The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear

Theophilus declared that Elizabeth could stay out of an “asylum” as long as she promised never to return to their home. Elizabeth approached publishers with her written works, but none of them would agree to publish; she attributed their reluctance to “insanity’s” “shadow stitched to her” (272). She found support from the members of her new community in Angeline and her husband David’s town of Granville. They were convinced of her mental health and incensed by how she had been treated. The Granville newspaper published a copy of the editorial she had written under the Coes’s name, and Elizabeth paid for additional offprints that she sold to begin cultivating a savings. It was her first-ever official publication. In October of 1863, Elizabeth booked a train ticket to Manteno.

The Hasletts and the Blessings welcomed her with enthusiasm. Moore suggests that Elizabeth was probably apprehensive about reuniting with them because she thought they had abandoned her. They explained that they had been constantly advocating on her behalf, ever since 1860 and that all the letters they had written to her were never delivered. She learned that Theophilus had left the ministry. In 1861, their church had split, leaving to start their own Congregationalist church.