The collection comprises manuscripts and printed material including account ledgers, correspondence, estate records, land deeds, peddler's accounts, and ephemera, spanning 1734 to 1910. Principal contributors include Jonathan Cadwell (d. 1768), Zacheus Butler (d. 1791), Jonathan Butler 2nd (d. 1855), William Gay Butler (d. 1857), Maria Butler Welles, and Elizabeth Gay Sisson Hubbard. Collection topics include agriculture and industry, itinerant peddlers, westward expansion and the Connecticut Western Reserve, the Union Army, American Indian relations in Michigan Territory, and society in New York and Europe in the 1890s.
