Phebe F. Beach was the niece of Phebe Perkins Beech (the spelling of the family name varied) and Joseph Palmer Fessenden, who was a Congregationalist clergyman in Kennebunkport (1820-1829) and South Bridgton, Maine (1829-1861). Phebe was adopted by her aunt and uncle and lived with them in Bridgton. In 1858 she taught school in New Gloucester, Maine. In August 1860 she married a man named Arthur [Jordan?]; a child was born in January 1862 and died two months later. Her husband enlisted in April and was killed at Cedar Mountain, Virginia, in August 1862. This diary includes entries about her depression following the birth of her child, as well as the death of her husband.

The Boston Women's Health Book Collective began in 1969 when a small group of women gathered after a workshop on women and their bodies at a Boston-area female liberation conference to talk about some crucial health issues and to confront a medical establishment viewed as paternalistic and condescending. Perhaps best known for their pioneering handbook Our Bodies, Ourselves (originally published in 1971 with subsequent editions and international adaptations), the Collective helped to create worldwide networks of women involved in health education and advocacy. See also Additional records of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective

Brown attended the Horace Mann School, in New York City, and Barnard College. She worked for the U.S. Children's Bureau and the League of Women Voters, specializing in issues relating to maternal and child welfare. She and her husband, Herman LaRue Brown, were active in the Democratic Party, particularly in Boston and Massachusetts, where they lived. Dorothy Kirchwey Brown served on a number of Massachusetts state boards relating to children's welfare and juvenile delinquency. The collection includes Freda Kirchwey’s letters to her sister Dorothy Kirchwey Brown between 1906 and 1922, including some concerning pregnancy, nursing, and caring for a newborn.

Established in 1995, the Center for Family Connections (CFFC) was an educational and clinical resource center that specialized in the developmental, structural, and systemic issues related to adoption, foster care, kinship, and guardianship, as well as the people with whom they are connected, by offering training, education, advocacy, and clinical treatment. It worked with families that were blended and complex in nature, including single parent and gay and lesbian families, along with families formed by donor insemination and other reproductive technologies. CFFC was founded by Joyce Pavao (Ed.D., LCSW, LMFT), who also established the Adoption Resource Center in 1973, Pre/Post Adoption Consulting Team in 1978, and Family Connections Training Institute in 1995. The Center closed in March 2012.

A sociologist, professor, lecturer, and tree farmer, Sarah Thomas Curwood attended Cornell University and was one of the few African Americans there at the time. She graduated in 1937 and went on to attend Boston University (Ed.M. 1947) and Radcliffe College (Ph.D. 1956). She also attended the Nursery Training School of Boston (1942-1944). Curwood married James L. Curwood, a businessman, in 1936; she experienced a miscarriage in the same year, and they later had a daughter, Sarah "Sally" (born 1938) and a son, Steve (born 1947). She served on the faculties of Antioch College, Rhode Island College, the University of New Hampshire, and Knoxville College and was the Head Start regional training officer for New Hampshire and Vermont. She was also a consultant for many organizations including the Massachusetts Committee on Children and Youth and Volt Information Services Head Start Planned Variations Program in Buffalo, New York.

Anne Engelhart, archivist and librarian, studied at Vassar College (1969-1971) before leaving for Europe where she became involved in the study of Renaissance and baroque music and historically informed performance practice, attending the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel, Switzerland), the Royal Conservatory of the Hague, and studying with baroque flutist Barthold Kuijken while living in Bruges, Belgium. In 1975 she returned to the United States and studied at Brandeis University (1975-1976) before finishing at New England Conservatory (BM 1978). In 1984 she completed an MLIS from Simmons and in 1992 she received an MLA in history from the Harvard Extension School. Engelhart began part-time work at the Schlesinger Library in 1977, initially as a staff assistant for the Black Women Oral History Project, and later as Assistant Curator of Manuscripts, and Head of Collection Services before retiring in 2018. The papers document Engelhart's close relationships with her parents, family, and friends; her marriage and efforts to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization and other treatments; parenthood; and her work at the Schlesinger Library.

A writer and the wife of economics professor and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith, Catherine "Kitty" Atwater Galbraith was born in 1913 in Plandome, New York. She graduated from Smith College and studied German as a graduate student in Munich in 1934. She married Galbraith in 1937; they had four sons, one of whom died at age seven. The collection includes materials relating to his life, illness, and death.

An author, lecturer, educator, poet, and activist, Blu Greenberg has been a forerunner in the movement to bridge the gap between feminism and Orthodox Judaism since 1973. In 1997, she chaired the first International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy, and the second in 1998. Greenberg was co-founder and first president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) and has served on the boards of numerous Jewish and feminist organizations. Greenberg first became active in the Jewish feminist movement in 1973 when she was asked to give the plenary address at the First National Jewish Women's Conference in New York, and she soon became a major activist in the field. This collection includes materials relating to the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York's 1988 conference on "The Infertile Jewish Couple: Issues and Options," as well as materials relating to the topic of adoption.

Journalist Freda Kirchwey received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1915. After a short stint with the Sunday Tribune in 1918, Kirchwey joined The Nation, a liberal weekly magazine. She began her career at The Nation clipping articles for the international relations section, but soon advanced to associate editor. She served as managing editor from 1922 to 1938, also becoming vice president in 1922, and served as literary editor from 1928 to 1929. In November 1915, Kirchwey married Evans Clark. Kirchwey and Clark's first child, Brewster, was born in 1916 and died at eight months of age the following year. A second son, Michael, was born in 1919. Jeffrey was born in 1923 and died in 1930. This collection contains considerable information about the Clark children, and particularly about the death of Jeffrey from tuberculosis. There is extensive correspondence between Kirchwey and Evans Clark, the most illuminating of which is a series of letters written during Jeffrey Clark's final illness in 1930.