The collection consists of 80 letters to Benjamin Douglas Silliman and 11 letters from him. His correspondents include William Henry Seward, Hamilton Fish, Preston King, Peter Cooper, and others involved in New York Sate politics. In the letters to and from Seward, they discuss the influence of the Irish vote in the 1840 election.
The letters are chiefly of family interest. Those written by Mary Evans Grier to her parents (Mr. and Mrs. George M. Grier) and sister while she was in Washington in 1857 and 1858 at the home of Senator and Mrs. William H. Seward are of particular interest. There are also several letters from William H. Seward to George M. Grier, to his daughter, Mary Grier, and to his father, Samuel S. Seward. Mr. Grier was a trustee of the Seward Institute in Florida, N.Y. which accounts for the letters concerning that institution from Thomas G. Schriver and Mary E. Hotchkiss.
The James Elwood Papers includes general correspondence, 1838-1888, including letters written by Henry O'Reilly, Joseph Hume, William Henry Seward, and Frederick Douglass which are indexed. Also included are miscellaneous scrapbooks, albums, and documents.
This collection consists of additions to the William Henry Seward papers after the main collection was microfilmed in 1981.
The William Martin Jones collection (1865-1902) consists of business correspondence and personal correspondence. The business correspondence mostly relates to consular affairs, written to William Martin Jones between 1865 and 1869. There are two signatures of William Henry Seward, President Lincoln's Secretary of State, included in the collection. One dates from May 13, 1873- June 28, 1875. The second dates from November 29, 1880- August 25, 1883. There are also two bound volumes of correspondence written by Jones. Correspondence in both the files and bound volumes include letters written to and from H. Sargent, George Smith, Sidney Barrett, and Edwin Dennison Morgan. Personal correspondence includes letters addressed to William Martin Jones' wife, Gertrude M. Nicholls of Buffalo, New York, with the exception of three letters written to Jones by family and friends.
