Elizabeth Currence Bunnell was born on a farm in Dewitt township, near Syracuse, New York, on December 24, 1834, the fifth child in a family of four boys and five girls.

When Elizabeth was fourteen years old, her parents removed from New York to Indiana, where, within six weeks after their arrival, her mother died.

[1] At the end of that time, in January 1861, she began publishing a semi-monthly journal called The Mayflower, devoted to literature, temperance and equal rights.

[1] By 1893, with Carrie Chapman Catt and Evelyn M. Russell, Read served as co-editor of the Woman's Standard,[6] of Des Moines, Iowa, a monthly newspaper produced by the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association devoted to equal rights, temperance and literature.

[1] In May 1897, from Elkins, Arkansas, Read wrote a letter to the suffragists who gathered in Algona, Iowa giving her support for a campaign to bring the woman's suffrage to the State.

[1] In 1899, Read donated US$500 to the newly built Methodist Episcopal Church in Algona, noting that one of the big windows was to be made into a memorial for her husband.

[11] Elizabeth Bunnell Read died in Fayetteville, Arkansas, May 22, 1909,[12] and is interred in Riverview Cemetery in Algona, Iowa.

A note in the May 26, 1909 edition of the Upper Des Moines Republican stated:—[13] "She was an ardent advocate of the ballot for woman at a time when the notion was much more unpopular than it is now.