The majority of the collection consists of correspondence sent by Montgomery Meigs (1847-1931) to his parents, Montgomery Cunningham Meigs and Louisa Rodgers Meigs, while he worked as an engineer on the Northern Pacific Railroad in Minnesota and the Dakota and Montana Territories from 1870-1873. Also included are sketches made by Meigs during the same period and his own later typescripts of his letters, along with a few pieces of family ephemera.

Montgomery Meigs Jr. was born in Rouses Point, New York, in 1847. His father, Montgomery C. Meigs (1816-1892), was a civil engineer and Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Meigs Jr. attended the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University, as well as the Royal Polytechnic School in Stuttgart, Germany, and completed his college education in 1869. From 1870-1873 he worked as resident engineer surveying the Northern Pacific Railroad before becoming an engineer for the U.S. government. The majority of his career was spent working to improve the Mississippi navigation system from St. Paul to the mouth of the Missouri River. Meigs retired in 1926 and died in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1931.

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