Deposit stations and the first branches

1909–1927

The Allen County branch system did not begin with buildings. It began with boxes of books left where people already were.

In 1909 the public library placed a small deposit collection at the Wayne Knitting Mills, for the use of employees only. A companion collection at the General Electric plant at Clinton and Holman Streets was given up that summer because hot weather killed its popularity, but demand at the mills ran the other way. A Fort Wayne newspaper marveled that July and August were dull months in the library business, yet "so great has been the demand for the public library books which have been placed at the deposit station at the Wayne Knitting mills... that the station has been continued all summer." The Wayne Knitting Mills station outlasted them all: when the Board moved in the 1930s to withdraw deposits from every industrial plant in the city, nearly four hundred Wayne employees petitioned to keep theirs. By then the mill's branch had run more than twelve years under the educational committee of the Wayne Company athletic association, circulated more books than any other industrial branch in the city, and cost the library nothing but the books: the company paid its librarian and hauled them itself. As late as 1968 the County Extension Department was still delivering deposit books, to North American Van Lines and the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company.

The county system proper dates from 1920, when library service to county residents began. Its unit was the deposit station: a collection of fifty to one hundred volumes, changed every three months, kept in a general store, a post office, a school or a private home. Staff packed the deposits fifty volumes at a time into strong wooden boxes that doubled as bookshelves, with files and written instructions for the circulation work. The first stations opened on November 1, 1921. They stood in Mrs. William Wilder's general store at Aboite, the drug store at Grabill, the Stewart and Warren store at Leo, Stuckey Brothers at Woodburn, and a dozen more like them, down to the Scott warehouse at Wallen and the Gladieux Brothers store at Zulu. The Harlan deposit soon grew into a branch. By 1923 deposit stations stood in twenty small communities. Their keepers, the deposit custodians, received no salary at all. A borrower too far from any station could order books by mail, postage free outbound.

Two kinds of local keeper ran this system, and the record keeps them distinct. The deposit custodians were unpaid. The county branches, the system's fixed points, had branch librarians, often called custodians too, who were paid ten dollars a month. The first four county branches, at Huntertown, New Haven, Monroeville and Harlan, opened in November 1921. County Librarian Corinne Metz visited each once or twice a month, riding out in the "library Ford"; her assistant Adele Warner gave the branches' story hours for children. By February 1922, three months in, the four branches had circulated 4,866 volumes; at eight months the figure was 11,558. In 1924, with nine branches, the Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County was noted as the largest of Indiana's thirteen county library systems. The same machinery reached sickrooms: planning began in February 1922 for a deposit at the Irene Byron Hospital, general hospital service opened at St. Joseph's in May 1924 with staff pushing a handcart of books through the wards weekly, and St. Joseph was still receiving the service in 1982.

The first true branch was a city one, and older than the county plan. The Southside Branch opened on March 7, 1912, in the north room of the Schwartz building at 2520 South Calhoun Street, a storefront between Suttenfield Street and Woodland Avenue, open from 3 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Estella C. Stringer was its first librarian, succeeded in July 1912 by Ada McCormick. In its first year Southside circulated 35,122 books to eight hundred cardholders, the people on the far side of the tracks. The Northside Branch followed in 1919, in rented quarters at 1630 East Wells Street.

In 1926 the city branches took the names they are still known by, at the suggestion of Margaret Colerick, who proposed naming them for the Native American chiefs and peoples of the region: the centennial history's summary says Southside became Shawnee and Northside became Little Turtle, with new branches named Richardville, Pontiac and Tecumseh established about the same time. The same book's detailed Shawnee history adds a wrinkle the summary smooths over: Colerick's 1926 plan renamed Southside the Miami Branch, "in memory of the great tribe which was the power of the middle west," and why the name was shortly changed to Shawnee is unknown. The Allen County Public Library's 2022 facilities history tells the sequence the same way, Miami first and Shawnee second. Tecumseh Branch, the system's showpiece, opened on January 19, 1927, at 1314 East State Boulevard: the first city branch housed in a building constructed for library purposes, raised after several hundred taxpayers petitioned for it, with some 1,500 children's and 1,000 adult books and Lillian Leasure Hall as its first librarian.

The Depression squeezed the system without killing it. County branches were cut to two days a week by 1934. Rex Potterf, the head librarian from 1935, restored daily hours by that September, used WPA labor to redecorate the branches in 1936, and in January 1937 moved the Richardville Branch to South Wayne Street. That same year Richardville's old home at 4011 South Wayne Avenue was discontinued as Richardville and reopened as Shawnee, which stayed on South Wayne until 1973. By 1949 the system counted thirteen branches: Arcola, Harlan, Huntertown, Leo, Little Turtle, Maumee, Monroeville, New Haven, Pontiac, Shawnee, Tecumseh, Waynedale and Woodburn. Arcola, Huntertown, Leo and Maumee disappeared from the records during the 1950s. Shawnee moved in December 1973 to a new building at 5600 Noll Avenue, renovated in 2003; Little Turtle reached its present home at 2201 Sherman Boulevard in May 1973 by way of Huffman Boulevard. In the current year the system runs a main library and thirteen branches across Fort Wayne and Allen County, and four of Colerick's chiefs still stand over the doors: Little Turtle, Pontiac, Shawnee and Tecumseh. The deposit boxes are long gone, their last closing date unrecorded even by the library's own historian, but every branch in the system descends from the discovery of 1909, that a box of books left in a knitting mill would be read to pieces.

Sources:

1. Dawne Slater-Putt, "Beyond Books: Allen County's Public Library History, 1895-1995" (Allen County Public Library, 1995), chapter 2: the 1909 Wayne Knitting Mills deposit and the discontinued General Electric collection; the 1909 newspaper quotation; the 1930s employee petition and company support; deposits at Bowser's, Wayne Pump and Tokheim; county deposits of fifty to one hundred volumes changed quarterly; the November 1, 1921 station list with its stores and keepers; more than 5,000 books selected; unpaid deposit custodians; free mail borrowing; twenty communities by 1923; the 1968 deliveries; hospital service from 1922 and 1924, weekly handcart rounds, St. Joseph served in 1982.
2. Slater-Putt, "Beyond Books" (1995), chapter 4: the first four county branches and their November 1921 opening; branch librarians at ten dollars a month; Corinne Metz's visits and Adele Warner's story hours; 4,866 volumes by February 1922 and 11,558 at eight months; the 1924 standing among Indiana's thirteen county systems; Margaret Colerick's 1926 naming and the summary sequence Shawnee and Little Turtle; Southside's opening March 7, 1912, at 2520 South Calhoun, its librarians and its first-year circulation of 35,122 to eight hundred cardholders; the Shawnee history's Miami Branch passage and the unknown reason for the change to Shawnee; the 1937 Richardville discontinuation at 4011 South Wayne and Shawnee's tenure there to 1973; Tecumseh's opening January 19, 1927, at 1314 East State Boulevard, its petition and its first librarian; Depression cuts, Potterf's 1935 restoration of daily hours, the 1936 WPA redecoration at about $1,600, the January 1937 Richardville move; thirteen branches in 1949 and the four discontinued in the 1950s; Shawnee's December 3, 1973 opening on Noll Avenue.
3. Allen County Public Library, Facilities Master Plan (April 7, 2022): the Shawnee sequence (Southside 1912, renamed Miami 1926, then Shawnee) and its moves to 2903 South Calhoun, to 4011 South Wayne in 1937, and to 5600 Noll Avenue in December 1973 with a 2003 renovation; the Little Turtle sequence (Northside Branch opened 1919 at 1630 East Wells Street, renamed Little Turtle in 1926, Huffman Boulevard in 1929, 2201 Sherman Boulevard in May 1973).
4. Bertine Weston, "Equal Library Privileges Provided for the Farm and for the City," School Life 14 (January 1929), as cited in "Beyond Books": the deposit system described for a national education journal, including the Edgerton railroad gang that read a station empty.
5. "Allen County Public Library," Wikipedia and the Allen County Public Library (accessed 2026): the present system of a main library and thirteen branches, four of them carrying the chiefs' names Little Turtle, Pontiac, Shawnee and Tecumseh.