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Letters written by Charity Clarke Moore and one letter and a diary written by her son Clement Clarke Moore. Charity Moore's letters range in date from 1767 to 1834 and were written to her sister, Lady Mary Clarke Vassal Affleck and other members of her family and friends. They are personal in nature dealing with family affairs and day to day events. Of the same character is Clement Moore's letter which was written to his cousin, Lady Mary Elizabeth Fox Powys Lilford in November 1840. The diary contains brief entries from 20 November 1856 to 8 July 1863, two days before his death. It is mainly a record of the weather, the temperature, and his benefactions. The letters are all mounted on the blank leaves of one volume and the diary occupies a second volume. Also included are nine volumes from the library of Benjamin Moore.

Correspondence and manuscripts of various literary figures, occasionally brought for this library by the Friends of the Columbia University Libraries. Authors include William Harrison Ainsworth, Augustine Birrell, Thomas Campbell, James Fenimore Cooper, Clement Clarke Moore, Carl Sandburg, A. C. Swinburne, Dylan Thomas, Anthony Trollope, and Talcott Williams.

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.

The bulk consists of salt prints and albumen prints taken by Nathaniel Fish Moore. Copy prints, correspondence, and other material that document the photography of N.F. Moore are included. This collection contains an early photograph of Columbia College at Forty Park Place, New York City, and portraits of Pierre Toussaint and Clement Clarke Moore, the latter credited for the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" more commonly known as "The Night Before Christmas."

This collection is primarily concerned with Prof. James Renwick and his professional correspondence and papers, both as Professor of Natural Philosophy (Physics) at Columbia College and as a leading engineer. Many certificates of membership in honorary societies are included. There are letters from Washington Irving (1783-1859) to Prof. Renwick and to his mother, Jane Jeffrey Renwick, pertaining to contemporary events and Irving's own activities. The letters to Mrs. Renwick are about the travels and experiences of Irving and Renwick abroad. The collection also covers the affairs of the Prof. Renwick's grandfather, including documents concerning his land grants in New York State, and those of James Armstrong Renwick, including his valedictory address at Columbia College in 1876 and his class reunion in 1916. There are many legal documents, letters, and manuscripts of various members of the Renwick and Brevoort families; among these are Prof. Renwick's notes on his family genealogy and a memoir of Jane Jeffrey Renwick. Correspondents include Clement Clarke Moore, John A. Dix, Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State John Forsyth, and Secretary of the Navy James K. Paulding. There is one letter from Sir Edward Sabine (1788-1883), President of the Royal Society, giving his views on the American Civil War.