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This collection is made up of letters written and received by Reverend Evarts Kent and members of his family throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kent and his family corresponded with friends and family members in several states, including Vermont, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. Most letters concern family news, education, religion, travel, family relationships, and similar personal subjects. The collection also includes printed invitations, programs, and 23 photographs.

This collection is made up of letters written and received by Reverend Evarts Kent and members of his family throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Kent and his family corresponded with friends and family members in several states, including Vermont, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. Most letters concern family news, education, religion, travel, family relationships, and similar personal subjects. The collection also includes 2 documents and 23 photographs; printed invitations and programs are interspersed among the letters.

The Correspondence series comprises most of the collection, and contains approximately 4 linear feet of letters, which are primarily the incoming personal correspondence of Evarts Kent, his wife, and their children. The earliest items are Civil War-era letters between unidentified family members. The bulk of the collection begins around 1867, when Evarts Kent began to receive letters from his family and friends, who provided local news from Ripton, Vermont, and often commented on his recent marriage to Helen Beckwith. As Kent's father, Cephas, was a Congregational minister, the Kent family frequently discussed religious topics. In the early and mid-1880s, Michael E. Strieby and Joseph E. Roy of the American Missionary Association also corresponded with Kent.

After the mid-1870s, the correspondence is primarily between Evarts and Helen Kent and their children, Ernest, Grace, and Willys, who exchanged letters with their parents and each other from their childhood into their early adult lives. Ernest discussed his educational experiences, including his time at Iowa College,his experiences in preparatory school and as a young adult and at Iowa College, and occasionally composed letters to his father in Latin. The Kent siblings sometimes included sketches or more refined drawings within their letters. Their letters reveal details about their relationships with each other, their personal lives, and their religious beliefs. Later items from the World War I era often concern Willys's wife, who signed herself "Roxi," and the couple's experiences while spending their summers at Camp Arcadia in Belgrade, Maine. A relative named "Jupe" also wrote Evarts Kent an extensive series of letters throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including a group of 20th-century letters about travel in the Black Mountains of North Carolina.

The Documents series is made up of a 2-page document containing several sets of church minutes compiled in Benson, Vermont, between March 1790 and September 1792, and a partially printed receipt for a payment made to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1870.

The Photographs series holds 23 photographs, primarily snapshots, of unidentified individuals. Though most are portraits, 2 depict a woman riding a bicycle and one is a self portrait of a woman, "taken by herself in front of a looking glass." The photographs include one cyanotype.

The John H. Griffith collection contains letters and documents pertaining to Griffith's time as a surgical technician in the United States Army during World War II and to his life in Bologna, Italy, as a Rotary Fellow from 1951-1952. Much of the collection consists of Griffith's wartime correspondence with his parents.

The John H. Griffith collection contains letters and documents pertaining to Griffith's time as a surgical technician in the United States Army during World War II and to his life in Bologna, Italy, as a Rotary Fellow from 1951-1952. Much of the collection consists of Griffith's wartime correspondence with his parents.

The Correspondence series (344 items) relates to Griffith's life in Ann Arbor before the war, his service in the United States Army Medical Department, and his experiences in Europe as a research fellow in Bologna, Italy. Griffith addressed the majority of his correspondence to his parents, Leon and Amelia Griffith of Vicksburg, Michigan; Griffith also wrote to his younger siblings, Richard ("Dick") and Helen. His earliest letters document his life as a freshman at the University of Michigan. One letter contains newspaper clippings pertaining to a convoy trip taken by a University of Michigan student (December 6, 1942); several letters to Griffith's father from the university offer congratulations on Griffith's academic record.

After he was drafted in 1944, Griffith wrote to his parents about army life, documenting his service at Camp Bowie in Texas; Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia; and Moore General Hospital in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Enclosures include newsletters from Camp Bowie (April 29, 1944; May 6, 1944) and an "Organization Day" flyer from Lawson General Hospital (July 2, 1944); one letter contains a diagram of a battlefield (June 8, 1944).

Griffith remained in the United States with the 86th Evacuation Hospital and the 134th Evacuation Hospital until the latter was deployed overseas in January 1945. His later letters, some of which have been censored, pertain to army life during the closing stages of combat in the European Theater. Griffith described postwar Germany and "the constant dribble of slave laborers leaving the Reich" (April 20, 1945). He wrote 1 letter to his grandfather in German, remarking on the beauty of the German countryside (April 28, 1945).

After the war, Griffith returned to the United States; he resumed his correspondence in August 1951, when he related his experiences traveling throughout Europe and living in Bologna, Italy. The collection also contains 2 letters in German to Leon and Amelia Griffith from a relative, "Uncle Chris," in Genkingen, Germany, whom Griffith visited during his travels abroad (December 27, 1951; January 14, 1952).

The Documents series (18 items) contains items related to Griffith's education and World War II service, including a notebook and a certificate for successful course completion at the United States Army Surgical Technician School, Griffith's curriculum vitae, report cards from his elementary and high school studies, and a war ration booklet.

The Photographs series (100 items) contains portraits and landscapes shot in Europe during the war and during the early 1950s. Most items are labeled, and include scenes from postwar Germany.

The Printed Materials series (24 items) contains clippings of Ernie Pyle columns from a Michigan newspaper as well as clippings mentioning Griffith's university scholarship; a copy of The Daily American (November 27, 1951); 2 books for American soldiers, including an "overseas edition" of James Thurber's My World--And Welcome To It; and a program from graduation exercises for the Army's School for Medical Department Technicians.

The Artifacts series contains 2 World War II Army patches, 1 WWII blue star service flag, and a flashlight.