Woman of the Century/Elizabeth Lyle Saxon

SAXON, Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle, woman suffragist, born in Greenville, Tenn., in December, 1832. She was left motherless at two years of age, and from her father she received her early training. Fortunately he was a man of liberal culture, who entertained advanced views respecting the development and sphere of women. Elizabeth was permitted to grow up naturally, much as a boy would have done, roaming the fields as the chosen companion of her father. Mr. Lyle seems to have recognized that his daughter was a child of unusual endowment, and to have endeavored to foster her peculiar genius. Certain it is that his love of literature and his habits of close observation of nature became prominent characteristics of the daughter. When but sixteen years of age, she became the wife of Lydell Saxon, of South Carolina. Their life was passed largely in Alabama until after the war, when the family removed to New Orleans, La. Circumstances compelled Mrs. Saxon's absence from her home for twelve years. During that time much of her public work was done. She lived three years on a government claim in Washington Territory to regain lost health, but is now again in New Orleans. Seven children were the fruit of their union, four of whom still live. Of a legal turn of mind, Mrs. Saxon became early interested in the study of constitutional questions. She seems to have inherited a liberty-loving spirit and to have always had an instinctive hatred for every form of slavery- Her father died a prisoner of war in Memphis, Tenn., and on his death-bed exacted from her a solemn promise "never to cease working for unfortunate women, so long as her life should last" She has devoted herself to the social and legal enfranchisement of her sex. For years she has been in demand as a lecturer on gospel temperance, universal suffrage, social purity and kindred topics. Her keen, logical and yet ELIZABETH LYLE SAXON. poetic and impassioned style of oratory fairly takes her audiences by storm and has won for her a national reputation as a public speaker. As a writer she has won an enviable reputation, her poems, stories and prose sketches being published in leading periodicals, both north and south. Her genius seems to be versatile in its nature. She is an elegant home-maker, a brilliant conversationalist, an eloquent speaker and an active philanthropist, but it is as a woman working for the most degraded and downtrodden of her sex she is to be held in lasting and grateful remembrance by the women of the nation.