Minerva Jane Sanders was born around 1852 in Indiana to John W. Sanders and Ritty Ann Selsor. Her father was a farmer who owned $400 of real estate and $175 of personal property by 1860. The family moved to Medicine, Missouri, in the late 1850s, and then to Washington, Missouri, in the 1860s. She married Greenberry King around 1870, and they had at least four children: Henry, born around 1871; Frances, born around 1872; Matilda, born around 1874; and Lucinda, born around 1877. They lived in Medicine, and her husband worked as a farmer. She died in Missouri on August 21, 1897.