The Poe Family Papers consist of account books, bills, budgets, charts and diagrams, check stubs, compact disks, Confederate currency, contracts, correspondence, engineering drawings, lists, maps, memos, orders, an ordinance, photographs, receipts, reports, a scrapbook, tables, time books and sheets, trial balances, and other material.

The H. T. Poe material in the collection documents his activities with the Greenville Gas and Electric Light and Power Company, the Greenville Traction Company (a street railway), the Paris Mountain Water Company, and the South Carolina Railway Company. The power and water companies were major public utilities that facilitated the economic growth and development of the city of Greenville in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much of the correspondence-mostly incoming-in this part of the collection is with the with the American Pipe Manufacturing Company and the National Gas and Construction Company, both of Philadelphia, PA. The American Pipe Manufacturing Company owned the Paris Mountain Water Company until 1918, and because of its link to George M. Bunting & Associates of Philadelphia, helped organize the other Greenville utilities. There is also material on Keowee Farm, a farm he owned that was located in Pickens County, SC at the confluence of the Seneca and Keowee Rivers and Twelvemile Creek, just north of Clemson.

Harry T. Poe's papers relate almost exclusively to his role as Senior Engineer of the Santee-Cooper Project, with a few items documenting his activities as an engineering student at Clemson College. The Project provided work relief for thousands of unemployed South Carolinians during the Depression, facilitated rural electrification in the middle and coastal portions of the state, and created power generating capacity which stimulated economic development in the communities it served. Isadora Poe's papers are concerned with her investment in local textile mills, other financial activities, and her interest in the history of the Sloan family.

Harry T. Poe Jr. compiled two volumes of "general information" and a scrapbook of photographs about the Project. The volumes consist of budgets, charts and diagrams, correspondence and memos (both incoming and outgoing), maps, orders, photographs, reports, and other material for the period 1933-1940-with most of the items dated between 1938 and 1939-relating to all aspects of the Project arranged alphabetically by topic. The scrapbook chronicles the construction of the Pinopolis and Santee dams and reservoirs from April to December 1939. Digital copies of the scrapbook photographs were made by Santee-Cooper and are available on four compact disks.

In addition to the maps documenting the Santee-Cooper Project are maps of South Carolina, Charleston County, Greenville and the surrounding area, and Keowee Farm.

Significant topics documented in the collection include the Santee-Cooper Power and Navigation Project; the Poe family; the history of Greenville, SC; the economic development of South Carolina; and the general history of South Carolina public utilities. The papers include information relating to the history of specific utilities such as the Greenville Gas and Electric Light and Power Company, the Greenville Traction Company, and the Paris Mountain Water Company, as well as the South Carolina Railway Company. There is also material relating to Anderson, SC; the Sloan family; and Woodside Mills in the collection.

Major correspondents include H. Bayard Hodge, Secretary of the American Pipe Manufacturing Company and the National Gas and Construction Company, both of Philadelphia, PA; Joseph S. Keen, Jr., General Manager of the American Pipe Manufacturing Company; F. A. Dale and L. F. Harza of the Harza Engineering Company; Kenneth Markwell, Project Engineer for the Santee-Cooper Project; F. R. Sweeny, Chief Engineer of the South Carolina Public Service Authority; Joel D. Justin of Philadelphia, Consulting Engineer to the Project; and Stephen Taber, professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of South Carolina and consultant to the Harza Engineering Company.