Cooke County Free Library

This was the second county library under Texas's new law, and the first formed by petition. The library's own history says it began in 1899 as a subscription collection of the XLI Club, with a dollar-a-year fee, and that the county petition succeeded on January 11, 1921. At its height it ran eighty-two branch libraries and a bookmobile. A biography of Lillian Gunter adds that she also lobbied for library access for African Americans, and that effort did not succeed. Voters approved a bond for the present building on April 3, 1962; it opened in June 1963.

What the plaque says

Cooke County Free Library In 1913, city librarian Lillian Gunter (1870-1926) and the XLI club (a local women's literary society) secured a grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation to construct a library building for Gainesville. Gunter then began her quest for state legislation to enable counties to support library services for people outside incorporated cities. With the help of state representative George W. Dayton and the Texas Library Association, the County Library Law was passed in 1917. In 1920, the Gainesville City Council voted to turn over its library to the county, creating one of the first county libraries in Texas. The library moved to new facilities in 1963. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Great Hanging Memorial — 0.3 mi
  Two granite monuments in a Gainesville park, dedicated in 2014, for the Cooke County men the Confederate militia hanged in October 1862 on suspicion of Unionism.
• Stonewall Saloon Museum — 22 mi
  Saint Jo's first permanent building, a stone saloon of 1873 with rooms upstairs for trail drovers, in a town named, the story goes, as a joke on a founder who did not drink.
• Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge — 24 mi
  A 1946 refuge on the Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, laid over land bought for Denison Dam and the site of the vanished railroad town of Hagerman, now a winter stop for geese.

More markers nearby

• Gainesville National Bank — steps away
• Barbed Wire in Cooke County — steps away
• Gainesville-Fort Sill Road — 0.2 mi
• W. T. G. Weaver — 0.2 mi