Zoe Ann Marinda Noyes was born to Augustous and Persis Stone Noyes on December 11, 1833 in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. Her early education was at Kimball Union Academy and a number of select schools. She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1859. She taught high school in various places until her marriage on March 19, 1868 to Reverend William Edwin Locke, a graduate of Amherst College and Union Seminary of New York. They sailed for Bulgaria in April on 1868 to work as missionaries. They had three children in Bulgaria: Adelaide, Marinda and Mabel. After 25 years of service, they returned to the United States. Zoe Noyes Locke died on April 30, 1926 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Adelaide Locke graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1892 and from Hartford Theological Seminary in 1896. She taught Biblical History at Wellesley College until her death in 1924. Marinda Adams Locke graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1893. She worked at various schools before becoming a nurse in 1898. Thereafter she worked at a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. She died in Boston, in 1951. Mabel E. Locke Tucker graduated from Northfield Seminary, married and had five children.

Correspondence, diaries, pamphlets and biographical material. Principally diaries and other papers of Zoe A. M. Noyes Locke which describe her domestic and social responsibilities as a missionary in Bulgaria and as the wife of a clergyman in the United States. Also includes a small collection of papers of her husband, William Edwin Locke, and of her three daughters, Adelaide I. Locke, Mabel E. Locke Tucker and Marinda Adams Locke.