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The Correspondence series is divided into five subseries: the William Richardson Abbot and Lucy Ridgway Minor Abbot subseries; Bellevue High School subseries; Abbot Family (1) subseries; Abbot Family (2) subseries; and the Minor Family subseries.

Letters to and from Mary Wager and William Righter Fisher and friends, family members, and associates. Correspondents include many educators, artists, and illustrious Americans of the period.

The correspondence of Braxton Craven that survives documents the financial struggles of Normal College and later Trinity College. During the 1850s and 1860s, the correspondence describes attempts to gain state aid to the College and the formation of a cadet corps at Trinity. Included are typed copies from the original correspondence in the North Carolina Department of Archives and History in Raleigh, North Carolina. The Methodist Church seems to dominate the correspondence after 1859, when it becomes the chief financial supporter of the College. A few surviving family letters are also present. They pertain to the illness and death of Craven in 1882. Also included is a letterbook (1870-1882) that contains copies of letters, receipts, bylaws of the Trinity Normal School, bursar accounts, and faculty salary payments. Major correspondents include John Alspaugh, member of the Board of Trustees of Trinity College, Bishop Edward R. Ames of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Calvin Henderson Wiley, John S. Brown and Governors Thomas Settle Reid, David Lowry Swain and Henry Toole Clarke of North Carolina.

Comprises mostly routine correspondence to Blackwell family members from other family members; including Alice Stone Blackwell, Anna M. Blackwell, Elizabeth Blackwell, Emma Blackwell, Helen Blackwell, Henry B. Blackwell, and Lucy Stone. Topics include suffrage meetings, the election of Theodore Roosevelt, reading and other pastimes, and general education. A letter from Henry B. Blackwell mentions inviting Frederick Douglass and his wife, Helen Pitts Douglass (editor of The Alpha, suffragist, feminist, abolitionist) "to some private house, where his color would not be made an objection" written on Office of American Woman Suffrage Association letterhead. There are several postcards mailed to the Woman's Journal regarding subscriptions, address changes and other matters related to publication, or the editor's business acquaintances.

Correspondence from Grant's career and personal life. There are many family letters in the collection. The contents of the personal letters may be summarized as revealing information about the relationship between Grant and his wife, and with their daughter; their daughter's education in Europe and at William and Mary College; relationships among the Hibbs family and between the Hibbses and the Grants; Grant's concerns about his elderly parents and their problems; and the relationships between Grant and his wife and their friends. There are also many letters between Grant and Senator Black. The correspondence of Black's senatorial office is divided between this collection and the one at the Library of Congress. Grant also wrote many letters to Albanians in Albanian, and had copies of them in both Albanian and English made for the Legation files. While serving as Minister, most of Grant's correspondence is of a diplomatic nature. His dispatches to the Secretary of State constitute a separate category in the arrangement of the collection.