Day 92, Thursday June 6, 2024: Greenville, Illinois to Evansville, Indiana
- Mark Carl Rom
- 13 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Carnegie libraries visited: Mount Vernon, Poseyville, Fort Branch, Evansville East Branch, and Evansville West Branch, Illinois
Days sober: 350
Jo learned to read when she was three, and that’s about the time that her mother started dropping her off at the Greenville Carnegie library, where she now serves as Head Librarian. She wasn’t wearing any glasses! She was wearing a blue cotton shirt, buttoned asymmetrically on the side, with white dandelion heads bursting into the wind. When her mother dropped her off, the mother would go grocery shopping at the market around the corner. Jo said that being left at the library alone made her feel like such an adult. Only when she had grown up and deposited her kids at the library while she went shopping did she realize that her mother had done the same not because the children were little adults but because it allowed her to cruise the aisles without the kids begging for treats. Jo began working for the library in 2011 and she became the Head Librarian a few years ago.
Greenville was founded in 1815 by George Davidson, who built its first commercial building: a tavern (of course). Indeed “In the early history of Bond County, whisky was considered as almost one of the necessaries of life, or at least ‘good in its place’.” This ‘place’ was nearly everywhere, embracing all occasions and applying to nearly every condition of life” says the History of Bond and Montgomery Counties, Illinois, edited by William Henry Perrin, and “On public occasions, drunken men were so common that sober men seemed to be the exception.”
In 1855 Almira College (now Greenville University), a women’s college was established as “one of the earliest extensions westward of an eastern idea favorable toward female education, an early step in the women's suffrage and liberation movement,” as Greenville history professor Donald Jordahl put it. Almira
proposed to prepare leaders for society by enlightening the intelligence of young ladies who were to become mothers. The assumption was that leaders were nurtured by mothers in the home. Hence the college provided young daughters from middle and upper class homes opportunities for cultural development, intellectual breath, and Christian nurture.
Mrs. Almira Morse, wife of one of the college’s founders (and its namesake), was “a lady of thorough and accomplished education, fully in sympathy with her husband, and [who] seconded every effort of his for this advancement of the worthy enterprise, adiding not only by words of encouragement and cheer, but with a generous personal money gift [of $6000, or about $216,000 in today’s currency]” according to The History of Bond and Montgomery Counties. Almira was a descendent of one of the earliest settlers of the county.
The women of Greenville were not content with just being mothers nurturing future leaders, as some became leaders in their own right. The year that Almira was founded, the Ladies Social Circle of Greenville was formed to “promote the intellectual and moral elevation of society.” For more than fifty years the Circle raised funds to support a public library. The library began in one of the member’s homes, before moving to rented rooms, the courthouse, and then finally the Carnegie library which opened in 1905. The first book purchased for the library by the Ladies was The Holy Bible. Mrs. Almira Blanchard Morse, Mrs. S. Hutchinson, Mrs. Sarah Wait, and Mrs. Robert Steward were among the Association’s founders.
The Circle’s name was changed to the Ladies Library Association the year after it was founded. The Association met weekly at the home of one its members. The women would sew and chat during the afternoon, and in the evening men would join them for some literary event. The members were devoted to their craft: “Work on hand for January 28 – Knitting a cradle quilt, three sun-bonnets, two pairs of pantalets, infants’ dresses, caps and aprons, three shirts finished and price for making the same $2.25”
The Ladies Social Circle was not the only local organization of women seeking to create a library. In 1888 the Shakespeare Club was organized by Mrs. W.A. (Ada) Northcutt, wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, who brought together her friends to study the works of the Bard. Ada was “a musician of considerable reputation, who comes from a most musical family.” Before long, the Club became very formalized, with members expected to adhere to strict standards of scholarship, dress, and deportment. Members were required to wear white gloves and hats to meetings, and the Club had a designated critic “who scrupulously recorded all errors of speech and grammar committed at meetings” according to the Bond County History. In addition to lady-like attire, they raised money for the library.
Were I less monk-like on this trip, I’d have more adventures to spin. A bender for me today involves slipping the clerk a five spot for an ice cream. The vast majority of conversations I have are just in my head, not with the lips of others. Today was not unusual in that respect. I spoke with Jo for a few minutes this morning, and then I paid my therapist to listen to my rants for fifty minutes this afternoon.
I was thinking of this while savoring a pineapple and lemon gelato at Evansville’s West Branch Carnegie just a buck thirty ago. Outside the library was a Music in the Parks concert and, loving music and loving parks, I checked it out. So rarely do I just sit and observe. Concert highlights: three women and one guy line dancing, lots of cold cans in koozies, and the two women sitting close to me singing along to a song whose only lyrics I could make out were “sweet strawberry wine”.
It’s not something I noticed right away, and so I’m surprised when I finally do. Even more so than in Kitt’s appraisal of Madison, Wisconsin, this is the whitest place I’ve ever seen. There is nary, not even one, face that is not one of the Benjamin Moore shades of white. Granted, Evansville’s 120 thousand population is 85 percent white, and the country rock band was hammering out Sweet Home Alabama, but still. The band could have been playing air guitars and I still would have known they were country. The lead singer, in jeans and ball cap, was commenting on the food trucks circling the tree-embraced sward, including the one that serves what he called Jello-ato. When he was corrected by a bandmate (“it’s gelato”), he just shrugged “I knew I was going to get that wrong.”
I had yet one more conversation this evening, at the C&L meeting held at 8 pm in a small white clapboard meeting house. The room was packed when the meeting started, although a half dozen guys slipped out shortly after. This meeting was not as white as the concert. One black guy got a big round of applause when he picked up his “24 Hour” chip. I imagined that one young woman, with fine features, pink toenails in tan Birkenstocks, and hair put up in the casual summering at Martha’s Vineyard look, was like Mary Karr. Her face showed sorrow and her body had that I don’t want to be here pose. She took notes throughout the readings, and gradually her posture and face softened. One guy said he had been sober for ten years and so was asked if he wanted to pick up a chip to celebrate that. Yes, and in fact that would be the first chip he’s ever received, as he had been in prison that entire time. A couple of other guys reported having spent years up the river and no one bats an eye. Convicts are as common as coffee cups at some meetings.
