In 1885, the United States Congress passed an act which allowed American citizens to file French Spoliation Claims with the United States Court of Claims. The act was designed to reimburse the heirs of United States merchants, ship owners and insurance underwriters whose vessels or cargo had been captured and condemned by the French from 1794-1801. The United States assumed the claims of its own citizens as part of the treaty made with France in 1800. In this treaty, France relinquished their claim on the United States for violations of the cooperative treaty of 1778. In return, the United States assumed the costs of American citizens' French Spoliation Claims.

Charles J. Brockway (1807-1891) was a merchant and businessman from Newburyport, Massachusetts who owned several vessels with his associate, Amos Noyes, including the ships Adeline, Brutus, Calypso, Constitution and Euphrasia. Brockway also became the executor of the William Bartlett estate in 1841.

William Bartlett (1748-1841) was a successful merchant who owned a large fleet of vessels employed in the trade with the East and West Indies and suffered some substantial losses at the hands of French privateers prior to 1801. Brockway married Bartlett's granddaughter Elizabeth (b. 1811) in 1835 and was involved in Newburyport commerce as secretary of the Newburyport Mutual Fishing Insurance Agency and as the first president of the Newburyport railroad.

In 1885, when the United States Congress began debate on legislation for appropriating funds for French Spoliation claims, Brockway and Noyes offered their services to those who could show evidence of their spoliation claims through an advertisement in the Newburyport Herald. Respondents to this advertisement generated most of the correspondence in this collection and deal primarily with the descendants of those who suffered monetary losses at the hands of the French prior to 1801.