Pieces of Kings Mountain History

April 12 marks the 100th anniversary of the Hord Mansion at 100 W. King Street in Kings Mountain. The building has been used as a library since 1947, but it was once the home the family of Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord. The family lived there from 1923 until it was sold in the 1940s.

In 1947, the property was gifted to the city of Kings Mountain as a memorial to Jacob Simri and Margaret Juletta Rudisill Mauney by their children for the expressed use as a library.

The following information comes from the application to place Jacob S. Mauney Memorial Library and Teacher’s Home on the National Historic Register written by Davyd Foard Hood. If you would like to read the entire application, it is online at https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/ nr/CL1457.pdf.

Using the power of the media, Publisher Haywood Lynch wrote article after article encouraging citizens to open a public library.

In the event the public library did not open in the second-story space do- nated by Dr. Anthony, but it began operation instead on 15 February 1937 in a room in the building on Cherokee Street occupied as a temporary city hall. While citizens of Kings Mountain were advancing the library initiative in 1936, other city leaders were seeking federal funding for a new town hall. That support was secured and the plans of the new municipal building to occupy the site of the existing town hall in the 100 block of South Piedmont Avenue were in hand and approved by year’s end.

In January 1937 the town offices were relocated temporarily to the Webb building on Cherokee Street, the old town hall was taken down, and construction began on the new building on the eleventh. The scheduled opening of the public library on Monday afternoon, 15 February 1937, was announced on the front page of the Kings Mountain Herald on 11 February.

An account of the opening appeared under the headline, “Public Library Now Open,” in the weekly newspaper on 18 February 1937. Kings Mountain’s Public Library is now open, and everyone is invited to come by and get a book.

About 500 volumes are already on the shelves, and more are on the way. Temporary quarters are at the Town Hall. Mrs. Lois Young, District Supervisor, and Mrs. Jesse O’Shield, County Supervisor of WPA(,) were in Kings Mountain Monday and Tuesday for the opening. They instructed Miss Ida Davis, local Librarian, in the system of keeping the books.

The committee in charge of opening the library are deeply indebted to Mesdames Young and O’Shield for their generous co-operation, in making Kings Mountain’s Library possible. The Board of Trustees of the Library named this week to have supervision for the next twelve months are: Mrs. Hunter Neisler, Rev. W. M. Boyce, Mayor J. E. Herndon and Haywood E. Lynch. Articles on patronage of the library and the acquisition of new books continued to appear in the town’s weekly newspaper through the spring and early summer of 1937 as the new city hall neared completion.

The handsome Colonial-Revival style building, whose architect remains to be confirmed, was accepted by the city in mid-July 1937 and the several offices housed in the temporary municipal