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This collection consists of papers including letters concerning Smith's retirement from both Davidson and Washington and Lee, as well as speeches, correspondence, and articles regarding Robert E. Lee, education, modern civilization, and temperance. Also includes material regarding Smith's 1921 trip to England chairing a commission to present a copy of Houdon's statue of George Washington to the British government from the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Correspondence, diaries, sketch books, published and unpublished manuscripts, literary notes, business records, and printed material of a schoolteacher, newspaper writer, county historian, novelist and essayist from Kingwood, whose fiction and nonfiction writings deal primarily with the Virginia-West Virginia Allegheny highlands. His best known works are WINNING OR LOSING?: A STORY OF THE WEST VIRGINIA HILLS (1901); LAND OF THE LAUREL: A STORY OF THE ALLEGHANIES (1903); UNDER THE COTTONWOODS: A SKETCH OF LIFE ON A PRAIRIE HOMESTEAD (1900); and histories of Preston, Pendleton, and Monroe counties. The collection also includes a manuscript temperance paper, "The Meridian Temperance Banner," 1880; and a list of marriage bonds for Monroe County, 1799-1846.

Collection of 31 postcards depicting various scenes related to prohibition, temperance, and women's suffrage. Majority of the postcards relate to temperance and include scenes and poems about the perils of drinking alcohol. One postcard celebrates the repeal of the prohibition amendment, telling of all of the jobs and prosperity the new brewery businesses will bring. Two postcards show women as Uncle Sam and another trumpeting with a banner that reads 'Votes for Women'. One postcard is titled Suffragette Madonna and ridicules the notion of granting women the right to vote. Many of the postcards indicate that they are published from A. T. Cook, Seedsman from Hyde Park, NY and are part of sets of 'Special Temperance Series'.