Collection consists largely of letters between members of the interrelated Tappan, Brewster, Tomlinson, and Shelton families, and emphasizes religious, missionary, and educational experiences. Included are a letter (1821) from a female teacher at the Brainard Cherokee Mission School; letters (1827) from Anne Tappan at Catharine Beecher's School in Hartford, Connecticut; letters (1834) from Lucy Tappan, a teacher at a religious academy in Detroit, concerning local conditions, Miss Beecher, and nativist fears; letters (1840) from Joseph Tomlinson, Jr., New Haven, Connecticut, describing commencement antics and a visit to a lock factory; a series (1851-52) from Tomlinson, New York City, with detailed comments on American sympathy for Cuban insurrectionists, a meeting for Negro colonization, the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher, a Democrat-Republican Locofoco meeting, a meeting at Metropolitan Hall to oppose the Maine Law; comments (1858) on a revival; articles relating to the activities of Charles Shelton, an American Home Missionary in Dell Rapids, Dakota, in the 1880s; and also letters (1861-74) from Theodore H. Peters and George Wynkoop of Bigelow, letters from Wynkoop and Peters to George W. Shelton, Birmingham, Connecticut, relating to the latter's interest in the Shelton Oil and Mining Company lands in Sheffield, Pennsylvania, and outlining plans for the expansion of the enterprise; and a quotation signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.