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.