The papers of the Bartlett family represent five generations of the family from 1710 to1931, with the bulk of the material concentrated between 1800 and 1890.

The papers consists of correspondence , diaries, notebooks , legal papers , diplomas, financial papers , account books, drafts of speeches , bills of lading, school compositions, genealogical material, photographs, maps, printed matter, biographies, obituaries, scattered individual issues of newspapers, and miscellaneous items.

The collection describes in detail the professional and political careers of Josiah Bartlett (1729-1795), signer of the Declaration of Independence and governor of New Hampshire, and his sons, Levi Bartlett (1763-1828) and Ezra Bartlett (1770-1848), both physicians and jurists, and Josiah Bartlett (1768-1838), physician, member of Congress, and president of the New Hampshire State Senate, as well as the papers of Ezra's son, Josiah Bartlett, (1803-1853), also a physician, and other descendants.

The papers primarily reflect the professional affairs of rural physicians and the daily activities and concerns of a large New England family in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Specific topics in the early correspondence include activities in Congress prior to the declaration of war on Great Britain in 1812, sentiment in New Hampshire favoring the war, and an account by an American combatant of the repelling of the British attack on Fort McHenry and Baltimore in 1814.

Later correspondence concerns the Missouri Compromise, Republican and Whig politics in New Hampshire, antislavery sentiment, the Seminole War, the Panic of 1837, life in the United States Navy, activities in military hospitals during the Civil War, and business developments in New England after the war.