A native of Richmond, Virginia, M. H. Omohundro was descended from a Huguenot family whose ancestors settled on a farm near Nomini, Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1670. Mr. Omohundro’s interest in history, first sparked by his father’s compilation of a family genealogy, was intensified by the courses he took while a student at William & Mary in 1924 and 1925. Although Mr. Omohundro left William & Mary to enter the advertising business in New York, his affinity for the American past did not wane. Returning to Richmond in the mid-1930s, he embarked on a career in real estate as president of the Old Dominion Real Estate Company, work that he interrupted to serve in the Navy during World War II. He resumed his business activities after the war and eventually renewed his ties with William & Mary. He met and became friends with former Omohundro Institute Directors Thad Tate and Ronald Hoffman and other William & Mary historians. Mr. Omohundro credited his great enjoyment of these associations and the historical knowledge he gained from them with deeply influencing his desire “to ensure that those of later generations would have the same opportunity to understand the past as I have.”

Mrs. Omohundro was a native of Gloucester, Virginia, who earned her teaching certificate from Longwood College in 1936 and taught in the Baxera and Botetourt schools in Gloucester for nearly 17 years. Mr. and Mrs. Omohundro married in 1955.

M. H. Omohundro, Jr. died in 1999, and Libby Omohundro passed away in 2008.