12th child of Deacon Benjamin Gold and his wife Eleanor, Harriet Gold married Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee who was attending college at the Foreign Mission School in her hometown of Cornwall, Connecticut. The school would be closed by racist townspeople after two of their daughters married Cherokee (John Ridge had married Sarah Northrup).

Moving to Georgia, Mr. and Mrs. Boudinot lived in the Cherokee capital of New Echota, where Elias (known as "Buck" to his Cherokee friends) wrote and edited the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper. Gold's father Benjamin is noted today for giving the best extant description of the Cherokee town of New Echota. Gold became sick and died ten years after moving to the Cherokee Nation. Her cause of death is frequently speculated upon, but is not known.