Rebel wife and diarist dies

On this day in 1917, diarist Elizabeth Scott Neblett died in Anderson, Texas. “Lizzie,” born in Mississippi in 1833, grew up a southern belle in Grimes County and married William H. Neblett, a planter and aspiring attorney, in 1852. From 1852 until 1863 she kept a diary that revealed an intimate portrait of southern culture and her own bitterness about a woman’s place in society. “Fame can never be mine,” she wrote. “I am a woman! A woman!” Her letters to her husband during the Civil War discussed varied topics that ranged from the economics of their plantation to the use of artificial birth control. They had six children, and often Lizzie’s writings addressed the hardships of childbirth and childrearing. Her journal and letters were finally published in 2001.