Eliza O. Stearns was born on April 8, 1835, in Maine to Edward R. Stearns and Eliza Barker. Her father died around 1848. By 1860, Eliza and her family were living in Union, Maine. Her older brother Charles supported the family by working as a farmer, and they owned $1,500 of real estate and $300 of personal property. Eliza and her mother moved to Boston sometime during the war. By 1880, she was living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and living in her brother Joseph’s household. She died of ovarian cancer in Boston on October 11, 1884.