Mary Hemphill Bush Rieffel's collection documents her academic progress, travels, and family life growing up, as well as her own family as an adult.

The collection is organized into two series: Family papers and Family photographs. The material dates from 1845 to 1995.

The Family papers series consists of a small amount of correspondence to Mary H.B. Rieffel and papers documenting Rieffel's academic career. Two ledgers track her belongings, one devoted to their repair and the other notating their disposition. The ledgers maintain the provenance of the belongings, dates, and relationships between those who gave the item(s). There are two sets of scrapbook pages containing newspaper clippings, one related to Rieffel's wedding in 1936 and one related to her parents' wedding in 1905. There is some correspondence from Rieffel's parents, Joanna Bush and William Bush; primarily, there are postcards from Joanna Bush to her daughter, Frances C.B. Grube, mostly concerning family news. There is a diary and some correspondence to her family dating from Mary H.B. Rieffel's trip to Plymouth, England, in 1931. Additionally, there are marriage certificates, birth and baptismal certificates, graduation and professional certificates, and obituaries.

The Family photographs series is organized into two subseries: Portraits and snapshots and Homes and haunts.

The Portraits and snapshots subseries consists of images of Mary H.B. Rieffel, her siblings, parents, extended family, friends of the family, and school friends. There are individual portraits of the Bush family members and some group portraits. There are some portraits of her maternal and paternal grandparents. There are many snapshots of the Bush family throughout their childhood, at their family home, on vacations, and playing at the beach.

Three albums were disbound, with loose pages that were cut apart, prior to arriving at Hagley Library. The purpose for such disbinding is unknown. The photographs on the pages were numbered, and therefore, using the numbering, the albums could be reassembled. None of the albums are complete; pages, sections of pages, and photographs from pages are missing. Most of the images have captions with the numbers, and most of the captioning includes dates (at least a year). Instances where the archivist has reassembled the album have been notated in the finding aid on the file level.

There are images showing Rieffel at camp, her days at Fairfax Hall, and at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. There is also a set of family albums concerning her husband, Marc Rieffel, and their three sons. The albums include a trip to France in 1953, accompanied by Mary H.B. Rieffel's travel diary.

The Homes and haunts subseries includes various images of du Pont and Bush family homes and vacation locales. There is a series of twenty-seven stereoviews of "Greystone," the home of William Bush Sr. (1821-1891), Rieffel's paternal great-grandfather. Wilmington-based professional photographer Joseph A. Maybin (1827-1914) took the photographs around 1880. The Greystone house, built in 1869, was on the corner of Clayton and Beech streets in southwest Wilmington, Delaware. The images show various exteriors of the home and property; a few images include people, one being Rieffel's father, labeled as "William Bush, Jr." on the backs of the images.

Other homes include the Bush family home on Delaware Avenue, Rieffel's schools and camp, and du Pont estates: Longwood Gardens, Winterthur, and Eleutherian Mills. One vacation locale frequently pictured is Skyland, Virginia, where the family rode horses.