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How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
In the late 1940s the mountain people raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, which traveled mountain roads to bring books to everyone who wanted them.
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How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
In the late 1940s the mountain people raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, which traveled mountain roads to bring books to everyone who wanted them.
3 of 3
How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
It all started nine years ago with a walk to the park on a beautiful autumn day in Banner Elk, North Carolina. It’s a beautiful place, especially in the fall. As I approached the park, I couldn’t take my eyes off the first honest-to-goodness, real-live bookmobile I had ever seen.
As a bookworm, my immediate question was, could I check out a book?
I had not yet obtained a library card for the area library in Newland. It wasn’t likely the bookmobile would issue me a card, right? But 15 minutes later, my walk forgotten, I was on my way home with my new library card and two books.
The library system in the high country counties of Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey still runs a bookmobile. Their long history doesn’t start with the first bookmobile. It actually starts with the first settlers to the mountains.
The first permanent European settlers came to the mountain counties in the 1770s, and many were educated people. One such person, William Wiseman, actually first came to the mountains in 1754. According to his fifth-great-grandson, Frank Vance, Wiseman, the youngest son of a wealthy London family, snuck aboard a ship bound for the new world. Once discovered he was indentured, and spent some time in Charleston, South Carolina.
Eventually Wiseman made his way to the mountains, and in the 1770s he helped survey the area and was known as a skilled cabinet maker. When the Overmountain Men marched South to tangle with the British at Kings Mountain, Wiseman followed with his wagon and made boots for the soldiers. He was also an educator and taught all over the area.
A display in the Avery County Historical Museum in Newland describes those first Europeans in this way: “The earliest settlers to these mountains, whether coming from England, Scotland, Germany or points of the colonies north and south, highly valued education. They were themselves, for the most part, well-educated. It is often said that our earliest settlers arrived with their Bible under one arm and a copy of Shakespeare under the other.”
Much of the land was parceled out in land grants after the Revolutionary War, and some of those same families still dot the mountains. However, as the generations passed, the ratio of books to people decreased. While still holding a great respect for book-learning, by the end of the 19th century many of the people in the mountains were illiterate, due to the hard life and lack of educational opportunities.
That began to change when Charles Halet Wing and his wife, Sarah, moved to Ledger, North Carolina, in Mitchell County, bringing books with them.
Wing was a professor of chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seeing the lack of education and low rate of literacy in the high country, Wing opened what became the first free library in North Carolina in 1867. He stocked it with 12,000 volumes, comprised mostly of discarded books from the Boston Public Library.
The “Good Will Library” was housed in a two-story building erected by for that purpose. In addition, crates of books were placed in community stores, post offices, and churches.
1 of 3
How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
In the late 1940s the mountain people raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, which traveled mountain roads to bring books to everyone who wanted them.
2 of 3
How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
In the late 1940s the mountain people raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, which traveled mountain roads to bring books to everyone who wanted them.
3 of 3
How Bookmobiles came to North Carolina's High Country
In the late 1940s the mountain people raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, which traveled mountain roads to bring books to everyone who wanted them.
This was the beginning of the first “bookmobile” of sorts. According to the family history record of the late James Myron Houston, it began as a horse-drawn ‘wagonmobile’ in which the driver would carry about 100 books from the library and distribute them throughout the mountains. Three months later the book wagon would return, with another 100 or so different books, and the earlier distribution would be collected.
Travel libraries were begun by the state starting around 1920, and the Goodwill Library closed.
However, by the late 1940s the mountain people were hungry for their own library.
The communities raised money and purchased a new green bookmobile, and Dorothy Thomas, a professional librarian from the Celo community in Yancey County was hired to be the librarian.
Donated books were stored in Miss Dorothy’s basement, and every day she hauled books up into the bookmobile and traveled throughout the county and into remote areas to take books to everyone she could reach.
Over the years, Dorothy Thomas inspired hundreds of children through her bookmobile and the library. She was also instrumental in bringing Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey counties together to form the current AMY library system.
Her story was told by Gloria Houston and illustrated by Susan Condie Lamb in the book “Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile,” published in 2011 by Harper Collins.
The AMY library system continues the tradition of a traveling library by providing Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey county residents with services for anyone living more than five miles from one of the regional libraries. The current bookmobile serves childcare centers, homebound seniors, homeschool families, and after-school programs. It offers fiction for all ages, nonfiction, magazines, historical reference materials, and more, and the librarian also assists those who are looking for work.
Librarians and other wise people believe that each generation must pass on the knowledge and educational opportunities they have received, or, like the 19th century mountain people, it can be lost.
Those book pioneers provided generations of North Carolinians mountain folk the opportunity to become readers.