This collection has been divided into three series: Correspondence, Prose and Poetry, and Other Material.
The Correspondence is found in boxes 1-7 and 10. Of the estimated 3,000 letters in this collection, only about 145 were written by Sherman Booth himself. These are mainly to his daughters, and to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Adeline P. Corss. In his letters of the 1850's may be found frequent mention of his imprisonment and trials. His second wife, Mary, wrote many letters to her mother and to her sister, Jane; and her letters also describe Booth's troubles over his abolitionist activities.
Booth's own letters span the period from the 1840s through the 1900s. The bulk of his letters (92) were written in the 1860s. The rest of his letters were dated as follows: 1849 (4); 1850s (23); 1870s (7); 1890s (9); 1900s (9); and undated (1).
The original letters written by Sherman Booth are interspersed throughout the collection. Due to the amount of time it takes to find all of them, photocopies are available to researchers. The photocopied letters are in box 10. They are arranged by their original location in the boxes and folders. The original letters are still available in boxes 1 through 7.
By far the largest part of the collection concerns the family of Adeline P. Corss, mother of the second Mrs. Booth. Booth's daughters, Mary Ella and Lillian May, lived with her in Connecticut for many years. When they moved to Wisconsin to their father's farm, they brought the Corss family correspondence with them.
Although Mr. and Mrs. Booth's letters to Connecticut were frequent during the years from 1860 to 1865, they almost completely ignore references to the Civil War and the national struggle. The letters are concerned, instead, with Booth's own problems and family affairs.
In the years between 1870 and 1890 the Booth sisters received a total of six letters from the Rev. J.J. Enmegahbauh, the first Indian ordained by Bishop Kemper. These were written from the White Earth Indian Reservation in Minnesota.
Added to Box 1 were copies of correspondence from the Booth Collection and the S. P. Chase Collection in the Library of Congress covering the period 1849, April 5 to 1864, May 2.
Prose and Poetry is found in box 7. It includes materials by mostly unidentified writers from 1833-1901.
The Other Material is found in boxes 8 and 9 and on microfilm. The miscellaneous material in Box 8 includes mainly school and church items acquired by Mary Ella and Lillian May Booth in the course of their work. Also in Box 8 are genealogical information and photostats of pictures of family members, which were removed from the Anita McCormick Blaine Papers in the McCormick Collection. (Blanch Booth Angster, daughter of Sherman Booth, was Mrs. Blaine's secretary for about 50 years.)
Box 9 contains records of soldier's medical examinations in applying for pensions, account books, diaries of Adeline, Mary and Jane Corss, and school notebooks of Lillian May Booth.
Part of a diary kept by Adeline Corss, 1847-1873, which includes references to Booth, is available only on microfilm.
