This collection consists of papers of the estate of Mary Williamson Houstoun, mostly legal, as kept by her executor, Dr. Richard Dennis Arnold of Savannah. It contains records of real property: Marengo plantation in McIntosh County, Woodstock plantation in Chatham County, land in Murray County and a house and lot in Savannah. There are conveyances, surveys, tax lists, etc. Included also are slave lists; copies and drafts of the will of Mary Ann Thomas, 1847 and 1853; copy of the will of George Woodruff of Trenton, New Jersey, 1846; letters of administration; family correspondence; personal accounts; copy of family Bible records; a list of the estate papers by R.D. Arnold and his account with the estate. The family letters contains family news, social life in Savannah and elsewhere, etc. Correspondents, many of them relatives, include G.W. Anderson, George Baillie, Harriet Louise Baillie, James S. Bulloch, G.B. Cumming, Richard R. Cuyler, John F. Gunn, Charles Harris, Charles C. Jones, Jr., Dr. Thomas S. Kirkbride, John Houstoun McIntosh, Horatio Marbury, John Williamson, George Woodruff, Patrick Houstoun Woodruff.
Many of the papers concern the care of Mossman Houstoun in the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, March 2, 1840 - April 1865: letters of guardians, accounts, receipts. With these is the Commission of Mossman Houstoun as Lieutenant Colonel in the 8th Regiment of Infantry, United States, July 23, 1812, signed by President James Madison, and a certificate for 160 acres of bounty land due Mossman Houstoun for his military service, 1857.
The papers are in chronological order.