OPINION Pieces of Kings Mountain History

If you have lived in Kings Mountain for any time, you are surely familiar with the Hord Mansion, a building that has been used as the city’s library. It was once the home of Dr. Jacob George Van Buren Hord and his family from 1923 until 1947.

Dr. Hord died in 1930 and had young children at the time. His wife and children occupied the home until after the mother’s death in 1940.

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. Haywood Lynch worked tirelessly from 1935 until 1947 to see that there was a library in Kings Mountain. He partnered with likeminded people to see that this happened. Other citizens joined in eventually laid the groundwork for Mauney Memorial Library. While I didn’t do this research, I thought it interesting enough to share the story using excerpts from the application regarding how the library itself came to be, written in three parts. If you would like to read the entire application submitted by Davyd Ford, it is online at https://files.nc.gov/ncdcr/ nr/CL1457.pdf. Using the power of the media, Lynch wrote article after article encouraging citizens to open a public library.

The genesis of the movement for a public library in Kings Mountain, the second such municipal library in Cleveland County, which has been known as the Mauney Memorial Library and located in its present location since 1947, lies in the efforts of Haywood Eugene Lynch (19091983).

Mr. Lynch, a native of Goldsboro, Wayne County, North Carolina, a graduate of Duke University, and a journalist formerly on the staff of the Goldsboro News-Argus, came to Kings Mountain in 1934. In that year he executed a lease arrangement for the operation of the Kings Mountain Herald, the town’s weekly newspaper, with Guilford Garfield Page (18831949), its long-time owner and former editor.

Lynch oversaw publication of the first issue of the newspaper as its editor on 17 January 1935. During the decade he owned and edited the newspaper, he utilized his role as editor of the Kings Mountain Herald to encourage every effort for civic, social, and commercial improvement in Kings Mountain.

This advocacy was especially important in the 1930s when he urged town leaders to seek and provide the necessary matching support for a series of projects funded through several Federal works programs including a new town hall, a high school gymnasium, a new post office, and important improvements to the transportation infrastructure.

Mr. Lynch first exercised his advocacy in an editorial, “A City Public Library,” published in the Kings Mountain Herald on 7 February 1935. “We would like to see in our town a public library. A place where readers of all ages may get reading material of the better kinds. Maybe some of the patriotic citizens would like to donate some books that they now have. A library could be started on a very small scale and gradually built up. New volumes could be added from time to time. The biggest cost would be the salary of the librarian, which could be part time work at first.