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The Quaker Collection consists of miscellaneous letters, diaries, and documents relating to the religious and social history of the Society of Friends in America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Quaker collection consists of miscellaneous letters, diaries, and documents related to the religious and social history of the Society of Friends in America during the 18th and 19th centuries. These items offer insights into Quaker's daily activities and concerns, such as family life, education, and attending meetings, as well as their participation in various social reform movements, such as abolition, treatment of Native Americans, prison improvements, temperance, and pacifism. The collection also documents internal divergences of American Quakerism in the 19th century, particularly the social and doctrinal disputes that culminated in the Hicksite and Wilburite schisms.

• 1707: A manuscript copy of the death warrant of William Leddra, the last of four Quakers (including Mary Dyer) executed in Massachusetts Bay colony for their religious beliefs
• July 26, 1755: A letter from Alexander Colden to Sir William Johnson voicing frustration with Quakers who refuse to support the war effort in Pennsylvania, and an announcement of General Braddock's defeat
• August 4-12 and 17, 1761: Two accounts, one by an anonymous woman, of Quaker presence at Treaty negotiations held at Easton, Pennsylvania, between the government of Pennsylvania and the Six Nations tribes. Discussed are the negotiations, Quaker-Indian interactions, and the role of Quaker women in the Society
• [After 1770]: An account by an anonymous author of a conference with Native Americans, mostly of the Minnisink Tribe
• October 13, 1829: A letter from Phoebe Post Willis of Jericho, New York, to Isaac Post on the death of John Hicks and strife between Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers
• March 10, 1843: A letter from Ethan Foster of Westerly, Rhode Island, to Thomas B. Gould on Wilburite-Gurneyite strife in his local meeting, and the disownment of Wilbur
• [After 1863 July]: A letter describing a meeting between Abraham Lincoln and five Quaker prisoners of war, who had been forced into the Confederate army, captured by the Union, and held at Fort Delaware
• Various dates: Reports, minutes, and epistles from yearly friends meetings in America and Great Britain

The papers of Dr. Rufus Degranza Pease are made up of 219 letters, documents, drafts, a diary, notes, broadsides and handbills, a printed journal, and ephemeral items dating between 1844 and 1890. The papers contain 195 incoming letters and drafts of outgoing letters focusing heavily on four main areas: itinerant teaching and lecturing on scientific and pseudoscientific subjects in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and other areas between the 1840s and 1860s; Dr. Pease's imprisonment at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in October-November 1863; Dr. Pease's work for and later litigation against the National Christian Association Opposed to Secret Societies, late 1860s-1870s; and his work as phrenologist and physiognomist in Philadelphia in the 1870s and 1880s. The collection also includes Dr. Pease's 1855 pocket diary, a copy of Pease's The Journal of Man (1871), and a variety of printed handbills, tickets, broadsides, business cards, and trade cards associated with Dr. Pease's lectures and occupations.

The papers of phrenologist and physiognomist Rufus Degranza Pease are made up of 219 letters, documents, drafts, a diary, speeches, notes, broadsides, a printed journal, and ephemeral items dating between 1844 and 1890.

The Correspondence and Documents series contains 195 incoming letters and drafts of outgoing letters focusing heavily on four main areas:

• Itinerant teaching and lecturing on scientific and pseudoscientific subjects in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and other areas between the 1840s and 1860s;
• Dr. Pease's imprisonment at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in October-November 1863;
• Dr. Pease's work for and later litigation against the National Christian Association Opposed to Secret Societies in the late 1860s and early 1870s; and
• His work as phrenologist and physiognomist in Philadelphia in the 1870s and 1880s (including several drafts pertinent to Dr. Pease's analysis of Charles Guiteau's "psycho-physiology," dated 1881 and 1882)

The collection also includes Dr. Pease's preprinted Pocket Diary for 1855. For Registering Events of Past or Present Occurrence ... Boston: Wm. J. Reynolds & Co., [1855]. Dr. Pease used this daily diary to document activities, notes, costs and purchases, medicinal recipes and more. It is unclear whether or not many of the entries correspond to the pre-printed dates on which they were written. He spent much of 1855 in Indiana (particularly Wayne County). Examples of his brief entries include: "Completed my large portfolio" (March 3); a recipe for broth taken from the Tribune (March 10). "Went to Indianapolis on cars . . . got cards printed . . . guitar strings. & saw Risher Linder in bookstore" (April 2); a rough pencil sketch of a "Puzzle box"; card printing and costs, and Silas Galespy's printer in Iowa (April 4-6); section headed "The Italian Lost Girl" with brief biographical notes about Amelia [Ettensberger?] (April 7-9); instructions for making "Webber's Plates" (for portrait painting) (April 22-23); reference to "Lectures to Ladies on Anatomy..." followed by a note "Mrs Lukens is said to be in sympathy with H.C. Wright." (April 24-25); an entry stating "a want of sensibility in the skin has been found in a vast number of cases of insanity" (June 18); a treatment for "Frozen flesh" (July 15-16 and November 27). Throughout are very brief notes or lists pertinent to articles and books, art, geographical locations, body measurements, names of people, professions, where they were from or where he met them, and places.

The papers include a single Photograph, a 3.5" x 2.5" tintype group portrait of three unidentified women, one standing behind two seated.

The collection's Printed Items include:

• R. D. Pease, The Journal of Man. Philadelphia: Wm. S. Rentoul, January 1872.
• Two business cards for "R. D. Pease, M. D., Editor of the Journal of Man," one with manuscript revisions.
• One trade card for R. D. Pease's services in Philadelphia.
• Eleven different handbills, broadsides, programs, and prospectuses for lectures and courses by Dr. Pease and others, plus fragments.
• Four tickets to lectures and courses by Dr. Pease (including one complimentary ticket for the Wagner Institute of Science).