Eliza Ann Abbott, born in Holden, Massachusetts, turned to religion only after a period of youthful irreverence. Letters home to her parents beg forgiveness as well as beseech them to become "followers of the Savior." She married a young Baptist minister, Josiah Goddard (BP 146), at age twenty-one and departed shortly thereafter for missionary work in China. In the letter the young bride is depicted as writing in the portrait, one can make out the date, "1838," and place, "Three Rivers," where the artist had a studio, but also the words "heathen land," clearly in anticipation of Mrs. Goddard's forthcoming mission to China. She and her husband remained in China for sixteen years, bringing four children into the world. When Josiah Goddard died of tuberculosis in 1854, Mrs. Goddard returned home to Massachusetts. She sent her son to Brown, also his father's alma mater. After he also graduated from Brown, he went on to work as a Baptist minister as had his father.

Erastus Salisbury Field was a neighbor of the Goddards in 1838 and at the peak of his career as a portraitist. At first a self-taught painter, Field went on to study in New York with Samuel F. B. Morse. Until about 1841 he traveled around New England as an itinerant portraitist. His work has been classified as "folk" art for its flat, stylized forms and focus on clothing details. In 1842, Field moved back to New York and embarked on a new direction in his work. The paintings from this period, for which he is better known, used Biblical, historical, and classical themes, and included "The Embarkation of Ulysses" (1844) and "Historical Monument to the American Republic" (1876).

This portrait and the companion portrait of Josiah Goddard were given to Brown in 1944 by the Goddards' grandchildren.