The Caroline Smith Page papers consists of a nine page typed transcription of autobiography of Caroline Smith Page, two photographs of Caroline Smith Page, circa 1867 and 1890, a photo of Stephen R. Page circa 1890, a photo of the Page farmstead in Boone, Iowa, a copy of Stephen Rice Page's obituary from the Boone County Democrat, August 29, 1894, and the transmittal letter of Anne and Edward McCarthy accompanying the deposit. Caroline Smith Page's autobiography outlines her family background as a descendent on her mothers side of John McIntyre, a Scotch immigrant to the United States after the Revolutionary War, who settled in Chenango, Green County, NY, where he married Abigail Jackson. Brief note is made Abigail's subsequent remarriage to a Hoyt after John McIntrye's death. Her mother was Alice McIntrye, the daughter of John and Abigail. She traces her paternal descent to William Smith of Rye, Westchester County, NY, who, with his brother John, were left as orphans. The brothers were adopted by an unnamed farmer who apparently took their inheritance. There is a brief description of Caroline Smith's education in the first class of the New York State Normal School at Albany, where she graduated in September 1845, and her subsequent teaching in public school in Troy, NY for four years.

Of interest to researchers is Caroline Page Smith's description of racial relations in the South (5 typescript pages) after being hired to teach in the Natchez Institute in Mississippi in 1849. Her observations on the "negroes" who "wooded up" the steam boats on the Mississippi, the "servants," Southerner's term for slaves, who worked in the homes and fields, or the "black boy" who preceded white women riding to open gates for them, are particularly revealing. She gives a description of slavery on two plantations near Natchez, the Boyd plantation and the Leslie plantation. While she characterizes the Boyd plantation as one where there was "no whipping of slaves", she details the brutality of the neighboring Leslie plantation where a slave killed his brutal master with an axe, the subsequent trial, and disappearance of the slave. As a northerner in the South, Caroline Smith Page felt some reluctance to speak on the issue of slavery with Southerners. She mentions the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the effect that it had on popular opinion, anti-slavery agitation in the North and that "colored preachers" in the South "were prophesying war between the North and the South, and the slaves would be freed...." Smith tells of an 1854 Yellow Fever epidemic in Natchez. Discomfort with slavery caused her and her husband Stephen to leave the South for Illinois.

The Autobiography contains brief accounts of the Page families stays in Chicago (1854-59?) and Champaign, Illinois (1859?-67), their eventual settling in Boone, Iowa (1867-)

The deposit letter from Anne (a great great grandniece of Caroline and Stephen Page) and Edward McCarthy provides information about the careers of descendants of the Pages in Iowa and California, including Isabel Brown Parker, great granddaughter of the Pages, her brothers who were doctors, engineers and bankers, and the grand children who work in Silicon Valley, California, including Dr. Christopher Parker, of Sacramento, who retains the family photo album.