[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
