Day 69, Saturday May 11, 2024: St. Joseph, Missouri to Albia, Iowa
- Mark Carl Rom
- May 12
- 4 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Albany, Missouri and Villisca, Mount Ayr, Leon, Osceola, and Albia, Iowa
I’m going to have to rethink my sleeping schedule. The sun rose at 5.33 this morning and so Goldfinger was shining like a gold bar by six. Living in the age of the screen’s blue light as I do, my diurnal rhythm is what I make it. So I’m going to try experimenting with turning all my lights off by the time it gets fully dark (about 9.30 pm) so I’ll be ready (in concept) of getting up with the sun. Check back with me on this in a few days.
You can hardly swing a scythe in Iowa without cutting into a Carnegie library. Iowa has 99 counties, with each county encompassing roughly a twenty mile by twenty mile square. The state map is nine counties high and 10-11 counties wide. One hundred and four communities requested library funds from Carnegie; ninety-nine communities accepted the funds, and a total of 101 Carnegie public libraries were built in the state. Iowa, devoted to its Carnegies, has an interactive website which shows all their locations Click on a location and a few details of the library pop up. You can find it here: https://carnegielibrariesiowa.org/
I began the day in Missouri, and so the Carnegie library in Albany is my first destination this morning, and I head for it after having a bowl of raisin bran in the car and a workout and jacuzzi at the Y. Fun fact: Kellog’s, Post, and General Mills each make their own version of the cereal. In the landmark case of Skinner v. Kellog, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth District ruled that, because all these cereals contained raisins and bran, they could reasonably be described as a ‘raisin (+) bran’ cereal. The US judicial system, in all its majesty, at work.
Yikes! Does my Kellogs Raisin bran truly contain more sugar than Lucky Charms, Reese’s Puffs, and Cocoa Krispies? If it does, I’m throwing it out. Ok, I’ve found out that it doesn’t, but it’s close.
When the Albany library opened in 1906, Miss Viola Neil was selected from among the fourteen applicants to be the library’s Director and Janitor. Her salary was $25/month, equivalent to about $870/month or $10,000/year today. Librarians are paid much better now – the average librarian in Iowa earns north of $60,000 each year. I should have asked Mackenzie, the sole librarian in the library on this Saturday, if she also had custodial duties. It wouldn’t have surprised if she did, because I could see the cleaning supplies in the closet at the bottom of the stairs to the basement.
For whatever reason, the early librarians at Albany didn’t last long: Viola Neil (1906-09), Miss May Erskine (1909-10), Miss Ophelia Hutchison (1910-11). Only after 1911, when Erskine came back and stayed for fifteen years, did the librarians stick around. After the first four ‘Miss” librarians (1906-26), the library then had six straight ‘Mrs’ (from 1926 to 2010). Here’s the list:
Miss Viola Neil, 1906-1909
Miss May Erskine, 1909-1910
Miss Ophelia C. Hutchison, 1910-1911
Miss May Erskine, 1911-1926
Mrs. Bea McFall, 1926-1930
Mrs. Anita Atherton, 1930-1941
Mrs. Mildred Osborne, 1941-1942
Mrs. Linna E. Yeate, 1942-1964
Mrs. Helen Henton, 1964-1997
Cheryl Lang, 1997-2010
Ms. Kathy Kephart, 2010-2011
Miss Jenny Ellis, 2011-2013
Mrs. Jessie (Edwards) Brown, 2013-2015
Mrs. Traci Clair, 2016-present
Yes, the library’s history page gives the Miss and Mrs. designations.
Mackenzie, a woman at an age I’m unlikely to be able to guess with any accuracy, has a warm smile and shoulder length brown hair parted in the middle. Maybe her glasses are nondescript, or maybe her bright green Albany Warriors t-shirt takes all my eyes’ attention and so I just didn’t note their description. She led me to the basement because that’s where the library’s genealogical and local archives are held. I was interested in learning more about (Mrs.) Helen Henton, who was the library’s director for 34 years (1964-1997). (If I had grown up in Albany, Henton would have been my librarian. I would have met her in first grade.) The archives held a fat folder with the names Brown/Fenton on the cover and a thick set of “Notes on Our Brown and Fenton Forebears” within. Lots of materials on the forebears; nothing of interest on Helen. Damn.
I broke for a picnic lunch on the town square in Albany. On this fine spring weekend day, the streets were silent. Its population reached around 2000 souls in 1900, 1920, 1940, and 1980. Since then, it’s been in slow and steady decline. In 2020, fewer than 1700 lived there. It has three buildings on the National Historic Register – the courthouse, the library, and the Samuel and Pauline Peery home. Wikipedia lists no notable residents. How long will this gem of a library continue to exist?
Each of the libraries I visited today have its stories, its history. For the rest of this day, however, I’ll be content just to admire them and imagine their pasts. By the time I rolled into Albia, it was almost 9 p.m.
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