Samuel Haney (1815-1888) was a farmer from Tennessee who settled in the Huntsville, Madison County, Arkansas, area sometime in the early 1840s. His brothers and mother settled in St. Genevieve County, Missouri. Samuel married Margaret Bowen Haney sometime around 1849, and they had six children: John, Gerry, Sam, Caroline, Sarah, and Margaret. Samuel's brother-in-law, John W. Bowen, travelled west to California during the gold rush of 1849 and later enlisted in the Union Army on February 23, 1863. Serving as a corporal in Company B, First Arkansas Infantry, Bowen spent most of his Civil War duty in the Fort Smith area and Madison County. His letters to Samuel and Margaret Haney from California in 1850 and from the army in 1864 and 1865 are among the most interesting documents in the collection. Samuel Haney also had business dealings with Jonas M. Tebbetts, a prominent antebellum Washington County lawyer and land speculator, and two items in the collection document their transactions.