[2] She entered the didactics program at the Iowa State Normal School in Cedar Falls, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1893.

[3] In the 1890s, Wier’s family left Iowa and moved to Heppner, Oregon, where she was an assistant principal of the high school from 1893 to 1895.

[7] In 1899, Anne Henrietta Martin, who had been teaching in the history department of Nevada State University, requested a leave of absence from the board of regents.

The timing of Wier’s arrival was marked by a period of growth and expansion for the university, under the leadership of President Joseph Edward Stubbs.

[15] Although the leadership of the historical society was largely made up of University faculty, and was closely associated with it, it was never classed as an affiliated organization.

Wier wrote to prominent individuals and early pioneer families, soliciting their support in the historical society.

In addition to letters of solicitation, Wier went out on collecting trips across the state to procure “early newspapers, manuscripts, photographs, maps, books, Indian materials, and artifacts from earlier settlement and mining periods.”[19] An early important collection Wier managed to acquire in a 1908 trip were the papers of William Morris Stewart, one of Nevada's first senators.

But many a person who had been irresponsive to letters became interested and even enthusiastic when visited in person.”[21] In the 1920s the societies first building was already inadequate for the storage and access of its historical collections.