Letters collected by Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., including correspondence and papers submitted to the Society. Pertains to APS members and associations. Includes letters by Franklin, Winthrop, Endecott, Eliot, etc. Scientific and historical references, primarily. Some of the subjects discussed are astronomy, botany, electricity, natural history, and Indian missions. Also included is Roger Curtis' "Journal of the Moravian Mission to Labrador."

This collection includes letters to and from Americans (including South America and the West Indies) and letters about America selected from the Society's manuscripts (Classified Papers, Letter Books, Letters and Papers, Royal Society Letters, Miscellaneous Correspondence, and other official groups) and from collections of private papers (Sir Charles Blagden, William Buckland, John Canton, Sir John F. W. Herschel, Sir Edward Sabine, and others). The documents range in time and character from John Winthrop, Jr., "A Description of the Artifice & Making of Tarr & Pitch in New England" (1662), to letters from Sir Thomas Edward Thorne to his wife describing the American West, where he was on a surveying party in the 1880s.