Arabella Lanktree Wilson was born, apparently in England, in 1814, the daughter of Wesleyan (Methodist) minister Matthew Lanktree and Catherine Lanktree. Evidence suggests that here father was posted to Northern Ireland, apparently in or near Belfast, and that it was there that she married John Wilson, presumably an Irishman but possibly an Englishman, who was also a Wesleyan minister. Subsequent to her husband's death, she migrated to Arkansas with her Ireland-born children Anna L. (c1839-1859) and William H.D. (C.1841-1884), possibly at the urging of her brother Caleb Langtree [sic], who was then resident in Little Rock, where he was employed as a draftsman and cartographer in the Surveyor's Office. Settling first in Dardanelle, where both she and daughter Anna taught in the Dardanelle Academy for Young Ladies for a brief period beginning in 1854, she later removed to Pine Bluff, at which mail is addressed to her as early as 1857. At the time of the 1860 U.S. Census, she and son William were living with a Jane Day, age 57, who owned 262 acres north of Pine Bluff. Arabelled died in Pine Bluff November 1, 1866 and was buried in that city's Bellwood Cemetery.

William H. D. Wilson served as a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, possibly in the Quartermaster Corps. On November 17, 1870, he married Eugenia James (c1852-1875), who bore him two children, Arabella E. (born Jun 29, 1872 and died two days later) and Eugenia James (b. 1874) before she died June 23, 1875. While serving, apparently, as Pine Bluff City Engineer, Wilson drew and published a map of the city, in 1868, and a map of Jefferson County, in 1872. The 1876-77 Pine Bluff city directory lists him as Assistant Agent for the Little Rock, Mississippi River & Texas Railway, but he appears to have been named Pine Bluff City Assessor in June 1878. In the 1883-84 directory, he is identified as a partner in the McCracken & Wilson General Insurance Agency. Wilson died, in Pine Bluff, August 26, 1884 and was also interred in Bellwood Cemetery.