The papers of the Arthur family span the years 1817 to 1972, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1874-1972. Although the collection consists largely of the papers of Chester Alan Arthur II (1864-1937) and Chester Alan Arthur III (1901-1972), it includes papers of President Chester Alan Arthur's sister, Malvina Ann Arthur Haynesworth; his brother, William A. Arthur, Jr.; Chester Alan Arthur II's first wife, Myra Fithian Andrews; his sister, Ellen Arthur Pinkerton; Chester Alan Arthur III's first wife, Charlotte Wilson Arthur, and his second wife, Esther Murphy Strachey Arthur. Other members of the Arthur Andrews, and Fifthian families are also represented in the collection. The papers are organized in ten series: Chester Alan Arthur II Papers, Myra Fithian Andrews Arthur Papers, Ellen Arthur Pinkerton Papers, Chester Alan Arthur III Papers, Malvina Ann Arthur Haynesworth Papers, William A. Arthur, Jr., Papers, Andrews Family Papers, Fithian Family Papers, Miscellany, and Oversize.

After the death of Chester Alan Arthur (1829-1886), Chester Alan Arthur II withdrew from Columbia University School of Law and sailed for Europe where he remained for over a decade. His papers for this period reveal his interest in women, horses, and cuisine. His correspondence abounds with letters from female admirers, and his diaries, scrapbooks, and general correspondence disclose his frequent participation in driving horse-drawn coaches through the French countryside. In 1897, Alan ("A-lan," pronounced as in "plan"), as he liked to be called, unsuccessfully sought appointment as United States ambassador to the Netherlands. His marriage in 1900 to Myra Fithian Andrews raised his family's hopes that he would now choose a vocation or a profession, but he preferred to live on income from investments. He belonged to clubs in England, France, New York, California, and Colorado and mingled with the social elite of two continents. He maintained a home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where for several years he was the major stockholder in a company owning the Trinchera Estate, a 250,000 acre ranch. The company cut timber, raised cattle, mined for gold, and established a game park reserve for the preservation of bison, elk, antelope, and other rare game animals.

Chester Alan Arthur III was more interested in social and political causes than in elegant living. During the 1920s, as his correspondence documents, he joined the Irish Republican Movement. For four years, in Ireland, Paris, and New York, he contributed his services. During the years 1931-1934, under the adopted ancestral name of Gavin Arthur, he organized in the dunes near Pismo Beach, California, a commune devoted to art and literature. He founded a magazine entitled , designed to establish communication between the intellectuals and the masses; six issues of were published.

In 1934, he joined the Utopian Society of America, and for several years thereafter he worked in its behalf. His correspondence for this period includes letters from Upton Sinclair and Herbert Agar. In the late 1930's Arthur became interested in party politics. In 1940, he accepted the post of secretary of the Democratic State Central Committee of California, but in 1941, convinced that the party had betrayed his principles, he resigned.

According to autobiographical manuscripts in the papers, he served in the United States Army and the merchant marine during World War II. After the war, he lived in New York City, where he sold books, tutored, and drew unemployment compensation. In 1949 he went to California and for a time found employment as a teacher-counselor in the state prison at San Quentin. During the 1950s he sustained himself by selling newspapers on the streets of San Francisco. Feeling handicapped by his lack of a formal education, he earned a bachelor's degree at San Francisco State College. Ultimately he became a freelance writer, a professional astrologer, and a student of the occult and of sexology.

Throughout his life, Arthur cultivated a wide variety of people, including political leaders, writers, entertainers, sexologists, and social misfits and outcasts. He was married successively to Charlotte Wilson, a dancer who was also a writer; Esther Murphy Strachey, an expatriate intellectual, the sister of Gerald Murphy, who had formerly been married to John Strachey, a leader of the British Labor Party; and, in his last years, to Ellen Janson, a longtime friend who had helped him launch . He wrote poetry and fiction for which he apparently found no market and began philosophical and historical works that he never completed. In 1962, he published The , a study of male and female sexuality; in 1966, he published a revised and enlarged edition. Portions of the manuscript of the book and four containers of other writings are in his papers.