The collection consists of letters, accounts, land registers, and other documents from the office of Sir John Orde (1751-1824) as governor of Dominica from 1783 to 1793, during a period of British colonial rule over the island; lists of enslaved workers from 1817, 1820, 1823, and 1825 on the estates of Peter Campbell, Esq., a plantation owner and relative of Orde's in the parishes of Saint Elizabeth, Westmoreland, and Hanover, Jamaica; as well as some personal correspondence and documents of Sir John Orde, including letters to his wife and incoming letters during his naval service, household accounts, and various land and property documents.

Materials primarily pertain to the institution of slavery and the plantation economy under British colonial rule in Dominica in the late 18th century and in Jamaica in the early 19th century, as related to Orde's role as governor of Dominica and to his family's ties to the Jamaica estates of Peter Campbell, whose daughter and heir Eliza Woolery Campbell married Sir John Orde's son, John Powlett Orde. To a lesser extent, Orde's later naval career is also documented in letters sent to his wife and received from friends and colleagues during his naval service in the mid-1790s through 1815, as are his family's property interests in the United States, particularly in South Carolina, following the American Revolutionary War.