Series I: Research Files, 1770-2006 houses the files that Prince created while researching own family history and the history of the Great Smoky Mountains. The bulk of the research (housed in Sub-Series B through Sub-Series I) is devoted to the Smokies and includes photocopies of books and articles, correspondence with libraries and other researchers, printouts of Internet sites, notes, and other materials. Sub-Series J houses Prince's extensive collection of photographs showing people and places in the Smoky Mountains. The vast majority of these images are copies of originals held at the Blount County Public Library, the University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville, Special Collections, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Library, and the North Carolina State Library and Archives. Some, however, are copies of images owned by private citizens whose families originated in the area that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park now occupies. Prince himself took several while working for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Finally, this series includes maps showing many of the locations that Prince was researching and publications that Prince kept for reference purposes.

Researchers should note that the vast majority of the cemeteries that Prince takes credit for discovering were found by dowsing. Dowsing has traditionally been used to locate water on open ground, but some dowsers believe that it can also find such lost objects as graves, railroads, and buildings. According to this theory, the dowser's rods will cross as he passes over the location previously occupied by the item in question and uncross when he moves away from it. Unfortunately, this method is not completely accurate, as Prince himself discovered when two experts (one professional and one lay) found no evidence of burials at a site that Prince claimed contained the remains of 37 Caucasians, 14 slaves, and 12 Union soldiers. Additionally, Prince assumes race and culture based on the orientation of the grave; thus, whites are buried facing east, slaves are buried facing south, and Cherokee (Prince does not claim to have discovered graves created by other tribes) are buried in the fetal position.

Additionally, Prince occasionally references research that is not housed in this collection. The two most prominent examples of this phenomenon are interviews that Prince conducted with people who had lived in some of the towns that he was researching and Prince's daily journal, which he kept from the 1950s to 2006.

Series II: Publications, 1890-2005 houses drafts and materials that Prince had set aside to write Prince Family Prince and Ghost Towns of the Great Smokies. The majority of the drafts pertain to Ghost Towns and were printed from floppy disks that Prince had assembled. The smaller articles were apparently meant to be paired with images housed in Sub-Series J of Series I and published as a set.

Series III: Personal Papers, 1980-2006 includes materials showing the later portion of Prince's personal life. Much of it documents Prince's gradual slide into depression and paranoia, particularly the lawsuits Prince intended to file against his apartment complex (which he claimed had endangered his life and evicted him unfairly), the Maryville Housing Board (which he claimed had wrongfully denied him housing at Broadway Towers), and Habitat for Humanity (which he claimed had improperly dismissed him from their program and so cheated him out of a home). This series also houses materials documenting the injuries that Prince sustained in his car accident, the lawsuit that Prince wanted to file against the two drivers who had hit him, and Prince's gradual conclusion that his injuries would eventually kill him.