John Todd was born in West Hanover, Pennsylvania on November 10, 1818 to Captain James Todd and Sallie (Ainsworth) Todd. He graduated from Ohio's Oberlin College in 1841, and from its theological seminary three years later. He married Martha Atkins on September 9, 1844 and ministered in Ohio from 1844 to 1850.

In 1850, the Todds moved to Iowa, where John Todd was instrumental in founding the Tabor community and its first Congregational Church, and in later establishing Tabor College. From 1854 to 1856, during the Kansas free state conflict, the Todd home at Tabor served as a station on the Underground Railroad and as an arsenal for abolitionist John Brown. In 1864, John Todd served for several months as chaplain to the Civil War's 46th Iowa Infantry while stationed at Colliersville, Tennessee. He resigned as pastor of the Tabor Congregational Church in 1883. Todd's wife Martha died in 1888, and in 1891 he married Anna Drake. John Todd died at Tabor on January 31, 1894.

Of the children born to John and Martha Todd, their daughters were Bertha, Martha E. (Minnie), Mary Louisa (Louise), Flora, and Margaret (Maggie). The Todds' eldest son James, born in 1846 and a graduate of Oberlin College, was a professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Kansas at Lawrence from 1907 until his death in 1922. John and Martha Todd's two other sons were Quintus Curtius Todd (1849-1927) and David, who died in 1854 within a year of his birth.

Quintus Curtius Todd, whose papers comprise a majority of the collection, attended theological school but served only intermittently as a clergyman, working briefly as a teacher and for several years as a telegraph operator prior to his marriage in 1879 to Harriet Sophia (Hattie) Ellis. In subsequent years, he pursued various occupations, including those of homesteader, clergyman, insurance agent, and traveling salesman.