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Papers of the Jay family and of those families related to the Jay family, including Bruen, Butterworth, Chapman, Clarkson, Dawson, Du Bois, Field, Iselin, McVickar, Mortimer, O'Kill, Pellew, Pierrepont, Prime, Robinson, Schieffelin, Von Schweinitz, Sedgwick, and Wurts. In addition to family and personal matters, the correspondence deals with anti-slavery, New York State civil service, repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Civil War, the Blair Bill, international affairs, and New York City and State politics and government. There are letters from numerous prominent persons including George Bancroft, F.A.P. Barnard, Bismarck, William Cullen Bryant, Aaron Burr, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hamilton Fish, Albert Gallatin, Horace Greeley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, Frances Anne Kemble, Jenny Lind, Henry W. Longfellow, Seth Low, James Russell Lowell, John Stuart Mill, Alice Duer Miller, Clement Clarke Moore, J.P. Morgan, Thomas Nast, Commodore Matthew Perry, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Carl Schurz, William H. Seward, William T. Sherman, Charles Sumner, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Letters written to Mrs. Josephine Sophie White Griffing relating to her interests in the emancipation of African-Americans, temperance, and woman's suffrage. It is evident that the letters have been preserved selectively from Mrs. Griffing's papers, all of them being from well-known contemporaries. Correspondents include Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Anna Dickinson, Lucretia Mott, William H. Seward, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Many of the letters relate to her efforts to have prominent people give lectures in support of women's suffrage. Also, a scrapbook of clippings about Mrs. Griffing's life and activities and the autograph book of George T. Driggs, a relative, which contains the signatures of prominent political and military figures, particularly members of Congress, during the late 1860s.

Letters written to Gay from political and literary contemporaries such as Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, and William Bryant; reports in letter form from his reporters at the front during the Civil War; and personal correspondence including many letters from his wife, Elizabeth Neall Gay. Letters written to Mrs. Gay from family friends and business associates including many from her husband. Correspondence of other members of the Gay family including Walter Gay, Sarah Gay, and Allan Gay. Diaries, notebooks, and journals of Sydney Howard Gay.