The collection contains family letters, legal documents (personal, professional, and business), primarily written by residents of New York State and miscellany; photographs of nineteenth-century portraits from the album of Elizabeth Van Rensselaer; black and white photographs taken in the mid-1950s and 1960s of Van Rensselaer family member portraits and homes; newspapers with articles relating to the Van Rensselaer family.
This collection consists of 4 ledger books used for calculations and other design work on the second Erie Canal aqueduct at Rochester, New York by Matthew M. Hall. The ledgers date between 1836 and 1842.