The James S. and Frances M. Bradford Collection contains a wealth of letters to and from Polly Stevenson Hewson, intimate friend of Benjamin Franklin. At the heart of the collection are approximately 40 letters from Mary Stevenson to Franklin with a smaller number in return. Friendly, increasingly intimate, these provide a glimpse of the domestic life of Franklin and his warm personal relations with the Stevensons and Hewsons. Among the noteworthy individual items is the manuscript "Craven Street Gazette" (Sept. 22-26, 1770), the mock newspaper Franklin produced while in London. The collection also contains a series of unrelated miscellaneous manuscripts that includes correspondence from William Bradford, Patrick Henry, and George Washington.

In this volume Rush comments on persons and events of the time, mentioning Robert Walsh, John Vaughan, Lafayette, James Rush, Peter S. Du Ponceau, and William Currie. Rush also comments on the Franklin Institute, and the American Philosophical Society.

This correspondence is chiefly of a personal nature between Short and Alexandrine Charlotte de Rohan-Chabot, the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, concerning his desire to marry her and bring her to America. The Duchesse's letters describe life in a powerful, wealthy, and noble French family under the ancien régime, including events of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and life in France thereafter. The collection also includes letters from Lafayette, Count Luigi Castiglioni, Pauline Castiglioni, and the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt.

In addition to family and business correspondence, the Charles Nicoll Bancker Family Papers contains various documents, such as a furniture inventory volume (30pp.); a Daybook, 1795-1800 (120pp.); and a very interesting journal (unidentified, but by one of the Banckers, and filed under "Description of a trip..."), from New York to Albany and back, between July 20-Aug. 15, 1793 (1 vol., 31 pp.). It contains detailed observations of the Hudson River and the towns along the way. Bancker was involved in business and trade prior to 1826, and in insurance after that date, so there is material relating to those topics in this collection. He owned a substantial library of the period, which was used by Charles Wilkes's Expedition after 1837 (see Reynell Coates to Bancker). This library, along with Bancker's notable scientific instrument collection, was sold after his death and there are published auction catalogues in the collection. There is much family correspondence from: Anne E. Bancker, Charles Gerard Bancker, Evert Bancker, Sarah U. Bancker, Violetta Bancker Talbot, Elizabeth Bancker Teackle, and John Teackle.