Collection primarily documents the activities of Lorin Farrar Wheelwright but contains some of the personal papers of his parents David R. and Valborg Rasmussen Wheelwright from 1890 to 1980, including documents pertaining to their lives as children, students, parents, missionaries, and workers through personal autobiographies, pictures, journals, correspondence, and personal writings.

The bulk of the collection contains personal documents of Lorin Wheelwright's life in music, education, lithography, religion, and civic leadership while in Oswego, New York, and in Utah. His musical documents contain lesson plans, class projects, newspaper clippings, personal music studies and tests, which pertain to his career as a teacher and administrator. Between 1967 and 1974 Wheelwright served as the Dean of Fine Arts of Brigham Young University in which this collection contains his correspondences, publications, and projects dealing with his commitment to the Board of Student publications, and the BYU Centennial and Mormon Festival of Arts projects. Throughout his life he served as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the collection contains his personal religious papers from 1952 to 1964. They include papers and correspondence dealing with the Sunday School General Board, Instructor manuscripts (an LDS magazine), and documents kept while serving in the ward and stake levels.

Wheelwright fulfilled civic duties and leadership as he interacted with the Utah Legislative Council and Coordinating Council of Higher Education in which the collection contains correspondences, reports, and bulletins surrounding each council's activities. The collection also contains Wheelwright's activities with Grove Finance/Beacon Financial Inc. as a chairman, in which he took part in a bankruptcy issue against Hal Haycock. The collection contains court orders, schedules, hearings, and reports. The largest part of the collection is composed of Wheelwright's activities in his Lithography business in which he worked for twenty-eight years. Publications, manuscripts, correspondences, and financial statements all document his success as a lithographer.