Ida May Helsell, Rosmer Bruce, and the Odebolt (IA) Carnegie Library

Rosmer Bruce

Driving through central Iowa, without a firm schedule, gives one lots of time to reflect on matters such as Iowa having roughly four acres of corn and six hogs to every resident. One hundred years ago, Iowa was the 6th largest state in terms of population; in 2020, it was 31st. It is just as rural now as it was then, which is to say not all that much: only one-third of its population lived “in the country” back then and two-thirds in towns and cities. What has changed is that in 2020 some 63 percent lived in its largest cities (such as Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, and Davenport) while in 1920 only ten percent of the population did. The big cities have gotten bigger (by Iowa’s standards) and the smaller towns often smaller.

Odebolt is not unusual in that regard. Its population peaked in 1920 at 1445, and it has been in almost continual gradual decline since then, with the 2020 census showing that fewer than 1000 remained there. Still, the Odebolt Public (Carnegie) Library is open for at least a few hours every day but Sunday, and on Wednesdays its open from 10 to 6.

The sign outside the Odebolt Public Library states that “The Women's Reading Circle with Mrs. W.A. Helsell, President, organized to raise funds and apply” for a Carnegie grant. It’s gratifying that Ida May Pritchart Helsell – Mrs. W.A. – is recognized here, as her contributions are harder to parse through contemporaneous records. Even small towns have their elites, and Ida and her husband William were surely among them. William was an attorney, businessman (“willing to lend you money on your farms at 6%”), member of the city council, and active in Republican party politics. Ida was socially active (Order of the Eastern Star, P.E.O. and the Literary Club – probably the enhanced version of the “Reading Circle”)with some flair for the theater, as she played the characters Samantha Allen in the “Temple of Fame” (1892) and Mary Amelia Traddles, President of the “Ancient Spinsters of Odebolt” at the “Old Maids Convention” (1899). In 1896, Ida and some twenty of her friends formed the Women’s Reading Circle with the goal of bringing a public library to Odebolt. They quickly moved beyond raising funds for a subscription library and moved to formalize their efforts. Ida’s husband was chosen to chair the effort to incorporate the library under Iowa’s laws and she was appointed as one of the members, but not an officer, of the library board. 

It took Odebolt several years to persuade Carnegie to build a library there, as it could only pledge $400 annually in support, and Bertram was loath to write a check for a mere $4000, as Carnegie “has never built a library for such a small population as Odebolt.” That changed in 1904, when Carnegie wrote the town a check. Tiny but tenacious, Odebolt opened its library the next year. Ida served on the library board until her death in 1932. 

Odebolt is no bigger now than it was when its public library opened. Incredibly, the library is, in part through the generosity of Rosmer Bruce. Rosmer, who according to one source has the 91,959th most common given one in the US, was born in Odebolt at the time that Ida and her Reading Circle were fomenting their library plans. She was four when the library opened and I imagine that her imagination was lit by the library which, wherever you lived in the town, was no more than about half a mile away. Rosmer was a true townie: she attended Odebolt public schools until she graduated from high school, although she did slip away to matriculate across the state at Grinnell College. After a few years as a teacher in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania she returned to her home town where she devoted 24 years to teaching in the local high school. Rosmer retired in 1969 and died in 1972.

By all accounts, Rosmer lived a quiet life and I could find few accounts of her whereabouts, whodunits, or whatisits. She rarely made the local press, The Odebolt Chronicle, although in 1950 she was the “high winner” in canasta at The Odd Fellows and Rebekahs party. She offered classes in typing and bookkeeping at an Odebolt community night school program, she was active in various school-related activities and the Sac County Education Association, and occasionally was mentioned as having attended a social gathering, where card playing seemed to be the cause for the gathering. 

What appears to have been an ordinary life did have a remarkable finale. Rosmer was thrifty, and when she died in 1972 she left it (almost) all to the benefit of the community, with a generosity equal to Carnegie in relative, if not absolute, terms. Rosmer’s will allocated $5000 to the Odebolt Methodist Church, of which she was a member, and $5000 to Grinnell College, from which she graduated. She donated $1000 to the American Cancer Society and bequeathed her General Motors stock to a cousin (she neither married nor had children). 

The remainder of her assets, some $40,000 (about $325,000 in 2026 dollars), she gave to the Odebolt Public Library to be used for “capital improvements.” (For reference, the estimated average salary for public school teachers in Iowa in 1970 was $8355.) By 1992 this bequest had generated about $100,000, and the community decided not only to preserve its Carnegie but also to expand it. Mrs. Mildred Traeder, a former resident of Odebolt, kicked in $10,000, and the library’s finance committee went about seeking other sources of funding. It found them. In 1997, even though only 80 percent of the estimated $500,000 needed had been raised, construction began. The library opened the Rosmer Bruce Annex, devoted to children’s activities, in 1998. Not bad for a town of just over 1000 Odeboltans.