Problem: Background: Elizabeth was born on 3 February 1821 in a house on Dicksons Street in Bristol, England, to Samuel Blackwell, a sugar refiner, and his wife Hannah (Lane) Blackwell. She had two older siblings, Anna and Marian, and would eventually have six younger siblings: Samuel (married Antoinette Brown), Henry (married Lucy Stone), Emily (third woman in the U.S. to get a medical degree), Sarah Ellen (a writer), John and George. Four maiden aunts, Barbara, Ann, Lucy and Mary, also lived with Blackwell during Blackwell's childhood.
Context: The Blackwells' financial situation was unfortunate. Pressed by financial need, the sisters Anna, Marian and Elizabeth started a school, The Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies, which provided instruction in most, if not all, subjects and charged for tuition and room and board. The school was not terribly innovative in its education methods - it was merely a source of income for the Blackwell sisters. Blackwell's abolition work took a back seat during these years, most likely due to the academy.  Blackwell converted to Episcopalianism, probably due to her sister Anna's influence, in December 1838, becoming an active member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. However, William Henry Channing's arrival in 1839 to Cincinnati changed her mind. Channing, a charismatic Unitarian minister, introduced the ideas of transcendentalism to Blackwell, who started attending the Unitarian Church. A conservative backlash from the Cincinnati community ensued, and as a result, the academy lost many pupils and was abandoned in 1842. Blackwell began teaching private pupils.  Channing's arrival renewed Blackwell's interests in education and reform. She worked at intellectual self-improvement: studying art, attending various lectures, writing short stories and attending various religious services in all denominations (Quaker, Millerite, Jewish). In the early 1840s, she began to articulate thoughts about women's rights in her diaries and letters and participated in the Harrison political campaign of 1840.  In 1844, with the help of her sister Anna, Blackwell procured a teaching job that paid $400 per year in Henderson, Kentucky. Although she was pleased with her class, she found the accommodations and schoolhouse lacking. What disturbed her most was that this was her first real encounter with the realities of slavery. "Kind as the people were to me personally, the sense of justice was continually outraged; and at the end of the first term of engagement I resigned the situation." She returned to Cincinnati only half a year later, resolved to find a more stimulating way to spend her life.
Question: did she find it?
Answer: Blackwell's abolition work took a back seat during these years, most likely due to the academy.

Problem: Background: Wilson was born on November 26, 1895, in East Dorset, Vermont, the son of Emily (nee Griffith) and Gilman Barrows Wilson. He was born at his parents' home and business, the Mount Aeolus Inn and Tavern. His paternal grandfather, William C. Wilson, was also an alcoholic. William C. Wilson decided to stop drinking alcohol immediately after having a "religious experience" when he was under the influence of psilocybin  ( sy-l@-SY-bin) during a "soul searching" hike on Mount Aeolus.
Context: Wilson met his wife Lois Burnham during the summer of 1913, while sailing on Vermont's Emerald Lake; two years later the couple became engaged. He entered Norwich University, but depression and panic attacks forced him to leave during his second semester. The next year he returned, but was soon suspended with a group of students involved in a hazing incident. Because no one would take responsibility, and no one would identify the perpetrators, the entire class was punished.  The June 1916 incursion into the U.S. by Pancho Villa resulted in Wilson's class being mobilized as part of the Vermont National Guard and he was reinstated to serve. The following year he was commissioned as an artillery officer. During military training in Massachusetts, the young officers were often invited to dinner by the locals, and Wilson had his first drink, a glass of beer, to little effect. A few weeks later at another dinner party, Wilson drank some Bronx cocktails, and felt at ease with the guests and liberated from his awkward shyness; "I had found the elixir of life," he wrote. "Even that first evening I got thoroughly drunk, and within the next time or two I passed out completely. But as everyone drank hard, not too much was made of that."  Wilson married Lois on January 24, 1918, just before he left to serve in World War I as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Coast Artillery. After his military service, Wilson returned to live with his wife in New York. He failed to graduate from law school because he was too drunk to pick up his diploma. Wilson became a stock speculator and had success traveling the country with his wife, evaluating companies for potential investors. (During these trips Lois had a hidden agenda: she hoped the travel would keep Wilson from drinking.) However, Wilson's constant drinking made business impossible and ruined his reputation.  In 1933 Wilson was committed to the Charles B. Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions in New York City four times under the care of Dr. William D. Silkworth. Silkworth's theory was that alcoholism was a matter of both physical and mental control: a craving, the manifestation of a physical allergy (the physical inability to stop drinking once started) and an obsession of the mind (to take the first drink). Wilson gained hope from Silkworth's assertion that alcoholism was a medical condition rather than a moral failing, but even that knowledge could not help him. He was eventually told that he would either die from his alcoholism or have to be locked up permanently due to Wernicke encephalopathy (commonly referred to as "wet brain").
Question: Who was he married to?
Answer:
Lois Burnham