Lena Bell and the Olathe (Kansas) Public Library
In the last decade of the 1800s, only about 400 public libraries existed, and some 180 of these were in Massachusetts. Most were founded by men. Still, even before Carnegie began funding libraries, women’s organizations across the country were already mobilizing to establish libraries in their often small towns.
One such group was the Ladies Reading Circle of Olathe, Kansas. Olathe, located just south of Kansas, developed as a stop along the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails. In the same year (1883) that Carnegie built his first library, the women of Olathe joined together to form the Ladies Reading Circle. At first, the “women of Olathe” comprised three individuals: Mrs. Susan J. (Jenny) Parker St. John, the wife of the former Governor of Kansas; her sister-in-law, Mrs. Emma Parker, and Mrs. Celestia Stevenson. Their tasks were the usual ones: collect books, find places to accommodate them, and volunteer as librarians. A library had been opened by the Olathe Library Association in the 1870s, although it was a subscription library and hence not free for public use.
Although the Olathean women were not allowed to vote in federal elections, they did have the right to vote in local elections, including those pertaining to the library. Their votes were separate but equal; that is, the votes of men and women were counted separately. The result? Women were substantially more likely to vote “yes” on library issues than were men.
In 1909, the town contacted Carnegie to seek library funding, and they received it. Miss Lena Bell, born and raised in Olathe, had taken a teaching job in Dearing, Kansas, some 150 miles to the south. While in Olathe, she was active in cultural affairs. The year she became the town’s librarian, for example, she hosted the “young ladies of the Culture Class” for an afternoon of nature study. (Lena presented two papers on the ever-popular topics of “Spring” and “Birds.”) She was chosen from among 20 applicants to be the town’s first librarian, and she led the transition from a temporary library hosted in the City Hall to the new one funded through the Carnegie grant. During this period the local papers lauded her efforts, with the Olathe News noting that “too much credit cannot be given” to her as “she had worked so hard the last few months to get the books properly classified” and her records “are kept with painstaking care.” All library visitors found that Lena was “eager to accommodate and that they will be treated with the utmost courtesy.”
That library opened in 1914, and on opening day eight different women’s clubs (Ladies Reading Circle, Sigournean Club, Culture Club, Progress Club, Civic League, Woman's Relief Corps, Delphi Club, the Womans' Christian Temperance Union) jointly hosted a reception for the women of the town. Nearly a thousand people enjoyed “one of the most enjoyable social functions of the month,” which made me wonder what the competition was. The library’s board of directors was composed of five women and five men.
Over the next few years, Lena’s library work made the local news from time to time although, to be fair, seemingly almost anyone who did anything social might see their names in the black and white (“Mr. and Mrs. Grant Adams entertained with a turkey dinner…”) Once, the Olathe Independent reported that Lena attended a showing of the film “The Birth of a Nation;” no other attendees were mentioned. Other notices were more noteworthy. In 1915, when Europeans were butchering each other in the trenches on the Western Front, Lena assembled a reading list to help the Olatheans “to understand the racial and political conditions” of the protagonists and antagonists in the struggle, and the list was posted in the Johnson County Democrat. When purchasing books for children, she selected them with “great care” and “you may be sure they are entirely ‘fit’ for your children,” read the Olathe News. When the Sigourean club and the Culture Class found the meeting room too loud for their gatherings, Lena advised them on how to hang wires across the ceiling, so that rugs could be draped over them to help deaden the sound. (In that same issue – February 11, 1915 – the local druggists were notified that they would have to take out a permit to sell heroin, morphine, opium, etc., and that anyone buying those drugs would have to sign their names in a register.) In July 1922 she used the money from overdue fines ($56) to buy two electric ceiling fans to hang above reading tables. The Civic League bought Lena a fan for her desk, as that summer the heat in the library was intolerable. On receiving the gift, Lena fainted, joy or heat exhaustion being the likely culprits. Whenever Lena traveled, the papers reported on her whereabouts and who would be running the library in her absence.
Lena continued to serve as the librarian until she passed away from a stroke, on Christmas day, in 1922. Her obituary in the Olathe News claimed that “She touched the lives of more people than any other Olathe person.” Lena already had suffered from some chronic ailment or other physical challenges. Without giving any details, the News reported that “Afflicted from birth with an ailment that would have caused many to give up entirely and go into solitude, it did not affect her so, and she was cheerful and took part in all activities, even with more zeal than those with normal bodies. Oh, but what a mind…” Lena had especially involved herself in working with children, and so when one child learned that Lena had died, she cried “Now who will pick out my books for me?” Lena shared her home with Katherine Meldrum, who lived for another ten years. As a final act of service, Lena willed her personal collection of 100 books to the library.
The Olathe Indian Creek Library, in a Kansas City suburb, is one of the most sensatipnal libraries in the United States. If you are in the area, it's worth a visit.
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