[1][2] Born on December 24, 1851, in the city of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, she was the daughter of William Keolaloa Kahānui Sumner, an ali‘i of partial Hawaiian descent, and his punalua (two or more spouses) partner Haa Maore aka Mauli Tehuiari‘i, a Tahitian princess and the sister of Sumner's lawful wife Manaiula Tehuiari‘i.

Sumner captained the government schooner Waverly and deported the party of Catholic missionaries led by Alexis Bachelot and Patrick Short in 1831.

This family dispute resulted in Mauli's and Sarah's' eviction from their home on Sumner Island (a former islet in Pearl Harbor) by Nancy's mother Manaiula.

Achuck was the adopted, Hawaiianized name of Qʻing Ming Qwai, who had immigrated in 1849 from Zhongshan in the Guangdong province of China.

Queen Emma, a political rival to the Kalākaua family and a friend of her sister Nancy, referred to Elizabethʻs husband as the "pigtail suitor Achuck.

"[18][20] Achuck's first wife was still alive in China while he had also previously contracted a marriage with a Hawaiian girl named Kamaua.

Kamaua was twelve years old at the time of her marriage to Achuck and was a student of Protestant missionary Reverend Lowell Smith of the Kaumakapili Church, who orchestrated the match.

[22][15] In a ceremony presided by the Reverend Father Herman Koeckemann, Achuck and Elizabeth were married on the evening of July 3, 1872, at the residence of Princess Likelike and her husband Archibald Scott Cleghorn in Honolulu.

[27][28][29][11] After Achuck's death, Elizabeth remarried to a Hawaiian man named Lapana Keawepoʻoole, a painter who later became a police officer and turnkey at Oʻahu prison.

[36][37] After suffering from diabetic complications for four months, Elizabeth died in Honolulu at her daughter's residence on Liliha street on February 22, 1911.