New Georgia Encyclopedia: Isa-Beall Williams Neel (1861-1953)

NGE >> Features >> Religion >> Historical Figures >> Isa-Beall Williams Neel (1861-1953)

Isa-Beall Williams Neel (1861-1953)

Isa-Beall Williams Neel

Isa-Beall Williams Neel

was an outstanding educator and a gifted speaker and leader. She was president of the Georgia Baptist Woman's Missionary Union from 1911 to 1932 and then taught language at Bessie Tift College in Forsyth from 1932 to 1941. She was the first woman to receive the honorary LL.D. degree from Mercer University in Macon (1931) and the first woman to be elected vice president of the Georgia Baptist Convention (1931).

Her parents, Harriet Elizabeth Beall and Alfred Carter Williams, were prominent Baptists. Her father was a merchant in Cartersville, where she was born on June 2, 1861. She was educated at Mary Sharpe College in Winchester, Tennessee, (A.B., 1882) and attended Berlitz College of Languages, Dresden, Germany (1890). In 1892 she married William Jesse Neel, a lawyer from Adairsville. They were a team in church and civic life until his death in 1908.

As a Woman's Missionary Union (WMU) leader in Rome and Cartersville, Neel attended state WMU executive board meetings and served as recording secretary from April 1911 until her election as president in November 1911. She played a major role in the decision of the Georgia WMU to build the Mary P. Willingham School for Girls at Blue Ridge (1916-31). The prayer room in the Memorial Chapel at Camp Pinnacle, owned by the Georgia WMU, near Clayton, is the I. Neel Prayer Room. She wrote the history of the Georgia WMU, His Story in Georgia WMU History (1939).

Suggested Reading

Kate Ellen Gruver, From This High Pinnacle: One Hundred Years with Georgia Baptist Woman's Missionary Union ([Decatur, Ga.]: Woman's Missionary Union, Auxiliary to Georgia Baptist Convention, 1983).

Dorothy Pryor, "Mrs. W. J. Neel: Georgia WMU Leader," Viewpoints: Georgia Baptist History 14 (1994): 5-15.

Dorothy M. Pryor, Decatur

Published 11/20/2002

Printable Version

Woman's Missionary Union

The NGE is not responsible for the content of external
Web sites.

RSS Feeds

A project of the Georgia Humanities Council, in partnership with the University of Georgia Press, the University System of Georgia/GALILEO, and the Office of the Governor.