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The materials in this collection were collected and curated by Richard H. Mette. Mette was a lifelong Jacksonville resident and has family ties to the area going back several generations.

Photocopies of research materials concerning Conecuh County, Alabama, 1814-1877, including letters (1844-1860) of James Jones about life in Conecuh, the 1860 Presidential election, cotton business, and activities in Pensacola. Other materials cover the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and Fort Jackson (1814), Fort Pickens (1861), a biography of Dr. George Columbus Reynolds, and a history of the Perote area, Pike County, Alabama.

This collection consists of original manuscripts related to Joseph Finegan, the estate of John D. Bellechasse, the Florida Railroad Company, and General H. S. Sanford. These materials should be useful as a biographical sketch of Joseph Finegan. Other subjects covered by the collection include: Jacksonville, Cuba, Lake Monroe, auctions, mill property, Joseph Oliver, St. Mary's Parish in Louisiana, debts, David L. Yulee, Confederate States District Court of Florida, George W. Call, railroad construction, Joseph Finegan & Co, Fernandina, William Phelan, orange groves in Mellonville, Florida, land sales, Orange County, John Forbes, St. Augustine, and Savannah. The collection also contains several maps showing purchase of lands, the "Ross Plantation," and Byrne lands.

Photostats of manuscripts and two United States printed forms filled in by and concerning Roderick McLennan, a citizen of Canada, 1864-1887. The five items are as listed below:

The collection contains personal and business documents of Rosa Holmes Walker, a Black funeral home director and businesswoman active in Jacksonville, Florida, during the early twentieth century. Included in the collection are materials relating to business records, ledgers, death certificates, removal and burial permits, funeral home bills and correspondence, and real estate correspondence from New York, New York. The collection also includes materials from her relatives, Henry and Fannie Glover of St. Augustine, Florida (early twentieth century) and to the Glovers of South Carolina (nineteenth century). Inclusive years are 1871-1943, with the bulk of the materials from 1920-1930. Few personal items are included in the collection. The Collection complements the Eartha M.M. White Collection as a source for Black history in Jacksonville, Florida, and provides documentation of a successful businesswoman flourishing in early twentieth century Northeast Florida.

Correspondence, papers, records, journals, cashbooks (or account books), scrapbooks, newspaper articles, passport, currency, manuscripts, books, songs, pictures, stamps, clippings and legal papers. This collection contains a wide variety of materials. The correspondence, papers, records, bookkeeping journals and cash books of Julius Diamond reflect the economic conditions of the time and are good examples of how merchandising business was conducted. The scrapbook, assembled by John W. Trench, contains manuscripts, Civil War letters and clippings, describing events such as the battles of Gettysburg, Bull Run and Vicksburg. There is an original holograph passport issued by Consul General at Marseilles, France, to a native of Italy, taken during the war. Newspaper clippings discuss the price of gold, burial ceremonies, and the sale of enslaved persons. Also included are recipes, poems, songs and jokes written during and about the Civil War, as well as other historical documents not preserved elsewhere.

The Russel Snow and Family Collection contains correspondence, photographs and newspaper clippings documenting the personal and professional life of former Fort Lauderdale mayor Russel Snow.