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Author: Dixon, Jacob

Biography:

Dixon, Jacob (1793-1849: ancestry.com)

Born in Virginia, the son of an Irish immigrant, Dixon followed in his father's footsteps as a Methodist circuit preacher in Ohio. He was largely self-educated but is said to have committed "nearly the whole" of Johnson's Dictionary to memory, column by column, in his teens. In 1814 he inherited the personal library of one of his brothers, and about 1815 began to contribute poems to Methodist periodicals. In 1817, he married Mary Smith Hall; they had four surviving children, one of whom wrote a memoir of his "eccentric" father. In 1834, hoping to improve the family finances, Dixon left the circuit and turned to the practice of medicine, but he was--according to his son--swindled and then ruined in a lawsuit. (J. M. Dixon, The Valley and the Shadow [1868] 25-51]; ancestry.com 11 Sept. 2018)

 

Books written (1):