Alabama Library History: Woodlawn in 1949

Women and their clubs have been very important to the development of public libraries in America. In a paper written in graduate school I explored this truth as exemplified by the efforts to organize a public library in Union Springs, Alabama, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

I recently came across the 1949 newspaper item below and thought I would share it on this blog, since one of my ongoing topics is Alabama library history. The piece notes efforts to showcase the Birmingham Public Library and its campaign for a new building for the Woodlawn branch before the members of the Woman's Club of Birmingham. 

In the segregated city of 1949, this club was no doubt made up of white women. African-American women in Alabama had their clubs as well.

The Birmingham Public Library web site gives this brief history of the Woodlawn branch, the system's first: 

"The Woodlawn Branch Library had its beginning in 1904 when a group of club women bought a few books and started a library at the home of Mrs. J. B. Gibson. On February 27, 1905, the library was moved to the business area and opened to the public. It was presented to the city of Woodlawn on March 7, 1905 by the club women. Woodlawn became a part of Birmingham in 1910. In 1911 the library was presented to the City of Birmingham to become the first branch library in the city system."

Birmingham Age-Herald 27 October 1949

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Two Early Medical Libraries in Birmingham

In March 2014 I wrote a post on "Alabama Libraries in 1886 and 1897" that described libraries found in the state in surveys done by the U.S. Bureau of Education. That 1886 survey found three medical libraries in Alabama. The largest was at the State Board of Health in Montgomery with 3000 volumes. The Pierson Libary at the Alabama Insane Hospital [later Bryce] had some 1500 books, and the Medical College of Alabama in Mobile had 500.

In this post I want to briefly discuss two medical libraries in Birmingham in the first decade of the 20th century. Comments are below. Today there are a few more medical libraries in the state, primarily at hospitals and academic medical centers. Since 1980 the Alabama Health Libraries Association has served those facilities.

Alabama Medical Journal October 1901 Volume 13 number 11

This item announces the intent to organize a medical library for Birmingham physicians. As items below indicate, efforts quickly began and a library association continued meeting until at least 1908.

George Summers Brown, M.D. [1860-1913]

Source: Holley, History of Medicine in Alabama

According to the article above, Brown was the "prime mover" in the effort to organize a medical library for the county society. As the item below notes, the idea quickly morphed into the impressive-sounding Birmingham Medical Library Association. Brown taught obstetrics at the Birmingham Medical College.

Alabama Medical Journal November 1901 Volume 13 Number 12

Alabama Medical Journal September 1908 Volume 20 Number 10

This 1908 meeting report indicates that the library association meetings were much like the county and state medical society ones--a chance to exchange some clinical information, eat good food and socialize. The Dr. E.M. Prince mentioned was a founder and surgeon for a number of years at South Highlands Infirmary [now UAB Highlands]. Prince published numerous articles before World War I and some indicated the presence of Dr. James Robertson Dawson as the physician giving anesthesia for his cases. 

That 1908 volume of the Alabama Medical Journal contains two letters to the Birmingham Medical Library Association from local physician Dr. H.S. Ward reporting on his visits to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and London, England. The first letter was read at the December 1907 meeting of the Association. In closing his second letter, Dr. Ward expresses the hope that "some day our own medical library association may be in a home of its own." 

I'll have to do some more research to determine how long this association met and if a library ever really developed and what eventually happened to it if it did. The list of names above in the original announcement indicates that a large cross-section of the county society's members at least wanted themselves associated with this project.

The second example is the private library belonging to a physician who practiced for a number of years in Birmingham, Dr. John Clark LeGrande. You'll note that he served as president of the library association organized in 1901. 

LeGrande taught hygiene and medical law at the Birmingham Medical College. He was the founding editor of the Alabama Medical and Surgical Age which was published from 1889 until 1911. LeGrande was also one of the individuals who helped furnish Hillman Hospital when the permanent brick building opened in July 1903; his contributions outfitted the obstetrical ward. 

LeGrande died in March 1906 and his personal medical library was offered for sale. The John Daniel Sinkler Davis named in the notice below had also practiced medicine in Birmingham for many years. An 1879 graduate of the Medical College of Georgia, Davis was the older brother of William Elias B. Davis, one of Alabama's most prominent physicians of his time period. LeGrande's "magnificent" personal library must have been impressive for its day.

Alabama Medical Journal April 1907 Volume 19, number 5 page 252

John Clark LeGrande, M.D.

Source: Holley, History of Medicine in Alabama

This page is from Jefferson County Probate records pertaining to Dr. John Clark LeGrande and dated April 7, 1906, just over two weeks after his death. As noted, he died without a will and the list of his "real and personal estate" included a "medical library." Family members probably asked Dr. J.D.S. Davis to handle the sale of the collection.





Some More Tuscaloosa History

Dianne and I recently made a visit to Northport to visit our daugher Becca Leon; son-in-law Matt was out of town. The three of us took in the Riverwalk along the Black Warrior River, and I've posted photos etc about that stroll here and here. In this post I want to cover a couple of historical places we also saw in Tuscaloosa. I've written a previous post on some other such places in the area.

First up is the former Queen City Pool & Bathhouse on River Road. Built during the Great Depression, the complex was designed by Buel Schulyer, who studied under legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The location was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. In December 2011 the building became the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum. Unfortunately the museum is not open on Sundays, so hopefully we can see it on another visit.  

In the photos above and below you can see where the pool for the complex was located. This area is to your right as you face the former bathhouse. 

Next door to the transportation museum is the main Tuscaloosa Public Library. I worked at this library in the early 1980's just after finishing library school at UA. This front entrance looks unfamiliar to me; I always entered via the employees' entrance on the back side of the building!

The library's web site has a nice history page.  

While we were in the Tuscaloosa area we also drove around Northport trying to find a particular location there. We never found it, but we did drive a short way on modern portions of Byler Road, once a major highway through 19th century Alabama. The state Department of Archives and History has this text from an historical marker for the road. The text of such markers all over the state can be found here by county. You can learn more about Byler Road here and here.



Byler Road
One-half mile east is a portion of the original Byler Road. Legislation authorizing construction signed into law December 1819, by Alabama's first governor, William Wyatt Bibb. Built by John Byler, it was Alabama's first public road. Opened November 1822, operated as a toll road until 1834. Twelve feet wide, it connected Northwest Alabama and the Tennessee River to the Warrior River at Northport. Used by early settlers and military forces during War Between the States, it was a factor in the development of many Alabama communities.

A Quick Visit to Union Springs, Alabama

One of the towns brother Richard and I visited on our recent tour through east central Alabama was Union Springs in Bullock County. The town dates from the early 1830's. We were passing through quickly, so I only took a few photos. They are below with some comments. 

The Bullock County Courthouse has some very striking architecture. The building was constructed in 1871 and 1872; information about it and many other historic structures in Union Springs can be found here. 

Downtown Union Springs is a lovely place with lots of history, but was very quiet on the July Saturday afternoon when we visited. 

Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of the Carnegie Library in Union Springs, but found one on the Deep Fried Kudzu site in a post with others from around town. The site is linked below. 

Back in the early 1980's I worked on a master's degree in library science in Tuscaloosa. For one of my classes I wrote a paper on the development of this Carnegie Library. In the late 19th and early twentieth century industrialist Andrew Carnegie gave away much of his fortune to many communities to build public libraries if the towns and cities would agree to fund operating expenses. About a dozen were built in Alabama. Over 2500 were built in the United States and various other countries.

Both a summary and the full report I wrote on this library are available online. 

Carnegie Library in Union Springs
Source: Deep Fried Kudzu 

What's Local, Online & Free? History, of Course!

The Birmingham area includes several counties and many cities with remarkable histories. Three local efforts are bringing much of that rich web of the past to screens near you.

Birmingham Public Library offers access to collections of images and texts of the African American Experience in Birmingham, the Alabama Theatre, some early newspapers, city buildings, old homes, businessmen and business districts. Also available are scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and local school yearbooks. The Birmingham Memory collection features submissions by the public.

 

Each BPL collection may have several subdivisions.  For instance, the African American Experience collection features a number of subjects, including churches, civil rights, and A.G. Gaston. Various groups such as inventors, lawyers, mayors, musicians and nurses; and schools such as the Industrial High School [now Parker High School] and the Tuggle Institute are also included.

   

In 1903 local social worker and educator Carrie Tuggle opened her Institute for the housing and education of African-American orphans in the area. Within a decade the facility had almost 150 students, most boarding at the school. The Institute became a part of the Birmingham public school system in 1926, and the current Tuggle Elementary School carries on the name. Alumni of the public school have included businessman A.G. Gaston and musicians Erskine Hawkins, Jo Jones and Fess Whatley.

 Research Club at Tuggle Institute in 1911

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Tuggle Institute c. 1906
Source: BhamWiki

Carrie A. Tuggle [1858-1924]
Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Besides material about the history of the university, UAB’s digital offerings include oral histories related to the city and Alabama, pellagra in Alabama and Mervyn H. Sterne, a local businessman for whom one of UAB’s libraries is named. Pellagra is a nutritional deficiency disease that was rampant in the South in the first decades of the 20^th century.

Also available from UAB is the Birmingham Medical College collection, material related to the school that operated in the city from 1894 until 1915. The college was one of many proprietary schools in the U.S. before World War I. As state legislatures and the American Medical Association began stricter regulation of medical schools, these small for-profit businesses like Birmingham Medical College began to close. The city remained without a medical school until the Medical College of Alabama moved here from Tuscaloosa in 1945.

A third resource devoted to Birmingham history and culture is the BhamWiki project. A private Wiki project that covers all topics related to the city and the surrounding area, BhamWiki currently has over 10,400 articles and 2400 illustrations available for the interested public. Contributions from anyone are encouraged.

Alabama Mosaic is another catalog of online print and image resources from the collections of numerous libraries, museums, archives and government agencies in the state. Many Birmingham area materials including those from BPL and UAB are linked in this database. All of the resources mentioned here are free to use for personal study and research.

Alabama Mosaic

BhamWiki

Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

UAB Digital Collections

This piece originally appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site on July 25, 2013.

Alabama Library History: Bookmobiles

For many decades one of the outreach methods used by public libraries all over America has been the bookmobile. These rolling collections brought reading material to both adults and children who often had no way to get to the city or county's public library building. A recent article by Piotr Kowalczyk on the "10 Most Extraordinary Mobile Libraries" describes a variety of moving libraries from around the world.

Below are some photographs of bookmobiles that once toured the roads in Alabama. These images come mostly from the digital collections of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. In many the vehicle seems to be parked in front of a school, which often had no library or a poorly stocked one. The photographs seem to date from the 1920's and 1930's. Some city and county public libraries in the state still operate bookmobiles including Baldwin, Huntsville-Madison, Mobile and Tuscaloosa. 

Two brief pieces on early bookmobiles can be found in the book The Heritage of Jefferson County, Alabama, published in 2002: "Jefferson County Free Library Bookmobile" by James Spotswood and "When the Bookmobile Came to Aunt Ruth's House" by Frances Hulsey Pardue, both on page 211.

Some nice photographs of the Tuscaloosa County bookmobile from days past can be found here.

This bookmobile was in Anniston.

This bookmobile was operated by the Jefferson County Free Library.

Here the Jefferson County Free Library bookmobile is parked at the U.S. Post Office at New Castle where women are browsing through the choices. New Castle was a mining town near Fultondale; a post office was established in 1874. Some filming for the 1925 silent movie Coming Through was done here. From the looks of the tree and the women's coats, this visit must have taken place in winter.

This photo shows the Jefferson County Bookmobile outside the service entrance to Birmingham Public Library in 1939. Librarian Dorothy West is flanked by two of the bookmobile drivers.

This vehicle seems to have been a rolling advertisement for Cullman County's bookmobile.

Here's a Montgomery County Bookmobile

And finally, a bookmobile in Tuscaloosa County [and finally a grown man!]

Jefferson County Bookmobile in front of the Thomas H. McAdory house in Bessemer ca. 1940

An undated photograph of BPL's "Traveling Branch"

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

This "romance for young moderns" was published in 1956. 

Alabama Libraries in 1851

[This post is one of a series I'm doing on the history of libraries and books in Alabama.]


In 1851 Charles Coffin Jewett published one of the early inventories of public libraries in the United States. At the time Jewett was Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; he moved to the Boston Public Library as Superintendent in 1858 and worked there until his death a decade later. 

The report, Notices of Public Libraries in the United States of America, was issued as an appendix to the 1850 report of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. In some 200 pages Jewett gives state-by-state library listings and descriptions. Listings are organized by town within each state. In his “Preliminary Remarks”, Jewett tells the reader:

As might be expected, Jewett found through his tedious methods of circulars and private correspondence only a few libraries in Alabama at that time. His first entry for the state, under “La Grange”, says simply “College Library—3,000 vols.” He refers of course to LaGrange College, the state’s first chartered college established in 1830; the site is located eight miles southeast of Muscle Shoals. The college was burned in April 1863.

From that brief entry Jewett moves on to Howard College, founded in Marion in 1842, with a library containing 1500 volumes. “It is opened once a week for half an hour”, he notes. Organized by Alabama Baptists and chartered in 1841, Howard was moved to the East Lake area of Birmingham in 1887 and finally to its present location in Homewood in 1957 and renamed Samford University in 1965.

In Mobile Jewett located the library of the Franklin Society, founded in January 1835. “The library contains 1,454 volumes, with a few coins and maps….The library and reading-room are open daily for the use of members of the society and subscribers to the reading-room.”

           

 In Spring Hill Jewett found the state’s second largest library of the time, that of the Catholic college holding 4,000 volumes. The school was founded twenty years before Jewett’s report was published. He gives no other library details.

The original main building of Spring Hill College, built in 1831. 
Source: Wikipedia

Jewett’s longest entry is the last, as expected the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa with 7,123 volumes. This figure included the 4,500 volumes in the “Rotundo” and two student libraries containing 2,623 volumes. He notes an annual circulation of some 800 volumes, a “stated annual appropriation of $200” and two extra $500 appropriations within the past five years.  “The library is opened twice a week, and kept open about an hour each time.”

The Rotunda in 1859, one of seven UA buildings existing when the school opened in 1831.
Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Jewett also mentions the two library catalogs that had been prepared by Richard Furman and Wilson G. Richardson. He notes that Richardson’s effort “is on the plan of the catalogue of Brown University Library.” In 1841 Jewett became librarian at Brown, reorganized its library and published a catalog in two parts: an alphabetical description of items and an alphabetical index of subjects. 

Thus Jewett found six “public libraries” in Alabama ca. 1850; he seems to have missed the one in Huntsville and probably others. By way of comparison, he found eight in Georgia, four in Mississippi and three in Florida.

Jewett knew this effort was only the beginning:

Charles Coffin Jewett [1816-1868]
Source: Wikipedia 
 

This document is available at Google Books



ALABAMA LIBRARIES PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I: A CHRONOLOGY IN PROGRESS

            

Alabama's First Library, Books and Printing

Alabama's oldest operating library is now known as the Huntsville Madison County PublicLibrary. An effort to open a library began in 1817 when the city was still part of the Mississippi Territory. Records show that on December 10th of the following year, William Atwood purchased two shares of stock in the Huntsville Library Company. Thomas G. Percy was listed as President and Robert Fearn as Treasurer. In the following year, during the assembly called to form the State of Alabama, James G. Birney gave notice that he would ask to incorporate the Huntsville Library Company.




An 1818 stock certificate in the Huntsville Library Company. 
Source: HMCPL Digital Archives.

Printed books and printing itself arrived even earlier. In July 1540 Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his expedition entered what is now Alabama; among their supplies were some books. All were burned in the battle of Maubila on October 18. The two most extensive accounts of the expedition describe the destruction by de Soto's men of many of their own supplies as they tried to trap Native American forces. The burning included clothes, ornaments and chalices, wafer molds and wine for mass. The books destroyed may have been mostly religious in nature.


Hernando de Soto [1496-1542]
Source: Wikipedia

 In September 1807 a political pamphlet was published at Wakefield, a town in Washington County that no longer exists. On February 19 of that year former vice-president Aaron Burr was arrested in Wakefield as he attempted to flee to Spanish West Florida and escape President Jefferson's warrant.

ALABAMA LIBRARIES PRIOR TO WORLD WAR I: A CHRONOLOGY IN PROGRESS

Alabama Libraries in 1886 and 1897

Having spent my working career in Alabama libraries, the history of those institutions in this state has always interested me.

I've constructed the beginnings of a chronology of Alabama libraries up to about 1920. Maybe one day soon I'll start organizing those boxes of material I have on the subject and continue expanding that resource. Maybe.

At the moment I'd like to look at the Alabama libraries listed in two reports published late in the nineteenth century.

The 1886 report from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education gathered information on “public” libraries holding over 300 volumes during 1884-5. A similar report by the same office in 1876 found 3,647 such libraries in the United States; ten years later 5,338 were found. The report does not define “public”, but the term seems to be applied to any library open to some subset of the public, whether free or by subscription, as opposed to purely personal libraries.

There are 41 libraries in Alabama included in this 1886 report, as noted in the table below. Only two are libraries with more than 10,000 volumes: the State and Supreme Court Library in Montgomery with over 17,000 volumes and Spring Hill College library in Mobile with over 12,000 volumes. Both of these libraries were also founded early in the state's history, 1828 and 1829 respectively.

A few libraries held between 3,000 and 10,000 volumes: 

Huntsville Female College Belles-Lettres Library, Howard
(Samford) College in its original Marion location, Judson Female Institute, Mobile Bar Library, Mobile Library-a “general” library with 5500 volumes although founded in 1879, the State Board of Health library,Young Ladies’ Academy of the Visitation library in Summerville, the Talladega College library, and the University of Alabama library in Tuscaloosa which was the third largest in the state with 6300 volumes.

Libraries between 1,000 and 3,000 volumes:

Southern University library in Greensborough, Howard College’s two society libraries, Marion Female Seminary, Spring Hill College’s Reading Room Association, YMCA in Selma, Talladega College’s Theological Department library, Institute for Training Colored Ministers in Tuscaloosa [now Stillman College], Pierson Library at the Alabama Insane Hospital [now Bryce]

Some libraries with under 1000 volumes:

18 libraries including those at several small schools, the Dallas Bar Library in Selma, a general “Library Association” in Opelika, a “Ladies Library” in Florence and “Book Club” libraries in Gainesville and Tuscaloosa.

Many of these libraries were designated as “free”, but some were subscription: the two law libraries in Mobile and Selma, the Mobile general library, and the book club libraries in Gainesville and Tuscaloosa.

The second table included in this post shows the 28 Alabama libraries over 1000 volumes in the 1897 report. Most were included in that group in the 1886 report, but several libraries have now joined it which were absent earlier.

These libraries include some not included at all in 1886: Birmingham Public Library, Zelosophian Academy library in Birmingham, St. Bernard Benedictine Society library, Jones College for Young Ladies library in Gadsden, Central Alabama Academy library in Huntsville, Academy of the Visitation library in Mobile, and the State Normal College library in Troy. Some, such as Birmingham Public, were new libraries; some of the others may have been newly discovered by the compilers of these reports.

These two publications give us an interesting snapshot of Alabama libraries as the nineteenth century is coming to an end. A number of libraries with significant collections have developed, including a few of what we now consider “public” libraries. Social groups in even small towns have started collections. Specialized law and medical libraries have appeared.

 

                       Table XVI from the 1884-5 Statistics of Public Libraries of the United States

From a table on page 370 of the Statistics of Libraries…1897