This collection includes photocopies of newspaper articles regarding early Kansas white settler Amelia Pardee Ellis McQueen and her two husbands, who both fought in the Civil War. The collection also includes a copy of "A Biographical Sketch of the McQueen and Pardee Ancestors of Dana Lee Thorne," a narrative genealogy. The McQueen and Pardee families lived in Miami County and Greenwood County, Kansas.

In this 1886-1887 journal and in later memoirs, begun in 1944, Colwell Orson Spalding describes his Spalding family ancestry, his life in Bates County, Missouri from the late 1860s to 1880, and his married years in Kansas and Missouri.

William C. Howard, the principal correspondent of the Howard family papers and records, was a Civil War veteran who divided his life after the war between his birthplace in Brown County, Ohio and land he owned and farmed in Kansas, particularly near Baldwin City, Douglas County. The papers in the collection pertain to Howard family affairs, the management of land holdings, and financial matters.