Samuel Stanhope Smith, born in 1751 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was the first alumnus to become president of the College of New Jersey. His father, Robert Smith, taught him at the school he headed in Pequea, Pennsylvania until the age of sixteen, when Samuel entered the College of New Jersey as a junior. He graduated with honors in 1769 before returning to Pennsylvania to teach in his father's school. In 1771 he returned to Princeton to tutor and study theology under John Witherspoon. For health reasons, he left Princeton to work as a missionary in Virginia. In 1775 the seminary that later became Hampden-Sydney College was founded, and Smith became its president. Married to Ann Witherspoon, Witherspoon's daughter, Smith returned to Princeton in 1779 as a professor of moral philosophy, and his brother, John Blair Smith, replaced him as president of Hampden-Sydney College. On Witherspoon's death in 1794, Smith, who had become vice president in 1786, assumed the leadership of the College. After the Nassau Hall fire of 1802, he raised enough money not only to reconstruct the landmark but also to add two additional buildings. Unfortunately, a riot in 1807 led to the suspension of 125 students and a growing distrust on the part of trustees. Faculty resignations and a declining student body led to Smith's resignation in 1812.

The papers of Prosper Montgomery Wetmore, grandfather of Violetta White Delafield, consist of twelve bound volumes (1818-1874) of correspondence, as well as loose material including letters by Wetmore, genealogical papers, miscellaneous material, and printed matter. The bound volumes contain correspondence between Wetmore and his family, business, policial, civic, and Eleventh Regiment New York State Militia colleagues, also some of his poems and essays, documents, maps, miscellaneous material, and printed matter. Some of the correspondents included in the bound volumes are Townsend Harris, William H. Seward, Benson J. Lossing, William Cullen Bryant, and Martin Van Buren.

Consists of correspondence of John James Audubon, Lucy Bakewell Audubon, and others, including original letters as well as photostat copies and typed transcripts.

The Minorities at Princeton series documents the lives of, and issues that have affected, various racial and ethnic groups at Princeton. While these materials mostly concern students, some also pertain to minority faculty, staff, and administrators.