The papers of John Joseph Pershing (1860-1948) span the years 1882-1971, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1904-1948. The collection consists of correspondence, diaries, notebooks, speeches, statements, writings, orders, maps, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, picture albums, posters, photographs, printed matter, and memorabilia. The papers document nearly every phase of the general's career, beginning with his service as a young officer in the American West and continuing through his tours of duty in Cuba and the Philippines, as military attaché in Tokyo and Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, command of the punitive expedition sent into Mexico after Pancho Villa in 1916, service as commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, and presidency of the Comisión Plebiscitaria de Tacna y Arica in 1925-1926. Included also is material on his goodwill tours of Europe and Latin America. A noticeable gap is evident in the scarcity of papers relating to his tour of duty as chief of staff of the army, 1921-1924.

The papers are organized into fifteen series: Diaries, Notebooks, and Address Books; General Correspondence; Social Correspondence; Special Correspondence; Greetings from French Municipalities; Illness; Death of Pershing; Helen F. Pershing File; Subject File; Tacna-Arica File; Speeches, Statements, and Book File; Scrapbooks; Memorabilia; Addition; and Oversize.

Address books in the Diaries, Notebooks, and Address Books series date from 1905 when Pershing was a military attaché in Japan and from 1908 when he was stationed at Fort William McKinley in the Philippines. The typed diaries, organized into two sets, describe Pershing's command of the American Expeditionary Forces in France during World War I and his postwar service as army chief of staff until 1925. Set I, a ribbon copy, includes minor penciled notations and a clipping mounted into the text. Set II consists of a carbon copy of a separately typed version extracted from the first set of the entries for the World War I period, 1917-1919.

The notebooks mainly document Pershing's army career prior to 1917, with a few that overlap the World War I diaries. The first notebook, from 1882, Pershing's plebe year at the United States Military Academy, is identified as his "cadet check book," or account book. There are notebooks covering much of the rest of his time at West Point, 1883-1884, and 1886, the year he graduated.

Some of Pershing's notebooks are diary-like accounts focused on particular military or diplomatic assignments. A notebook dated 1897-1898 documents his service during the Spanish-American War as commander of Company A, probably the 10th Calvary. Notebooks from 1902-1903 cover his experiences in the Philippines, including the Lake Lanao campaign. One of the Lake Lanao notebooks also includes agreements with Muslim leaders in Arabic script. Other notebooks document his tour of duty as a military attaché in Tokyo and as an observer in the field during the Russo-Japanese War. Later ones relate to his expedition in Mexico against Pancho Villa just prior to the American participation in World War I. In the Addition series are more address books, notebooks and diaries, including of his wife, Helen F. Pershing, who died with three of their children in a fire in 1915, and personal jottings by him from 1900, 1904-1905, 1918, and 1934.

Pershing's early military career is well documented in an extensive Subject File that includes his experiences in the Spanish-American War, the Philippines, and as military attaché in Japan and Manchuria. Of biographical significance are memoirs materials in the Speeches, Statements, and Book File series with its background files and drafts dealing with his life prior to 1919. The Scrapbooks series (available only on microfilm) covers his career from 1900 until his death in 1948. In the Addition are six drafts of his autobiography.