Paintsville Public Library Building

Though the first Works Progress Administration (WPA) sponsored Pack Horse Library was located about seventy miles southwest of Paintsville at the Wooton Presbyterian Center in Leslie County, Paintsville was home to Kentucky’s first recorded Pack Horse Library in 1913. The first Pack Horse Library was organized by May F. Stafford who convinced local coal baron John C.C. Mayo to fund a private library collection and mounted carriers to deliver reading materials to remote homes and schools in Johnson County. Unfortunately, the town was unable to find new financing for the library after Mayo’s death two years later and without funding library services were discontinued (Schmitzer, 1997).

By the beginning of the Great Depression, unemployment in Eastern Kentucky was at forty percent and illiteracy rates were higher even than the rest of the Appalachian region at thirty-five percent (likely higher still in rural areas which hadn’t been reported by the census). Though the coal, railroad, and timber industries had created an industrialized economy in the Appalachian region by the 1930s, most of the area was without highway construction or electricity and remained isolated and impoverished (Schmitzer, 1997). Kentucky as a whole spent only ten cents per capita on library services annually, which was well below the American Library Association recommendation of one dollar. Despite the efforts of local women’s clubs and other private groups to set up traveling libraries and other outreach efforts, sixty-three percent of Kentuckians had no access to public libraries in 1935. To address these inequities Kentucky’s state director of women’s and professional projects at WPA in Louisville, Elizabeth Fullerton, sought to use President Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative to revive Stafford’s Pack Horse Library Program.

By 1937 a new WPA-sponsored Pack Horse Library was formed in Paintsville and by 1939 the WPA had completed construction on a brand-new library building to house. The architect of Kentucky’s first Pack Horse Library, May Stafford, supervised the WPA project as well. In 1939 the library had received “1,897 books, 21,292 magazines, 70 Bibles, Testaments and gospels, 240 interesting scrapbooks” donated from 28 different states and had a circulation of 67,999 books and 105,550 magazines in the Johnson County area it (“Second Anniversary of WPA Pack Horse Library of Paintsville”, 1936). In Reaching Out to the Mountains: The Pack Horse Library of Eastern Kentucky Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer cites a Paintsville resident as saying “’Book women’ are among the most popular individuals Johnson County folk ever knew” (p. 73).

The WPA paid a salary of twenty-eight dollars a month for carriers, but the rent, heat, and lights for center libraries was funded by local school districts in return for serving backwoods schools (Boyd, 2007). The books and other reading material were mostly used and donated by churches, colleges, individuals, and larger libraries. Higher educational institutions and private citizens donated books specifically for public schools including nonfiction, American Literature, and popular magazines. As demand increased magazines became much more popular with requests for Women’s Home Companion and Popular Mechanics. Readers wanted information on home healthcare, cooking, canning, agriculture, childcare, hunting, and machinery. As they became more aware of the outside world, many enjoyed National Geographic and Western Story Magazine. Literature became popular with women and children and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Dickens, and Shakespeare were frequent requests. Children’s books were in especially high demand as both adults and children had limited reading ability (Boyd, 2007).

The library was staffed with five or six carriers and one librarian at the depot to maintain the collection, repair books, plan carrier routes, and serve walk-ins. Pack Horse librarians were exclusively local and nearly all of the 1000 carriers between 1936-1943 were women, most in their late twenties, married, and providing their family’s sole income. A Pack Horse Librarian rode an average of 100-120 miles twice a month, supplied, fed, and boarded her own horse or mule—two if she could afford it so she could carry more books. They rode along cliffs, in creek beds and ravines, and left their animals when necessary to finish the last leg by foot or boat (Boyd, 2007). Though they met resistance initially, especially from men, their patrons quickly grew to adore their carriers. They would read to sick miners and children who could not go to school. By reading bible passages to families who had received scripture exclusively from memory for generations, they gained the trust of local communities. To meet the demands of readers, librarians would re-purpose worn materials into scrapbooks as well as gather local recipes, quilt patterns, advice, and other miscellany to create entirely new material. As they became a part of daily life, carriers would send messages, deliver medicine, bring news, and send for doctors or midwives (Vance, 2012).

Following cuts to the WPA in 1941 due to wartime jobs, the Pack Horse Library Project ended in 1943. By that time nearly 1000 carriers had served 1.5 million patrons in 48 Kentucky counties. Most carriers returned to their farms or became teachers but some “served local public libraries into the 1990s” (p. 124). The collections were moved and eventually “discarded, given away, or destroyed by the regular flooding in the region” (p. 124) and the library centers that had been rented were forgotten, became private business, or were demolished (Boyd, 2007).

Boyd, Donald C.. The Book Women of Kentucky: The WPA Pack Horse Lihrary Project, 1936-1943. Libraries & the Cultural Record, vol. 42, no. 211 - 128. Published 2007. ProQuest.

National Register Of Historic Places. National Register of Historic Places. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, 2003] Web.. https://lccn.loc.gov/2003543619.

Vance, Jason. Librarians as Authors, Editors, and Self-Publishers: The Information Culture of the Kentucky Pack Horse Library Scrapbooks (1936–1943). Library & Information History, vol. 28, no. 4289 - 308. Published December 2012.

Schmitzer, Jeanne Canella. Reaching Out to the Mountains: The Pack Horse Library of Eastern Kentucky. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, vol. 95, no. 155 - 57. Published Winter 1997.

"Second Anniversary of WPA Pack Horse Library of Paintsville." The Paintsville Herald (Paintsville) December 21st 1936. vol. 39, no. 21, 1-1.

"Work On Library Here Is Being Pushed by Leaders." The Paintsville Herald (Paintsville) June 25th 1936. vol. 34, no. 50, 1-1.