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This series consists of letters written by Merrill between 1924-1983. Most of these documents appear to be copies of letters that Merrill wrote for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and sent to her friends, mainly at Mount Holyoke College. The collection also includes a few personal letters sent to Bertha E. Blakely, Librarian of Mount Holyoke College, Dorothy ("Deed") Camp Nourse, a Mount Holyoke classmate, and David Bicknell Truman, President of Mount Holyoke College. There is also a note to Merrill from Mary Emma Woolley, former president of Mount Holyoke College, written in January 1944. Of particular significance are forty-three letters written by Merrill while teaching at the Matsuyama Girls' School in Japan, 1924-1940. In these letters she gives detailed information about her life and work. She discusses the school's curriculum, buildings, ceremonies, fund-raising activities, and dormitory life; its summer camp; the surrounding city; her work as a teacher of English, physical education and etiquette classes; and the personal lives of her co-workers and students. Olive S. Hoyt, Principal of the Matsuyama Girls' School and an 1897 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, is frequently mentioned in these letters. There are two letters, 1926 and 1936, written by Hoyt and Merrill describing the history of the school and current goals at the time of the fortieth and fiftieth anniversary of the school. Merrill also discusses Japanese customs pertaining to food, clothing, church, movie and play theatres, calling upon friends, New Year's celebrations, national holidays declared by the Japanese Emperor, religious festivals, weddings, funerals, and Christian baptisms. She describes climbing Mount Fuji, flying in an open cockpit mail plane, visiting various Japanese cities, temples, palaces, shrines, and missionary conferences, taking extensive bicycle trips, and visiting China in 1925. She also discusses political and economic events such as the Sino-Japanese conflict, World War II, and the impact of the worldwide economic depression in the 1930s on Japan. In her correspodence from 1944-1983 Merrill talks about her work as a translator in the United States, her personal life and travels in Sweden, where she lived from 1964 until her death in 1983, and trips to France, Germany, and Switzerland between 1966-1978.

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This series includes Merrill's unpublished and published articles written by Merrill between 1926-1937 and a document translated from Japanese to English by her in 1978. The articles concern the Matsuyama Girls' School and summer camp and school. Merrill's translation is of an unpublished paper by Anne Sano-Gerber entitled "Getting to Know the Japanese."

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This series consists of programs, postcards, and documents, chiefly in Japanese, from the Matsuyama Girls' School dating from 1924-1941. Of particular interest are postcards of the school showing the campus and the surrounding city before its destruction during World War II. Most of the postcards have descriptions of the pictures written by Merrill.

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This series contains notes, programs, clippings, articles, and wedding invitations dating from circa 1924-1968. There is a program from the "Commissioning Service for Miss Katherine Merrill, Matsuyama, Japan," 1928. There are also newspaper clippings, 1928-1935, discussing Merrill's missionary activities in Japan and information about her assistance with a book about the pineal glad published in 1954. Invitations to her weddings in 1954 and 1968 are also included.

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This series consists of formal and informal photographs of Merrill, her students, co-workers and husbands, circa 1913-1968. Included is what is probably Merrill's high school graduation photograph, circa 1913. Of particular interest are photographs of the students, choir and teachers of the Matsuyama Girls' School, circa 1924-1926, and of Merrill in traditional Japanese clothing and riding a bicycle, circa 1925-1928. Also included are snapshots of Sweden and Norway, 1965, and pictures of Merrill and her two husbands, 1958-1968.