Radio Script #388

Little Talks on Common Things

October 5, 1958

I find that very few listeners to WTVL know how the Waterville Public Library began and developed into the important municipal institution which it is today. So tonight I want to tell you about it.

In March, 1896, a group of citizens formed the Waterville Free Library Association. More than fifty years earlier a circulating library had been started in the town, and had continued, with some interruptions, through the years. But that earlier library was a fee, not a free library. Borrowers had to pay for the privilege of taking out books. By the 1890’s libraries free to all citizens were becoming common, especially in the larger communities. So a group of public spirited citizens of Waterville formed in 1896 the first free library in this community.

The Association held annual meetings, and between those sessions it was managed by a board of thirteen trustees, consisting of the Mayor, three chosen by the City Council, one by the Board of Trade, and eight by the Association itself. That original board had three women members: Mrs. Annie Pepper, Mrs. Ellen Arnold and Mrs. Lillian Campbell. The chairman was Simon S. Brown and the secretary was Horatio Bates.

That first board set up quarters in the Plaisted Block on Main Street, but remained there only a few months, when they moved to what the newspaper called “Mr. Haines’ new block on Common Street”. The first librarian was Mrs. Agnes Johnson, who for operating the library every week day from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9, a total of 24 hours a week, received a salary of $5 a week, a little less than 21 cents an hour.

At first there was no catalogue of the books. But in the fall of 1896, the trustees voted that “a list of books in the library be prepared, and four copies be placed on the library tables.” In 1897 Mrs. Johnson’s salary was raised to $300 a year, and in 1898 electric lights were installed at a rental of $4 a month. The trustees were diligent and ingenious in raising money for the library. Members of the Woman’s Literary Club made a house~to-house canvas, which yielded nearly $400. The Cecilia Club, Waterville’s famous musical organization of half a century ago, gave a benefit concert which netted $250. Even the GAR put on a benefit entertainment, and the Hollingsworth and Whitney Company contributed $100.

Many people have supposed that the City appropriated nothing for the public library until the present building was erected in 1905. But that is not the case. As early as 1896, the very year the Free Library Association was started, the city appropriated $500 toward the library’s support. The same amount was appropriated every succeeding year until 1902, when the amount was increased to $1,000, then to $1,500 in 1903, in obvious preparation for the $2,000 required by terms of the Carnegie gift.

Even when the city appropriation was small, the trustees were dependent upon it, just as they are today. In January, 1902, the treasurer reported that he had “on hand $36 to pay current bills until the Library should receive its appropriation from the next City Government”.

First mention of the Carnegie building in the trustee records came on November 6, 1903, when it was voted that “the chairman confer with the City Committee on the Carnegie Library Building, to ascertain what has been done, and what plans, if any, have been adopted”. But in the annual records of the Association it was as early as May, 1902 when it was voted, “The Waterville Free Library Association expresses to Andrew Carnegie, Esq., grateful appreciation of his gift of $20,000 to the City of Waterville for a Library

What had happened was the successful outcome of persistent attempts by a few determined citizens to obtain a library building, so that the library would no longer be confined to the cramped quarters of a single room in a business block. The person who took the leadin.this endeavor was a woman, Mrs. Annie Pepper, wife of the former president of Colby and former pastor of the Baptist Church~ George Dana Boardman Pepper. Andrew Carnegie had just begun to donate library buildings to American communities, and Mrs. Pepper tried to stir up local enthusiasm for a Waterville application to Mr. Carnegie.

Her first attempts were met with cool response, even with opposition. When it was allover and the city had accepted a Carnegie gift, Mayor Cyrus Davis expressed his dissent in his 1904 report: “I feel sure the proper policy would have been to appropriate a given sum annually for five or six years for a building which at the end of that time would have had local meaning instead of paying $2,000 a year to take care of a building bearing the name of a stranger.”

Not only had Mrs. Pepper boldly written to Mr. Carnegie on her own authority, to sound out the situation. The same had been done by Elwood Wyman, the local superintendent of schools, by Mrs. Willard Arnold, and by other citizens. As a result, in 1903, Mayor Martin Blaisdell received a letter from Mr. Carnegie, offering to give the City of Waterville $20,000 to build a library, provided the City would provide a site; at least $2,000 must be appropriated annually toward the library’s support; and the library must be free to all the citizens. Furthermore, since Mr. Carnegie never made these gifts to private associations, proper arrangements would have to be made to make the library a publicly operated institution.

The City Government accepted the Carnegie offer and appointed a committee to select a site. The committee decided to erect the building on a part of Monument Park on Elm Street, but such a storm of protest arose that a group of citizens got a legal injunction against such action. The committee thereupon decided to go across the street and put up the new library directly opposite the First Baptist Church.

At once more trouble ensued. The proposed site was a part of the original Lot 104 of the McKechnie survey in the 1780’s, extending 40 rods along the Kennebec River, and back to the Messalonskee. The whole lot had been purchased early in the 1800’s by Timothy Boutelle. He had generously given part of it in 1824 to the Baptist Society for the erection of their meeting house, and more of it for a town cemetery, the latter being the land which we now call Monument Park. By 1903, most of the lot had, by sale or gift, passed out of the hands of the Boutelle family, except the land on which sat the house built on Temple Street by Timothy Boutelle for his daughter, Mrs. Edwin Noyes. That house is now the headquarters of the Waterville Y.M.C.A. The land that went with it then extended all the way to Elm Street and along Elm Street to what is now the Cottle Parking Lot. It was the northwest corner of that land that the City Committee wanted for the new library. The Noyes family refused to sell, so that the city had to take the land by eminent domain, much to the annoyance of the owners, who are said never to have become reconciled to this municipal action.

So the city took the land and proceeded to let contracts, the major one, for construction of the building, going to the Horace Purinton Company.

In 1904 the Waterville Free Public Library, under the management of 17 trustees, elected by the City Council at its January meeting, commenced operations, succeeding the Waterville Free Library Association. Trustees were elected for four-year terms. To show what a cross-section of the citizenry was represented on that reorganized board, I want to tell you who were its members. First of all there was the mayor, Cyrus W. Davis. Colby College was represented by the professor of English, Arthur J. Roberts. From the churches of the city came Father Charland, the Rev. Edwin Whittemore, and and Rev. E. L. Marsh. The law was represented by Charles F. Johnson and Simon Brown; medicine by Dr. F. C. Thayer and M. S. Goodrich; dentistry by Dr. E. L. Jones; and the business community by Horace Purinton, Frank Redington, Horatio Bates and George Fred Terry. The women of the city were ably represented by Mrs. Edward Heath, Mrs. Franklin Johnson and Mrs. Clarence White.

The original plan provided that all finances should be handled by the City Treasurer directly, but in December, 1904 the Library Trustees and the City Government agreed that the Library should choose a treasurer to receive and disburse all funds, both those coming as gifts and income on investments, as well as those coming from city appropriations.

On May 13, 1905 the Waterville Carnegie Library was suitably dedicated, not only by addresses and the unveiling of a plaque, but also by the spirited music of R. B. Hall’s military band. When it moved into the new building, the library had 3,500 books and received regularly about twenty periodicals. Hours in the new building were established at 10 A.M. to 9:00 P.M. on week days and 2 to 6 P.M. on Sundays. Later attendance was found not to justify Sunday opening, and the hours are now from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. six days a week — the longest weekly open hours of any library in Maine.

Prevailing wages for men as compared with women are strikingly revealed by the salaries paid the three members of the staff as late as 1911: Librarian $500, Assistant $400, Janitor $600. When the new building opened in 1905, the first librarian was Mary Caswell, now Mrs. Benjamin Carter, a life-long resident of Waterville. She served until 1914, when the assistant, Miss Jennie Smith, was elected librarian. The first janitor was Philip Brown. When he died in 1914, it was found necessary to pay his successor $700 a year.

Miss Mary Tobey became assistant librarian in 1921 at a salary of $850. She has been with the library ever since, a continuous service of 38 years. In 1923, for the first time, the librarian’s salary went into four figures. In that year Miss Smith got $1,000, Miss Tobey $950. In 1926 a third person, Miss Marion Tobey, was added to the staff. At that time the salaries were Miss Smith $1,150, Mary Tobey $1,100, Marion Tobey $900. On the resignation of Miss Smith in 1929, Mary Tobey was elected librarian, with Marion Tobey and Mary Whitcomb as assistants. When Miss Whitcomb resigned in 1930, her prospective successor refused to take the position for less than $1,100. The trustees reluctantly granted that salary, but in their thrifty fashion made up for it by reducing vacations of all members of the staff from four weeks to two weeks.

Conditions are not now quite so tight. The staff receives higher salaries than in those years, but not much higher in terms of purchasing power, and not nearly so much as is paid in other libraries of our size. That present staff consists of five full-time workers besides the janitor, and several part-time employees. The full-time persons are Mary Tobey, Librarian; Marion Tobey, Associate Librarian and Cataloguer; Mrs. Mary Loftus, Children’s Librarian and Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Bradford, assistants.

The 3,500 volumes of 1905 have grown to 41,000; the twenty periodicals to nearly 100. Circulation is now about 55,000 items a year. In 1958 the City’s appropriation is $16,000. Increased costs of operation, which can only be met by increased city appropriation, will call for a larger budget in 1959. (Free to other towns.)

The Waterville Public Library is not the exclusive concern of its seventeen trustees and its employed staff. The library belongs to all the people of Waterville, from the tiniest tots in the children’s room, up through the teenagers, so proud of their own attractive alcove, to the several thousand adults who use the library facilities.

That, my friends, is the sixty-three year story of Waterville’s Public Library.

Year: 1958