Day 16, Thursday, February 29, 2024: Porter, Oklahoma to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Carnegie libraries visited: Collinsville, Sapulpa, and Perry, Oklahoma

After a leisurely morning with Mark and Sally, I saddled up and hit the westward trail midday. When the clock struck noon on a different day – September 16, 1893 – the land around what became Perry, Oklahoma, which had been deeded in perpetuity to the Cherokee tribe, was opened to homesteaders, and as many as 90,00 men, women, and children raced across the land that day. The Reverend Fred R. Belk, in his brief history of Perry, wrote that

The silence of the treeless plains were suddenly filled with screaming men, thundering wagons, cracking whips, plunging animals and yapping dogs, and the tidal wave of humanity, surrounded by a cloud of dust, swept towards Perry and its adjoining countryside. They came from all classes, from all directions; afoot, horseback, on lumber wagons, carriages and by railroad. They were honest men and thieves, bankers and paupers, adventurers and homesteaders, all wanting some of the virgin land…

By that evening, some 40,000 had set up their tents in what would become Perry. Jack Tearney reached Perry first, at 12.31 p.m. and by 4 p.m. he had opened up the Blue Bell saloon. Due to what Belk calls the “scarcity of water,” he sold 38,000 bottles of beer that day, at a dollar a pop. Within a couple of years, the “Hell's Half Acre” part of town hosted 110 saloons and gambling houses.

My drive was less frenetic, as I was in the search of neither land nor beer. I had other business to attend to. Before reaching Perry, I would visit the Carnegie libraries in Collinsville and Sapulpa, a name I just love to say.

Collinsville Carnegie Library

The Collinsville Library is a cutie. Instead of the typically impressive full-frontal steps leading into the library’s sanctum, this stairway is wrapped coyly to each side of the entrance, with a brick skirt blocking the view through the glass entryway. (Pictures show that the original entrance was the standard ascending into the temple variety.) In 1903, a group of Collinsville women formed the Comedy of Errors Book Club.  As their first order of business, the group adopted a project to fund a library for the town.  The Comedy of Errors Book Club founder, Mrs. J.A. Tyner, kept the initial tranche of books, donated by a local Methodist church organization, in her home, until the first library was opened in a room in city hall. The Comedy of Errors Book Club continues to hold monthly meetings in that Carnegie library.

Sapulpa Carnegie Library

The women of the Ladies Library Club in Sapulpa somehow knew the deal. They did not write Carnegie pleading for a library. They had the Mayor, the Chief of Police, the City Engineer, the County Judge, and the Secretary of the Sapulpa Commercial Club write Carnegie on their behalf. Each of their letters notes the ladies’ requests. They got their library, which 107 years later continues to check books out to eager readers.

By the time I arrived in Perry, the library was closed for the day, and most of those 110 early saloons and gambling houses were closed for good. Still, in the early years, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) had its work cut out for it. One small remedy for all the booze was to open one small library (plus bathroom) a decade after the town sprung into existence. Everything was a struggle. Getting books, yes, and also chairs and tables. Ready to throw their bottle-free hands up, in 1904 they reached out to the Ladies Tuesday Afternoon Club, Perry Progress Club and the Coterie Club, three female organizations. These clubs immediately hopped on board, and that April they held a mass meeting of the women in the community, from which the Perry Library Association was born; men were allowed to join. Mrs. M.A. Lucy, who later served as the librarian, was elected president, and the group agreed to rent rooms in the courthouse for $8 a month, janitorial services included.

Women volunteered to take turns serving as librarians when the library was open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, as the Association didn’t have money for salaries. They raised money through ice cream socials and other events, although most of the books were obtained through donations. When the Association’s board decided it needed to extend the library’s hours, scheduling volunteers became too difficult and so funds were scraped up to hire a librarian, Miss Lola Brisoe, for $3 per week.

In 1906, Perry voted to approve a tax to support the library over the protests of Mayor A.E. Smyser, who thought public monies were better spent on fire protection, and water and sewer lines. A classic guns vs. butter dilemma, except in this case it was books vs. butts. Books won.

Two years later, the association’s ambitions became grander. The association’s president, Mrs. B.T. Hainer (her husband was the local judge, and the existing library was in his courthouse) asked Mrs. H.L. (Lucy) Boyes to look into the prospects of acquiring land for a library building. Lucy reached out to Congressman Bird S. McGuire, who happened to be a Perry attorney, and three months later the association received a government patent (which allows the federal government to transfer land to private use) for a lot adjacent to the town’s square. 

The next step: obtaining funding for a building, and so Boyes reached out to Carnegie on behalf of the children. “We, as a band of women comprising the City Library Board, are doing all we can to place the best educational advantages for our boys and girls. The moral and intelectual [sic] future of this new commonwealth of ours depends on the training of our young people.” Bertram, who never signs his name to his letters, concluding them only with P. Secretary, soon awarded Perry a $10,000 grant, and the library was built in 1909.

So far, so good, and then not so good. James Lobsitz, the town’s mayor in 1920, insisted that the library building also include the city’s headquarters. This would violate Carnegie’s terms that the grants be used only for libraries, and the building committee objected. Lobsitz, who was in addition to being the mayor also owned a hardware store, changed the lock on the existing library, preventing 18 year old Irene McClune, who was then serving as librarian, from entering it. 

As the library’s “About Us” page states, 

Library board members located a small, unlocked window in the furnace room and asked Miss McCune to enter the building this way and continue to conduct business. She was willing, but her father, L. W. McCune, forbid her to do so, telling her that her salary of $15 per month was hardly enough to justify that kind of unladylike behavior.

The library remained locked to the public, although McCune was permitted entry so she could bring books out to those who requested them. Lobsitz and his allies lobbied Carnegie to have the town released from the terms of the grant, calling the library a “white elephant.” Bertram responds that this request is “surprising.” The ALA and the Oklahoma Library Commission weigh in on behalf of the library. Bertram forwarded the Commission the letters asking for the release, noting that “These letters require no comments, but it is not flattering to the community or to the State for a cashier of a bank and a member of the City Council to call what is considered nowadays an indispensable educational factor in any community a ‘white elephant'." Bertram did not waive the terms of the grant, and the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the mayor was being a jerk and that the public should be allowed to enter the building.

Thanks, Perry, for giving the public such a detailed account of your history on your website. Most of the section above comes from that history, supplemented with material from the Carnegie archives. I don’t know how many people have actually read that story; I do know that I was fascinated by it. Then again, libraries contain books that might almost never be read, yet the few who do read them are enriched. 

A few final thoughts on Perry. A commemorative marker outside the library celebrates its history and the Centennial Sculpture standing outside. It was sponsored by the women’s Perry Progress Club, which itself had been doing what it does for over a century. Despite all the work that women had done to bring a library to Perry, only two of its women have been notable enough to merit a Wikipedia profile, as compared to nine men. Sharron Miller is an award winning screenwriter, producer, and director best known for her ABC Afterschool Special episode The Woman Who Willed a Miracle, which won four Emmys, as well as a Peabody and a Directors Guild of America award. The other? “Little Britches” (Jennie Stevenson) who, with Cattle Annie (Anna Emmaline McDoulet), were outlaws. 

Perry is one of three towns that received a Carnegie grant. The others are in Iowa, which is on my itinerary, and New York, which is not. Yet.

By 9 p.m. I had kicked up my heels in a hotel lobby and reflected on my day's library adventures.