This collection primarily documents the activities of members of the Vose, Stearns, and McCormick, dating from 1834 to 1949, and chiefly reflects their life in Los Angeles, California. In particular, this set of papers documents the activities of the Hollenbeck Ebell Club of Los Angeles through the personal documents, correspondence, diaries and photographs of Cynthia Lisetta Vose (born 1839) and her daughter Nellie Stearns McCormick (born 1869).

Cynthia Lisetta Vose was born in 1839 in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Her family including her parents Nathaniel Vose and Cynthia Smith Belcher Vose and her siblings Edgar and George Vose, were early settlers of farm land in Lake County, Illinois. In 1857, Cynthia Vose married George Kimball Stearns. The couple had three children named Harry Stearns (born 1858), Elmer Paine Stearns (born 1860) and Nellie Stearns (born 1869). Harry, upon completing his BA at Dartmouth College worked as a salesman for the Lippincott book company. Elmer attended Lake Forest College for two years, worked as a telegraph operator and then moved to Southern California in the late 1880s. Harry joined Elmer in California to run a fruit ranch in Suisan, California, in hopes of recovery from his suffering of tuberculosis. Harry died in 1888 of the disease in Gurnee, Illnois, after his mother brought him back from California by train to attend to his final months. George Kimball Stearns died in 1894. Cynthia Vose then married her cousin, Nathaniel (Nat) Vose born in 1850 of Warren, Illinois in 1895. The two shared similar interests in spiritualism, homeopathic healing and "free thinking."

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