Library Movement in Greenville

Greenville's library belongs to a pattern the Handbook of Texas describes statewide. Between 1898 and 1917 Carnegie made thirty-four gifts totaling $645,000 to Texas communities, asking each to provide a site and pledge ten percent of the grant every year, and grants to smaller towns often began as applications from women's clubs. By 1914 fourteen communities were defaulting on those agreements. The Handbook's description of Greenville that year lists a 3,500-volume Carnegie library beside four public schools and four banks.

What the plaque says

Library Movement in Greenville In 1897, Greenville's Chautauqua Literary and Social Circle formed the Women's Review Club, which aimed to create a circulating library; each member donated books. The Review Club opened their library in 1900. By 1903, the popular library had to move to larger facilities. The club sought funds from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who offered $15,000 for a building. The local Federation of Women's Clubs, under leadership of may Moulton Harrison, provided the site, and the City formed a board of trustees for the public library, which opened in 1904. The library moved to new facilities in 1954 and again in 1996. Renamed for local historian W. Walworth Harrison, the son of May Harrison, the library continues to serve its community. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum — 1.0 mi
  A Greenville museum of Hunt County's military heroes, including Audie Murphy, and of cotton, which keeps the engine of what it says was the world's largest inland cotton compress.
• Rockwall County Historical Foundation & Museum — 24 mi
  A small museum in Harry Myers Park that keeps the evidence on Rockwall's rock wall, sandstone dikes that geologists call natural and folk tales call built.
• Cooper Lake State Park — 30 mi
  Two units on Jim Chapman Lake, a Corps reservoir proposed in the late 1930s, stalled by a lawsuit until 1984 and dedicated in 1991, with a 10.5-mile equestrian trail and wildlife land around it.

More markers nearby

• Wesley United Methodist Church — 0.9 mi
• Wesley College Administration Building — 1.0 mi
• Lallie P. Carlisle — 1.0 mi
• Greenville's Electric Light Plant — 1.2 mi