Elizabeth Welch Gates was born on November 11, 1895, in Hartford, Connecticut. She attended Hartford Public High School and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1917. In 1919, she graduated from the Finch School in New York City with a Secretarial Certificate. She worked at a variety of institutions from 1919-1937. In 1943, she married David Doffler, and divorced shortly thereafter. Elizabeth Welch Gates died on April 12, 1983, in Willimantic, Connecticut.

The Elizabeth Welch Gates Correspondence consists of letters to classmate Helen "Henry" Graves Fisk, Mount Holyoke College graduate, class of 1917, and round-robin letters to friends in the class of 1917. The letters to Fisk describe Gates' summer vacations in New England with friends and family and her later experiences as a teacher at Piedmont College, Demorest, Georgia (1917-1918). The letters peripherally mention the domestic contributions of women to World War I, as well as Gates' tour of the French battlefields in 1921 and her visits to Mount Holyoke College. The correspondence also includes round-robin letters in which Gates responds to the social activities and careers of fellow classmates and briefly describes her teaching position in Georgia.