Sheriff John Potter's papers include letters, financial papers, and legal records. Among the papers are a list of household furnishings and other possessions of Andrew Montour (1755); a few records by or pertaining to Indian traders George Croghan and William Trent; an inventory and appraisal of Potter's own property and numerous accounts, receipts, and land records relating to the distribution and settlement of his estate after his death.

General James Potter's papers include documents relating to the French and Indian wars and to the Revolution, mainly military orders, accounts, receipts, and a few pieces of correspondence. One list of “officers and soldiers wounded, missing, and returned after the action near Fort Duquesne” concerns James Grant's defeat in September, 1758. Post-Revolutionary letters in the 1780s pertain to politics, land surveys and settlement proposals, and civil unrest in the Wyoming Valley.

Notable among papers of his son James are letters (1795) of William Cocke on land prospects in North Carolina and letters (1796, 1799, 1807) by Andrew Gregg, United States senator from Pennsylvania, discussing western land investments, United States foreign policies, and the Burr conspiracy. A very few scattered items allude to business affairs of another relative also named John Potter.

Among other Potter family correspondents were William Bonham, William P. Brady, William Cathcart, Nicholas V. Cortlandt, James Hanna, William Hanna, Samuel Hunter, Jno. Kelly, William Maclay, Thomas McKean, Robert McKim, William Maxwell, two Virginians named William Patterson (father and son), Timothy Pickering, James Poe, Joseph Reed, William Shaw, Robert Smith, James Stewart, and James Witherspoon. Additional signers of documents include Alexander Boggs, Valentine Crawford, the elder George Croghan, Edward Lee, William Machlin, Robert Moodie, Henry Pawling, Charles Wilson Peale, William Plunkett, David Rittenhouse, Thomas Robinson, James Sinclair; William Smith, and Alexander Stewart.

The volume also contains a few letters from Potter descendants to Draper as well as Draper's notes and copies of materials loaned to him in 1849 by John Potter, (1800-1879), a great great grandson of Sheriff John Potter. Among Draper's copies are lists of men in Captain John Armstrong's company (1759) and letters by Armstrong (1777), William Maclay (1773) and George Washington (November 3, 1777).