This collection (182 items) is primarily made up of personal letters to Elizabeth Hollister Lyons, whose friends and family members discussed their lives in Connecticut and Illinois. Her correspondents included her sisters Artemisia (18 items, 1851-1902), Clara (20 items, 1852-1862), Emily (6 letters, 1853-1856), and Sarah (27 items, 1847-1871); her brother Lee and his wife Caroline (18 items, 1847-1867); and her parents Horace and Artemisia (18 items, 1849-1864).
Elizabeth's sisters Artemisia and Emily provided news of Salisbury, Connecticut, with additional comments from "Arte" about experiences teaching school. Clara wrote about sewing, dressmaking, and domestic life in Brooklyn, New York; one of her later letters refers to Salisbury residents serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. Lee Hollister and his wife Caroline discussed their life in Illinois, where Lee taught school. Letters by a fourth sibling, Sarah Hollister Walker, pertain to her life in Metamora, Illinois, and to local religious issues. Horace and Artemisia Hollister, Elizabeth's parents, gave news of family and friends in Salisbury, discussed political issues, and mentioned the possibility of moving to Illinois with their children.
The remaining letters, from other family members and friends, concern the writers' lives in New England and the Midwest. Additional items include a printed letter to members of the First Presbyterian Church of Fort Dodge, Iowa; Mary Lyons's diploma from the Normal Institute of Humboldt County, Iowa; a document regarding the disposition of Walter Lyons's estate; and miscellaneous notes.
Horace Hollister (July 4, 1791-August 17, 1866) and his first wife, Sarah Lee (June 21, 1791-July 1830), married in Salisbury, Connecticut, on January 7, 1819. They had five children: Clarissa (1820-1832), Lee (b. 1823), Sarah (b. 1824), Horace (1826-1853), and Elizabeth Metcalf (May 28, 1828-June 9, 1910). Following his wife's death in 1830, Horace Hollister married Artemisia Ward (August 21, 1804-January 8, 1868) on November 30, 1831. They had six children: Clarissa Lucretia (1832-1862), Artemisia (b. 1834), Ward (1836-1837), John Ward (b. 1837), Emily Maria (b. 1839), and Edward (b. 1843). The younger Artemisia Hollister became a schoolteacher, and many members of the family relocated to Illinois before the Civil War.
Following her education in Connecticut and Massachusetts, Elizabeth Metcalf Hollister moved west; she taught at the Fairfield Female Seminary in Iowa in the mid-1850s. On July 7, 1856, she married Ohio native Reverend Walter Lowrie Lyons (b. 1820); their eight children were Walter Lowrie (b. 1857), Edward Hollister (b. 1859), Charles Hodge (b. 1860), Mary Loraine (b. 1862), William Paxton (b. 1864), Elizabeth Minnie (b. 1866), Anna Jane (b. 1868), and John Knox (1870-1876). The Lyons family lived in Iowa and Illinois.