Elizabeth Belle Overton was the youngest daughter of Judge John Overton and his wife Mary McConnell White May Overton. She married John McCormick Lea, a Knoxville attorney, at the home of her sister, Anne Coleman Overton Brinkley, and her husband, Robert Campbell Brinkley, in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 1, 1845. Portrait miniatures like this were often created to mark occasions such as engagements or marriages. Elizabeth would have been nineteen years old on her wedding day. Based on the fact that her older sister, Anne, had a similar portrait made by artist John Wood Dodge during the same month she was married, this small personal likeness has been attributed to the same artist and dated to the approximate time of the marriage of Elizabeth B. Overton and John M. Lea.
