The Packard family was from Bolton in Quebec, Canada. Brothers Charles (MD), Walter, Jesse, Frank and Major all moved to Bloomington in the 1840s and 1850s. They were businessmen as well as accomplished singers and belonged to the spiritualist church. Major Packard made several contributions of papers to the McLean County Historical Society. Frank and Major Packard both served in the Civil War and their correspondence during the war is in the Civil War Era Correspondence Collection.
Correspondence in this collection includes early letters between Margaret Baker (later Packard) in the 1850s when she briefly lived in Iowa City to the death of Margaret Packard in 1924.
Also included in the collection are six historical papers on the early settlement of McLean County presented in the early 1900s.