The Grant family Papers represent three generations, including educators, missionaries, a banker, pioneer lawyer, social reformer, writer and lecturer. Zilpah Polly Grant Banister, 1794-1894, was born in Norfolk, Connecticut. She was a pioneering educator and founder of Adams Female Seminary in Derry, NH, 1824, and Ipswich Female Seminary with Mary Lyon, 1827. She married William Banister, 1841. Her brother, Elijah Grant, was a town officer, who married Elizabeth Phelps Grant, 1809-1875. They had 8 children. Elijah Phelps Grant was a lawyer, philosopher, social reformer, and banker in Carleton, OH, and John Grant a teacher at Yale and founder of his own private school. Other family members were bankers, homesteaders in CT, pioneers in Nebraska and Illinois. Mary Z. Grant Burgess was a missionary in India.

It is clear from their content and their provenance, however, that they are actually the papers of her brother Elijah Grant, his wife Elizabeth Phelps Grant, their children, and the descendents of the eldest son, Elijah Phelps Grant. The correspondence consists mainly of letters exchanged within the family from the l830s to the l860s. Most of Zilpah Grant's letters were written to her nephews Marcus and John after she had married and given up teaching. John Grant, who taught at Yale and later established his own private school, sought her counsel as a former school principal. Correspondence of other family members relates to such topics as the maintenance of the original Connecticut homestead, banking in Canton, Ohio, and the starting of businesses in Nebraska and Illinois.

The early financial records, beginning in the l770's, are mostly from the settlement of the estate of Elijah Grant's uncle Samuel Cowles, of Colebrook, Connecticut, who died in l843. Account books belonging to Elijah Grant (l822-56) Elijah P. Grant (l866-67), James M. Grant (l868); Jennie Wallace (l890-97) and William Wallace (l90l-07) add to the fragmentary family financial record.

Notebooks, lectures, essays, and newspaper articles by Elijah P. Grant span the period from his college days at Yale to old age. One of his college notebooks contains transcriptions of letters describing the death of Mary Zilpah Grant Burgess who died of cholera in India where she and her husband were missionaries. The balance of the collection consists of diaries, a few photographs, compositions, and legal papers relating to various family members.

Portions of the Grant Family Papers have been digitized for the Five College Digitization Project Web site.