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Material gathered by Oswald Garrison Villard in the researches for his biography JOHN BROWN, 1800-1859: A BIOGRAPHY FIFTY YEARS AFTER. A large part of the materials is copies of correspondence both contemporary and of a later period, concerning John Brown and his associates, especially in the Kansas Territory and at the Harper's Ferry raid. Of the original letters in the collection, many are from descendants and family of John Brown and the men who accompanied him on his raid. There are clippings, pamphlets, proof sheets, and other printed matter. Photographs number 181 items.

Correspondence, documents and manuscripts from late seventeenth and eighteenth century France, especially from the French Revolution, collected by Sam Schaefler. Authors include J.B. Colbert Torcy and the Duchesse Du Lude. Many of the items from the French Revolution represent the work of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. French Revolutionary leaders represented in the collection include François-Antoine Boissy D'Anglas, Jean-Baptiste-Noel Bouchotte, Pierre Joseph Cambon, Lazare Carnot, Jean-Marie Collot D'Herbois, l'Abbʹe de Fauchet, Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai, Jean Victor Moreau. C.A. Prieur-Duvernois, and Antoine Joseph Santerre. In addition, the collection includes a letter from the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to Sir John Herschel, a letter by the French poet Romain Rolland, a document of the Philadelphia Artists' Fund Society of 1846 with signatures of its officers, and an autograph letter and a photograph of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.