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The collection includes two diaries of his American tour (one is made up of his rough travel notes, the other is in edited form for circulation), a memorial volume of manuscripts about his wife (Ann Loxley Rhees) prepared by his daughter Eliza (Mrs. Nicholas Murray), and 1851 passport of Nicholas Murray, a letter of Thomas Chalmers Murray to his sister Mary Jones Murray Butler (the mother of Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University), correspondence between Welsh historian Gwyn A. Williams and collection donor Mary Butler Brown, an essay entitled "Morgan John Rhees and Beula" by Gwyn A. Williams, Ann Loxley Rhees's valedictory oration on graduation from Philadelphia's Ladies Academy, an address on female education ca. 1789, family obituary clippings, poems, misc. items, and a photograph of Ann Loxley Rhees. An edited version of substantial sections of the diaries of M.J. Rhees was published in John Thomas Griffith's 1910 biography and miscellany of Rhees and his family, a copy of which is included in this collection. An edited version of a previously unpublished section of the diary, from May 2nd to July 9th 1795, was published in Northwest Ohio History (vol. 80, no. 2), but it is an unreliable transcription containing many inaccuracies, according to Dr E. Wyn James of Cardiff University, who is working on a new edition of the M.J. Rhees diaries.

The records of W.R. Grace & Co. cover the rise of the Grace shipping business from 1864 until World War II. The early correspondence concerns all aspects of the shipping business in New York and South America, mining interests in Peru and Chile, the railroad in Costa Rica, the inter-ocean canal planned for Nicaragua, and political interests throughout Central and South America. There are letter books, correspondence, and scrapbooks of clippings for all aspects of W.R. Grace's career. There are minute books and other documents for more than 50 subsidiary companies owned by W.R. Grace & Co. or by family members. The papers of Joseph Peter Grace (1872-1950) continue the business, family, and philanthropic activities until 1942. There are also 20 reels of motion picture film about the Grace Co. South American interests in the 1950s.