Elizabeth Russell was an English spinster who settled in Upper Canada, with her half-brother, Peter Russell, the Province's first Receiver General. Russell was born into a disrupted family. Her father Richard Russell was cashiered over a scandal, and, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the stress drove her mother "violently insane". While he was able to secure employment with the Royal Navy in Harwich, the Dictionary reported "Elizabeth grew up with little education, in an atmosphere darkened by her mother’s insanity and her father’s debts, extravagance, ill health, and lawsuits."