The Edwin Brown Allen papers (MC95) contains biographical materials, correspondence, reports, lectures, course materials, publications, speeches, research notes, subject files, and a Coptic manuscript related to his positions as professor of mathematics and astronomy at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

The collection contains family letters, legal documents (personal, professional, and business), primarily written by residents of New York State and miscellany; photographs of nineteenth-century portraits from the album of Elizabeth Van Rensselaer; black and white photographs taken in the mid-1950s and 1960s of Van Rensselaer family member portraits and homes; newspapers with articles relating to the Van Rensselaer family.