Elizabeth was reared in the comfort of a large and well attended family. She was not only admired for her beauty but also for her ability to correspond with scholars in Greek and Latin. Her father had been particularly successful in business up until the crash of 1837. She experienced the partial financial retraction of the Venable family fortune but became engaged and married to a gallant naval surgeon 5/28/1845. Throughout her early marriage she continued to live on and off at "Longwood" outside of Farmville with her mother and family as Dr. Carrington's career took him to duty aboard various ships and to overseas posts. In the 1860 census, the family is shown as posted at the navy yard (Pensacola), Escabria County, FL from where the Dr. resigned his U.S. naval assignment in 1861 and joined the C.S.A. Throughout the war Elizabeth saw to the education of her children while she lived at "Longwood". During this troubled period she drew increasingly close to her eldest daughter, Mildred. She and the family moved to her husband's family home, "Mildendo", in 1865. The parents tried to piece a new life together as farmers and he as the local country doctor. Mildred's marriage and subsequent move to Texas in April of 1867 greatly affected Elizabeth. She wrote to her daughter the following on 5/1/1867: "I cannot tell how sadly your absence has grieved me. I never realized at all what the pain would be until after you were gone. I even now as I write must hide my tears from your Father, or he would reproach me with them." "I yesterday tried to learn to sew on the machine-was a little successful, shall continue it. The incessant rains have kept me very much out of the garden, that would give me very pleasant employment, and since we failed to procure a gardner, either Maria's or Allen's personal attention are essential to the cultivation of vegetables. Everything reminds us of you, and you are very frequently talked of." Her children moved one by one to the West save for her final child, Nathaniel Venable Carrington, who was born in 1860 and died young. His grave has not been discovered. Elizabeth experienced health failure by the early 1870s perhaps tied to epileptic seizures as reported by her daughter Mildred in her Oct. 25, 1868 letter and followed her sister, Sarah, in death at "Mildendo". (Bio. by Jim Hutcheson)