Bob Besom was born in Olean, New York, in 1943, and grew up in Bellevue, Nebraska. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska in 1965 in history and journalism. In his early years, Besom was often in Arkansas visiting family in Pine Bluff, where his mother grew up. In 1970, after service in the United States Army, he moved to Fayetteville to pursue a post-graduate degree in American history at the University of Arkansas. Arkansas history became his research focus, and when he had difficulty finding material to support his research, he began looking for and collecting what he needed. A lifelong collector, he began to focus on Arkansas material once he lived in Fayetteville. He worked on the papers of Senator William Fulbright at the University of Arkansas Special Collections, and was a historian with the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program and the Old State House Museum in Little Rock before taking a job in 1980 with the Shiloh Museum in Springdale. He served as director of the museum for 25 years and helped the institution to build a significant collection of Ozarks-focused materials.

He and Patty McCrary were married in 1980. Patty was born in 1943 in Felsenthal, Arkansas, a small Union County community where she lived until she left for college in 1960. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature at the University of Arkansas. She taught English at the University of Arkansas at Magnolia and taught generations of piano students in Fayetteville. Bob and Patty’s daughter, Lela, was born in 1984.

The Besoms’ interest in Arkansas history has continued to the present, and serves as the driving force for their collecting.