Major collections of ceremonial masks purchased by Harley in Liberia are held in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and the Anthropology Department of the College of William & Mary.

[1] Harley enlisted in the Medical Corps in June 1918 and was assigned to the Chemical Warfare Unit in the Brady Laboratory of the Yale School of Medicine.

He spent the summer at Wilfred Grenfell's Harrington Hospital in Labrador, then from September 1924 to February 1925 studied at the Kennedy School of Missions of the Hartford Seminary.

He attended the London School of Tropical Medicine from May to September 1925, took a map-making course at the Royal Geographical Society and studied under a craftsman potter for a month.

[1] The Liberian government, based at Monrovia on the western coast, began to establish some level of military control over the interior in the early 20th century.

[4] In the 1920s the government introduced a hut tax, a considerable hardship in regions that did not have a money-based economy, which may have helped Harley buy ceremonial masks for cash.

Mandingo traders were granted land and encouraged to establish markets, selling imported goods in exchange for local produce such as kola and latex.

[1] The Harleys spent four months in preparation in Monrovia before leaving for Ganta, where the government had given them permission to build a mission on 250 acres (100 ha) of land.

Schwab helped introduce Harley to the anthropologist Earnest Hooton of Harvard, the start of a long professional relationship.

He spent his subsequent furloughs in 1938, 1944, 1948 and 1952 at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard where he worked with the displays of artifacts, wrote and studied.

[15] Harley's approach to collecting and documenting reflected the anthropological theories of the time, and included an effort to classify the masks by type and relate the classification to social functions.

[16] The supply of masks grew to a peak in 1939, perhaps due to social changes that made them less valuable, then began to dry up with prices rising as American and European collectors entered the market.

[18] As Winifred Harley explained, Some of the younger Mano men had masks, charms or fetishes in their possession which they may have inherited from a father or an uncle, to their own embarrassment ...

[19] Harley became intrigued by the men's secret societies, which he called "Poro" after other ethnographies, and which conducted elaborate initiation ceremonies for boys.

The masked officials of the societies had supernatural powers derived from ancestral spirits, and exercised broad authority that extended beyond village boundaries.

[20] A 1949 reviewer said the book was excellent in providing factual information, but was weak in anthropological analysis and showed strong ethnocentric bias.

[21] In 1960 the Harleys retired to Merry Point, Lancaster County, Virginia where he suffered a fatal heart attack on 7 November 1966 at age 72 .

[citation needed] President William Tubman publicly praised Harley's long service on behalf of the people of Liberia.

[10] His wife moved back to New England, where she wrote a book about her life's work titled A Third of a Century with George Way Harley in Liberia (1973).