Betty Pelham Neel (1841-1921)
When I was growing up in the Brick Store Community of Newton County in Northeast Georgia, grandmothers were, almost without exception, "Old Ladies." They tended to be comfortably shapeless. They wore their hair twisted into topknots anchored with wicked looking hairpins. They appeared in public in long black dresses; their hats were formidable, and they chose their shoes with an eye to comfort rather than style. If it suited them to dispense with troublesome teeth, they blithely did so.
I remember my grandmother, Betty Pelham Neel, as just such an old lady, sitting in the snuggest corner at the fireside and telling us grandchildren that when the sparks flew up the chimney it was a sign that the Yankees were still fighting (somewhere) and finding things hot. Actually, she always said "damnyankees." I was almost too old for knee pants before I realized that "damnyankess" was not one word and a commonplace one at that.
She was always treated with great care and respect in our home, but I must honestly add that the reverence with which her grandchildren regarded her became a bit more pronounced around the first of the month when her pension check was due to arrive. She received this pension as a Confederate veteran's widow after my grandfather died and I am sure it was minute, but we could always count on her presenting us with at least a nickel apiece, which in those days would buy a generous treat. Sometimes she gave us a whole quarter, in which case our mother would usually intercept and confiscate our bulging candy bags and give us a lecture on the virtues of putting a fair share in the Sunday School collection plate.
It is hard for me to reconcile my early memories of my grandmother with the daguerreotypes of her as a young woman. If she was not, perhaps, a raving beauty, still she was pretty enough to qualify for the status of an authentic antebellum Southern belle. It strikes me that in these early pictures there is something firm and uncompromising about her mouth and chin, but that may be due to the rigors of early photography. I remember her as a happy, laughing person, one who never, never scolded her grandchildren, whatever their shortcomings.
Betty Pelham Neel was born in Benton County, Alabama, on December 6, 1841, the fourth child of Dr. Atkinson Pelham and his wife, Martha McGehee Pelham. Brothers William, Charles, John, and Peter were older; Samuel, Clay and Thomas, younger. I have no idea how it came about that she was enrolled in an academy for young ladies in Greensboro, Georgia, a year or two before the onset of the war, but it was there on the occasion of a ball given at the school that she met William Simpson Neel, the son of a plantation owner in nearby Hancock County. Family tradition has it that it was love at first sight, an attachment that survived the years of conflict. As soon as possible after the war ended, W. S. Neel claimed Betty for his wife and they made their home in Kirkwood, then a separate community between Atlanta and Decatur, Georgia.
I have no doubt that the early years of their marriage were full of difficulties, especially since they shared backgrounds of former affluence. I remember my mother once telling us that our grandmother had never dressed herself unassisted until she was married and had to learn how, a statement that we received with stunned amazement.
For a while William Neel was involved in a business venture with General John B. Gordon, a wartime friend whose home was also in Kirkwood. Later he assisted his younger brother, Charles Mallory Neel, who had established the Moreland Park Military Academy, a prestigious prep school in the Inman Park -- Little Five Points area, which was for a number of years one of the finest residential areas in the growing city of Atlanta. Family lore has it that Pelham Neel, oldest son of W. S. and Betty, was the first student enrolled in the Moreland Park Military Academy.
Around the year 1885 William S. Neel became convinced that the expanding urban neighborhood of Kirkwood was not the place for his growing family, which by this time consisted of a wife and six children: Pelham; Thomas; Martha, or Mattie as she was called; William Simpson, Jr.; Robert; and Rabun. He moved his family to Newton County where he acquired land on the old Augusta road in the Brick Store Community and attempted to make a living by farming. He may have been influenced in this decision by memories of his boyhood on a prosperous plantation in the days of slave labor, but in any case he soon found that he was not well suited to hard physical labor, and when the opportunity was presented, he abandoned farming for the field of education. He became the principal and high school teacher of the Brick Store School, a position he held until his last years. He had been educated at Mercer and the University of Virginia and, by all accounts, was a well-qualified and dedicated teacher. He had, also, the reputation of being a stern disciplinarian. My mother, Mattie Neel, taught with her father for a few years until her marriage to L. A. Patrick of the same community.
In their old age both my Neel grandparents lived with us. My grandfather could never reconcile himself to his loss of independence, and more than once my father had to board the train in Social Circle, travel to Atlanta, and bring back his father-in-law from the Old Soldiers' Home on Confederate Avenue where we was determined to take up residence. I suppose my parents would have felt disgraced if they had allowed him to do so while they were able to offer him a home. William S. Neel died in 1910 when I was three years old. As far as I know, my Grandmother Neel was well contented as part of our family. She lived until February 16, 1921. Both my grandparents are buried in the Gibson-Patrick cemetery on Highway 11 near the intersection with Highway 278 in the eastern part of Newton County.
I deeply regret that after my sisters and I grew up none of us remembered our grandmother telling us stories of her girlhood in Alabama. The only example that stands out in my mind of her referring to the Civil War is her statement that she had had six brothers and a sweetheart who were soldiers in the conflict. My sisters recalled that too, so she must have stated it often and with emphasis. I do have a clear image of Uncle Peter Pelham who visited us while my grandmother was living in our home. He had a trim white beard and wore Congress shoes. I found both beard and shoes impressive.
It might have been better if my grandmother had been less generous and more grasping. It never occurred to her, for instance, to retain possession of the letters she had received from her brother John and to insist on copies of them being made by that nice man from Alabama who was so interested in them. At one time she had custody of John Pelham's bridle complete with CSA emblem and with, I seem to recall, a small attached flag. Collective family memory, concludes that she donated the bridle upon request to an unidentified museum collection in Alabama where it has probably lost its label and was discarded as worthless. For years she had a few pieces of the Pelham silver which she allowed my sisters to use in playing "house." Each grandaughter had a favorite bowl or dish, and they long remembered their indignation and woe when, after a visitor had taken her departure, it was discovered that she had also taken the family silver which she had asked for and been graciously granted by Grandmother Neel. Nobody now recalls who the visitor was, but we think it was not a close connection.
Being the only girl in a family of reportedly rambunctious boys, Betty Pelham
was, by all accounts and indications, held in great affection and respect
by her brothers. When she in turn had a family of five sons and one daughter,
she reared her boys to behave toward their sister with care and concern. My
mother strove to carryon the tradition and to train me up in the image of
a young Southern gentleman, but as I was the only boy with three older sisters,
it was uphill work. I was, for instance, required to stand when one of my
sisters entered the room on company occasions, and I can remember having to
rise in the chill dark of winter mornings to build a fire in my sisters' bedroom
and resenting it furiously. I fear that eventually the struggle for survival
won out over the courtly standards and ideals of Mattie and Betty Pelham Neel.
This article first appeared in Volume 4, No. 1 of The Cannoneer.
Source:
"Thomas Pelham Found Dead In Bed," The Anniston Evening Star,
July 29, 1912.
Letter of Robert A. Cason, Alabama Department of Archives and History, to
Charles H. Hooper, March 26, 1982.
Letters of J. Douglas Pelham to Peggy Vogtsberger, March 16, 1985; March 27,
1985; and February 18, 1985.
