The Buswell papers and photographs consist of primary source material collected by self-trained historian Howard Buswell during his lifetime.  Researchers must pay particular attention to the fact that in his collecting efforts and in his writings Buswell provides an interpretation of history that reflects his own biases and the time period in which he lived.  The items included in the collection cover nearly all aspects of social and economic life of the lower Nooksack Valley and North Puget Sound areas in Washington State from the time of the first contact between white settlers and Native Americans to the early decades of the twentieth century.  He was also interested in the Lummi culture and the collection contains a good deal of source material related to the history of this tribe.

The collection consists of thirty boxes of material including correspondence, duplicates of primary source material, indexes and lists, business records, transcripts of interviews, copies of legal documents, scrapbooks and newspaper clipping. The collection also includes 16 boxes of photographs, 10 boxes of microfilm, over 2000 maps, and 3 boxes of reel to reel audio tapes of oral history interviews.

The correspondence begins in 1938 and ends in 1965 with the main purpose of assembling materials and other evidence on pioneer settlement in the Marietta/Lummi area.  The bulk of the letters, however, relate to historical materials held in various archives and other repositories or else are inquiries to the latter about such materials.  The correspondence is arranged in chronological order with the original letter attached to the reply.  The indexes and lists are, for the most part, lists and indexes of various materials Howard Buswell collected.  It should be noted though that the present organization of the Buswell Collection is often radically different from the arrangement suggested by the indexes.  The Bernard N. McDonough business records include miscellaneous private and business letters, receipts and bills, various legal documents, and a number of account books kept in McDonough's Marietta store.  The legal documents and papers have been arranged in part according to subject, in part according to type, and in part according to the court of origin.  They are composed of a variety of legal records ranging from business records to transcripts of select court cases.