H. A. Buchanan may have been Hugh Alexander Buchanan, a Wythe County, Virginia farmer. Hugh Alexander Buchanan was born April 18, 1837. During the Civil War, a Hugh A. Buchanan served as a sergeant in Company B, 29th Virginia Infantry. The 1880 census describes Hugh A. Buchanan as a 43-year-old farmer, living in Wythe County with wife Mary and a daughter. By 1900, the Buchanans were living in Marion (Smyth County), with Hugh still listed as a farmer. Hugh Alexander Buchanan died April 19, 1914 and was buried in Marion (Smyth County), Virginia.

Mary Fayetta McMullin, born in Smyth County, Virginia, on June 2, 1871, was the daughter of Lafayette and Mary Jane Wood McMullin. She married William Jacob Peterson (1863-1916), of North Carolina, about 1892. The 1900 census lists a 28-year-old Fayetta Peterson living in Salem, North Carolina. A native of Virginia, she was living with husband William Peterson; children Pauline and William Mcm. Peterson; an aunt; and a servant. The family were listed as residents of Winston, North Carolina, in the 1910 census. By 1930, a widowed Fayetta Peterson, 59, was living in the Winston-Salem home of her daughter and son-in-law, Agnes and Thomas J. Boyd. Mary Fayetta McMullin Peterson, wife of William J. Peterson, died on July 24, 1930, and was buried in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.