Elizabeth Ann Pryor Bankhead Lytle Stockdale was known as “Bettie” to her family.
Born 10/10/ 1822 she grew up at Myrtle Wood Hempstead AR on a 600-acre plantation.
The Secession of the South and the loss of the Civil War destroyed her way of life and that of her family never to recover the life they once lived.
She first married at the age of 16 to a man named Thomas Bankhead who was 20 years older. His name was not random, he was in fact a real estate banker. They came to Texas and lived in the Port Lavaca area and were married for 13 years before he died at the age of 33 in 1852.
A year later she married John Lytle, the year he was elected senator, representing Calhoun County. They moved to Austin and were married for 3-months when he resigned due to “feebleness of health” and died 5 days later at the age of 30.
4-years later she married the man who took over the Senate seat from her husband Fletcher Stockdale when he was 30 and she was 35 and they moved into the Hill mansion. They were strong conservatives and supporters of the institution of slavery in fact in 1861 Fletcher led the movement for Texas to secede from the Union and the war began.
In Arkansas the Union took control early into the war.
That was the gateway to the Mississippi River and one of the Unions first targets. Bettie’s father died at the end of 1864 in Gilmer Texas presumably leaving Arkansas due to the occupation of the North.
In Austin Bettie had known the war was lost when Robert e Lee surrendered in April 1865. The general public in Austin did not know until the Union Army arrived on June 19th announcing the war was over. Before the Union arrived all of the government buildings were looted as well as businesses and houses. It was total chaos. All Confederate currency was worthless and the new government not only took over state buildings they took over property to house the army. For Bettie Amidst the panic, fear and being forced out of her home which was to become a hospital for the sick and wounded Union soldiers one can guess it was too much to bear and she died on August 27, 1865 just 2 months after the occupation.
In Arkansas, Virginia, Betty’s mother lasted a year before she too died late in 1865. Her last wish and will was that everything be sold and the money used to bring her husband and daughter back from Texas to be buried together at their homestead and a monument erected in their honor placed over the grave. Myrtlewood estate was sold at a public auction in 1866 and the 3 are buried together in a little cemetery in Hempstead alone.
https://www.thetowntalk.com/story/news/local/2015/08/15/myrtlewood-estate-historic-haunted/31785983/
History researched by Jeanine Plumer
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