This collection consists of letters that discuss family affairs, droughts and crops. J. S. Clark mentions carrying mail, "following" cotton, and Mormons. Lizzie mentions raising chickens and pigs. It also contains a marriage certificate for J. S. Clark and Mary Ann Pedigrew from Kansas in 1873.

The Bass/Bayley collection consists primarily of the correspondence and papers of Elisha and Elizabeth Eulalia Bass and their relatives. The Bass family were New Englanders who settled in pre-Civil War Texas near present-day Brownsville, Cameron County. They later located to California and Colorado.