Bereshit 32:8 records that Yaakov divided the people with him into two camps. Yet, the Torah does not record what the division of the family into two camps. Who was in which camp? It is also unclear whether Yaakov ever split his camp into two.
After Yaakov sent the gifts to Esav, Yaakov took his entire family over the Yabbok River, 32:23. Rambam (on 32:23) seems to claim that this was the splitting of the camp and the text was written out of chronological order. Yet, everybody was taken over the river, so we do not see any split in the family.
Abravanel (2007, p. 604) makes the interesting suggestions that the division was all of Yaakov’s family in one camp and Yaakov’s wealth with his servants in the other camp. The idea was that Yaakov put his “wealth” camp on the side of the river that he thought that Esav would approach first, and he hoped that Esav would have been content to get his wealth. However, Esav ended up approaching the camp with the family, and only after this episode ended did Yaakov rejoin his “wealth” camp. While this suggestion is interesting, we never read of the “wealth” camp in the Torah. Also, it seems unlikely that Esav was after Yaakov’s wealth since even if Esav got Yaakov’s wealth he would have continued to track down Yaakov.
My guess is that the split was all of Yaakov’s family and possessions (except for the gifts to Esav) in one camp and Yaakov by himself in the second camp. First, Yaakov sent ahead his second set of messengers with large number of animals, who were to meet Esav before Yaakov would meet Esav, 32:14-22, 33:9. Then, Yaakov crossed his family over to the northern side of the river to move them further away from Esav, who was coming from the south, 32:23,24. After crossing his family, Yaakov crossed back to the southern side of the river to be the second camp all by himself, with his messengers far ahead of him, and his family on the opposite of the river, 32:25. 32:8 should be understood that Yaakov revealed to the family that he was going to separate from them, but he waited to actually do the split until the nighttime.
The idea of this split was that Yaakov would face Esav by himself in the morning since the fight was a personal fight between the brothers. Yaakov hoped that even if he lost, Esav would have been satisfied with defeating him, and would then leave his family alone. To a great extent this plan worked since I believe that Esav fought with Yaakov in the middle of the night when Yaakov was alone, see our discussion on 32:25-31, 33:10 "Who fought with Yaakov?" At the end of the fight, regardless of who was the assailant, Yaakov was victorious so he knew that he no longer had to split his family (see Netziv on 32:8 and 33:1). Furthermore, the fight left Yaakov injured, 32:32, so in the morning his family re-crossed the river, and joined Yaakov to meet Esav on the southern side of the river.
This split answers another question. 32:25 records that Yaakov was alone. Why should he have been alone? Rashi (on 32:24, quoting from the Talmud Hullin 91a) explains that after he crossed his family, he went back to look for some small jars. Silbermann and Rosenbaum (1934, p. 159, note 2) explain that as 32:24 recorded that Yaakov had already taken all that was his across the river, there could only be some small relatively unimportant items left. This idea is incredible. Yaakov was worried that he might die in the morning, and his concern is to find small jars? Why did his sons not help him with the final small items? The simpler explanation is that the split of the camps was Yaakov by himself in one camp and the remainder of the family in the other camp. Yaakov wanted to be alone since this was how he wanted to meet Esav.
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