Kennedy, Alice Carey Traver Libby.

Miss Alice Traver, born in 1876 in Olympia, Washington of pioneer parents, Miles E. (d. 1902) and Stella W. Traver (d. 1914), was educated in Spokane and at the Cheney Normal School. Between 1908 and 1912 she was employed by the Western Union office in Spokane and following that she worked for the city as a labor agent in what became the Women's Free Employment Bureau until 1919. In 1917 she became the second wife of Dr. Isaac Chase Libby (1852-1923) a pioneer Spokane educator. Dr. Libby died in 1923 and following his death Mrs. Libby became a housemother at the Montana School for the Deaf and Dumb. She later married James C. Kennedy and died in Spokane in 1959.

Acutely conscious of her pioneer heritage, Mrs. Kennedy began the compilation of scrapbooks and clipping files which document much of the history of the Inland Empire through the Spokane newspapers. These clippings comprise the largest bulk of this collection. In addition there is a small file of personal and family correspondence, clippings, postcards, brochures, periodicals and other papers.

Mrs. Kennedy's sister, Miss Edith G. Traver (born 1881), a Baptist missionary in China for thirty years preceding World War II, also retained some material from her personal experiences in China. In addition, she later donated the diaries of her father, Miles E. Traver, to the library in another accession.

Throughout her life Mrs. Kennedy contributed many pamphlets, books and other material on the history of the Pacific Northwest to the Washington State University Library and to the Eastern Washington State Historical Society.

From the guide to the Alice Carey Traver Libby Kennedy Papers, 1903-1959, (Washington State University Libraries Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections)