Papers comprise a genealogy chart of thirteen generations starting with John Carman and Florence Fordham through children born in the 1960s and significant correspondence from the 1830s to the 1880s, by which time the family was in upstate New York in Mecklenburg, Bridgewater, Buffalo, and Trumansburg. Members of the family were Quakers and the correspondence includes positions on faith and religion, news about the Civil War, views about slavery, hungar, factory work, and the Mexican War, as well as family news. In 1837, Ruth Williams writes about the birth of Eliza Purdie in Waterloo. Most of the correspondence is to Catharine Williams Carman in Mecklenburg, second wife of Thomas Carman. Correspondents include niece Eliza Mott Purdie Peabody and probable siblings Henry Williams, Ruth Williams, and John E. Williams. There is also some correspondence from Thomas Carman's first wife Margaret and their daughters Anna Corey and Libbie Bodle. Josiah Fisher writes in 1870 to his wife Emily about visiting Kansas and Wisconsin.

Also, a few books, including Elisabeth Barney's 1710 Bible, a gift of her father Jacob in 1743, possibly relatives or friends of the family; Ruth Williams' copy of the 1803 "Letters on the Elementary Principles of Education" by Elizabeth Hamilton; a Williams copy of the 1826 "Conversations on Natural Philosophy" by Thomas P. Jones; Vol. 1 of "The History of the Society of Friends in America" by James Bowden, signed by William Carman; Bodle family copy of "History of Plymouth Plantation," no. 3, 1890; and a 1966 "Plain English Handbook" used in Trumansburg High School.