This collection predominantly documents Lankford’s personal life and his early academic career. It is arranged as CORRESPONDENCE, ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS, TEACHING, PERSONAL MISCELLANY, and NANCY JO LANKFORD material.
CORRESPONDENCE contains chronologically-arranged personal and professional letters from friends, family, colleagues, and prospective employers. Most of the letters center around events in Lankford’s personal life such as his marriage, divorce, health, ideologies and career moves. The most valuable material illustrates the time, frustration, dedication, and study put forth by young historians. The earlier correspondence documents Lankford’s youthful interest in astronomy through exchanges with such notable astronomers as AAVSO recorder Leon Campbell, Margaret Mayall and Walter Haas. The remainder discusses religion, ideas about history and social reform, marriage, health, and the events in his own life as well as the lives of his friends, family, and professional associates. The other significant theme in the correspondence is the development of Lankford’s benevolence theories.
ACADEMIC RESEARCH PAPERS contains papers written during college for classes and Lankford’s Ph.D. thesis. Later papers written as a professor contain articles for publication and reviews of other’s works. This papers are in chronological order and they outline the development of Lankford's ideas.
TEACHING includes class notes, syllabi, test questions and outlines of paper assignments for classes taught by Lankford at River Falls as an Associate Professor and in Madison as a teaching assistant. These papers are separated by school and arranged by course level thereunder.
PERSONAL MISCELLANY is comprised of various documents such as some amateur astronomical work, clippings, copyrights and book reviews, poetry written while in high school, reports of the River Falls ARC archivist, preliminary Ph.D. examinations, and several instructional letters Lankford wrote describing how his papers should be processed. Also included are scholastic awards, one test from a class taught by Dr. Beale, and two travel journals and one travel paper written as a high school student. They are arranged alphabetically.
The NANCY JO LANKFORD papers include a smattering of academic papers (1962-1964), two baby books and some personal memorabilia such as high school and college diplomas and a high school graduation program.
