The Board of Education reports from the superintendent of schools in Ottawa give a considerable amount of information concerning the Ottawa schools: teacher appointments, attendance and enrollment records, school social activities, health reports, and budget concerns are all discussed. The collection also contains letters of application for teaching positions written to the superintendent of schools in Augusta and Ottawa.

Very little personal information about George Marshall is included in his papers; a story and play written by him and a small amount of business correspondence is all of the personal materials that exists within this collection.

The photographs in the collection include portraits and candid photographs of community members, Marshall family members, and school faculty. There are parade scenes and images from the Kansas Semi-Centennial celebrations of 1911. There are also images of the Garnett courthouse, railroads and bridges, parks and nature scenes, tornado damage in Augusta, KS in 1924, and other outdoor scenes that sometimes include people. A few images, notably in a photograph album at the end of the photographs, are from New York State or from Colorado, and there are a few photographs of Sac and Fox or Navajo children at reservation boarding schools in Kansas and Colorado.

Terms and language used are representative of when the collection was created and have not been replicated in this finding aid.