Jonathan Williams, a nephew of Benjamin Franklin, was chief of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, and first superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point. The genealogical material was "compiled from family records and his own personal knowledge by his son," H.J. Williams.

These papers include correspondence, marriage settlements, legal papers, genealogical tables, and memoranda of William Montgomerie of Brigend, Scotland, who emigrated to East Jersey, ca. 1701. Also includes the pedigree of Alexander Forbes of Balogie; correspondence (to 1755) of John Burnet, who was a merchant of Edinburgh, London, and New York, and of John Burnet, Jr., of Perth Amboy, N.J., with Elizabeth Forbes; genealogy of the Montgomery family in the United States, prepared by Thomas H. Montgomery (1853); and a seventeenth-century copy of documents, accounts, and patents of East Jersey.

These papers include letters, broadsides, and other documents pertaining to various branches of the Rittenhouse family, in particular, David Rittenhouse and his daughter Elizabeth "Betsey" Rittenhouse Sergeant. Included are references to Benjamin Smith Barton, and copies of documents concerning the Barton family, especially Thomas Barton, in Fanny Abbott's, "Family Records."

This correspondence is principally concerned with business between Pershouse and his brother James in England, with comments on conditions and events in the United States, including anti-British feeling, Thomas Paine's return to America, Jefferson's administration, and immigration. The papers include Pershouse's journal (1800-1838), which includes accounts of travels in England, France, and the United States, letterbooks (1836-1862) of Henry Pershouse, nephew of John, chiefly on business matters, and two volumes of Pershouse genealogical data, compiled by B.M. Pershouse Bayley (1899).

The family correspondence of Richard and Sarah Franklin Bache on a variety of topics including references to Benjamin Franklin and his estate. There is also a family genealogy.

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.

An extensive family collection, the Vaux Family Papers center around the lives of George Vaux V (1721-1803), George Vaux VII (1779-1836), and George Vaux VIII (1832-1915), their business partners, siblings, wives, and children, and encompasses the extended Vaux family of Warders, Sansoms, Heads, Graffs, Morrises, Cressons, and Mayberrys. The collection includes correspondence, financial accounts, receipts, business records, journals, diaries, photographs, and legal documents.

The collection includes letters between Hutchinson and his uncle Israel Pemberton, written while Hutchinson was a student of medicine in London. There are also 12 tickets of admission to medical lectures in Philadelphia and London, including one given by William Hunter, and 3 unused cards of admission to Hutchinson's own lectures. Miscellaneous items include Hutchinson's marriage certificate; genealogical data on the Hutchinson, Hare, and Pemberton families; and stock certificates, 1857-1872, of the McKean and Elk Land and Improvement Company. Materials dated post-1793 are to and from Hutchinson family members.

The Peale family is best known as a family of artists; however, family interests and activities were much more wide-ranging. The best known Peale is Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827, APS 1786), who produced more than one thousand paintings, including hundreds of portraits of leading Americans during the colonial and early national periods. Peale was married three times, to Rachel Brewster (1744-1790), Elizabeth de Peyster (1765-1804), and Hannah More (1755-1821). He had eighteen children, eleven of whom reached adulthood. Three of Charles Willson Peale's sons became artists: Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), and Rubens Peale (1784-1865). A fourth son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885, APS 1833), was a naturalist (who made drawings on the exploring expeditions he accompanied) and pioneer in photography, and another son, Benjamin Franklin Peale (1795-1870), became a naturalist and paleontologist. Peale's daughter Sophonisba Angusciola was married to Coleman Sellers (1781-1834), an inventor and manufacturer of machinery, including locomotives. Two of their sons, George Escol Sellers (1808-1899) and Coleman Sellers (1827-1907, APS 1872), were inventors and engineers. The latter served as director of the construction of the hydro-electric power development at Niagara Falls. He was married to Cornelia Wells Sellers (1831-1909). One of their grandsons was Charles Coleman Sellers (1903-1980, APS 1979), a librarian and historian and the author of several studies of the Peale family, including a Charles Willson Peale biography.

Letters (including some transcripts and photostats) from and to Vaughan from many American and British correspondents, including: Also personal correspondence and business papers of Benjamin, Charles, Petty, Samuel Sr., Samuel Jr., William, William Oliver, and Sarah Vaughan (2 boxes); lectures, mostly in shorthand (3 vols.); a large number of notes and memoranda on a wide variety of topics, such as agriculture, architecture, astronomy, diplomacy, diseases, dueling, electricity, hieroglyphs, internal improvements, medicine, meteorology, land, manufactures, politics, punctuation, religion, silk-manufacturing, stock-breeding, taxation, Unitarianism, Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, Napoleon I, Joseph Priestley, Bowdoin College, town of Hallowell, Maine; notes on the peace negotiations, 1782-1783; miscellaneous legal papers; genealogy of the Abbott-Vaughan families. For a personal account of the collection, see Mrs. Mary Vaughan Marvin, "The Benjamin Vaughan Papers," APS Proceedings 95 (1951): 246-249.