Maria Hastings Cary is the founder of Lexington's free public library. She donated money and led the way deciding how the library would be run and financed by the town.
In 1868, she gave the town $1,000 for books, but said the town had to also spend $1,000 on books and not charge people for borrowing them. At that point, the town library was a few bookshelves upstairs from the general store. The next year, 1869, she offered Lexington $20,000 so it could add a special room for a library to the town hall it was building. That gift would be $410,000 in today's money!
 The old town hall (pictured above) was erected in 1871 and included a room for the library. |
She gave the library $5,000 more in 1871. When she died in 1881, she left another $5,000 to the library. Each of those gifts is the same as $100,000 today. Remember that in those days, not all towns had public libraries. If you've read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott or the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, you remember how precious access to books was to the characters in those books. |
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