The Thelma Peters Papers document various aspects of her career. Research files contain valuable information on Miami's early history, while her professional correspondence offers biographical insight into Peters' careers as teacher and pioneering historian. Similarly personal correspondence, photographic slides, and diary and notebook entries offer a good deal of information on the Caribbean and Latin America. Together they reveal that, even when not in her beloved South Florida, Thelma Peters possessed an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail.

The papers contain correspondence, research, literary manuscripts, photographs and slides pertaining to Dr. Peters' career and research. Copies of first hand accounts are also included, for example, the section of Parson's diary pertaining to George Buck's 1895 cruise. One box contains periodicals acquired by William H. Gleason while living at Biscayne (present-day Miami Shores); Gleason participated in state and local politics during Reconstruction.