User:Lilydougherty/sandbox

Life
Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer was born to William and Maria Winston Meriwether on the Woodstock plantation located on the borders of Montgomery County, Tennessee and Todd County, Kentucky.[citation needed] She attended Clarksville Female Academy and later graduated from Hollins Institute in 1883. In 1888, she married her stepmother's brother, George Gilmer.[citation needed]

Shortly after her marriage to George, his mental health began to deteriorate, forcing Dix to provide financial support for both of them. He would later be institutionalized and eventually died in an asylum in 1931. In the aftermath of these events, Dix moved to Louisiana and took up writing. Her journalism career began after her neighbor Eliza Nicholson, the owner of the New Orleans newspaper Daily Picayune,[citation needed] saw her work and offered her a job as a reporter.