Concord was at the time of Wheeler's early life a progressive community engaged with Transcendentalism, abolitionism, education reform, and women's rights.

Her father Abiel was involved in a local Underground Railroad effort and their family provided refuge to escaped slaves on their way to Canada throughout the 1850s.

[1] Intellectual figures in the community at that time included Amos Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Horace Mann, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others.

Local feminist Margaret Fuller died before Wheeler's time, but the "audacious" woman "left [an] impress on the village."

In 1887, Wheeler started a practice of taking groups of students to France during the summer to learn the French language and study painting and art history.