Includes the official constitution of the Committee, June 8, 1851. The bulk of the collection is from June through Sept. 1851, with records of a more sporadic nature through November 1852. The papers include minutes of meetings, statements of witnesses, some correspondence, police reports (especially those involving James Stuart and John Jenkins), reports on examination of passenger ships coming from Australia, accounts, and other records, as well as clippings from various San Francisco newspapers. The chronological arrangement, day by day, of most of these papers follows, in the main, the work edited by Mary Floyd Williams entitled: Papers of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance of 1851 (Publications of the Academy of Pacific Coast History v. 4) published by the University of California, Berkeley, 1919. An annotated copy of Williams' book is included, with pencilled notations giving folder number of documents.