Diary of an Intelligence Operative during the Mexican Revolution, 1914 April-1915 March

The collection contains a 156-page handwritten diary kept from April 23, 1914-March 29, 1915, at locations in Mexico, Texas, and New York City. The diary is unsigned, but events match known details in the life of magazine writer Elizabeth Chandler Hendrix, who published a novel, My Brother's Keeper, in 1915. In the diary, the author describes spending time in New York in the summer of 1914 completing My Brother's Keeper, as well as a visit from New York to a resort in Virginia, where, she notes, other women introduce her by saying she is from Wytheville and that her "mother was a Jackson from South Carolina" (July 30). Other than the New York-Virginia portion, which takes up about a fifth of the material, the diary primarily relates Hendrix's activities in Texas and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, with mentions of key figures including Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Lucio Blanco, and Venustiano Carranza. In an entry for April 30, 1914, she writes: "Received a message direct from General Villa today, telling me to have no fear, that he is my friend and wants to see me on important business when he returns to the border." The diary begins in Ysleta, now part of El Paso, Texas. It describes numerous visits with "the consul" in Matamoros, Mexico (across the border from Brownsville, Texas); the author's efforts to aid Mexican refugees in Brownsville; her conversations with Mexican refugees and others; her thoughts on news about the Revolution, including comments on the resignation of General Huerta (July 17, 1914); and letters she wrote appealing for American aid to Mexico. There is also a thirty-seven-page typed transcription of the diary in the collection, provided by the vendor.