The wife of Capt. William Ely, Elizabeth Ely died at the age of 66, when the American Revolutionary War was in its final stages. Born in Chewbacco Parish, Ipswich, in colonial Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Abraham Perkins and the former Abigail Dodge. On September 16, 1737 she married William Ely, and the couple became the parents of ten children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. After nearly twenty years of married life in Lyme, Connecticut, where they struggled to eke out a living on their farm, in 1756 the Elys moved to present day Livingston, NJ, where they settled on "the Orange Mountain". Still beset with financial difficulties, Mrs. Ely was advised by family friends to hide her heirloom silver tea service from her husband's creditors, but being a woman of irreproachable honesty and integrity, she refused to do so. At the time of her death, Mrs. Ely's survivors included her husband, a veteran of the French & Indian War, and seven of their ten children. Captain Ely died in 1802, 20 years after her death.
Mrs. Ely's brown sandstone stele, which features a soul effigy of the portrait typle in its tympanum, appears to be the work of craftsman Uzal Ward of Newark. It is now ensconced in granite to aid in its preservation.