This address was delivered in Philadelphia before an "association formed for the education of men of colour." Vaux shows how slavery adversely affects the interest, happiness, and safety of the owner, slave, society, and government.

William S. Willis Jr. (1921-1983), anthropologist and ethnohistorian, contributed significantly to the understanding of the dynamics of inter-cultural exchange in a multicultural context. After receiving his doctorate from Columbia University, he was hired as the first African American professor of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University. Upon resigning in protest from SMU in 1972, he returned to teach at Columbia University until 1975. His final years were spent studying Boasian anthropology. The collection includes correspondence, lecture notes, manuscripts of Willis' writings, and working notes. Of note, are the memos concerning his leaving Southern Methodist University and his extensive research notes on Franz Boas' views on race relations in America.

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 Welsh non-conformist minister Richard Price (1723-1791) was a moral philosopher and political and economic theorist whose ideas leant support to the American cause during the Revolution. Of broad and liberal mind, he was an integral member of the intellectual coterie surrounding William Petty, the Earl of Shelburne, and was a founding member of the Unitarian Church. Befitting a latitudinarian thinker, the range of Richard Price's correspondence is extremely broad, touching upon his rationalistic philosophy and dissenting theology, his political views on British politics, America and the American Revolution, the Constitutional settlement, the future of the United States, social reform, demography, prisons, and slavery. The ninety letters in the collection are arranged chronologically, with correspondents including Charles Chauncy (8 letters, 1772-1779), Benjamin Franklin (7 letters, 1775-1789), John Howard (11 letters and a biographical manuscript, 1770-1789), Thomas Jefferson (3 letters, 1785-1789), Benjamin Rush (8 letters, 1786-1790), and Edward Wigglesworth (3 letters, 1775-1786), as well as lesser known figures such as the reformer John Howard.

One of the oldest houses in Philadelphia, Wyck is now a non-profit museum listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Nine generations of the Jansen-Wistar-Haines family owned the Wyck property from 1690 until 1973. The last family owner deeded 2.5 acres of land, the house and its contents, several outbuildings, a landscaped garden, and a small endowment to the Wyck Charitable Trust. The Wyck Charitable Trust and the Wyck Association now administer the preservation of the property and its educational services to the public. This collection contains diaries, letters, accounts, bills and receipts, deeds, and photographs. The collection as a whole is deepest for the period 1770-1970. Items of particular note include accounts of household expenses at Wyck from ca. 1790-1970; papers pertaining to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Quaker schools, and social reform groups; agricultural and horticultural practices; and correspondence to and from cultural leaders of 18th and 19th century Philadelphia. The papers of the John S. Haines family (Ms. Coll. 52A) form part of the Wyck Papers. The papers cover the years 1845 to 1949 and are arranged into eight series.

The Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin prepared by Isaac Minis Hays for the bicentennial of Franklin's birth in 1906 provides access to the largest portion of the Franklin Papers at the APS. The items were originally bound into volumes in roughly chronological order, with letters to Franklin preceding those from Franklin and at the end of the collection, Franklin's letters owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Each manuscript is still identified by Hays' reference numbers, which include a roman numeral refering to the original volume followed by an arabic number to identify the folio. The electronic version of the finding aid replicates Hays' calendar, including the introductory material and item-level descriptions. It has been updated to reflect corrections in the metadata, corrections of personal names, dates, and description.