Per Wikipedia, Electa Quinney was a Mohican born around 1798 to 1802 (different publications mention different years) all the way over in New York, and that was where she received her education and taught at her first school for 6 years. Then, after traveling here to Wisconsin with her family in 1827, she settled in Statesburg WI, became a member of the Community and established the First Wisconsin Public school there, where she taught as many as 40-50 children. Though most of her students were Indian, they studied in English and she used standard texts to teach arithmetic, geography, language, oration, penmanship and spelling. Quinney died in 1885 in Stockbridge, Wisconsin. She is buried in the Stockbridge Indian Cemetery, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, though her stone is missing. Posthumously, the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee was named in her honor.

Since she was born so long ago, it was difficult to find many photos of her, to base our statue from. Honestly, this is the only photo we ever found, of what she looked like at 60 years old. Therefore, since we were going to make a life size standing statue of her, we used other photos of Native Women in that same time frame, to come up with a design for her dress, blouse, shawl and the motif on that shawl – as seen from the back of the statue.