She was born in Vernon, Connecticut, in 1836, the daughter of Ralph and Susan (Bell) Talcott. Her father was a pioneer manufacturer of Rockville, in the town of Vernon, and a descendant of John Talcott, one of the first settlers of Hartford; her mother's ancestry went back to Thomas Hooker, founder of Hartford Colony.
Eliza studied in the school of Sarah Porter at Farmington, Connecticut, and also taught there. Later, she attended the Connecticut Normal School at New Britain.
For several years was a teacher in both public and private schools.
In 1873 she sailed for Japan under appointment of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, being one of its first woman missionaries to that country. She acquired the language quickly and was soon engaged in various activities.
In 1875 she helped to found and became the first principal of Kobe House, a boarding school for girls which developed into Kobe College. In 1880 she became a touring missionary from Okayama as a center, enduring the hardships of primitive travel and difficult living conditions, mingling with the people both as nurse and as religious teacher. This work was interrupted in 1884 by her first furlough.
Returning to Japan the following year, she became the evangelistic head and house mother of the Doshisha Nurses Training School at Kyoto. During the Chino-Japanese War of 1894 she was at Hiroshima, an unofficial visitor to the sick and wounded in the six military hospitals there, bringing such sympathy and encouragement that soldiers testified: "Her visits do us more good than the visits of the doctors. "
After an attack of cholera, she returned to the United States in 1900 on a furlough which was prolonged for a number of years because of the condition of her health. Sailing again for her field in 1900, she was detained for two and a half years in the Hawaiian Islands to assist in work among the Japanese who were settled there.
When at length she reached Japan she took up the training of evangelistic workers at the Woman's Bible School at Kobe, where she remained until her death.
Her parish was the entire Empire and she probably exerted a greater Christian influence than any other foreigner of her time. Her command of the Japanese language was perfect and she had so mastered the intricacies of Japanese etiquette that she commanded the confidence and respect of all classes of people. One of the Chinese prisoners to whom she had ministered said: "She had within her a mysterious happiness which we could not understand. No amount of preaching could have made such an impression as her work and example. "
She recognized good in religions other than her own and she had unbounded faith in human nature and charity toward the erring.
She was gentle and unassuming, yet she gave the impression of great strength.
