This collection consists of a rough and finished draft of Coates' lecture, which was delivered before the Phrenological Society of Philadelphia. In it he included a review of Boston professor John C. Warren's work on the nervous system.

James M. Crawford was a linguist who mainly studied Native American languages, including Cocopa, Yuchi, and Mobilian trade language. He came to the field of linguistics halfway through his lifetime after pursuing a career in forestry in the West and Southwest. After receiving his PhD in 1966 from the University of California at Berkeley, he returned to his birthplace, Georgia, where he taught in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Georgia at Athens. The collection is organized into seven series: I. Correspondence, 1964-1986; II. Subject Files, 1949-1987; III. Works by Crawford, 1962-1986; IV. Research NOtes & Notebooks, 1906-1988; V. Card Files, 1960s-1980s; VI. Course Material, 1961-1986; VII. Photographs, 1963-1978.