Elizabeth Sewall "Lizzie" Alcott (June 24, 1835 – March 14, 1858) is the real-life model for the fictional character Beth March in Little Women

Little Women

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott . The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869...

, a novel written by her sister Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868...

. She was the third daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a...

 and Abigail May Alcott

Abby May

Abigail "Abby" Alcott was the wife of Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott and mother of four daughters, including Civil War novelist Louisa May Alcott...

.

Biography

She was born Elizabeth Peabody Alcott on June 24, 1835 in honor of her father's teaching assistant Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. By age three, her mother changed her name to Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, after her own mother. She was nicknamed "Lizzie" by the family.
In her semi-autobiographical novel, Little Women (1868), Louisa May Alcott represented her sister as Elizabeth. She wrote:
Her father Bronson was on a tour of the Western United States

Western United States

.The Western United States, commonly referred to as the American West or simply "the West," traditionally refers to the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. Because the U.S. expanded westward after its founding, the meaning of the West has evolved over time...

 and had reached as far as Cincinnati when he heard of Lizzie had taken a turn for the worst. By February 1858, she refused to take medicine and told her father, "I can best be spared of the four." On March 14, 1858, Louisa wrote in her journal

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

:
At the moment of her death, Louisa, her mother, and the doctor saw a ghost-like mist rising from Lizzie's body. Her funeral was a small affair, with Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

, Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

, and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an American journalist, author, and reformer. Sanborn was a social scientist, and a memorialist of American transcendentalism who wrote early biographies of many of the movement's key figures...

 serving as pallbearer

Pallbearer

A pall-bearer is one of several funeral participants who helps carry the casket of a deceased person from a religious or memorial service or viewing either directly to a cemetery or mausoleum, or to and from the hearse which carries the coffin....

s.