Business and family correspondence, relating to lumbering interests near Canadea, New York; McGraw family genealogy; diaries and accounts of travels in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Egypt; Jennie McGraw Fiske diaries refer to travels in England and on the Continent, and to Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. Other subjects include Cornell University faculty members, the settlement of the estate of John McGraw, and a memorial to McGraw by the Cornell University Board of Trustees. Major correspondents and persons figuring prominently in the collection include Douglass Boardman, J. W. Dwight, Willard Fiske, Mary Celestia McGraw, John Ellis Southworth, and Anna Gauntlett Whitcomb.

Also, a Jennie McGraw letter to her uncle, Thomas McGraw, describing the impact of the Civil War on Detroit, and mentioning mutual acquaintances involved in the struggle. Daguerreotype of Jennie McGraw Fiske. John McGraw papers refer to Cornell University lands, lands held by H. W. Sage and Company, and his own personal matters; includes Henry Williams Sage correspondence. McGraw's involvement in the lumber industry is documented by correspondence with William E. Taylor regarding lumber prices in Ontario, Canada, and by exchanges with mill operators and lumbering concerns in Ontario, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Also, prenuptial agreement between John McGraw and Phebe Jane Bates, 1861; letter and receipt to John McGraw from Archimedes Russell about stone for McGraw Hall, 1869-1870; letter from George Sidney Camp to Joseph McGraw, 1887; Christmas card with photographs of the Cornell campus and the Fiske-McGraw mansion; 10 stereoscopic views (exterior and interiors) of the McGraw-Fiske mansion; and published brochure for the executor's sale of the McGraw Fiske Estate, 1891.