
Disgusted by the violence of the John Brown raid, George Adams adopts the state of Virginia and its cause as his own. The war does not go well for the South, and when the North's cannons destroy the city, George is horrified. Then, when he finds a poor starving girl, George realizes that he is the only one that can save her. Off to Fight is a story of growing up. It is a story of the brutality of war and the kindness that takes place in the middle of such horrors.
During the Civil War, Mary Adams wants to do more than work at the aid society so she sets out for the front lines, where she cleans the wounds of Lynn Rhodes and then conceals the fact that Lynn is female. When the secret is revealed, the teens must reevaluate their roles and determine how best they can help as women in a man's world. Mention of historical figures and places allows readers to learn facts in an easy-to-read format. A bibliography and historical photographs are included.

 

ADDITIONAL READING

This book is a concise, interpretive account of the life of Clara Barton from her childhood in Massachusetts through her feats of heroism during the Civil War, her founding of the American Red Cross, which she led for 20 years, and her bitterly contested ejection from office which clouded her last days
This volume by the team of Cynthia Klingel and Robert B. Noyed looks at the life of "Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross." Following the standard four chapter format, we learn how Barton spent her early years as a teacher, became the Angel of the Battlefield during the American Civil War, worked to have United States be part of the International Red Cross, and then served as the first President of the American Red Cross. Young readers are going to be hard pressed to name many Americans, of either gender, who have been responsible for helping more people than Clara Barton
Reading Level 9-12
Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross
Reading Level 4-8

From School Library Journal
Grade 5-9 This biography relates Barton's accomplishments, making it clear how extraordinary her activities were for a woman of her time. Whitelaw makes use of her subject's original diaries from the Library of Congress, along with her published work. The chapters consist of easy, short sentences, lots of footnotes, and some direct quotes. Occasionally a box offers interesting incidental information. The black-and-white photographs and drawings are sharp with good contrast.

Card catalog description
Follows the life of the nurse who served on the battlefields of the Civil War and later founded the American Red Cross.

Sources:
U.S. Library of Congress
U.S. National Park Service
Federal Citizen