The daughter of William Walden Carter and Martha E. (Nelson) Carter, Lucy Elizabeth Carter was born in 1841, the second oldest of six children. She lived in the family home near Warrenton, Virginia, until 1865, when she married Samuel Melville Withers. Samuel had served in the same Confederate regiment with her brother George in the 4th Virginia Cavalry, Company H, known as the Black Horse Troop.

Her younger brother Thomas Carter, who was 16 when his sister married, moved in with Lucy Elizabeth her husband and worked as a farm laborer.

Her son William H. was born in or around 1867, and in or around 1869 her daughter Mattie H was born. Daughter Alice was born around 1871.

On April 5,1874, due to complications of giving birth to her son Shelton, Lucy Elizabeth died. She was 33 years old. Her widowed husband married her sister Alice in November of the following year.