Providing a glimpse in to the private life of a genteel lady in the early republic, the Elizabeth Bordley Gibson Papers consist of over 200 letters and notes written during the years 1795 to 1863. The bulk of the letters cover the period 1848-1863, and involve Gibson's correspondence with members of her extended family. Elizabeth was related to the influential Bordley, Mifflin, and Shippen families, three of the more prominent families in colonial and early republic Pennsylvania and Maryland. Most of the correspondence in the collection comprises letters between Elizabeth Bordley Gibson and her cousin Edward Shippen and her nieces Elizabeth Mifflin, Anne C. Ross, and Elizabeth Stump. Complementing other early American history collections at APS, the Gibson Papers offers important insights in to women's history and the history of influential mid-Atlantic families in nineteenth-century America.

Letters and papers relating to Sparks's research on Benjamin Franklin and the publication of an edition of the latter's writings. There are also extracts from Sparks's journal, 1831-1841, relating to his Franklin researches.

Papers of jurist Samuel Bayard (1767-1840), including a diary from his time in London as American Claims Agent; correspondence with William Bradford (1755-1795), second attorney general of the United States; and a 1778 letter from William Alexander, Lord Stirling, to Governor William Livingston of New Jersey that discusses troop deployment in that state.

These papers include materials on the Onondaga, Tuscarora, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida Indians, collected during the years 1928-1930 under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies' Committee on Native American Languages. Included are field notes, grammars, dictionaries, studies of Handsome Lake religion, medical prescriptions, comparative linguistics, and correspondence with Franz Boas. Contains data on consultants, texts, translations, paradigms, grammatical studies, and lexical files.

Known for his pioneering work on Athens in the fifth century BC, Benjamin Dean Meritt spent most of his career at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he developed a world-renowned center for the study of Attic epigraphy, or Greek inscriptions. Meritt reconstructed, with A.B. West, the inscribed tribute-quota lists of the Athenian Empire and is perhaps best known for his work on fifth century BC Athenian finances, which resulted in the four-volume Athenian Tribute Lists, co-authored with H.T. Wade-Gery and M.F. McGregor.

The collection contains information on Fox family speculation in western lands, two manuscript maps from the 1790's and 1830's depicting the family's holdings in northwestern Pennsylvania, and a photograph album from the 1890's documenting Chestnutwold, the Fox estate adjacent to Andalusia. Chief correspondents are Samuel and George Fox.

The Smith-Houston-Morris-Ogden Family Papers document the history of the Houston, Smith, Ogden, Morris and allied families, beginning in the late 17th century, and continuing through to near the end of the 20th. Among the many treasures in this vast collection are the papers of Pennsylvania Railroad executive Henry Howard Houston (1820-1895), his son, Samuel Frederick Houston (1866-1952), and of Pennsylvania attorney and treasury official, William Meredith (1752-1816). Although the collection contains a great deal of interest with respect to land speculation, commerce, and trade emanating from Philadelphia, the bulk of the Smith Family Papers consists of personal and family correspondence and other papers. Among the largest and most interesting bodies of papers are those of L.M.C. Smith and Eleanor Houston Smith, daughter of Samuel F. Smith. These document the family's progressive attitudes regarding and resource conservation, historic preservation, and their social activism. This very large collection includes much material that is not itemized below.

The Scaliger Family Papers, when taken together, trace the history of a noble family that was originally from Italy but lived primarily in Agen, France from the mid-1500s through the mid-1800s. Beginning with the patriarch, Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), a celebrated Italian scholar and physician, the members of the Scaliger family upheld an illustrious reputation over the centuries as scholars, military leaders, and noblemen. Throughout their family's history, the Scaligers maintained that they were descended from the Della Scallas, Princes of Verona. It is as a result of the necessity to defend this claim as well as later attempts to prove their ties to their noble heritage that this collection of documents has remained so well intact. The Scaliger Family Papers is a collection that encompasses several different kinds of documents that span from 1539 to 1862 including letters, genealogical material, works by members of the Scaliger family, as well as military, legal, and financial documents.

A collection of business and personal papers of three generations of the prominent Philadelphia Jewish family from 1750-1974. Business records include trade and land transactions (some in Yiddish) of the Gratz brothers, Barnard and Michael (1750-1804) with the business continued by Michael's sons: Simon, Hyman, Joseph, Jacob, and Benjamin (1791-1861). Personal correspondence are primarily letters to Rebecca Gratz from her sisters Rachel and Sarah (1795-1867) with later correspondence to Rachel's children: Horace and Sara Moses (1832-1879). Contains a small group of French letters related to Napoleon III, collected by family member Miriam Fox, and some heirloom artifacts.

The Mary Rosamond Haas papers are extensive, including correspondence, research notes, field notes, texts, lexical slip files, audio recordings, photographs, reprints and more, covering more than 100 languages of North America and Southeast Asia. Of particular value are notes and audio recordings from fieldwork from the 1930s on Ditidaht, Tunica, Natchez and Muscogee, work toward pedagogical materials for Thai, and groundbreaking comparative studies of several language families of North America.

The James V. Neel Papers document nearly every phase of the career of one of the founders of human population genetics in the United States. Neel was particularly thorough and organized, and retained virtually all of his significant scientific correspondence, committee reports, minutes of meetings, and drafts of manuscripts. The collection also includes data collected during Neel's work among the Xavante, Yanomanö and other indigenous populations. In a career that spanned the period from the late work of Thomas Hunt Morgan and Charles B. Davenport to the contemporary world of molecular genetics and nucleic acids, Neel knew, worked with, and corresponded with many of the most influential 20th century practitioners of genetics. The collection begins in earnest in 1943, after Neel had decided to focus on human genetics. Neel's work with Drosophila and none of his Drosophila manuscripts are found in the collection.