This series contains letters by the three Peabody sisters, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894), Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (1806-1887), and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (1809-1871). A few letters are to Rebecca Chase Kinsman, and there is a very small amount of third party and unidentified correspondence. Also included are typescripts and photocopies of the letters, notes taken by Evelyn Page, and a 1949 issue of The Essex Institute Historical Collections.

This series is comprised of typescripts of letters from Rebecca Chase Kinsman to her family in Salem, Massachusetts, when she was en route to Macao, China in 1843. Also included are published letters by Kinsman, written while living in Macao from 1843 to 1846 (probably removed from volumes of The Essex Institute Historical Collections, a scholarly journal), and a reprint of an article, Nathaniel Kinsman, Merchant of Salem, in the China Trade (1949).