This collection contains a letter written by geologist Henry McCalley to his brother William dated Pleasant View, August 29. The letter details McCalley's travels from Memphis, Tennessee down the Mississippi River and then from New Orleans, Louisiana to eastern Texas. He describes in detail his stays in the cities of Galveston, Victoria, and Goliad, Texas.

This collection houses three letters written by U.S. Congressman Pryor Lea (1794–1879) from Washington, D.C. to his brother H. G. Lea in Grainger County, Tennessee. It also contains two newspaper clippings published following Pryor Lea’s death in 1879, a transcript of the eulogy read at his funeral, a postcard depicting the fort in Texas where he lived for a brief period, and a biographical article published in The Junior Historian (1958).