Archives West Finding Aid

The papers in the three accessions of Laney material were combined and rearranged to form fewer and broader series.

The first series contains the original inventories for MG 2 and MG 153.

The second series contains correspondence of both Francis and Minnie Laney, and invoices. The correspondence of Francis Laney spans the years 1902 to 1938, with the bulk of the letters being between 1910 and 1913. Arrangement is alphabetical by last name of correspondent. A majority of the letters are incoming, with an occasional carbon copy of an outgoing letter included. Most are concerned with geological surveys and field work in North Carolina and Virginia, although a couple of letters contain employment offers. Mrs. Laney's correspondence includes material concerning the Daughters of the American Revolution of which she was state regent, letters germane to the operation of schools in Moscow, Idaho, while she was a member of the school board (1926-1933), some miscellaneous correspondence including a letter from J. Edgar Hoover, and letters of condolence received after her husband's death in 1938. The invoices are for the years 1937 to 1938 and are arranged alphabetically by store.

The third series contains material related to geology. The first items are Geological Survey reports 1-21; Laney wrote numbers 12, 19, 20, and 21. Other items include Laney's 1908 doctoral thesis and letters to other geologists which he collected. The letters to Joseph R. DeLamar of Silver City, Idaho, were written by Christian and Louis Wahl of Chicago in 1886 and 1887 and concern mining in the Silver City area. These were discovered in Silver City by Dr. Laney. John Wellington Finch was a consulting geologist, a widely recognized authority on the mining regions of the world, and a former investigator of fraudulent mining promotions for the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1930 he was appointed Dean of the School of Mines at the University of Idaho; in 1934 he resigned that position to become Director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. W.C. Kerr was, in 1880, the North Carolina State Geologist; in 1882 he was the geologist in charge of the Southern Appalachian Division of the United States Geological Survey. An outstanding mining authority, Francis A. Thomson was Dean of the University of Idaho School of Mines from 1917 to 1928 when he resigned to become president of the Montana School of Mines in Butte. In 1919 he was instrumental in the creation of the Idaho Bureau of Mines and Geology. Lester F. Ward was associated with both the USGS and the Smithsonian Institution.

Memorabilia and photographic negatives, originally MG 153, make up the fourth series. Included are a miscellaneous collection of baggage tags, items on the George Washington Bicentennial, liquor bottle labels, National Recovery Act emblems, old prohibition literature, seals and trademarks, and worlds fair memorabilia dating from 1983 to 1928. Also included are over 800 photographic negatives of Europe and World War I.

The final series is a scrapbook kept by Laney's son, Francis Towner Laney. It includes report cards, programs from high school events, sports tickets, newspaper clippings, and material relating to DeMolay. From his years at the University of Idaho he kept several handbooks, programs, grades, sports notes, R.O.T.C. material, restaurant menus and signed napkins, plus graduation programs. After graduating from the university in 1935 he entered Kinman Business University in Spokane and included menus, theater ticket stubs, letters, and post cards among the memorabilia of this period.