Sarah Ella Hunt was born to William and Sarah Gaines (O'Brien) Hunt in Tennessee on June 18, 1849. She was one of five children, including Samuel, Susan Leticia (Hunt) Rowan, Mary Eliza (Hunt) Carson, and Alice Nancy Patton (Hunt) Lynn. Sarah Hunt died in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 2, 1933 and is buried in Old Gray Cemetery.

Walter George Holmes was born in Jackson, Tennessee on July 9, 1861. He graduated from Union College in 1881 and went on to work with newspapers in Tennessee. While on a business trip to New York City in 1906, Holmes (whose brother George was blind) read a newspaper account of a bequest to benefit the deaf, crippled, and handicapped. This article prompted him to write a letter to the editor of the New York Herald asking why there were no such endowments to aid the blind. This note resulted in an interview with philanthropist Mrs. Matilda Ziegler (widow of the founder of the Royal Baking Company), who sent Holmes abroad to study European progress in helping the blind. Upon his return in 1907, the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind began publication and the Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind was organized. Holmes continued to work with this publication until February 7, 1946 when he was killed after falling from his ninth story Manhattan hotel room onto a third story extension roof.