Born: 17 November 1815, United States
Died: 15 December 1864
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Eliza Woodson Burhans
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Eliza W. Farnham, an American philanthropist and writer. She was born near Albany, N.Y., and her maiden name was Burhans.
In 1835 she went to Illinois where she married Thos. J. Farnham, the traveller and author.
On her return to New York in 1841 she began to visit prisons and lectured to women, and for some years she was matron of the female department of the state prison at Sing Sing, where she sought to govern by kindness alone.
In 1848 she removed to Boston, and was connected with the institution for the blind in that city. The following year she went to the Pacific coast, and on her return in 1856 published California Indoors and Out. For the next two years she studied medicine, and in 1859 organized a society to aid and protect destitute women in emigrating to the West, and went at different times to the western states with large numbers of such persons.
During the last year of her life of service to others, she wrote Women and her Era, a work on the position and the rights of women.