The Godparent

The Godparent: Evaluating Wayland’s Role in the Free Public Library Movement¹

Joseph M. Weisberg

Visitors to the Wayland Historical Society, which is located at the site of the former library and town hall, will notice a boulder on the southern corner of the property emblazoned with a plaque that reads:

IN COMMEMORATION

OF THE ESTABLISHMENT BY THE 

TOWN OF WAYLAND 

OF THE 

FIRST FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY

 IN 

MASSACHUSETTS 

AND THE SECOND IN THE UNITED STATES 

AUGUST 7TH 1850

The claim that Wayland is home to the oldest library in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been repeated many times over the years.² However, as this piece will make clear, it is difficult to verify this claim on the basis of historical evidence. Town historian Helen Fitch Emery noted, “It is hard to define the beginning of what could be called a true public library.”³ In fact, the meaning of the term “public library” has changed significantly since the mid-nineteenth century, when it simply referred to any publicly or privately-owned collection of books that was easily accessible to people who wished to use them. 

Nonetheless, the Wayland Free Public Library has another claim to history with an arguably more significant legacy. Wayland’s decision to establish a publicly funded library triggered a statewide conversation about the legality of using public money for library-related purposes. Wayland clergyman and state legislator John Burt Wight resolved the doubt by introducing legislation in the Massachusetts General Court that explicitly authorized the use of public money to establish and maintain free libraries. The bill unanimously passed both houses of the legislature and was signed into law in May 1851. Thus, the WFPL opened before it was technically legal to do so, but Wight’s landmark bill retroactively enshrined the WFPL as the first major success of the free public library movement. 

Ultimately, the WFPL may not have been the very first free public library in Massachusetts. However, there is no doubt that Wayland was among the earliest towns in the Commonwealth to dedicate taxpayer dollars to a library and that the WFPL served as a model for other towns to follow. In this sense, the WFPL can be thought of as a godparent to the free public library movement in Massachusetts. This essay does not tell the story of the WFPL’s founding. That story has been told elsewhere in this commemoration. Instead, this essay explores the ambiguous early history of public libraries in Massachusetts. It has two goals: First, it shows why the WFPL is probably not the first free public library in Massachusetts. Second, it demonstrates why it is almost impossible to deliver a definitive answer to the question, “What was the first free public library in Massachusetts?”

 Municipalities in Massachusetts have owned and maintained public collections of books since the colonial era. In 1656, Captain Robert Keayne included provisions for a public library in a larger bequest he left to the Town of Boston, which the town accepted and used to construct a municipal building referred to as the “Town House.” The first public library in Boston occupied a room in the Town House for almost a century until it was destroyed by a fire in 1747. During that time, the town actively managed the library as public property, commissioning a catalog for it and depositing public records in the library. In contrast, Wayland would not own any books until Samuel Sewall donated the works of Richard Baxter to the local parish in 1731. The fact that Sewall donated the volumes to the parish likely meant that the small number of residents who attended church in other parishes were not eligible to use the books.⁴ 

Wayland was also not the first town in the Commonwealth to circulate a collection of books. In 1785, the Town of Franklin wrote to its namesake Benjamin Franklin requesting the donation of a bell. The statesman famously responded by sending the town 116 books instead. After a brief period of controversy, the books were eventually made available to any resident of the town. However, when the residents of Franklin wanted to use public funds to add more volumes to the collection, they encountered the same legal obstacle that Wayland residents would later confront when they wanted to use public funds to establish a library. The Franklin town meeting questioned whether they could legally use taxpayer money to add to the library without the approval of the state legislature. Wayland would later make its mark on the free public library movement in Massachusetts by introducing the law that resolved any lingering concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars for public libraries. For the moment, however, Franklin continued to operate its public library without taxpayer support. 

Most importantly, the questionable legality of using the public purse to fund libraries did not prevent every town in the Commonwealth from contributing taxpayer dollars to local libraries. The Town of Lexington used public funds to establish a juvenile library in 1827. Town meeting records show that, in 1827, Lexington voted to raise sixty dollars “by a tax” and used the funds to purchase books for the library. Ten years later, the West Cambridge Juvenile Library explicitly recognized the rights of residents to use the library as a benefit of municipal support.⁵ Their trustees “voted that in consideration of [the] thirty dollars annually appropriated by the town for the increase of the Library [sic], that each family in the town shall have a right to take books from the Library while the appropriation is continued.”⁶ As a result, the residents of West Cambridge had access to a tax-supported free public library over a decade before Wayland would vote to establish its own free public library. 

Wayland may have the state’s first free public library that was conceived as such from the onset. Some historians have suggested that the town of Peterborough, New Hampshire created the first modern public library in 1833.⁷ The Peterborough Town Library differed from earlier tax-supported libraries because it was explicitly intended to serve any class of people in the community. It is unclear what town was the first to establish a similar institution in Massachusetts. The town of Orange may have founded a free public library as early as 1844, but, as one historian wryly noted, “No one seems to know just when this library was begun.”⁸ Other sources, including an 1869 catalog, suggest that the Orange Town Library was not founded until 1859. As a result, it is almost impossible to determine what town introduced the modern public library to Massachusetts. 

However, the establishment of the WFPL clearly precedes the founding of the Boston Public Library (BPL). Although the BPL looms large as the “first large free municipal library in the United States,” it was not the first free public library in Massachusetts.⁹ Boston created an exploratory committee before Wayland, but the smaller town slightly preceded Boston to most of the noteworthy benchmarks on the path to establishing a public library. Wayland was made aware of the proposal to form a public library about a week before the Boston City Council applied to the state legislature for the power to establish and maintain one. More significantly, the WFPL was both established and operational before the BPL. Residents voted to establish a town library on March 6, 1848—twelve days before Boston received authorization to found its library—and were able to borrow books over three and a half years before their counterparts in Boston. 

In short, the WFPL may have been the first institution conceived of as a free, community-serving, and tax-supported library from its inception, but that claim cannot currently be confirmed by historical evidence. We can more safely conclude that the WFPL was not the first tax-supported free public library in Massachusetts. However, Wayland still left an indelible mark on the history of free public libraries in Massachusetts. 

Like a godparent, Wayland guided the free public library movement to maturity. As we have seen, Wayland and its elected officials played a central role in resolving legal questions that prevented some towns from establishing public libraries. Its impact was immediate: at least ten Massachusetts towns established public libraries in the three years following the passage of the 1851 Library Law. If the Wayland Free Public Library’s claim as the first free public library in Massachusetts is questionable, the 1851 Library Law offers concrete evidence that the spirit of that claim—leadership in the growth of free public libraries—remains intact. 

 

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^{1 This essay would not have been possible with the help of numerous librarians across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We would especially like to thank Steven Prochet of the Robbins Library in Arlington, Amy Newmark of the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, and Jessica Magelaner of the Wheeler Memorial Library in Orange for their patience and generosity in helping us locate information about their respective institutions.}

^{2 The plaque was erected late in the nineteenth century. In 1896, the town voted to appropriate fifty dollars “to erect and place on the Town Hall Lot a Stone [sic] tablet or monument with [a] suitable inscription to designate, that in Wayland was established the First Free Public Library in Massachusetts.” The Library Trustees reported the following year, “This duty has been discharged to the best of our ability with the money appropriated.” The Trustee minutes contain more details about procuring the plaque, including details that suggest it was not finished until 1897. The plaque remains on the current site of the Wayland Historical Society, serving as a reminder of how previous generations of Waylanders used the space. See Wayland Town Meeting minutes, Vol. 4, 25 March 1896; “Report of the Library Trustees for the Year 1896-7,” in Official Reports of the Town of Wayland, Vol. 4, 1893-1901; Wayland Public Library Trustee Minutes. Vol 2, 1870-1905, 36-43. The original Trustee minutes book does not contain page numbers. They are available in the transcribed version of these minutes on the Internet Archive.}

^{3 Helen Fitch Emery, The Puritan Village Evolves: A History of Wayland, Massachusetts (Canaan, NH: Wayland Historical Commission, 1981), 180.}

^{4 People familiar with local history will note that the town currently known as Wayland could not have owned property until it split from Sudbury in 1780. However, we elected to refer to the precinct of East Sudbury as the institutional predecessor to Wayland partially for expediency and partially because the church precinct followed the east-west divide that eventually caused the two towns to split. For more on the schism, see Emery, The Puritan Village Evolves, part 1.}

^{5 West Cambridge changed its name to Arlington in 1867.}

^{6  Record of the West Cambridge Juvenile Library Founded by Doct. Ebenezer Learned. Local History Room, Robbins Library, Arlington, MA, p. 7.}

^{7 For instance, the American Library Association recognizes Peterborough as the “free modern public library.” See “Details of ALA History,” https://www.ala.org/aboutala/history/details-ala-history.}

^{8 Jesse H. Shera, Foundations of the Public Library: The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629-1855 ([Hamden, CT]: Shoe String, 1965), 182n60. Originally published in 1948.}

^{9 The BPL uses this phrase to describe itself. See “BPL History,” https://www.bpl.org/bpl-history/.}

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Bibliography:

Emery, Helen Fitch. The Puritan Village Evolves: A History of Wayland, Massachusetts. Canaan, NH: Wayland Historical Commission, 1981. 

Jewett, Charles Coffin. “Report on the Public Libraries of the United States.” In Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, appendix. Washington, DC: United States Senate, 1850. 

Lexington Town Records. Book 8. 1820-1839. Lexington Public Records Portal. 

“Library Dedication To-day.” Orange Enterprise and Journal. 17 April 1914. p. 3. 

Peters, John A. and Nina C. Santoro. A History of America’s First Public Library at Franklin, Massachusetts, 1790-1990. [Franklin, MA]: Franklin Public Library Bicentennial Commission, 1990. 

“Receipt for payment to Committee Chosen by the Town to Purchase Books for a Juvenile Library, no date, believed to be 1827.” Manuscript. Library Folder. Old Town Records. Lexington Public Records Portal.  

Record of the West Cambridge Juvenile Library Founded by Doct. Ebenezer Learned. Unpublished. Local History Room. Robbins Library. Arlington, MA. 

Shera, Jesse H. Foundations of the Public Library: The Origins of the Public Library Movement in New England, 1629-1855. [Hamden, CT]: Shoe String, 1965 [org. 1948].

Wiegand, Wayne A. Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.