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History of the Topsham Public Library
This article is reprinted from the July, 1964 Topsham Bicentenniel Booklet
Whitten Memorial Library
by Mrs. Donald Dorian
Like the lofty elms that shade its home on Pleasant Street, Topsham's Whitten Library has roots which reach far back into the town's past. In fact, the first library, "The Social Library of Topsham," whose charter subscribers included most of the well-known early residents of the village, was founded in 1803. Unhappily the surviving records of that early venture are incomplete, but books still in existence, containing its bookplate and with publishing dates as late as 1883, indicate that the original library either flourished for many more years than most such old-time libraries or was quickly followed by other earnest efforts to supply
Topsham readers with books.
The tale of the modern Whitten Library , however, is a success story in the best American Tradition. And it all began back in 1922, when two ladies, strolling down a Topsham street, discovered that their stockings had gathered a ruinous assortment of thistles and burdocks!
"What can we do about these things?" one of them demanded in disgust.
"Found a society to get rid of them," the other suggested promptly.
The result was the Village Improvement Association, dedicated not only to the job of making Topsham streets safe for silk stockings but to anything else that might need doing. Since creating a library for the town was obviously something that needed doing, the Association soon had that on its agenda, too.
But creating a library from scratch is no easy task. Funds, books, and a usable building all had to be acquired. So for eight years the Village Improvement Association set aside what small sums it could spare from its limited treasury, and most important of all, talked LIBRARY enthusiastically. Then with town interest steadily growing, the time seemed ripe for energetic action. First came a "book social" to which the price of admission was the contribution of a book. That realized 356 volumes.
A little later to raise money for more, the Association tackled a musical comedy. Its cast required an incredible 150, but everyone from the milkman to the bank president cheerfully took part, - and needless to say, it was an enormous success. Meanwhile, as the word spread, other books began to come in, not just from interested Topsham residents but also from out-of-State friends who summered in the area.
Eventually, too, a building turned up. Topsham firemen obligingly moved all their gear to the first floor of the old Androscoggin Engine House on Main Street and made the second floor available for the library. The boys in the school manual training classes [were] turned to and made book shelves. Local carpenters offered their services to strengthen the floor and walls for the weight of books. Paint was offered at discount and local painters contributed their labor. Some of the women in the Village Improvement Association scrubbed and cleaned. Other catalogued the books. Finally chairs and tables were installed, and on Saturday afternoon, February 7, 1931, with 1,500 books on its shelves, the Topsham Public Library proudly opened its doors.
The library moved to its present quarters and became the Whitten Memorial Library in 1941 when Mrs. Sarah Whitten, one of its earliest and most enthusiastic supporters, bequeathed her family house to Topsham for use as a library building and as a repository of historical relics.
Today the original 1,500 books has grown to 10,848, and under the competent direction of Mrs.Frances Coro, the librarian, the collection steadily increases. To many browsers and visitors one particularly interesting feature of the collection is a carefully selected and growing number of books about Maine and its history.
But quite aside from its books, Topsham's Whitten Memorial Library is well worth a visit by anyone who enjoys a glimpse of the past. The old house, built in 1838, retains much of its original flavor and charm. The entrance hall still contains its graceful curving stairway and wallpaper dating back to 1852. Over the bookshelves hang old portraits of the Whitten family, residents of Topsham for nearly two centuries. Upstairs, in the meeting room used by organizations such as the Garden Club, hangs a vivid reminder of the days when the town's mariners sailed the seven seas: a huge,oil portrait of the "Ship Henry Failing" (done by W. H. York of Liverpool, England in 1884) whose master, Captain Jacob Merriman lived nearby on Topsham's Elm Street. Upstairs, too, is the "historical room" with its fascinating mementoes of the past. Among them are an ancient wooden cradle and Topsham's first baby carriage, a wicker contraption set high on big wooden wheels and pulled by a heavy wooden tongue. Most attractive of all to many visitors, however, is the"historical room's" display of literary treasures from another day such as a school "rank card" of 1876, yellowed and dog's-eared school books, the earliest dating to 1834, used by successive generations of children in the Whitten family, copies of old newspapers - The New York Sun of 1883 for instance and The Brunswicker of 1844 - and that rare treasure, "The Laws of the Social Library of Topsham."
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