In this volume Rush comments on persons and events of the time, mentioning Robert Walsh, John Vaughan, Lafayette, James Rush, Peter S. Du Ponceau, and William Currie. Rush also comments on the Franklin Institute, and the American Philosophical Society.

This volume contains short sketches of prominent American and European scholars, diplomats, and statesmen. "These short memoirs were composed in the heat of the summer of 1862; and the concluding page written on the 15th of August of that year, when I was about one month advanced in my ninety second year; my birthday being July 17th, 1771." Signed Saml. Breck. Persons discussed include Talleyrand Perigord; M. Volney; Rochefoucauld Liancourt; Louis Philippe, King of the French; Joel Barlow; William Bingham; Robert Morris; Alexander Hamilton; General Henry Knox; Doctor Benjamin Rush; Doctor Rush and William Cobbett.

The Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin prepared by Isaac Minis Hays for the bicentennial of Franklin's birth in 1906 provides access to the largest portion of the Franklin Papers at the APS. The items were originally bound into volumes in roughly chronological order, with letters to Franklin preceding those from Franklin and at the end of the collection, Franklin's letters owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Each manuscript is still identified by Hays' reference numbers, which include a roman numeral refering to the original volume followed by an arabic number to identify the folio. The electronic version of the finding aid replicates Hays' calendar, including the introductory material and item-level descriptions. It has been updated to reflect corrections in the metadata, corrections of personal names, dates, and description.

Personal and professional correspondence of the chemist Robert Hare, including drafts of letters to editors of journals on such varied topics as fish guano, slaughterhouses, paper money, and the meaning of the term "Yankee annexations." The collection originally contained over 300 scrolls, since disbound, which contained drafts of letters, essays, and lectures, composed by Hare on ordinary sheets of paper, then pasted end to end, and rolled up. The essay and lecture topics include: chemistry, storms, slavery, currency, fire-fighting, capital punishment, railroads, the Smithsonian Institution, Michael Faraday, religion and Spiritualism, riots in Philadelphia, epidemics, underwater blasting, and Ralph W. Emerson; there is some verse. The collection also contains an account book of Hare and his wife, 1806-1829 (180 pp.; B/H22#3); a volume by Hare on Cyclones (tornadoes), n.d. (ca. 60 pp.; B/H22#4); and Samuel Powel, Jr.'s "Short notes on a course of antiquities at Rome... under M. Byre Antiquarian," 1764. (60 pp.).