Brown's student and professional activities in education are documented extensively in these files of correspondence and related papers. This includes his initial schooling in Sublette, Illinois, his years at the Illinois State Normal University, service as principal of public schools in Belvidere, Illinois, his tenure as Assistant State Secretary of the Illinois Y.M.C.A., his student years at the University of Michigan, 1887-1889, and at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany, 1889-1890, high school principal in Jackson, Michigan, 1890-1891, and acting Assistant professor of the Science and Art of Teaching, 1891-1892.
A large number of correspondence files concern the development of the Department of Pedagogy at the University of California at Berkeley, 1892-1906. These files include extensive correspondence with Brown's colleagues at Berkeley such as presidents Martin Kellogg and Benjamin I. Wheeler, and professors Frederick Slate, George Howison, and numerous educators across the United States, including James B. Angell, Nicholas Murray Butler, William Torrey Harris, Thomas P. Bailey, Jr., E. C. Sanford, Edmund J. James, Andrew S. Draper, Ellwood P. Cubberly, Hugo Muensterberg, John H. Finley, Winston Churchill, Henry M. MacCracken, Daniel Colt Gilman, E. W. Scripture, and Governor George Pardee of California. Of particular interest are letters from John Dewey when the educator was serving as a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. Also included in the professional correspondence files are departmental reports on student enrollment, Brown's course notebooks for "Theory of Education" and "School Systems," and printed material relating to both the Department of Pedagogy and general university concerns. Material concerning Brown's activities as U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1906-1911, include correspondence files and letter books of outgoing correspondence. The final folder relates to Brown's decision to accept the invitation to become Chancellor of New York University in 1911.
