The papers inclue 30 letters, 1 Soldier's Bible, 5 deeds, 2 plats, and 3 copies of receipts. The earliest of the William L. Burroughs letters is dated in 1859 and is from his cousin Fannie giving news of the health and conditions of neighbors, two of wham are recovering from typhus. The following fourteen letters are dated from 1862 through 1864 and are written by or to friends and relations. Three of those letters are addressed to his cousin Jennie and relate to a slanderous tale being circulated against Burroughs; his letter to her dated September 10, 1863, reports the destruction of W. W. Holden's printing office in Raleigh by soldiers--I wish they could have got him. Three 1863 and 1864 letters from Leapold Henderson of Williamsboro, amusingly written, give news of neighbors and kinsmen. A letter of October 28, 1863, is a recommendation for Dr. R. D. Fleming to fill a vacant lieutenancy in the Warren Guards, and letters of Feb. 11, June 18, and Aug. 21, 1864, relate to Burroughs' work in the Quartermaster Department in Raleigh. Of these latter, the one dated Aug. 21, 1864, written by 1st Lt. James A. Marrow, Co. H, 55th Regt., gives instructions on the cutting of a new uniform to be made by the tailor, Michael Grausman in Raleigh. Two of the letters have a freemasonry relationship (one of Oct. 10, 1864, in connection with the funeral service for Burroughs' brother and one of Jan. 30, 1864, asking that Burroughs use his influence to prevent the writer from being sent on active duty in the Confederate Army).

Filed with the Civil War letters, but not necessarily related to any of them, is a sixteen-page Confederate imprint, by William W. Crumly, Chaplain of Georgia Hospitals, Richmond (by attribution, printed in Raleigh--see Crandall Unofficial #4619).

The last of the William L. Burroughs letters is one dated 1878 and relates to his wish to purchase an upright stove suitable for a school house.

William J. Burroughs, son of the above, moved to Charlotte and continued to live there from as early as 1910. His papers include four letters written by Margaret Norwood of Hillsborough concerning the estate of her brother James (non compos mentis) in 1909; three letters dated in 1913 concerning the sale of land in Charlotte belonging to the estate of Patience Gardner; three letters from Burroughs' wife Hattie while vacationing at Green Park Hotel, Green Park, N.C.; two letters dated in 1922 and 1923 concerning the sale of family property two letters written by his sister in 1926 and 1930 on family matters; and five deeds and related papers. The 1926 letter from Burroughs' sister (Mrs. Thomas Tyack of Winston-Salem) expresses her disapproval of an aged uncle who had neglected his parents while looking for gold mines in California and now needs their assistance, and insists that Burroughs come to attend the Greensboro graduation of Annie Gray Burroughs (missionary to Liberia from 1931 to 1935). Mrs. Tyack's letter of Oct. 8, 1930, gives the account of a little girl who has come to stay with them and has traveled by herself from San Francisco to Washington, stopping only at Chicago where someone from the Traveler's Aid Association met the child and lunched and entertained her at Marshall Fields during the layover.