John Foster Wheeler (1808-1880) and John Carnall (1818-1891) were early pioneers of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Wheeler, born and educated in Kentucky, moved as a young man to Georgia to become a printer for the Cherokee Nation. When the tribe removed to Oklahoma in the 1830s, he followed them and continued acting as a printer at the new press established at Park Hill. Following a wave of violence between the Ridge and Ross factions of the tribe in 1839, Wheeler moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he established several newspapers. In 1829 Wheeler married Nancy Paschal Watie, a sister of Stand Watie and Elias Boudinot, and the couple had eight children, one of whom was William Watie Wheeler (1848-1915), a cattle rancher in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith Chief of Police from 1874-1880 and 1890-1892.

John Carnall was a teacher, newspaperman, and real estate broker in nineteenth century Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was a business associate of John Foster Wheeler, operating a newspaper with him in 1871 called the Western Independent. Later Carnall, along with his son, John Henry Carnall, started their own newspaper, the Fort Smith Elevator. Carnall married Frances Turner in 1843, and the couple had nine children, among whom were John Henry Carnall and Emma Columbia Carnall. Emma married William Watie Wheeler in Fort Smith in 1868. William and Emma Wheeler were pioneer residents of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and had nine children. Their daughter Daisy married Edgar Stevenson in 1893, and they, too, made their home in Sallisaw. The Stevenson's second eldest child, Emma Wheeler Stevenson Black, is the donor of this collection. Another Carnall descendent of note, Ella Howison Carnall (?-1894), was a teacher at the Arkansas Industrial University at Fayetteville, Arkansas, in the 1890s. Carnall Hall on campus is named for her.