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The papers detail the personal lives and professional careers of several generations and family lines of the Baldwin family. The legal, political, and business activities of family members in Connecticut, New York, and elsewhere are documented. Major topics include: family, women, law, education, Connecticut and New York politics and government, New Haven, Connecticut, and Yale University.

Family and business correspondence and financial records largely relating to the invention of the Yale Lock and Linus Yale's attempts to establish a sucessful business in Newport, New York, and Philadelphia. The papers of the Yale Lock company continue after the death of Linus Yale and contain documents on its financial reorganization and on suits against infringements of Yale Patents (1868-1870).Yale's intellectual and social life is revealed in his correspondence with Henry and Walter Brown, William Morris Davis, A. Heymann, William Manley and John Hoskin. Many of the letters also concern mechanics, and ideas for new inventions, with drawings. The family correspondence includes numerous letters between Linus Yale and his wife, Catherine, as well as letters between her and her sisters. Of particular interest are the letters from her sister Nancy Gore in Wisconsin, which contrast with the letters from another sister, Elizabeth Carter, in New York, and a friend, Fanny Marley, preparing a career as an artist in Boston.

Correspondence, diaries, notebooks, drawings, legal and financial papers, published writings, unpublished manuscripts, and memorabilia of the Loomis and Wilder families of Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia. The papers relate principally to Eben Jenks Loomis, astronomer, poet, and nature writer, and to his immediate family, and to his wife, Mary Alden Wilder Loomis and her immediate family, including papers of John Augustus Wilder, Civil War officer and lawyer for the U.S. Army. The Eben Janks Loomis papers contain much of interest relating to scientific topics current in the latter half of the ninteenth century as well as material relating to members of his family and their activities and interests. Of interest in the John Augustus Wilder papers is the material relating to the use of Negro troops in the Civil War and to his legal activities at the end of the war.

The papers include correspondence, journals, memorabilia, and photographs that document the life of Samuel Willard Saxton and the career of his brother General Rufus Saxton during the Civil War. The largest portion of the papers is composed of S. Willard Saxton's multi-volumed journal, which he began in 1847 while at Brook Farm and continued until the 1920s. The journal chronicles his career as a printer, aide-de-camp, and civil servant; his travels; family; his interests in the cultural life of Boston and Washington, D.C.; and his summers spent in Guilford, Connecticut. His journal highlights Saxton's ardent abolitionist and reformist interests, his work on behalf of freedmen's education, and his strong Republican loyalties. The letterbooks reflect Saxton's position as an aide-de-camp for his brother and Rufus Saxton's administration of the Department of the South and the former slaves under his jurisdiction.

The papers contain bills and receipts, daybooks, estate papers, invoices, and other materials documenting the life of a Boston silversmith.