Library’s History Holds Social Secrets

By Kendra Bobowick

Historian Dan Cruson glimpsed something suspicious when he looked into a past he imagined would be clear. Research for his new work, The Cyrenius H. Booth Library and Earlier Reading Institutions: A History focused on books, he thought, but as he followed the pages back to the late 1800s, the brighter tale of book collections became overcast. Angry voices emerged from Newtown’s history.

“With something as peaceful as a library you wouldn’t expect this controversy,” he said. The upper Main Street portion of Newtown that ran downhill toward the lower Sandy Hook section bordering the Housatonic River were standing on opposite sides of a feud over books.

“The great revelation of doing this research is this split, this chasm between Sandy Hook and Newtown,” Mr Cruson said. “The split was real and vitriolic.” Tension followed the course of books moving from personal collections in 1876 and at last to the C. H. Booth Library today. With a flash of hindsight, Mr Cruson considered his own new book. “This has become a social history of Newtown and the library illuminates the social division,” he said.

Social status and politics were part of the problem.

Sandy Hook and “up-street” Newtown were pitted against each other, Mr Cruson explained. “The core of the argument was class distinction. Sandy Hook was working class people, a lot of working men, a lot of Irish.” The up-street residents were Yankees and primarily middle class, he said. Down the hill were Democrats, and Catholics, where in the opposite direction were Republicans and Protestants. As he tracked the initial private collection of books to more public homes and start-up libraries, letters to the editor appearing in The Newtown Bee documented the growing aggravations.

Detailing the time when some Sandy Hook residents had hoped a library might be located in a place also convenient to them, he said, “A statement came in the letters, ‘Those lower class people don’t read.’” Sparks were flying, he said.

Sandy Hook residents did read, however, and managed to bring books into their reach on their own terms. Saint John’s Pastor Otis Wright started a reading club.

Mr Cruson’s expression brightened. “It was ingenious. It worked on the principal that you buy a book and I buy a book and we exchange books. If 100 people do this, you have 100 books to choose from, it’s free, and it’s volunteer labor.” The historian looked at Pastor Wright’s solutions and concluded, “The Sandy Hook Library was done in defense of the people in Sandy Hook…and it was a free alternative, Wright felt strongly [libraries] should be free.” As the 20th Century dawned, so did the Sandy Hook free library in 1902.

“This was the core of the library, a free library that existed on donation,” Mr Cruson said. Two libraries existed until the Sandy Hook library “melded” with the C.H. Booth Library in the 1970s, Mr Cruson said.

A Library Timeline

“This book deals with the changes in the library, meaning the entire library, since 1876,” Mr Cruson’s history brings readers through the next roughly 130 years. “The last chapter comes into the present.” The moral of his story?

“The library is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.”

Mr Cruson nearly started his story with the death of benefactress Mary Hawley, who bequeathed to the town the Cyrenius H. Booth Library named for her maternal grandfather. She also left to the town the Hawley School and the Edmond Town Hall.

The tale begins sooner, however. “I figured, no, the story should start in 1876; that’s when the widow Sarah Baldwin dies and donates volumes to the town.” The Newtown Library Association, which was a continuous entity from 1876 to 1934, coalesced around the donation, and ended in the next century as the C.H. Booth Library took its place along Main Street.

At the time no public library existed, but some residents maintained private collections. “There were individuals who had substantial holdings — the Baldwins had one,” he said. When Sarah donated her estimated 100 volumes, the collection fell into public possession.

“That’s the core of the first Newtown library,” Mr Cruson noted. “This was a subscription library. You became a member.” Membership cost money that would have been steep for the working class. “You paid a fee to become a member and paid a dime to borrow a book for two weeks,” Mr Cruson said. “A dime was substantial at the time.” An average worker earned $1 a day, he said. The fee would have been a tenth of the person’s daily salary.

During the first few years people kept the collection in their homes, then relocated the books to the upstairs space at the brick Scudder Building on Main Street. In 1900 Rebecca Beach donated money to build a library at 63 Main Street. From there readers went to the John Beach Memorial Library. The John Beach was a subscription library and as the century continued, one particular nationwide demand was evident in Newtown.

“One of the ongoing controversies was how to make the library free,” Mr Cruson said. “There was an ongoing debate between the free library faction and a continued subscription library.” Mary Hawley’s library solved the problem.

“The C.H. Booth library was free,” Mr Cruson said. Late in the 19th Century people found leisure time on their hands, he explained. “The time allowed the habit of reading to develop and a demand for free libraries gained momentum across the country. The C.H. Booth Library was an interesting solution.”

By 1933 the John Beach library dissolved and melded with the C.H. Booth library. Piquing the historian’s interest was one detail. The Newtown Library Association had marked the books it kept at the John Beech location. And the evidence lingers.

“There are still a couple Newtown Library Association books floating around,” he said.

The C.H. Booth Library eventually absorbed all the public collections in town. The Sandy Hook Library, which emerged at roughly the same time as the subscription John Beach Library, had accounted for two libraries until the Beach library merged with the new C.H. Booth Library. By 1976, the Sandy Hook Library dissolved. Housed where the Sandy Hook Post Office once was on Washington Avenue, the library lost its space.

“The books ended up in someone’s barn,” Mr Cruson noted. By 1976 the Board of Trustees decided to blend their assets with the C.H. Booth Library.

Talking About The Book

Cyrenius H. Booth & Earlier Reading Institutions: A History reveals the C.H. Booth Library to be far from the quiet collection of books and town artifacts that readers see as they step through the building’s doors at 25 Main Street. The pages reveal the town’s early book collections as the beginnings of what is now the library and uncovered social disputes that help tell the story in author and historian Dan Cruson’s recent release.

With a teasing smile Mr Cruson gave away only one detail hidden in his pages.

“As a footnote, there was another private library in the Lake Zoar District,” a library ran out of one resident’s living room, he said. Describing the entertainment and creativity he found in this library that Mr Cruson described as “an intersection of things that could only happen in a rural library,” he said, “It’s a fascinating footnote and I had almost more fun just with that.”

He continued, “The whole reason I get into these projects: little pieces of Newtown become apparent.” His biggest discovery? “How important the library became to the town in the last 70 years,” he said.

On Wednesday, November 28, at 7 pm, in the library’s meeting room, guests are invited to an author talk and book signing.

 “I’ll discuss some of the highlights, some of the important things we found,” he said, anticipating the 20 minutes or more that he will use to lure readers into the chapters of his book. According to a brief description in the library’s newsletter Booth Bylines, “This work is more, however, than the story of collecting and disseminating books to the public. These reading institutions mirrored the social, intellectual, and political currents of the time…it has become a social history of the town, which traces many of the intellectual undertones of Newtown’s recent past that until now have been poorly documented.”

Copies of Mr Cruson’s 119-page soft cover book will also be on sale for $12.

Reference Librarian Andrea Zimmerman noted the “tremendous volunteer effort” that contributed to the book’s publication. Friends of the Library President Mary Maki had formatted the text for publication and created an index, local graphic designer Ray Shaw created the cover art that incorporated a watercolor painting of the library by local artist Ruth Newquist, Kaaren Valenta and Liz Arneth spent time proofreading the book, and Kathy Beals electronically formatted the copy for print. The self-published edition was printed at Bridgeport National Bindery.

Who Was Cyrenius H. Booth?

Everything Mr Cruson knows about Dr Booth fits on page 19 of the book he wrote about Mary Hawley. “He was a quiet country doctor,” he said. He imagines that Ms Hawley named the building after him, because it was her habit. The Edmond town hall is named for her great grandfather, Judge William Edmond. Dr Booth was born in Newtown on May 25, 1797, and studied medicine under a local physician.

Dr Booth lived on Main Street two doors south of the library at what is now the Hawley Manor.