With a practical mind and excellent memory she stored up a splendid basis for her future line of literary and lecture work.

[1] Meriwether's father was a physician — Nathan Avery, of New York; her mother, Rebecca Rivers, belonged to one of the old families of Virginia.

She amusingly related that her own father said grace three times a day before meals, but her Grandfather Rivers said he didn't believe the Lord wanted to be bothered with hearing the same thing so often, so no one was surprised when one day he called the family out to the smokehouse, where the winter's stock of hams and bacon had been cured, and provisions stored for the year, asking them to join him in saying grace over everything at once for the whole year.

[1] Her "Travel Letters" caused much favorable comment and interest, and discussions and arguments on political, literary, sociological and every other vital topic of the times, through the columns of the papers, have given her a well-deserved international reputation.

[1] The title of one of the books of which she was the author is "Facts and Falsehoods Concerning the War of the South of 1861 and 1865," under a pen name — George Edmonds — which was published in 1904.

She soon had a novel titled "The Master of Red Leaf" ready, and sent it off to London, where the publishers issued a splendid set of three volumes, gilt-edge, etc.

At the time Mrs. Meriwether made those addresses she was a slender, vivacious, attractive young woman, and after comparing her with the cartoon which she said was of herself there was a general roar of laughter, clapping of hands, etc.

The same cartoons are hanging on the wall of her living room now and furnish the material for many interesting anecdotes which she relates with much satisfaction.

[1] The first time Meriwether lectured in Missouri on "equal rights" she received many anonymous letters; in some she was denounced as being everything but a good wife and mother.

When she made her first public speech in Tennessee she went to the editor of the paper and wanted him to make the announcement, but he said: "You will have to get the permission of your husband," which, of course, was readily granted; however, Mr. Meriwether expressed his fear that she might become stage-struck, and her son — Lee — a little fellow ten years old, who was lying on the floor, interrupted, "Don't you believe it — mother will go through; she won't get stage struck."

[1] In 1852, she married Minor Meriwether of Kentucky, who became a Confederate Major in Oct. 1861, serving as an Engineer constructing defenses and railroads.

[1] Minor Meriwether never served under Nathan Bedford Forrest during the war, but they knew each other as former Confederate officers and railroadmen.

One of the organizational meetings of the Ku Klux Klan took place in her kitchen in the Meriwether's Memphis home, which stood on the site of what is now the Peabody Hotel.

Then followed, "The Tramp at Home," 1890; "Afloat and Ashore on the Mediterranean," 1892; "Miss Chunk," 1899; "A Lord's Courtship," 1900, and "Seeing Europe by Automobile," 1911, which was written just twenty-five years after the first book.