NOW YOU KNOW
Story Time With Miss Ruth Winifred Brown by Debbie Neece, Bartlesville Area History Museum
What did Benjamin Franklin and Ruth Brown share in common…no, not the kite and key. They both had a common goal of sharing education and conversation through library access, benefitting people who might not have had access to books otherwise. Beyond being one of America’s founding fathers, Ben Franklin’s name has been etched in history for his many “firsts,” including the establishment of the first lending library, the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, where he served as librarian from December 1733 to March 1734. Franklin adored philosophical conversation and the ability to freely share with others in search of intellectual improvement. This became his inspiration for the Library Company of Philadelphia, America’s oldest library at 290 years. In Bartlesville, organized access to reading material, outside the daily Magnet newspaper, was found in Mrs. Filkin’s Millinery Store on East Second Street. On June 1, 1898, the reading room was established by the ladies of the Fortnightly Club, later known as the Tuesday Club. In 1908, the Tuesday Club Public Library Room had limited access; open Friday’s from 2:00-5:30. Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American who granted funds to establish over 2,500 Carnegie Libraries; among them, one in Bartlesville through the 40
bmonthly | AUGUST 2021
work of the Tuesday Club. Carnegie believed in granting enough funds to construct the building but required a “buy-in” from the community to create a sense of pride in the library. Thus it was, November 1908, the Bartlesville City Commission, the Tuesday Club and a selected Grant Committee requested a grant from the Carnegie Foundation for a public library building. A site was designated at the southeast corner of Seventh Street (Adams Blvd.) and Osage Avenue. By 1912, the funding and construction contracts for the new library were secured and March 1913 Bartlesville’s Carnegie Library opened with 1,250 books on the shelves. This building is currently the Kane law offices and the Tuesday Club has since disbanded. In 1919, 28 year old Ruth Winifred Brown was hired as librarian on the heels of World War I. At that time, the Carnegie Library held just over 2,000 books and within eight years, the collection swelled to over 10,000 books. Rapidly outgrowing the Carnegie building, the City Commission and the Library Board moved the library to the north wing of the Bartlesville Civic Center in 1927 where the collection flourished to 25,000 volumes by 1936. Miss Brown addressed Bartlesville Public Library patrons by name as they entered the library because they were her family. She never married, preferring to focus on her service to the library visitors often crossing the lines of segregation to help children learn to read. She had long worked to bring equal rights to all citizens and shared story time with children of all races. According to my dear friend, Flo Messall, “It didn't matter what color you were…
The Carnegie Library building, now the Kane law offices.
