Maude Elizabeth Channing was born January 29, 1888 in Midvale, Utah, the oldest surviving girl of thirteen siblings. She always disliked the name Maude, and everyone, including her parents, called her Elizabeth or Lizzie. She attended Murray High School with Ivies LeCompte Beckstead, whose son Francis would later marry her daughter, Lola.

Lizzie married David Channing on Christmas Eve, 1906. Standing just 4 feet 11 inches tall, she looked even shorter next to her 6'4 husband. She was unable to have children, so after many years she and David finally adopted a daughter in 1921. As their only child, Dave spoiled her rotten, while Lizzie was firm but loving. She was the same with her grandchildren. When they'd get a little too rowdy, she'd shout out to them: "You girls look like you've been fetched instead of brung!"

Lizzie was a devout member of the LDS Church, and every Friday she would go through the Temple. She was very proud of her work in the Relief Society. She never did learn how to drive, so her sister Lavera would come and pick her up to go to church or do their Relief Society activities. She had blue-black hair, and in her later years she would make it a weekly ritual to go out to the hairdresser, wearing "a little rouge and a little lipstick."

She canned peaches (which were delicious) in her spare time, and always made the pies for Thanksgiving. She was a very good cook. She and David led a rather simple life, and it was well into the 1950's before they had indoor plumbing put into their house.

After Dave died in 1958, Lizzie continued to live in the same house on Secord Street in Salt Lake City. In August of 1972 she was hospitalized, and she said Dave came to see her. She was very upset though; he was wearing the same dirty, old overalls he always wore and not the nice, new suit she had buried him in. After a while her doctors informed her that she was getting too infirm to live on her own anymore and would have to go to a care facility. Well, Lizzie just wasn't having any of that, so on August 17, 1972, she passed away.