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The Chapman family papers consist primarily of letters between John W. Chapman of Brooklyn, New York, and his immediate family, written around the turn of the 20th century. Most of the letters relate to his daughter, Sarah Dimon Chapman ("Sallie"), including a series of letters written to her by her mother, Mary C. Chapman, with advice for Sallie's European travels, as well as later letters to John and Mary from Sallie's husband, Lewis Witherbee Francis.

The Chapman family papers contain about 98 items, of which 85 are letters exchanged by members of the Chapman family around the turn of the 20th century. John W. Chapman and his wife, Mary Dimon Chapman, received incoming letters from numerous family members and other acquaintances, such as Mary's father, Charles Dimon. Of the 85 letters, 42 pertain to their daughter Sallie and her husband, Lewis Witherbee Francis. In 1896, Mary Chapman wrote 12 letters to Sallie in which she offered her opinions about several European countries while Sallie was traveling abroad. Her letters occasionally enclose newspaper clippings. Sallie also received letters from her father, grandparents, and other relatives and acquaintances throughout the late 1800s. She and her husband occasionally wrote to her parents, reporting on their health and news from New York City. In one letter, Lewis commented on the stock market and the assassination of President William McKinley (September 15, 1901). A woman who signed herself "Aunt Cordelia" also wrote to John and Mary Chapman on the same subject, sharing her feelings about the shooting and about anarchists (September 8, 1901). Many of these letters are written on stationery with printed letterheads from hotels and businesses, including two of John W. Chapman's professional letterheads.

The collection also contains receipts from Sallie Chapman's purchases in France in July 1896, calling cards, a printed report on the expenses of the Union Pacific System (July 30, 1901), some cat fur kept as a souvenir, and an illustrated newspaper clipping on the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough.

The Bigelow Papers consist of twenty-eight letters, almost all of which were written by Lydia S. Bigelow Hathaway to her sister Elisa Wales Bigelow Page between 1839 and 1850. The letters are entirely personal in nature, covering a range of domestic and family topics.

The Bigelow Papers consist of twenty-eight letters, almost all of which were written by Lydia S. Bigelow Hathaway (1822-1850) to her sister Elisa Wales Bigelow Page (1815-1883) between 1839 and 1850. The earliest letters date from when Lydia was a seventeen year old student in Petersham, Mass., and and the correspondence continues irregularly into her married life in Lynn and Worcester, up to the year of her death in 1850. The letters are entirely personal in nature, covering a range of domestic and family topics.

The primary value of the collection is the portrait it provides of a young woman's life in mid-nineteenth-century New England, revolving around the varied regions of the domestic sphere. Cotillions, dressmaking, romance, church meetings, visiting, songfests, and pasttimes are the main subjects of Lydia's letters, all of which are discussed in her lively and entertaining prose. In one sense, her letters from school are disappointing, in that there is scant mention of her actual schooling, but on balance the letters present a fine depiction of the maturation of a young New Englander into her adult role as wife and mother.

Of special interest are Lydia's description of the financial depression at Templeton, Mass., following an industrial collapse in 1843 (letter 22) and her account of her bankruptcy in 1848, when her husband's business venture disintegrated, carrying with it several investors' money (letters 25-28). The last two items in the collection are a letter from Lydia's father to her mother, written on the day of Lydia's death, March 31, 1850; and one item from San Francisco, 1889, concerning Lydia's son and daughter in law.