William Wilson (1807-1886) was a prominent landowner, enslaver, and stock raiser in the Prairie Grove area of Washington County, Arkansas. Wilson, a Georgia native, came to Arkansas in the late 1830s, settling first in Pulaski County, and then moving to Washington County around 1855. Wilson and his wife, Eliza, acquired over 2,000 acres near the present-day town of Prairie Grove, building a home able to accommodate their large family with thirteen children. They included Benjamin, Ann, William Augustus, Eliza, John, Emily, Anthony, Mary, William, Harriet, Albert, Andrew, and George. Not all lived to adulthood, with nine having died by the end of the Civil War.

Around 1859, construction began on the Wilson farm of a large home William planned to name "Excelsior." The Civil War interfered with its completion, and for a time the place was occupied by Unionist refugees organized into a cooperative colony under the command of Captain William Rutherford, First Arkansas Home Guard Militia. Two of Wilson's sons, Andrew and Albert, served in the Confederate Army, while another, William, enlisted on the northern side. After the end of the war, William Wilson returned to Washington County from an unknown location and filed suit to regain possession of his farm.

In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Excelsior farm was run by Albert and Andrew Wilson. Andrew married Nannie McCulloch in 1889, and their four children included Rollans M. Wilson, the donor of the collection. William Wilson had at least four brothers and sisters, one of whom figures prominently in the collection's correspondence: John Wilson, who lived in Homer, Louisiana.