The collection is divided into two series: FAMILY HISTORIES and CORRESPONDENCE.
The FAMILY HISTORIES series consists of detailed family trees and genealogies for each family including birth and death dates, some brief biographies, and some obituaries and epitaphs.
The CORRESPONDENCE series (1846 to 1984) consists predominantly of correspondence between family members and is arranged chronologically, not by family name, with the exception of a folder of Walker correspondence and one of Barber letters. The earliest correspondence is from the Walker family which, with the Hamilton family letters, forms the bulk of the series. The early Walker letters are transcribed and include editorial comments by Stenberg. The Orson and Narcissa Barber letters (1860-1865) detail Orson's service in the Civil War with Company H, 9th Regiment of the Minnesota Volunteers, Schofield B. Although all of the family names are represented in the chronological files, from 1873 to 1916, the bulk of the letters relate to Margaret Hamilton. The rest of the correspondence is mostly from within the Walker family, principally with Dorothy, Harland, and Onton and their parents, Maude and Bert. Dorothy and Harland both attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and many of the letters are from them to Maude, Onton, and Bert at home in Almond, Wis.
