Day 107, Monday July 1, 2024: Galion, Ohio to Cleveland, Ohio (Part 2)
- Mark Carl Rom
- Sep 24
- 14 min read
Updated: Sep 29
Carnegie libraries visited: Sandusky, Milan, Amherst, and Lakewood, Ohio
Days sober: 375
The five sentence history of the Kaubisch Memorial Public Library in Fostoria that it has posted online is like that first chip from the Pringle’s can: it’s just enough to make me want, no need, the next 20 chips. Ok, no, actually, it will make me want to eat the entire can.
If only getting deeper into the history was as easy as tipping over the can. I learn from the website that “Money donated by Mrs. Louisa McClean and a grant from Andrew Carnegie made it possible for the library to be built on its present site.” McClean, one of the library’s original trustees, left the library $21,343.42, worth about $780,000 in 2025 dollars. Louisa seems to have disappeared from all the usual digitized records – in desperation, I asked AI, who had no answer – but it appears that her donation almost prevented Fostoria from getting a Carnegie grant.
When local attorney Charles Strauch wrote Carnegie in 1911 asking for funding, he noted that “a lady” had in her will left the town money for a library. Bertram naturally asks well, how much? Strauch replies that the bequest will probably amount to between $18-$20,000, to which Bertram then responded that this amount seemed to be just about the right for your town’s library, and as “a lady” had given Fostoria that amount, Carnegie’s cash would not be necessary.
The matter sat there until 1913, when Bertram and Mrs. Annie Foster, the Secretary of the Fostoria Public Library Association began corresponding. Foster’s initial letter to Bertram is apparently missing from the files; Bertram’s first letter to her simply recapitulates the conversation he had with Strauch, ending with a query about the status of the still-unnamed lady’s bequest. Foster, over time, convinced Bertram that McClean’s bequest would buy a building site and provide an endowment and that Carnegie’s money was desperately needed for the building itself. Carnegie provided $20,000 and the library, named the McClean Public Library, opened in 1914. The name was changed to Kaubisch Memorial after Arthur Kaubisch gave the money to enable a major expansion in the 1960s. Louisa nonetheless still has the McClean Drinking Fountain on the north end of the lot, so there's that.
The Sandusky (Carnegie) Public Library wouldn’t have been created without the efforts of a “group of unusual local women” who “were determined to succeed.” In 1870, these women organized the Library Association, which took over the books and other assets of the Young Men’s Christian and Library Association. Whether the takeover was hostile or peaceful is unknown to me, although it’s easy enough to believe that the women said “we want those books” and the young men responded with “you can have them.” The women of the library charged $2 annually as a membership fee, and they also obtained a 1/10 of one mill – 1/10,000 of a dollar city tax for support. They set about raising money for a library building through the Library Building Fund Association, which sponsored numerous plays, lectures, and musicals in the 1880s and 90s.
One such event was the “Grand Cosmorama” held in 1891, with some 50 townspeople participating in the action, which included selections performed by the Ladies Banjo Club (four players picking), the “Light Infantry” (six children singing), the “Wheel of Fate (eight ladies fanning), the “Old Maids of Lee” (ten spinsters spinning, or actually engaging in “an amusing act in which the participants frantically tried to catch a man.” [NB: all numbers approximated.] The women wanted to put the library right on the town’s main square; city officials balked at that, so they bought a home on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Adams Street – one block off Washington Park and away from the county courthouse – and moved the library there. They were able to buy this property as their events had raised the queenly sum of $10,000.
Mrs. J. O. Moss – this is how she is titled in virtually every document I have seen referring to her library work, although she herself generally signed her letters to Carnegie as Fanny (or Franny, as her first name was Frances) G.B. Moss – is credited as the Sanduskian most responsible for obtaining a Carnegie grant. Her husband’s family had been in Sandusky for three generations already and had made their money in banking, railroads, and other business endeavors. She was the president of the ladies library association.
Franny was, how do I put this, a “high context” correspondent. Her earliest letter in the Carnegie archives runs a full six handwritten pages from the “My dear Mr. Carnegie, please remember me, as I wish very much to call myself to your remembrance” to the “My dear Mr. Carnegie, forgive me for troubling you, and pardon me for asking so much. Ever from admiring friend, Franny G.B. Moss.” Man, it’s a struggle for me to read Moss’s letters, so I did what I often did while grading handwritten bluebooks (shhh): I scanned for key words and then tried to fill in the blanks. Moss’s main messages: 1) women are running the library, and they should be doing so because women are “careful, prudent” and 2) the town’s elected officials are by and large idiots.
Carnegie’s responses are not in the Carnegie archives – it seems that he, not Secretary Bertram, was responding to Franny from his Skibo Castle in Scotland – yet it also seems that Franny was quite persuasive, as he awarded Sandusky a $50,000 grant while requiring the town to chip in only $3000 annually, far less than the 10 percent of the grant normally required. (Carnegie’s letter, as I’ve discovered, is in the Sandusky library archives.) Franny responds to this with an even longer letter of thanks, which I hope Carnegie had someone read to him. It did contain lots of praise for his “noble gift.”
In 1996, the library bought the Erie county jail which stood next door. These two buildings, each on the National Historic Register, are now connected into one library plaza. On that plot of land, freedom and enlightenment have replaced enslavement and ignorance. I take hope from that.
The Carnegie library in Milan is one of the five Ohio libraries in which Carnegie’s grant was less than $10,000 (the smallest, in Bristol, was for $6000). Miss Atty Hawley, the secretary of Milan’s library association, was in contrast to Franny Moss a “low context” applicant: her letter to Carnegie is a single paragraph saying we want a library and asking what do we need to do? Library association president A.L. Hoover’s follow-up letters were similar. It’s almost as if Milan was Tweeting its interest to Carnegie. Carnegie was engaged, and awarded the town $8000.
Miss Maude Neiding was 28 years old when the Amherst Public Library opened in 1906, and as the initial hire she was one of the first to walk up its ten steps and through its front doors. Neiding was a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College, founded in 1845, which was one of the first colleges in the nation to admit students regardless of race or gender. Maude was born in Lorain, just five miles from Amherst – Baldwin-Wallace was just 23 miles down the road – and she led the library for 42 years until her retirement in 1948. She died in her home at 901 Cleveland Avenue. Around the corner from her house is the Maude Neiding Memorial Park, with playgrounds and picnic shelters, built on the ten acres that Maude donated to the city for this purpose. From one side, the library looks exactly like what it would have when Maude climbed its steps. From the other, where you can park your car, no steps would slow your entrance.
The Carnegie library in Lakewood, Ohio, had more material about its history posted online than any other library I’ve encountered. Its online archives contain eighteen articles about it, including “Heavy Metal: Lakewood Has A New Landmark,” and “A Classic Goes Green,” but more importantly for my purposes papers such as “Moulders of Community Service: The Directors of Lakewood Public Library, 1916-1976” and “History of the Lakewood Public Library, Lakewood, Ohio: the First Twenty-Five Years, 1913-1938,” a masters thesis by Mary Martha Reed, written to complete her degree in library science.
Reed’s thesis is wide-ranging, including virtually every aspect of the library’s history that can be confirmed by written documents. As she notes in her acknowledgements, “I feel a deep regret that the conventions of this exercise, requiring as they do the maintenance of an objective viewpoint and reliance on measured data and documented facts, have deprived the history of much of its living quality….[W]ho can ‘document’ with footnotes the motivation of a network of human relationships?” Who, indeed. Still, the human relationships can sometimes be documented and appreciated: Reed gives special thanks to Mrs. Mary B. Bloom, Librarian of the Lakewood Library, for providing her with all the original documents for Reed’s study, and for editing it, too.
The star of Reed’s thesis is Roena A. Ingham, the librarian who guided Lakewood through its early years. The history ends shortly after Ingham died in 1938 because that was “the end of an era for this institution.”
Reed begins by outlining the history of the Lakewood community. She reports data and insights from a study by Edward L. Thorndike, a “well known psychologist” (funded by the Carnegie Corporation) in his books American Cities and States and Your City. Thorndike categorizes cities through quantitative indices. His “G” score was his most comprehensive measure, which rated cities based on their health, education and recreation, the presence of creature comforts, and the absence of poverty, vice, and vulgarity.” Lakewood had the 13th highest score of the 310 cities Thorndike examined. He slyly noted that cities with high G scores tended to be in the suburbs of large cities because “They can keep their own territories free from vice, and still have convenient opportunities to indulge in heterodox, vulgar, or vicious propensities. Residential suburbs are asylums or retreats for good people to live in, so long as the big city is there, too.”
The Lakewood Board of Education – the body responsible for planning the new library – wanted to have William Brett, the Librarian of the Cleveland Public Library, to run its library, but legislative barriers blocked this possibility. Mrs. Belle T. Graber, the head of the Board’s education committee, along with another member of the Board, met with Brett and Miss Linda Eastman, another representative of the Cleveland library. Brett anticipated that Graber wanted to poach one of his good librarians, and gracefully provided her with four names, including Roena Ingham. Ingham had already been employed by the Cleveland Library for twenty years, and at this time was the Director of the Carnegie West Branch. She accepted the offer to move to Lakewood.
The Lakewood Library grew substantially in the years that followed. Ingham promoted this growth, and sought the resources to grow faster: “With [the] present building and equipment, there is no room for advancement….Without an adequate plant for housing books and carrying on the work, we must fall short of maximum service due this community…I do recommend most earnestly that you [the library’s trustees] give immediate consideration to this problem.” The trustees responded by requesting that two bonds worth a total $180,000 (about $3.2 million in today’s dollars) be issued in 1921, and the community approved both.
No further bond requests were made for the next thirty years. Between 1916 and 1938, the main library was doubled in size and eleven other branches and stations were opened.
Ingham learned to deal with financial stress during the Great Depression. In her 1933 report she bemoaned that staff salaries had been cut, that she had six fewer staffers than in 1931, and that in some weeks she didn’t have enough money to meet payroll. She did not request that the salaries be restored to their previous level until 1936.
Ingham was largely responsible for purchasing books, and she outlined her views on this to the trustees: “The purchase of expensive and rarely-used books is not necessary in a community so close to large libraries like the Cleveland Public Library….It must also be remembered that the function of a public library is first and foremost educational and cultural – that the recreational demand must be secondary, thus it will never be possible to supply the demand for all the new ‘best sellers’.”So how would these books be chosen, especially those available to children? In her 1936 annual report, Ingham spelled out that
There is much talent and charm going into the writing and making of books for children, but there is still (an) appalling number of so-called juveniles…Almost every title that is added, and many that are not, is read by at least two members of the staff, and is reviewed at the monthly book meetings…The library must still buy books of ephemeral value, but the best policy for a children’s department is to buy many duplicates of titles which seem of permanent value. Then to bend every effort to get these into circulation…”
Miss Ingham herself selected the initial 10,000 books in the library’s collection. Her first hire, in 1916, was a page employed at 15 cents per hour. In that same year, Ingham asked the trustees to allow her to hire two assistant librarians and a person to handle the children’s room. By 1921 Inham had ten full-time staffers, all women (the gender of the janitor was not reported), including a reference librarian. By 1931 her staff had tripled. When Ingham retired in 1938, the library had 45 full time personnel.
Miss Ingham believed that having a reference librarian was vital to the library’s mission: “We have tried to make our Reference Department a laboratory of factual information, ready to answer any question which came by telephone or word of mouth. Sometimes it is a simple direct question, sometimes it is for an elusive bit of information that may take hours to unearth.” She also believed in the importance of an educated staff: in her annual report to the trustees, she listed the librarians enrolled in full or part time college, professional, or graduate study. In 1922 she herself created an apprentice course, given one morning each week by herself or one of her other librarians, for her team.
Most of her staff were Lakewood locals “with roots in the community and a knowledge of its people that would be difficult for an outsider to acquire,” according to Reed’s thesis. Ingham earned her undergraduate degree from Hiram College – 50 miles east of Lakewood – and her Library Science degree from Western Reserve University (now, Case Western Reserve), less than 15 miles away. At the time she was hired by Lakewood, she was already living in that community while she directed the Cleveland Public Library Carnegie West Branch.
Outside the library, Ingham was deeply connected to other community organizations. She was a charter member of the Lakewood Women’s Club; she also belonged to the Lakewood College Club, the Lakewood Business and Professional Women’s Club, and the Lakewood Christian Church. She served as President of the Library Club of Cleveland (1927) and Vice-President of the Ohio Library Association (1925-27) and its President (1934-35), serving on its executive board until the year of her death; she also served on the Council of American Library Association (1927). By 1938, more than half a million books were checked out from the library each year.
We don’t know if Ingham had enemies; she clearly had admirers. In 1923, a reporter for the Lakewood Post watched her in action:
Miss Ingham’s personality fairly radiates as she swings about the Lakewood library, helping here and suggesting there…The instant a reader approaches her, she is on her feet, listening to his request. In the next few seconds she is hustling to some corner of the library to fill his need. Volumes come from all parts of the library and are laid before him with pages marked in them….Busy years have kept Miss Ingham young and mentally alert. Her streaming white hair is finely contrasted with a ruddy complexion. Her eyes sparkle with activity.
Reed interviewed several individuals who knew Ingham to “round out the picture.” “One sensed something of the gracious lady about her,” a Mrs. Martha Olson said, “Night after night, when Lakewood people used their library the most and the place was busiest, Miss Ingham would stand at the desk nearest the main entrance, greeting everyone who came, as a hostess greets her guests.”
“Most of them were her friends and neighbors,” a Miss Emily Cornell explained, “She took a personal interest in them and what they wanted, helping them to find it, or sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for a great range of books and reading.”
Mrs. Josephine Bienstadt exclaimed “Her energy was amazing. She was always on the go. She worked hard and expected others to do the same. This just seemed natural to her.”
Reed notes that Ingham would call people to the carpet if she felt they needed it. Bienstadt continues “She had firm convictions and high standards. She would lay you low and then, a moment after, you would feel her arm about you and she would be saying ‘Now, Joe, you know I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,’ and before you knew it you would be completely disarmed.”
Miss Ingham’s Secretary and head of the office staff during the Depression, Mrs. Ruth Malling Angell, reported that “[Ingham] could be as generous as she was impulsive. She could fire a person just like that, but a moment after she would be all concern ‘Now, do you have enough money saved to take care of yourself and your family? I can lend you some to tide you over until you get started in another job, if you need it.’
“She loved a party. Even a trip to the Bank on library business was likely to end with Miss Ingham bringing candy or something for a staff party. And she and her sister, Mrs. William F. Brandt, were always finding occasions for parties or entertaining friends from the library and community.”
“Miss Ingham’s fondness for flowers and gardening was well known. Flowers from her own garden and from those of her friends and neighbors created in the library the atmosphere of a home in which beauty is cherished.”
Miss Winifred Christy, who worked with Ingham for eighteen years, described her care of and devotion to her staff: “We were her girls. She gave me and some of the other young staff members at the time a thorough grounding in library work. But she also took an interest in each of us, our personal affairs, our family and friends. She invited us to her home and arranged excursions and picnics for us. No matter how busy she was she would drop everything to greet our out of town guests, for example, and drive them about the city. And no one could be a better friend in need.” Ingham was quick to reach out her “generous sympathy and practical assistance” to those ill or bereaved. As Reed sums it up, “Again and again, her warmth, her personal friendliness, her generosity, and the maternal affection she felt for people were mentioned by those who knew her well. These qualities with her abundant energy and spontaneous zest for life were apparently a constant source of wonder to her associates.”
Miss Ingham did not believe that the library best served the public by quietly waiting for patrons to show up. In her 1930 annual report, she wrote that “Effort must be made to let the community as a whole know that there is something to interest every man, woman, and child in the modern library.” In her 1934 report, Ingham noted “That the public is conversant with the resources of the library cannot be taken for granted. A business firm that shows a yearly turnover of nearly $100,000 would have expenditures for publicity. The alert librarian must seek every opportunity for contacts of every kind, through newspapers, through prepared book lists…through close contact with clubs and organizations.” And that’s exactly what Ingham did.
I have not yet found a picture of Miss Ingham. [Update: I have, courtesy of the Lakewood team. The story and picture appear in the next post.]
When my sister Cristine and brother-in-law Alan greeted me as I pulled into their Cleveland Heights driveway, I could feel their love through my windshield. They always make me feel that way. I can’t know for sure if their love is truly unconditional; I do know that I wouldn’t want to test the limits. For the next few days, I’ll be basking in their care.
Before I doze off, I can’t get this off my mind. Joe Biden has got to go. In last week’s debate he not only demonstrated that he is not competent to lead the country for another four years, he also lost whatever chance he had to convince the American voter that he is competent. The most important part of that sentence is the latter half. Trump is not competent to lead America either, yet in the debate voters could conclude based on his confidence and conviction that he is the guy. And in politics, it's the decisions of the voters, not the politicians, that matter most.
When I talk about politics, I usually try to speak as a social scientist – guided by theory and data – and also as a skilled observer. I can’t give a definitive answer as to what will happen if Biden stays in the campaign or if he withdraws. I can offer probabilistic answers (“given historical evidence, it seems more likely that X will happen rather than Y”). Based on both data and gut, it’s clear to me that Biden must drop out.
Biden’s inner circle insists that won’t happen. I’m hoping that the history of the McGovern-Eagleton ticket will repeat itself. On July 13, 1972, Senator Thomas Eagleton was selected as George McGovern’s vice presidential nominee. Within two weeks, Eagleton acknowledged that during the 1960s he had been hospitalized three times for depression and had received electroshock treatments. McGovern responded that he would not remove the Senator from the ticket and that he was behind Eagleton “1000 percent.” By the end of July, after meeting with McGovern, Eagleton withdrew from the ticket. If Biden’s advisors and family face the fact that his debate performance was disastrous, not because it was bad but because it revealed the truth: he is not competent to lead the country for another four years, the voters know this, and he will not be re-elected.
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