As a young child she moved with her parents to a large farm known as Forty Acres, located in Hadley, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Porter married estate manager Charles Phelps, Jr. on June 14, 1770 and continued to reside at Forty Acres.
After her daughter's marriage to Dan Huntington in 1801 and removal to Litchfield, Connecticut, the two women remained in contact with each other through a lively correspondence.
[3] The Elizabeth Porter Phelps diary is an important historical record that has been utilized by a number of historians, including Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Catherine E. Kelly and Marla R.
Most models of the "patriarchal family economy" ill fit the evidence of 18th century diaries, which describe a world in which wives as well as husbands traded with their neighbors, where young women felt themselves responsible for their own support, where matches were made in the tumult of neighborhood frolics, and where outsiders as well as family members were involved in the most intimate events of life.