Papers, chiefly correspondence, of a Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York family, a number of whose members were prominent in commercial, political, and intellectual fields: George Gibbs (II, 1735-1803), a prosperous merchant, engaged in worldwide trade; his eldest son George (III, 1776-1833), merchant and noted mineralogist, whose wife Laura was a daughter of Oliver Wolcott, secretary of the treasury during the administrations of Washington and John Adams and later governor of Connecticut; their four sons: George (IV, 1815-1873), historian, geologist, and ethnologist; Oliver Wolcott (1822-1908), chemist and physicist; Alfred (1823-1868), United States army officer; and Francis Sarason (1831-1882), grain exporter; and Francis's son George (1861-1940).

A number of letters written between 1796 and 1815 concern the family shipping business; they include impressions of American trade in China recorded by George Gibbs (III) in 1796 and accounts of hazards to commerce engendered by the Barbary pirates and by the Napoleonic wars. Correspondence, 1808-1825, between George (III) and Benjamin Silliman relates to the development and preservation of Gibbs' mineral collection.

There are many letters written by Oliver Wolcott between 1800 and 1827. A small group of typewritten copies of correspondence, 1801-1806, shows Wolcott's Federalist opposition to Jefferson's administration. Later letters are primarily personal in content, but contain occasional descriptions of current events, such as the reception accorded Lafayette in Congress and the industrialization of a Connecticut woolen mill.

Oliver Wolcott Gibbs is represented in the collection mainly by a group of letters he wrote while a student in Europe, 1845-1847, to his immediate family and to his cousin and fellow scientist William F. Channing. Included are detailed impressions of European scientists Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Justus von Liebig, and Heinrich Rose; discussions of political unrest in Europe; and commentary on science, American politics, and the Mexican War.

Numerous letters and other papers relate to the career of George Gibbs (IV). Occasional letters he wrote during his boyhood indicate the development of his interest in science and in outdoor life, and one of them includes an account of a visit with Audubon in 1933. A letter he received from George Bancroft in 1837 encouraged his interest in history, and a few papers contain brief references to his writing of Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams (1846). Letters exchanged with his brother Alfred during the latter's service in the Mexican War discuss Whig politics, army conditions, and military personages.

From 1849 to 1860 George Gibbs lived on the Pacific Coast, where he served as a Whig appointee in the customs office at Astoria, Oregon, dabbled in gold mining and townsite speculation, participated in federal surveys, and collected ethnological data on the Indians and historical information on Oregon and Washington territories. The collection contains his letters to his family, 1850-1853, and drafts of several government reports on the Indians, on geology, and on a military road from Fort Vancouver to Fort Steilacoom. A few maps and a number of drawings depicting scenery, topography, and Indian art and handicraft are also included.

Most of the letters in the collection were exchanged with members of the family, but there are also a few from and to Gibbs' longtime friend John Austin Stevens, Jr., New York financier, written during Gibbs' years in the West and during the Civil War. The correspondence of the 1860's contains critical comment on the Lincoln administration, information on Salmon P. Chase and the financing of the war, a description of a visit with William H. Seward and his son after an attempt had been made to assassinate them, and references to Andrew Johnson's unpopularity and his impeachment.

Among the few letters written after 1869 is a brief series written in Europe in 1880 by a son of Francis Sarason Gibbs, the fifth George, who became a famous engineer. A 1918 diary concerns his work in the Soviet Union with the Railroad Mission.