It was a day late in April that Sylvester Barnes hitched his team to the flatbed wagon and drove to Helmsburg to pick up his pupils.

After an hour’s travel along the old Helmsburg Road, his load of 27 arrived in Nashville to mark the celebration of Library Week in 1922.

The first public library was established shortly after the village of Nashville was plotted. Lots were sold at public auction with 10-percent of the proceeds going to the establishment and maintenance of a public library.

Early records do not tell the demise of this library, but somewhere between 1884 and 1919 it appears to have perished.

Interested villagers petitioned the town of Nashville and a new library was established.

The first regular meeting of the library board was held at the Methodist Parsonage in January 1920. The Nashville Public Library began operating in a brick building owned by T. D. Calvin, opposite the courthouse.

A little more than a year later the location was changed to the Masonic Banquet Hall in what is now the Village Green building on West Main Street. It remained there until 1949 when it moved to a new library building on Jefferson Street opposite the Methodist Church.

Many of the long-time residents of the county will always think of Mrs. Helen Allison when the library is mentioned. The quiet, pleasant-mannered little lady served as librarian for 34 years. When she began her duties, the library contained but a few hundred volumes and the salary was two dollars per week. The library was open two afternoons and two evenings a week.

She loyally followed the slow growth of the library through the years and was able to enjoy a short period as librarian in the new building before illness caused her retirement in 1952.

While the library began as a town library, its services were extended to the entire county the following year and has since been tax supported.

To give greater service to the county, the library board in 1920 decided to place books in “out-stations” with 100 books being placed in homes of various people in different sections of the county who would be responsible for them. Later these people were paid for acting as librarians in these out-stations.

Mrs. Edna Frazier became librarian after the retirement of Mrs. Allison. She enlarged upon the work begun by Mrs. Allison, particularly in the services to schools.

A summer reading club for grade school children was initiated in 1950 to stimulate their reading during the summer vacation. In 1954, 125 children were enrolled in the club and some members read as many as 75 books during the summer months.

The school class having the best reading record received a pennant, which was kept until a better record was made by another class the following year. The library board sponsored a party for the reading club members and 84 pupils with 24 mothers who attended.

At the beginning of each school year, Mrs. Frazier would send each teacher in the county who taught grades one through six a stamped self-addressed card to check whether they wish to have books sent to their school class. All but three teachers had accepted this service and were receiving books from the library periodically for school use and distribution.

Since the library had no traveling book truck, transportation of the books was something of a problem. Were it not for the generosity of the librarian, the teachers and Leston Deckard, the attendant officer, it would have been impossible to make the plan work.

This distribution was made twice a year and averaged 100 books per school. This was not enough for some teachers like Mr. Leonard Glenn, sixth-grade teacher Helmsburg, who made several trips a year on his own to secure books for his class.

Mrs. Frazier stressed grade-school reading with the hope that good reading habits formed early will continue into adult life. There seemed to be a recession in reading at the high school level.

— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society

NOTE: This story appeared in part in the Brown County Democrat in 1955. Since the Brown County Public Library celebrated its 100th birthday this year the Historical Society wanted to share it with the community. The complete story can be read in “Brown County Remembers” at the library.