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

 

Rebel Wife
A Rebel Wife in Texas: The Diary and Letters of Elizabeth Scott Neblett, 1852-1864
Elizabeth Neblett's observations on slave and class relations, regional politics, lynching, farm management, medical practices, mental illness, and the Civil War in Texas.

Civil War Women
Women Civil War Soldiers
Womens Sufferage
Civil War Music History
Colored Troop Pictures
Civil War Picture Album
Documents of the War
Kids Zone Causes of the War
Kids Zone Underground Railroad
Civil War Exhibits
Civil War Timeline
State Battle Maps


American Civil War Book Titles

Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse and Spy: A Woman's Adventures in the Union Army
On April 25, 1861, Sarah Emma Edmonds alias Frank Thompson became a male nurse in Company F, of the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry Regiment. This is 'his' story
Divided Houses
Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War
The new "manly" responsibilities both black and white men had thrust upon them as soldiers; the effect of the war on Southern women's daily actions on the homefront; the essential part Northern women played as nurses and spies; the war's impact on marriage and divorce; women's roles in the guerilla fighting; even the wartime dialogue on interracial sex.
Kindle Available

The Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book
Part cookbook, part culinary history, part family history, this book is an engaging and enlightening glimpse into the household of a well-to-do, mid-nineteenth-century Virginia family. Seeking to learn more about her ancestors' daily lives, Anne Zimmer, great-granddaughter of Robert E. and Mary Lee, turned to her great-grandmother's small, now shabby notebook. Packed with recipes, shopping lists, and other domestic jottings, the notebook opened an intimate window onto an earlier way of life.

When Slavery was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War
Dissects the evangelical defense of slavery at the heart of the nineteenth century's sectional crisis. John Patrick Daly's writing uncovers the cultural and ideological bonds linking the combatants in the Civil War era and boldly reinterprets the intellectual foundations of secession
Kindle Available
War Journal
The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865

Eliza Andrews' diary is more cogent than any novel about the Civil War. General Sherman laid a track, and ELiza had to follow his footsteps through Georgia. Her insights into war and the havoc it wrought in the South are accompanied by her own editorial comments forty-four years later
Kindle Available

When Will This Cruel War Be Over?

A Confederate girl in Virginia, in 1864, Emma Simpson writes about the hardships of growing up during a turbulent time
Girls Life
A Girl's Life in Virginia Before the War

First published in 1895. An engrossing eyewitness account of antebellum plantation life as it really was
Wife
Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer

The author tells of her many travels across the war-torn South, capture behind enemy lines, encounter with Belle Boyd, friendship with General J. E. B. Stuart, and the devastation suffered by the citizens of Richmond in the last days of the Confederacy.

Civil War History Documentary DVD Movie Titles
       
       

 


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