The Carrigan Family Papers consists of correspondence, diaries, account books, photographs, and other papers of the family and relations of Alfred Holt Carrigan and Mary Elizabeth Moore Carrigan. It also includes genealogical materials pertaining to the families of Alfred Holt Carrigan’s parents, the Carrigans and the Holts, as well as similar materials pertaining to the families of Mary Elizabeth Moore Carrigan’s parents, the Moores and the Bethells. The collection includes antebellum property assessments that list enslaved persons by age, sex, and assessed value, as well as bills of sale and other records relating to persons enslaved by Carrigan family members, primarily in North Carolina. The collection includes wartime correspondence of the Carrigan family members who fought as Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, as well as material on an Hempstead County unit, Company H, 20th Arkansas Rifles, CSA. It also includes correspondence with relatives in North Carolina, including Thomas Michael Holt, governor of the state from 1891 to 1893. The collection includes materials pertaining to the assassination in 1876 of Adolphus Gustavus Moore, a brother of Mary Elizabeth Moore Carrigan; Moore was an alleged leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Alamance County, North Carolina. The collection includes correspondence with James Kimbrough Jones, who served as a United States Senator from Arkansas from 1885 to 1903, and Daniel H. Hill, a former Confederate general and president of the University of Arkansas. It also includes an essay on Augustus Hill Garland written by Mary Bethell Carrigan.

The collection features family materials arranged alphabetically and preceding other non-family materials. In addition to correspondence, documents include genealogical records from family bibles, marriage bonds, property appraisals, tax receipts, and wills. Several essays by Alfred Holt Carrigan include a lengthy one detailing individual members of the Carrigan, Holt, Moore, and Bethell families. The twenty-eight images include twenty-four photographs and four tintype images; an appendix lists the subject of each image. William Adams Carrigan’s second account book includes not only his financial transactions but also copies of the wills and appraisals of the estates of both James Edwin Carrigan and William M. Carrigan. In several cases more than one family member shared a common name. In instances where the relationship is father-to-son, a Roman numeral indicates the relationship. In other cases the dates of the men are listed. For instance, William Adams Carrigan (1830-1897), who lived in North Carolina, was a nephew of William Adams Carrigan (1792-1880). The author of one diary, which includes interspersed entries for several years from 1886 to 1905, is unidentified. Non-family materials include correspondence with General Hill and Senator Jones’s family as well as unidentified persons; Hempstead County newspapers; and a negative caricature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They also include materials pertaining to the Arkansas Secession Convention in 1861; Company H, 20th Arkansas Rifles, CSA; and the Hope chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.