The five box, Henry Peterson Papers chronicle the adult life of a significant, early twentieth-century, Utah educator. The papers touch upon the above professional activities with correspondence, notebooks, personal writings, and diaries.

The correspondence consists primarily of incoming letters to Peterson. These have been arranged alphabetically by correspondent. One folder contains outgoing correspondence from Peterson that has been arranged chronologically. There are two exceptions to the above filing order, first are two cases in which Peterson was involved and because there were documents that went together with the correspondence, these sections were left intact. The other exception was a series of correspondence by Peterson's children that did not involve Henry Peterson directly. These items were filed under the name of the child.

This collection also contains a series of diaries which Peterson kept from 1895-1907. These diaries cover his missionary experiences in Sacramento, California, and his attendance to the above mentioned universities. Of particular interest her is the diary kept by his wife, Mary Jane "Polly" Peterson, while the family was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1906-1907.

Perhaps the most significant single part of the collection is the material pertaining to a controversy over the instruction of evolution at the Brigham Young Academy. Peterson, at this time, 1909-1911, was dean of the LDS Teachers College. He chose to teach the idea of evolution in his classes and this created a controversy a the school that led to Peterson's resignation. Peterson kept a scrapbook containing newspaper articles about the event and wrote several essays about the problem. One letter that stands out in this context is a copy of a lengthy letter that Peterson sent the then LDS president Joseph F. Smith explaining his stand on evolution.

Two other items of particular interest that are in the collection are Josephite affidavits that Peterson received when on his mission. One affidavit from Miss F. C. Neal stated that she heard Alexander Smith say that the revelations given to the ‘inspired translation' of the Bible was not correct, and that Joseph Smith Jr. had changed parts of the Bible. The other affidavit, also from Miss F. C. Neal, stated that Jason Briggs had attempted to persuade her into becoming his plural wife. Briggs later became a founder of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (now the Community of Christ) and denied ever having believed in the idea of plural marriage.