In the late seventeenth century, English families crossed the Atlantic to settle in the American colonies, leaving behind lives and stories that rarely entered the historical record. Elizabeth Jefferys, born in 1679 in Whitkirk, Yorkshire, was one such life.

While members of her family sailed to Colonial Virginia, Elizabeth remained in her parish village, her presence recorded only briefly in baptismal registers before disappearing from official documents. Like many women of her time, her life unfolded quietly within the rhythms of labor, faith, and endurance, sustaining continuity while others departed.

Elizabeth Jefferys of Whitkirk, Yorkshire: An Unrecorded Life (1679– ) is a historically grounded ancestral narrative that explores what it meant to remain behind during an age of migration. Drawing on genealogical research and social history, the book offers a respectful reconstruction of a woman’s life lived beyond the reach of formal records.

Written for genealogists, historians, and family-history readers, this work restores presence to a woman history forgot—and invites readers to reconsider the lives that sustained families and communities from the margins of the archive.