Elenor was one of seven children of Arthur and Joan Prutt, who were enslaved by Isaac Chauncey (1670-1745) of Hadley, Massachusetts. She was born in August of 1724. (Town records, 1659-1719, Hadley, Massachusetts. See also James Avery Smith, History of the Black Population of Amherst, Massachusetts (Boston, MA: New England Historic and Genealogical Society, 1999), pp. 110-111.)