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Elizabeth Lydia Smalls Bampfield was born in 1858 to Robert Smalls and his wife Hannah Smalls and escaped from Charleston with them on The Planter in 1862. When Elizabeth was six years old, she went to Penn School. At age twelve she studied at a boarding school in Massachusetts. The day she graduated, she took the train to Washington to become her father’s clerk for he was just beginning the first year of his first term in Congress. She assisted with his correspondence and speeches. In April, 1877, nineteen-year old Elizabeth married Samuel Jones Bampfield, an attorney. Two weeks after the wedding, Elizabeth and Samuel Bampfield moved into 414 New Street, Beaufort, South Carolina. For 22 years the Bampfields lived in this house and it was where all of their eleven children were born. Following Samuel Bampfield’s death in 1899, she served as postmaster and held that position until 1908.