John Franklin Ramsaur (1819-1904), a planter, enslaver, businessman and Presbyterian church elder from North Carolina, moved to Ashley County, Arkansas, near Hamburg, in 1858. He had one daughter, Emma Eugene Ramsaur Shuford (1846-1905), by his first marriage to Sarah Ramsaur, who died in 1848. In 1851, Ramsaur married Catherine P. Wellborn of Mississippi; their three surviving children were Clark W. Ramsaur (b. 1851), Susan E. Ramsaur Lawson (b. 1856) and Willie E. Ramsaur (b. 1868). During the Civil War, Ramsaur was a first lieutenant in the Ashley County Home Guard, one of the Confederate militias formed primarily of males too old or too young to be eligible for regular service.

Emma Eugene Ramsaur Shuford lived with various relatives while attending school in North and South Carolina during the Civil War. She graduated from Converse College, Spartanburg, South Carolina circa 1864. In 1866, she married Wallace Pinkney Shuford of Newton, North Carolina. Emma and Wallace Shuford moved, circa 1875, to Hamburg, then to Fayetteville, and finally settled in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Wallace and Emma Shuford had six children, one of whom, Garland Julius Shuford (1876-1912), fought in the Philippine-American War, 1899, Company B, Thirty Third Regulars, U. S. Army.