"They were known as the "book women." They would saddle up, usually at dawn, to pick their way along snowy hillsides and through muddy creeks with a simple goal: to deliver reading material to Kentucky's isolated mountain communities."
So began an article I happened upon on the Atlas Obscura website, written by Anika Burgess in 2017. Quoting from the article:
The Pack Horse Library Initiative was part of FDR's Works Progress Administration, created to help lift America out of the Great Depression. Roving horseback libraries weren't entirely new to Kentucky, but this initiative was an opportunity to boost both employment and literacy at the same time.
The Book Women rode 100 to 120 miles a week, on their own horses or mules, along designated routes, regardless of the weather. Sometimes they had to go on foot! By the end of 1938, there were 274 librarians riding out across 29 counties in Kentucky. This WPA program employed nearly 1000 riding librarians. Funding ended in 1943 as WWII loomed.
The counties had to have their own base libraries from which the women would travel. Reading materials.... books, magazines and newspapers ...... were all donated. In December 1940, a notice in the Mountain Eagle newspaper noted that the county library "needs donations of books and magazines regardless of how old or worn they may be."
Did you have an ancestor in the 1930s in Kentucky who might have been a horseback riding librarian???
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