LaRue County, By the Book; An Expanded Look at the Library's History

By 1761, American colonists were fed up with tax decisions made by an English Parliament in which they had no voice.  Even then, it was no new issue.  My own paternal uncle, Sir John Randolph, had personally taken up the argument with King George by the 1720s on behalf of Virginia's overtaxed tobacco planters.  LaRue County, Kentucky's public library board seems to operate in much the same aristocratic & autocratic English way, charging ahead with a new construction decision in which the tax payers of the county have no say, the people of the town have no input, and for which we've all yet to see a proof of need.  Times haven't changed so much, for those in power still take ownership of the resources of the poor and powerless, clearly, it would appear, because we haven't the common sense to spend our own cents wisely.  Perhaps we should thank these visionaries who speak and act on our behalf without our having to think or assume the burdens of social responsibility.  Perhaps. 

That said, the announcement of the new library building and its departure from down town after a century comes in the local newspaper with a hastily researched summary review of the institution's history, one that strangely fails to mention its first librarians.  Fortunately, my work on the history of Hodgenville United Methodist Church allowed me to glean some biographical information on one of these ladies, along with the identity of the first, which will follow, but I wonder if anyone knows the real story of just how our county was finally prompted to create a library?

Lincoln Memorial Library, a WPA Construction ca. 1935-

Yes, it's true, the civil organization of local women, the Ladies' Lincoln League, constituted the primary impetus for creating a library, but their efforts lacked motivation for many years, when they, and the citizenry, became oddly content to have a hodge-podge assortment of books on a borrowed shelf.  Understand, this group of civic-minded women had done a lot since their inception in 1909 when they were chartered with but 16 members when organized on 16th September of that year.  For the next 18 years they tackled community improvement projects like paving the town square, installing sidewalks and street lamps, and caring for Adolph Weinman's  Lincoln statue.  By about 1917, for reasons lost to history, their membership set about to enhance the literacy of the county. They began to raise money by selling souvenirs in a shop (no longer standing) at the rear of the Lincoln Memorial at the National Park. (This business venture was terminated and the Ladies evicted from the Park in the early 1930s.)  Per the official state record, "The Lincoln League Library was established by the Ladies' Lincoln League of Hodgenville.  It is located in the rooms of the League and its purpose is to make books available to persons in all parts of the county.  It was formally opened in June, 1917.  Several hundred volumes were donated and a small subscription fee is required.  Mrs. Charles R. Creal is in charge of the library."  Thus was reported the creation of the present-day LaRue County Public Library in the Kentucky Library Commission Fourth Biennial Report 1915-1917.  Later on, per the 1st March 1921 issue of The Library Journal the still fledgling library had amassed a collection of books valued at $200.

That first librarian referenced was Lily Beauchamp Jones Creal (1893-1973), wife of Charles Ramsey Creal (1891-1952), co-owner, publisher & editor of the LaRue County Herald (with R. N. Munford).  Lily & Charles had married the 15 January 1913.  She was the daughter of Dr. James Cook Jones (1852-1937) & Nancy Brownfield Jones (1862-1933) of Buffalo.  Nancy was the great granddaughter of early LaRue County pioneer George Brownfield (1773-1851).

It would appear that the League's work in sustaining a library had become stagnant by the beginning of the "Roaring '20s", and the members complacent with the infant status of the project.  That situation may have continued for many more years had they, and we, not been shamed by the somewhat biased yet basically truthful expose' by a Ladies Home Journal reporter back in January of 1922.  In it, we discover what the ladies of Hodgenville must have been horrified to read, a scathing account of ignorance that, while certainly weighted in its negativity, sustained a kernel of truth, especially for the wife of a newspaper man. 

The infamous yankee reporter turned Hodgenville traitor was one Charles Albert Selden (1870-1949), former reporter for the New York Sun and contributing writer to the Journal as well as Harper's.  His article was, even today, eye-opening to say the least, with some serious interviews that read today like a "Saturday Night Live" comedy script, but his message to a nation of readers, mostly women, was anything but comical, and was certainly not flattering to the membership of the Ladies' Lincoln League who had done so much to bring their town into the new 20th century.  Their marked failure in a 15 year project to establish a library, while an embarrassment, failed to daunt these women.  It instead launched a fervor and fortitude this town had never before seen.

While Selden's article would be entertaining and pertinent to print here in its entirety, I shall first request permission to do that at a later date, and shall instead let it suffice to quote his findings regarding the Lincoln League Library.  Selden wrote, "In the public square of Hodgenville, facing the courthouse, is a bronze statue of Lincoln erected by the Government.  At one corner of the square (now the Lincoln Museum) is a bakeshop, which houses the most encouraging thing in Hodgenville so far as education is concerned.  The woman who keeps the bakery (Nona Stierle) is the president of the Ladies' Lincoln League, and in a room back of her store is the beginning of the League's library, housed there temporarily for the use of the community until the League can obtain different quarters.  There is a considerable number of books of popular fiction and a half a dozen trivial books about Lincoln- none of the great biographies of the man.  One entire shelf is filled with bound volumes of the Congressional Record.

The president of the League did not know who had made the Lincoln statue in the square.  "Oh, I don't know that," she said.  "I'm only the president, and I'm very busy with the store.  The secretary ought to know all those things."  But hats off, nevertheless, to the president of the League and the village baker.  She at least does not think that her neighbors are, "all fed up on Lincoln," and she is willing to give up a whole room of her restricted quarters that the public may have the facilities for reading books."  Selden's editorial goes on to quote other individuals in the county, from teachers to farmers to the Superintendent of Schools, gathering ample verbal evidence of a severe educational failure in LaRue County. 

As noted, the "baker-librarian" that Selden interviewed was our county library's 2nd official custodian, Mrs. Nona Stierle.  Born Nona Blandfield on 14 November 1887 near Leitchfield, Kentucky to Methodist parents Sarah Jane Hart and James Harvey Blandford, members of Summit United Methodist Church, Hodgenville’s Nona Stierle is best known perhaps as the mother of a beloved teacher, but in truth she was respected in her own day for her work with the Ladies' Lincoln League and for her unrecognized vocation as our county’s second librarian, taking over the initial work of Lily Creal.  By common knowledge an outreach of the Ladies’ Lincoln League, few today remember the irony that our first LaRue County Public Library had its austere beginnings in the back room of Mrs. Stierle’s bakery in downtown Hodgenville. 

No longer the part-time librarian as our nation entered into a troubling economic depression, Nona Stierle nonetheless was a fervent supporter of the cause, refuting the image portrayed by Selden in 1922 by working diligently to see the dream of a respectable library come to fruition.  Their accomplishment was heralded in the local paper, “Hodgenville. Ky., Feb. 12. 1935 — A long- fostered project of the Ladies' Lincoln League was due to materialize here tonight with the dedication of the new $11,500 Lincoln Memorial Library. A program, in which leading citizens of Larue County planned to take part, was arranged under the direction of Mrs. D. B. Munford. president of the league. Entertainment on the program includes singing by a double quartet consisting of Mesdames C. B. Funk. LaRue, Clara Walther, Nona Stierle. Dr. Shacklette. Ollie Lyons, J. R. Wil-son and Edward Elliott, and a solo whistling number by Mrs. Hugh Fulkerson.”

 Prior to coming to Hodgenville, Nona Blandford had married George H. Stierle (3 JAN 1879- 7 JUNE 1921) in Grayson County. George was a baker by profession and had established a shop in Leitchfield where the family resided in 1910.  For reasons unknown, but perhaps due in part to the early death of their young son, the couple, along with their daughter Sarah and Nona’s mother came to Hodgenville in 1912 to operate a bakery here.  The couple had 6 children, they being Anna Mae (1912-1993), George Jr. (1910-1911), Helen (1914-1987), Martha (1917-1966), Winona (1919-2002), & Sarah (1908-1974), all of whom, but for baby George, were reared in the Methodist Church family at Hodgenville.  Of all the children, the best remembered and loved was surely “Miss Sarah”, their eldest child.  Never married, “Miss Sarah” was the surrogate mother to hundreds of LaRue County children during her memorable career as an elementary school teacher.  The entire family rests today in Red Hill Cemetery.

George Stierle’s life was cut short prematurely, but as mentioned his widow Nona continued to run his bakery which she expanded to incorporate our fledgling County Library.  George, the son of Rudolph Theodore Stierle Sr. and Marie Magdalena, was in reality named Heinrich George, having been born in Baden-Württemberg, Germany and emigrating from there with his parents, four brothers & two sisters on the S. S. Trave, arriving in New York at 26 April 1889. The family made its way to Louisville by 1910, where Theodore worked as a cabinetmaker making church furniture.  It might be surmised that George was trained in Germany as a baker.  Surely Lutheran by birth, it seems rationale that he would make the conversion to Methodism. 

By the time of that 12th Feb 1935 dedication of the then recently renamed Lincoln Memorial Library (a name that seems to have come into use in the early 1930s as a part of the fundraising campaign of the League), the sting of humiliation from that New York journalist had turned shame into community pride.  13 years and $11,500 later, the ladies of the League were proud to open a brand new, modern library boasting 5,000 volumes, a vast increase from the scant few books on those borrowed bakery shelves back in 1921.