Correspondence, diaries, essays, notes and notebooks, financial and legal records, circulars, genealogical material, newspaper clippings, and other papers of the allied Feamster (Feemster), Alderson, Cary (Carey), and Mathews (Matthews) families. Subjects include farming, law, medicine, military, politics, and religion, as well as geography, economic and social conditions, and education in areas and states in which members of the family visited or resided including Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Other subjects include conduct of the War of 1812 in Ohio; troop movements under William Henry Harrison; army life in the 18th and early 19th centuries; an 1824 visit to the United States by Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de Lafayette; the Episcopal Church; the James River and Kanawha Company, Richmond, Va.; the Battle of Gettysburg; occupied Germany after World War I; college life in the 1930s; the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II; and the American sector of occupied Germany following the war. Correspondents include Robert E. Lee and William Meade.

Family papers include a memorandum book (1844-1872) of Martha Alderson Feamster; account book of Company A of the 14th Regiment of Virginia Cavalry kept by her sons, Thomas L. Feamster and Samuel William Newman Feamster, during the Civil War; diary (1864-1865) and correspondence of Thomas L. Feamster; journal of the military career (1901-1923) of his grandson, Claudius Newman Feamster; letters (1914-1953) from his sons, Robert Cantrell Feamster and Felix Claudius Feamster, concerning their experiences at college and in the Army as army surgeons in World War II; diary (1849-1851) of Charles William Cary as a medical student; and correspondence of J.D. Alderson, Cyrus Cary, Ophelia Mathews Cary, William Cary, Eliza Cary Greene, and John Mathews.