Original Correspondence : America and West Indies : Indian Affairs, Surveys, etc. (CO 5 / 65-82, 225) : 1760-1784.

Colonial Office 5 is an artificial class which was created through a major reorganization of records in the Public Record Office between 1908-1910. It includes, mainly, the records of the colonies, including Original Correspondence, Entry Books, Acts, Journals, Naval Office Lists, and Miscellaneous of Plantations General, and of each of the colonies now forming the United States.

Records precede the development of the Colonial Office, created in 1854, and contain records in the offices of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, which held responsibility for British colonial matters until 1782, when both were abolished at the end of the American Revolution. Responsibility was then held by the Home Secretary until the new position of Secretary of War was created in 1794 and the department renamed Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in 1801. Position of Secretary of State for the Colonies, also known as Colonial Secretary, had been created in 1768 and took on more of a leadership role over the Board of Trade through the American Revolutionary period.

The Original Correspondence, or in-letters, are those documents sent from a British colony to Great Britain.

British Indian Department was created in 1755 to oversee British relations with Indigenous peoples of North America. Initially divided in North America into two units: Northern Department and Southern Department, each with a superintendent, and a boundary between the two jurisdictions running along the Ohio and Potomac rivers. William Johnson was commissioned superintendent for the north to oversee allying the Indigenous population with the British during the French and Indian War. He was replaced in 1774 upon his death by his son Guy Johnson. Edmund Atkins was the first superintendent for the Southern Department and John Stuart replaced him in 1762. The Southern Department was divided into two - east and west - during the American Revolution.