Elizabeth W. Woodward was born around 1848 in York, Maine, to George W. Woodward and Tamara Dennison. Her father was a farmer who owned $1,500 of real estate and $328 of personal property in 1860. Elizabeth grew up and attended school in York. Her mother died in June 1863, and her father followed in January 1870. In 1870, she was living in her brother John’s household in York, along with her sisters Priscilla and Ellen. She moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sometime in the 1870s, and she worked as a house keeper there for Francis and Frances Langdon. She returned to York by the early 1890s, and she died of jaundice on November 16, 1892.