Elizabeth Carter (maiden name: Lake) was born around 1829 in New York to Josiah Lake and Abigail Benedict. Her father was a farmer who owned $500 of real estate in 1850. The family lived in Middlesex, New York, until the 1830s, when they moved to Thompson, Ohio. She married Samuel J. Carter in Fairfield County, Ohio, on October 17, 1852, and they had at least four children: Sarah, born around 1854; Margaret, born around 1855; Emma, born around 1856; and Josephine, born around 1859. They moved to Neosho in the Kansas Territory in the late 1850s, and by 1860, they owned $300 of real estate and $800 of personal property. She died in Kansas on April 30, 1868.