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).

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 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.