Hotel receipt from Lausanne-Palace, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1919

This collection consists mainly of personal correspondence from Smith to his mother during World War I, letters received from several of his cousins, financial and legal papers, and photographs. It also contains miscellaneous items related to Smith’s father, legal papers of his mother, a letter written to Mrs. Smith from her sister Netta Tutwiler, and a small quantity of financial and legal papers of a cousin, Margaret Roberts Ellington. The papers are fragmentary, with a gap spanning a period of almost thirty-five years, from the 1930s through 1963. The strength of the collection lies in the World War I material, particularly in Paoli Smith's correspondence, which offers a wartime perspective on his own life, the lives of non-combatants, and the effects of war upon the countryside.