Papers docuenting James Harrison Arthur's work as a textile mill accountant in North and South Carolina and the business and financial records of John Clough Farrar, a wholesale grocer and cotton broker in Charleston, South Carolina and planter in Union county, South Carolina. Includes correspondence, subject files, daily expense records, plantation account books, photographs and genealogical material. Also includes some material on James Park McComb's gold mining activities in Charlotte.

The collection consists of papers of the Carpenter family, relating primarily to their farming activities in Lincoln and Gaston counties from 1834 to 1935. The collection also includes banking records, business and tax receipts, correspondence, insurance records, papers from the National Grange, Depression era relief records, and promissory notes.

Papers of the Davidson family of Rural Hill Plantation in northern Mecklenburg County, N.C., and of the related families Alexander, Barry, Hampton, Montieth, and Wilson. Includes correspondence, family Bibles, financial records, land records, newspaper clippings, photographs, and plantation records for Rural Hill, as well as Dickson (Dixon) in Gaston County, N.C.

Papers related to the William Abram Jenkins family, including photographs, survey maps of the family farm, and biographical information.

The Rankin Family papers consist of a wide variety of materials, though the majority of the collection concerns this family’s ownership and stewardship of the land that they have owned in Gaston County, NC since the late eighteenth century. There are also items relating to the Rev. Frank B. Rankin and his daughter, Mary Delia Rankin Jarman as well as material relating to Gaston county history and the genealogy of several Gaston families.