The following are personal recollections of Elizabeth Ely by her son, Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860):
I have no doubt that I inherited from my mother a love of the night side of nature - not a love that begets melancholy, but an appetite that found pleasure in the shadows as well as the lights of life and imagination. Eminently practical as she was - laborious, skillful, and successful in the duties which Providence had assigned her, as the head of a large family, with narrow means - she was still of a poetic temperament. Her lively fancy was vividly set forth by a pair of the finest eyes I have ever seen - dark and serious, yet tender and sentimental. These bespoke not only the vigor of her conceptions, but the melancholy tinge that shaded her imagination. Sometimes indeed the well of sadness in her heart became full, and it ran over in tears. These, however, were like spring showers - brief in duration, and afterward brightening to all around. She was not the only woman who has felt better after a good cry. It was, in fact, a poetic, not a real sorrow, that thus excited her emotions, for her prevailing humor abounded in wit and vivacity, not infrequently taking the hue of playful satire. Nevertheless, her taste craved the pathetic, the mournful - not as a bitter medicine, but a spicy condiment. Her favorite poets were King David and Dr. Watts: she preferred the dirge-like melody of Windham to all other music. All the songs she sang were minors. Alas! how few are now living to verify this feeble portrait - among the cloud of witnesses who would once have testified to the general, though inadequate resemblance!
(Goodrich, Samuel. "Recollections of a lifetime, or, men and things I have seen : in a series of familiar letters to a friend, historical, biographical, anecdotal, and descriptive." -- New York : Miller, Orton & Co., 1857, pages 156-157). Owned by New York State Library, Albany, N.Y.