The Freeman Clarke Allen Collection consists partly of correspondence and material relating to early Rochester and Western New York State, including the Hamlet Scrantom letters, which give a detailed account of the village of Rochester in its first years, legal documents, business and financial documents, material relating to the Rochester and Genesee Valley Railroad, and material relating to the War of 1812 and military affairs in Western New York. The other part of the collection consists of autographs of persons famous in Europe and America.

The Papers consist of 16 letters written by the Countess of Rochester to her grandson Edward Henry Lee, 1st Earl of Lichfield, five letters to his wife Lady Charlotte (Fitzroy) Lee, Countess of Lichfield, and one to his mother Elizabeth (Pope) Lee Bertie, Countess of Lindsey. Also in the collection is a letter to the Countess from James Bertie, 1st Earl of Abingdon, and a letter to her from a "Cosen Bowyer".

Letters, chiefly family in nature, written to and from Breese-Stevens-Roby family members of New Jersey and upstate New York. Also in the collection are family legal and financial papers, literary items, genealogical material, maps, postal forms, prescriptions and recipes, and newspapers. The material encompasses generations of this extended family from the early 1700s to the early 1900s, with concentration from the 1790s to the 1860s.

The Bartlett Family Papers span the years from 1733 to 1924, with the bulk of the collection falling into the thirty-year period from 1832 to 1862. The papers consist of 4 boxes containing a total of approximately 510 items, of which 360 items are letters and approximately 150 items are manuscript materials including family related manuscripts, financial and legal materials, and miscellaneous items of printed ephemera. The collection contains a significant amount of material related to the medical career of Elisha Bartlett from 1832 to 1855, and the activities of Walter Otis Bartlett, Captain 1st Rhode Island Artillery, in the Civil War during 1861 to 1862. The collection also contained some printed pamphlet materials relating to Elisha Bartlett which were removed for cataloguing purposes. See register below for a listing of these printed materials.

A collection of documents including deeds, leases, agreements, and land titles relating to transactions in upstate and Western New York. Includes records relating to Albany, Monroe County and the Pulteney Purchase.

The Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux, Comte de Maurepas Papers are comprised of one box containing, for the most part, secretary's copies of documents made for Maurepas' use, the majority of which concern his duties as Minister of Marine. Maurepas was responsible for building up the Royal Navy to meet the threat from the expansion of British sea power; he also instituted changes in French training standards to meet this challenge. Many of the papers deal with the Acadian Expedition of 1746, which was an attempt to retake lost French territory in what is now Newfoundland and Nova Scotia from the English, specifically a fortified base at Louisville on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The resulting debacle for the French is reflected in the papers. The remainder of the papers concern various maritime issues in French Canada and America, including naval protection of French fishermen, the iron industry in Canada and Indian wars in French Louisiana.

The George J. Skivington Collection consists of business papers of John Greig of Canandaigua, agent for William Hornby and other landowners in western and central New York. The land papers include deeds, contracts, surveys, maps, depositions in chancery case regarding title of Pulteney Estate, 1820-21, schedules of debtors, 1841-42, and Greig estate inventories and papers. There is also correspondence, including letters from Oliver Phelps, Israel Chapin, Robert Troup, William H. Adam, Joseph Fellows, Alexander Duncan, Alonzo Frost, Nathaniel W. Howell, Thomas Morris, John Rankine, William Jeffrey, John Tryon, Francis H. Beckwith, Josephine Greig Chappell, Lockwood R. Doty, and D.D.S. Brown, a paymaster in the U.S. Army, Civil War. Topics in the correspondence include lands in the Chenango Triangle, Military Tract, Cottringer Tract, Greig Tract at Rochester; Morrisville Tract at Philadelphia; and the Phelps and Gorham Purchase. There is also information about early Rochester railroads, the Sodus Canal Association, Sodus Land Company, the Shaker colony and Fourierite Phalanx at Sodus Bay, and the Ontario Glass Manufacturing Company at Geneva.

The Tallcot-Howland Family Papers are comprised of 2 boxes containing approximately 140 letters to and from Joseph Tallcot (ca1768-1853) and members of his family. Tallcot, a Quaker, lived much of his later life in Skaneateles and Sherwood, New York. Included is a series of about twenty letters from Mary Thomas of Union Springs, New York to his daughter Phebe F. Tallcot. His daughter Hannah married Slocum Howland of Sherwood and there is some Howland Family correspondence, including letters to and from their daughter Emily Howland (1827-1929). Most of the letters in the collection are of an informal nature, mentioning events and topics of the day, including temperance.