Eliza was born in England and came to New Zealand with her parents, Thomas Nathaniel and Ann Payton and her brother Samuel, on the "Euterpe in 1874.

The family lived in the Wanganui area before shifting to Marlborough where she met and married Ebenezer Gurchen Gibson. 

Two of their children died before they shifted to the Maruia Valley in 1913.  By the time of the earthquake one son had been killed in the First World War, one had died in a bush felling accident, three were out working and two daughters were married.  This left only my mother and her youngest brother living at home when the earthquake struck killing my Grandmother, her youngest son and a visitor, Thelma Ferguson