In general the collection consists of the genealogical research of the Oakley, Hawley, Hough, Atwood, Church, Sweeney, Queen, and Benedict families from about 1854 to 1951, with various documentary genealogies extending from the 17th century B.C. in Spain and Scotland, 9th century A.D. in France, 11th century in England, and 17th century A.D. in Italy. The collection also includes some genealogical data concerning other collateral (or suspected collateral) lines--Sweet, Shriver, Brewster, Kinney, Brooks, Martin, Dean, Gray-Copp, Whiting, Sheets, Frye, Vandervoort, Valkenburgh, Pinney, Manning, Hawthorne, Duke, Thomas, Howard, Rice, Woods, Abbott, Miller, Barbour, Jerningham, Brent, Barrett, Harper, Hills, Reis, Curtis, Fairbanks, MacDaniel, Briggs, Sheman, French, Fauconnier-Faulkner, Gates, Vilas, Grange, Burr, Woodhull, Maya, Pell, Hibbard, Proportion (?), Sinclaire, etc.
A number of the family lines are supported by early Colonial documents and various published genealogies and pictures, some of which can be found in this collection or in the Wisconsin State Historical Library. Information which may be found in the Library includes: Scrapbooks...by Mrs. F.W. Oakley and Mrs. Cynthia Oakley; Hawley Record...; and Genealogy... by William Dickinson Hawley.
There is a considerable amount of information contained in either the correspondence or genealogical files of this collection concerning prominent members of the various families; e.g. Violette Oakley, artist, is represented herein as w=is Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, author. Included in this collection is information concerning her part in obtaining the Japanese cherry trees for Washington, D.C. and her winning of a Japanese award for her writing during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.
Considerable information concerning George H. Scidmore, an American Consul in Japan and China in the early twentieth century, is found herein, and there are a few diplomatic papers included, such as a Congressional Resolution allowing Mr. Scidmore to accept an award from the Japanese government for saving a citizen of Japan. Two diaries are included, kept by his sister Eliza R. Scidmore, and they cover periods spent in China, Japan, and India in the first decade of the twentieth century. Mr. J.C. Hawley was supervisor of certain provinces in the Philippine Islands during the term of President Taft, and he served later with the Council of National Defense in 1918. Horace S. Oakley served in Athens and Italy, receiving the Equestrian Order from the Crown there, and he is responsible for a great deal of the later genealogical research, along with Mary Hough Oakley Hawley.
There are a number of articles written by members of the family, on such topics as early Colonial Tory history, Oriental events, and Wisconsin history. The Atwood portion of the collection consists mainly of the Scrapbooks included with the collection.
The correspondence, extending from 1870 to 1951, is, of course, arranged chronologically, but there are separate files for the main family lines in which no chronology could be maintained.
