18 Feb 2016 Looking back: Literary ladies looking forward 100 years ago

by Janna Virden

This year, the Conway County Library is celebrating 100 years of continual service with anniversary events scheduled every month. 

The events will feature speakers, parties and prizes with each month celebrating a different era of time during the library’s operation.

According to Linda Green, director of youth and outreach services and also a member of the GFWC Pathfinder Club, not only is it a time to celebrate, but also a time to look back and say a grateful “thank you” to a small group of women “who had a long view of the future for the community.”

Green, who is a history major and holds a master’s of library science degree, has done extensive research in the University of Arkansas Special Collections on the history of the library for the 100-year Anniversary Celebration. According to her research and through Pathfinder documents, in 1897 a small group of women decided to form a literary club to improve educational opportunities for themselves by reading great works of literature. They called themselves “The Pathfinders.” Literary clubs were one of the few ways women could expand their knowledge and education of the world outside their communities because of limited educational opportunities. At first, the women met in their homes for book discussions and exchanged books that they had purchased. But they wanted more. They wanted the community to have the same opportunity.

According to Green, there were many literary clubs for women during this timeframe that would plant the seeds of public libraries across the South. She said the ladies of the Pathfinder Club were essential. “Put yourself in that time period. Morrilton was not just rural, but full of roughnecks, river rats and gamblers. This ladies’ club brought art, literature, education and culture.” 

She said many men didn’t quite know what to do with these women when they saw them walking through the streets of town with their volumes of Shakespeare. After all, women didn’t even have the right to vote and wouldn’t until much later.

In 1899, the Pathfinder Club joined the Greater Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). They were also on the path to creating the first public lending library in Morrilton. In 1913, members raised enough money to buy the Old School Presbyterian Church to house their collection of books. Green said the men of the community threw their support behind the effort and helped the women move books as well as build furniture and shelving. 

In 1916, the women applied for a Carnegie Foundation grant of $10,000 to buy land and build a new public library. According to Green, the grant wasn’t automatic and the Foundation had to be convinced. She said Morrilton was considered “too small a community, too rural and too risky.” 

But the ladies didn’t give up. They got community support and backing. Finally, their grant was approved. The ladies of the GFWC Pathfinder Club had completed their goal and for the next 100 years the club has continued to support bringing educational opportunities to the community through the local library they founded. The Conway County Library is only one of two Carnegie funded libraries in the state and the only one that has been in continual operation since the doors opened. The other is in Eureka Springs.

For Green, doing the research on the library and the women who founded it has taken her down a path of greater understanding as she looked back at the history of the library, a place she has loved since she began coming to read in the afternoons as a little girl. She said as a child she believed anything was possible when she was at the library. “It was the prettiest building in town for a little girl from rural Conway County. It was simply a magical place.”

Green’s sentiment is probably the best “thank you” to the women who were always looking to the future.