By Jared Olar
Library Assistant
Last week in our series on the history of the Pekin Public Library, we recalled how Pekin library board member Mary E. Gaither took the initiative to write to philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and ask for his help to build a library for Pekin.
In our previous installment, we learned of Carnegie’s program that enabled communities across the country and even internationally to build beautiful libraries. This week we will shine a spotlight on the remarkable Mary Gaither, who is justly remembered as the mother of Pekin’s Carnegie library.
The Gaither surname occupies a special place in the history of Pekin and Tazewell County, chiefly due to the central role played by Miss Gaither, whose name in full was Mary Elizabeth Gaither (1852-1945), in the planning and construction of the Pekin Carnegie Library in 1902. She also compiled and wrote the early history of the library up to 1902.
Miss Gaither was one of seven children of William Gaither, Esq. (1813-1892) and Ann Eliza Coleman Garrett. William held a number of public offices in Tazewell County, including that of county treasurer. His social prominence and political activities earned him a place in the 1873 Atlas Map of Tazewell County, which also includes numerous biographies of the “Old Settlers of Tazewell County.” Gaither’s biography is on page 42 of the atlas, and an engraving of his residence on Buena Vista Street is found on page 124.
William Gaither was born April 8, 1813, in Hagerstown, Maryland, the son of Zachariah Gaither (1782-1834) and Elizabeth Garver (1786-1827). In 1844, he and Ann Eliza married, and together they had seven children, three of whom died in childhood – William, Otho, Martha, Mary, Charles, Samuel and Lincoln. William had first come to Pekin in Oct. 1836, but only lived here a short time before moving to Tremont. He and his family moved back to Pekin in 1863.
In the fall of 1850, William was elected Tazewell County Sheriff, serving a single term. Later he was appointed by President Lincoln a federal inspector of revenue for the Eighth District (encompassing Tazewell County), then removed from that office by President Johnson over policy differences, was appointed assistant county treasurer and collector in the fall of 1867, appointed county treasurer in September 1869 to fill the vacancy created by the death of County Treasurer Barber, then elected county treasurer in November 1869. At the time of the publication of the 1873 Atlas Map, Gaither was serving a second elected term as treasurer.
We have previously noted that Miss Gaither had joined the Ladies Library Association of Pekin by 1875, in which year she was appointed one of the association’s five officers. She was then about 23 years old. She made a living as a music teacher, and she never married (and so was usually known in the community as “Miss Gaither”).
Important insight into her personality and character may be discerned simply from her decision to write to Carnegie: civic-minded, aware of the library’s needs and constraints, and ready and willing to take the initiative and act when made aware of a means to improve the library and the community it served. As we noted last time, Miss Gaither later reported her activities to the library board in Nov. 1900: “The opportunity being presented, I have acted upon it” – not waiting for the majority of her fellow board members to warm to the idea first. She acted because, she told the board, she saw that “Our city has for years needed a library building, such as is maintained in other cities of like size.“
Having gotten the ball rolling on the construction of a Carnegie library for Pekin, Miss Gaither continued to play a leading role in the planning and building of Pekin’s new library. Upon receipt of the favorable reply from Andrew Carnegie’s personal secretary James Bertram’s letter informing her of Carnegie’s offer to commit $10,000 toward the construction of a library, she immediately moved on to the next phase of her campaign to get Pekin’s library a new building: finding a landowner willing to donate a building site.
For that, Miss Gaither penned a letter to prominent Pekin businessman George Herget (1833-1914), and on Nov. 8, 1900, Herget wrote back to her saying he would be happy to donate land to the city for the library site. That same day, Gaither brought Bertram’s and Herget’s letters to the library board meeting of Nov. 8, 1900, where board president Franklin L. Velde read them into the record and the board voted its approval and thanks. The board and the city then went to work on plans for the Carnegie library. We will continue the story of the planning and building of Pekin’s Carnegie library next week.
As for Miss Gaither, having devoted much of her years to the public library, she stepped down from the library board in 1923 (her letter of resignation from the board was accepted at the Oct. 11, 1923 meeting). She later moved to California, where she lived her remaining years in the home of her older brother Otho, outliving him by a few months and dying in Lindsay, Calif., on Jan. 11, 1945. Coincidentally that was the same day and month that her father William had died in 1892; her mother Ann Eliza had died in 1912. According to her death certificate, Miss Gaither’s remains were cremated at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, but the certificate does not specify whether her ashes were interred there or scattered somewhere.
Miss Gaither’s obituary, published on the front page of the Jan. 13, 1945 Pekin Daily Times, surprisingly is silent about her involvement in the library, but offers these remarks on the decades-old ties of Miss Gaither and her family to Pekin:
“The news carries oldtimers down a long memory lane to Civil War days in Pekin. At the turn of the year, word came of the death of Mrs. Margaretha Neef, whose memory also included Civil War and Abraham Lincoln days in Pekin. Still living of that day and almost the same age is Mrs. Anna Schipper, now in Florida for the winter.
“The old Gaither home in Pekin was the house that now is the Congressman Dirksen home. Many remember old Mr. Gaither because of the shawl he wore. Miss Gaither is best remembered here as a music teacher – but that was long, long ago.”
Among the records and mementos preserved in the Pekin Public Library’s Local History Room archives is a collection of papers and letters of Miss Gaither’s father William, many of them associated with his activities as treasurer and collector for the county. The collection, formerly in the possession of Miss Gaither, was donated to the library in 1970 by Miss Gaither’s niece (Otho’s daughter), Nellie Gaither Urling-Smith.
