Correspondence, financial and legal records, and miscellany relating to Russell & Co., Guangzhou (Canton), China, and to its founder, Samuel Russell, and members of his family. Includes material relating to the merger of Russell & Co. with John P. Cushing, William Perkins & Company of Boston, Mass., and Houqua, of Guangzhou, China; banking problems in the U.S.; national and international monetary matters; commerce with China; commerce within the U.S.; the Russell Manufacturing Company, producer of elastic webbing, established in Middletown, Conn., in 1831; Ithiel Town's design of Samuel Russell's Middletown mansion; land speculation in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin; the Turkish opium trade; the American Colonization Society; and epilepsy and the medical care of Russell's son, John A. Russell.

Family correspondence chiefly between Samuel Russell and his sons, George O. Russell and John A. Russell, and his brother, Edward Augustus Russell. Other correspondents include J.W. Alsop, Richard Alsop, Philip Ammidon, John Jacob Astor, Cyrus Butler, John Murray Forbes, R.B. Forbes, Augustine Heard, Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, S.D. Hubbard, William Henry Low, W.L. Newberry, Ithiel Town, Samuel Wetmore, and William Wetmore. Firms represented by correspondence include Baring Brothers & Co., Benjamin & Thomas C. Hoppins, Clarke & Company, of Smyrna, Turkey, Edward Carrington & Company, George Douglas & Company, Hull & Griswold, and Ward & Bartholomew.