Correspondence and an autobiographical sketch of the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War service of Samuel Miles. A native Pennsylvanian, Miles raised and commanded a regiment of riflemen, but was captured near Flatbush in August 1776, during the battle of Long Island. He was held as a prisoner of war in New York until his exchange in April 1778. Miles subsequently served as Mayor of Philadelphia and was a presidential elector in 1796.

John Neagle was among the better known portrait painters in Philadelphia during the first half of the nineteenth century and was the husband of Thomas Sully's niece, Mary C. Sully. The Neagle Papers is a small assemblage of personal correspondence, documents, and notes assembled by Neagle during his career. The letters are primarily of a personal nature, but along with the five bound volumes, offer insight into Neagle's study of painting and the techniques he employed. Included among the bound volumes are recipes for varnish, megellup, and drying oils and notes on watercolor painting.

This autobiography relates Rush's experiences in college and medical school; his meetings with notable doctors; his life in Scotland, England, and France; his medical views; the military and politics during the Revolutionary War; and brief sketches of personalities of that period.

Leo Lesquereux emigrated from his native Switzerland to Ohio in 1848, and quickly established himself as one of America's foremost bryologists and paleobotanists. Working with the state geological surveys of Pennsylvania and several states in the Mississippi Valley, he contributed some of the earliest descriptions of the Carboniferous flora in North America and helped flesh out the basic geology of coal formation. The autobiography of Leo Lesquereux provides an engaging account of the early life of one of Victorian America's best known bryologists and paleobotanists. Consisting of 14 letters addressed to his friend, J. Peter Lesley, the letters cover only the years between Lesquereux's childhood in Switzerland and his emigration to the United States in 1848. Written after his retirement at the age of 78, they shed light on his education, the illness that led to his loss of hearing, and his studies of peat deposits in Europe, and they provide short vignettes about watchmaking and about his peers Louis and August Agassiz and Arnold Guyot.