Elizabeth Lucy Chapin, secondary school teacher, was born on August 27, 1838 in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Her father, Titus Chapin, was a farmer and her mother died when she was young. Lucy, as she was called, entered Mouth Holyoke Female Seminary in 1854, and graduated in 1857. An older sister, Roxanna Emily Chapin, was a graduating member of the class of 1854. Lucy taught at the Lucy Cobb Institute, a women's secondary school in Athens Georgia when it opened in 1859 until 1861. From 1861 to 1862 she was employed by her sister's husband, William Louis Crawford Gerdine, as governess to his nine children, her sister's step-children, on their cotton plantation in West Point, Mississippi. Lucy died there in mid or late October, 1862, after unsuccessfully trying to return to Massachusetts during a long illness. Lucy and Roxanna traveled as far as Richmond, Virginia where they were turned back. They were detained at Corinth, Mississippi, about 100 miles north of West Point, during the October 3-4 Battle of Corinth. Lucy died the day after arriving back in West Point, at the age of twenty-four. Her body was later reburied in Chicopee, MA.