THE GROTON AVERY CLAN, Vol. II, by Elroy McKendree Avery and Catherine Hitchcock (Tilden) Avery, Cleveland, 1912. p. 806

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/elizabeth-avery-meriwether/

Tennessee suffragist, temperance activist, publisher, and author Elizabeth Avery Meriwether was born in Bolivar on January 19, 1824. Her father Nathan Avery was a physician and farmer, while her mother Rebecca Rivers Avery was the daughter of a Virginia planter.

Financial problems led the family to move to Memphis around 1835. Nathan’s death in 1846, and Rebecca’s in 1847, caused an economic crisis for the siblings. Brother Tom sought outside employment to support his four sisters, and Elizabeth operated a school for some twenty-five students in the family’s dining room.

In 1852 she married Minor Meriwether, a railroad civil engineer. Carrying out the wishes of Minor’s late father, the couple sold part of Minor’s inherited land to free his slaves and repatriate them to Liberia. She characterized the act as abolitionist, although she later accepted the gift of a household slave from her brother. Both Meriwethers spoke of their marriage as strong and happy. Elizabeth bore three sons: Avery, in 1857; Rivers, in 1859; and Lee (the namesake of General Robert E. Lee), in 1862.

With the onset of the Civil War Minor Meriwether joined the officer corps of the Confederate army. He served with General Nathan Bedford Forrest; Elizabeth was vocal in advocacy of the Confederate cause, and defiant during Union occupation. General William T. Sherman ordered her to leave Memphis in December 1862, weeks before the birth of her third son. She recounted the experience in her 1863 short story, “The Refugee.”

After the war Minor Meriwether purchased a modest Memphis home for his family on the current site of the Peabody Hotel. He worked with Nathan Bedford Forrest to establish the Ku Klux Klan in Memphis; an early Klan organizational meeting took place in Elizabeth’s kitchen.

Elizabeth Meriwether nettled occupation forces to reinstate the title to her girlhood home, successfully arguing that her 1851 “abolitionist” stand invalidated its seizure. Thus recognized as a property owner and tax payer, she obtained a voter registration in 1872.

She published a small-circulation newspaper, The Tablet, during part of 1872. It featured her unorthodox views on woman suffrage, divorce law, and pay equity for women teachers. In 1876 she made one of the first public suffragist addresses in Memphis. Elizabeth and her sister-in-law Lide Meriwether championed a number of reform causes. Both were active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and belonged to the National Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth served as a national officer of NAWSA in 1886. She presented unsuccessful suffrage petitions at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1880.

Elizabeth Meriwether’s published writing includes two novels, The Master of Red Leaf (1872) and Black and White (1883), and a play, The Ku Klux Klan, or The Carpetbagger in New Orleans (1877). Nonfiction works include Facts and Falsehoods About the War on the South (1904), published under the pseudonym George Edmonds, and The Sowing of the Swords, or The Soul of the ‘Sixties (1910). An informal memoir, Recollections of 92 Years, was serialized in many Tennessee papers in 1916 and was published by her son Lee in 1958. Meriwether’s writing idealized the Confederate cause and the traditional race ideology of the “Old South.”

Elizabeth Meriwether died in St. Louis on November 4, 1916; several months earlier, each of the major political parties had adopted campaign planks urging passage of a woman suffrage amendment.

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Elizabeth Avery was born in Bolivar, TN on January 19, 1824 the son of Nathan Avery and Rebecca Rivers Avery. Nathan was a physician and farmer who died early in 1847. Her mother followed her father the next year. These early deaths caused the family to scramble for solvency. The family moved to Memphis and took a job teaching students in the family home. The older brother worked and the family did well enough until Elizabeth married Minor Meriewether in 1852.

Minor was a good husband. He was civil engineer and he, like she, had a mixed attitude toward slavery. Upon their marriage they sold part of Minor's inherited land to free his slaves and repatriate them to Liberia. On another occasion however Elizabeth acceptepted the gift of a house slave from her brother. In time she would win back her property from the Union army by going to court and pleading that she had taken an "abolitionist stand". Then like now positions were often fuzzy.

Minor and Elizabeth both were happily married. The marriage bore three sons: Avery (1857), Rivers (1859) and Lee (1862; was named after General Robert E. Lee, he would later be an author in his own right. When the Civil War began Minor joined the officers corp and served under Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Union Army banished Elizabeth from the city setting her afoot while pregnant and mothering two children. This may have been because of her vocal attitude during the northern occupation or just part of the practice the Union Army had of turning the wives of Confederate Soldiers out when Union soldiers were killed in the area.

After the war the Meriwethers bought a small home on what is now the site of the Peabody Hotel. Minor assisted Nathan Forrest in forming the Ku Klux Klan. One of the early meetings was in the Meriwether kitchen. Although Elizabeth did not protest the Ku Klux Klan she did challenge the men on women's suffrage which was to be her lifelong crusade.

After Elizabeth successfully regained title to her girlhood home, claiming she had taken an "abolitionist stand" she used that status as a landowner to obtain a voter's registration in 1872. In that same year she published a small newspaper named "The Tablet" which showcased her views of suffrage, equal pay and divorce law. She and her sister-in-law Lide Meriwether were very active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union which sought to prohibit liquor. Elizabeth presented unsuccessful suffrage petitions at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1880.

Elizabeth published two novels, The Master of Red Leaf in 1872 and Black and White in 1883. Apart from several short stories she also published a play, The Ku Klux Klan, or The Carpetbagger in New Orleans. Her non-fiction works include Facts and Falsehoods about the War on the South (under pen-name George Edmonds) in 1904 and The Sowing of the Swords, or The Soul of the Sixties in 1910. Her last written work was a memoir entitled Recollections of 92 Years.

Elizabeth Avery Meriwether lived 92 years in good health. Her son Lee also lived to a ripe old age and was a published author in Memphis.

In her autobiography, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether reveals little about her childhood other than to note that her family moved from Bolivar to Memphis when she was eleven. It is obvious, however, that Meriwether was well educated, for after the death of her parents, she became a teacher. When the Civil War began, her husband, a civil engineer, joined the army, leaving Meriwether in Memphis. The city was occupied by the Union army in 1862, and after several unpleasant encounters with Northern generals, Meriwether decided to seek refuge in Alabama.

While in Tuscaloosa, Meriwether resumed her childhood pastime of writing. She won a competition sponsored by the Selma Daily Mississippian offering $500 for the best story dealing with the war. "The Refugee" is based partly on her own experiences traveling through Alabama and Tennessee. Encouraged by this success, Meriwether wrote "The Yankee Spy," which the newspaper planned to publish as a book. However, when the Confederacy fell, these plans were abandoned.

After the war, Meriwether combined writing with an interest in social reform. In 1872, she edited and published a weekly newspaper, The Tablet, which lasted for a year. A strong believer in woman suffrage, Meriwether "cast a vote" in the Memphis elections of 1872 and began a correspondence with leading feminists. In 1881, Meriwether joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony on a speaking tour of New England. There she met Henry George and became a supporter of his "single tax" theory of economics.

Meriwether's first novel, The Master of Red Leaf, was published in 1872. It is basically a description of life on a southern plantation before the Civil War and a justification of secession. Her other works include novels, a play, and several works of popular history. Meriwether's autobiography, Recollections of 92 Years, was published the year before her death.

In many ways, Meriwether can be considered a "professional Confederate." Not only do most of her works deal with the antebellum South, but unlike other postwar southern authors, Meriwether refused to acknowledge that slavery had been a moral or social evil. Meriwether's fiction is replete with stereotyped black characters—happy, carefree, childlike, and unable to govern themselves without the discipline of slavery.

However, with the end of slavery, Meriwether saw her ordered world turned upside down. "Life in the South," she wrote, "became one long nightmare; then a miracle happened—for surely the way the South escaped from that frightful nightmare was little short of miraculous." The "miracle" was the Ku Klux Klan. Meriwether writes about the Klan with an insider 's knowledge and sympathy, for her husband was a member. She witnessed its night raids, terrorism, and destruction of black property, claiming that the corruption of the carpetbaggers and the insolence of "uppity" blacks justified any actions by disfranchised whites. Meriwether concludes: "No doubt many abuses were committed by the Ku Klux. In large bodies of men some unwise ones, some mean ones will inevitably be found. But considered as a whole the work of the Ku Klux was done in a patriotic spirit for patriotic purposes, and I rejoice to see … that History is beginning to do justice to that wonderful secret movement. At the time it was misunderstood; in the North it was reviled. But in truth it accomplished a noble and necessary work in the only way in which that work was then possible."