The bulk of the materials in the Rosalie Howell papers document Howell's career as a Red Cross nurse during World War I and her subsequent world travel. Items include a scrapbook; correspondence with former patients; official Red Cross documents; clippings concerning her receipt of the Croix de Guerre from the French government; and travel books, postcards, and ephemera (primarily from the United Kingdom). The collection has material about, or created by, other members of the Howell family; such as two family scrapbooks (mostly concerning Evan P. Howell), and a diary kept by Mary Davis Howell (1873 – 1874). Some of the family materials were created before Rosalie Howell's birth in 1877.