Eliza Woodson Burhans was born in Rensselaerville, New York, the daughter of Cornelius and Mary (Wood) Burhans.
Her mother died when Eliza was six years old, and she was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in Maple Springs, New York. In this somewhat backwoods section she found little kindness; her aunt was jealous and nagging, her uncle addicted to whiskey, and Eliza became obsessed with the desire to alleviate misery in the world.
She was the only child in the neighborhood who was not allowed to attend school and the only one who read books of her own accord. At about sixteen, she left her uncle’s home and went to live with another uncle, who had taken her brother and two sisters when her mother died, and was sent to school for a time.
In 1841 the Farnhams moved to New York. In 1844 Mrs. Farnham accepted an appointment as matron of the female department of the state prison at Sing Sing. She determined to prove that prisoners would respond more satisfactorily to kindness than to the harsh treatment accorded them formerly, met with much success in her experiment, and retained her office until 1848. Meanwhile her husband had removed to Illinois and then to San Francisco, where he died in September 1848. After a brief period of employment at the Institution for the Blind in Boston, in 1849 Mrs. Farnham went to California. Prior to her departure she attempted to organize a party of women to emigrate with her, and her project, which did not prove successful, was indorsed by Judge J. W. Edmonds, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Catharine M. Sedgwick, and other notables. The difficulties of her journey and her experiences on the Coast she later described in a book, California, Indoors and Out (1856). She returned to New York in 1856, and devoted the next two years to studying medicine. She also edited, wrote the preface to, and illustrated an American edition of a treatise, Rationale of Crime, and its Appropriate Treatment (1846), by Marmaduke Blake Sampson.
She died at Milton-on-the-Hudson, N. Y
In 1859 in pursuance of the plan conceived a decade earlier, she organized a society in New York City to assist destitute women in finding homes in the West, and she personally conducted several companies of “emigrants” of this class to California. Her most significant work was Woman and Her Era (1864), published in two volumes. It is an intelligent discussion of woman’s capabilities for other vocations than motherhood.
She urged women to develop intellectual interests but in doing so not merely to imitate men.
In 1835 she moved to Illinois, where in 1836 she married Thomas Jefferson Farnham, a young lawyer, to whom she bore three sons.
Meanwhile her husband had removed to Illinois and then to San Francisco, where he died in September 1848.
By this marriage she had one daughter, who died in infancy.
Shortly after the death of her first husband she was married a second time (Burhans Genealogy), to William Fitzpatrick, of Ireland. By this marriage she had one daughter, who died in infancy.
