I have always been in awe of libraries, and therefore also with librarians.
From the bibliophiles of my childhood, who introduced me to Nancy Drew to the librarians of my teen years who helped encourage my love of historical fiction, book promoters have always been my gatekeepers and heroes.
Especially when I remember that in my first week of teaching, I discovered that none of my students could read the county-issued textbooks, so I walked downstairs and introduced myself to the librarian.
She nodded in understanding, disappeared into the stacks, and returned with a copy of Sounder by William H.Armstrong. Her suggestion was to read it aloud to my students and teach them the principles of literature through that novel.
For the remainder of that year, I consulted weekly with her to discover other novels and short stories for my reluctant readers. As the years went by and my career flourished, there would be Edna, Linda Sue, Cathie, Karen, Willa, Betty, Lois, Vicki, and many other librarians who came to my rescue when I needed the perfect book for my students.
But I took libraries for granted; it never occurred to me that entire sections of Americans did not have access to books.
Grace Caudill Lucas helped to remedy that.
In 1931 Grace Caudill (Lucas) was living in Lee County, Kentucky in the heart of Appalachia. At age 19, she had a two-year-old boy, and a one-month-old girl and her husband had just abandoned her.
This was in the throes of the Great Depression, and times were tough all over America, but especially so in eastern Kentucky, where shuttered coal mines had skyrocketed unemployment to 40 percent.
At first, Grace tried her hand with the WPA Sewing Project. Three years later, she heard about the new Pack Horse Libray Project of the WPA and applied for a job as a pack horse librarian.
The WPA, Works Progress Administration, was established in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. One year later, the WPA initiated funding for the Pack Horse Libraries.
Because eastern Kentucky was one of the hardest-hit sections of Appalachia with high unemployment and 31 percent illiteracy, the Pack Horse Library Project targeted the isolated settlements in the Cumberland Mountains.
Grace quickly learned that she would ride through eastern Lee County and deliver books three days a week for a salary of $28.00 a month. She would have to rent a horse or mule at 50 cents a week and pay for the animal’s feed. That would still leave her with more money then she had previously ever earned.
Her job meant rising at 4:30 am, feeding her two small children and taking them over to her mother’s house, and then saddling up the horse. She was out on the roads by dawn, carrying 100 books in two sturdy bags perched behind her saddle. By the time she returned home, it might be dark and she would have covered roughly 20 – 30 miles. On horseback. In all weather conditions. By herself.
The bulk of her deliveries were children’s books, which were favored by both children and their illiterate parents who could decipher the story through pictures. The other requested materials included The Bible, Robinson Crusoe, and magazines.
Without any paved or gravel roads, Grace would pick her way along deer paths and rocky creekbeds with the sound of rushing water accompanying her journey. She rode in all types of weather, plowing through knee-high snow or sleeting rain that left ice crystals clinging to her coat. Once, her shoes froze to the stirrups.
But she never quit. The money helped her family survive the Depression. In Grace’s own words:
“In the Depression, times were tough. Many a night my children and me went to bed with just milk and bread for supper, and it’s still good enough for me.”
Some of Grace’s deliveries were to one-room schoolhouses where as many as forty-five children clamored for her to distribute the precious books. Other times she stopped at isolated cabins and offered to read aloud to the family. Each family was allowed one or two books or magazines and had two weeks before Grace would return. Grace then collected her materials from the previous visit and set out again, this time to perhaps another remote cabin in a deep hollow where she had to lead her horse and was the only visitor the family had from month to month.
Grace never calculated her mileage, although she made a full circuit in eastern Lee County from Bear Creek on toward Tallega. Estimates exist that most of the Pack Horse Librarians logged from 80 – 90 miles each week.
While the WPA paid the Pack Horse Librarians’ salary, all of the books were donated by fellow Americans, mostly from outside of Appalachia.
When the program finally ended in 1943 due to a lack of funding by the WPA and American employment skyrocketing with WWII, the Pack Horse Librarians had circulated books to approximately 100,000 Appalachian families. And all those books were delivered by steadfast women from rural Kentucky, willing to ride up into the hollows where mountain folk clamored for the stories inside the books.
When Grace died in 2001 at age 89, rural Kentuckians were able to obtain books from motorized bookmobiles. And by 2014, Kentucky had more bookmobiles than any other state.
Grace would be pleased.
Thank you to Strong Women follower Donna Haarz, who sent me a magazine article on the Pack Horse Librarians. Once read, I plunged headfirst into researching these women.
If you enjoyed this month’s blog, please sign up on the right sidebar to become a Strong Women follower, and encourage others to do the same. In the meantime you can catch me on Twitter @LHSittig and discover my strong women novels: Cut From Strong Cloth, Last Curtain Call, and Counting Crows – all available from bookstores and online.
Happy New Year. Happy new decade. Happy reading!
Linda:)
What an amazing woman! A great story for the start of a new year and a new decade. Thanks!
Thanks Darlene, I couldn’t stop researching these women because of their incredible contribution to literacy! Happy New Year!
Wonderful story! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Bobbie. I wish I could have posted all the amazing photos I found, but they were all copyrighted! Happy New Year!
Great beginning of a new decade. Literacy for all!
Amen!
Could your research on the horseback librarians lead to a new series of books? I hope so!
Ooh, don’t tempt me! Actually JoJo Moyes has just published one!
Amazing story of such very tough women. Impossible to calculate the value to the thousands of rural Appalachian children and adults who were the recipients of these treasured books delivered by women whose strength and resourcefulness is equally incalculable! Great story, once again, Linda. Happy, Peaceful New Year!
Thanks, Karen, I love how they touched so many lives! Happy New Year!
Thanks Linda for the thoughtful story. Access to library books fostered my daughters’ love of of reading to this day. As a young mother I couldn’t afford to buy children’s books other than Golden Books. We’d borrow about 20 books every two weeks and read aloud daily. Now I’m repeating myself with grandchildren. I don’t know of a better experience than sharing a good book.
Oh, Carol, I couldn’t agree with you more!
linda:)
Grace Lucas was my adopted Granny. She wasn’t my blood but a Granny none the less. She went on to be a foster of countless children. Most of the foster children came to her as infants and left by school age. She also raised her grandson Rick and his son Raymond. I spent many days working right beside her in her garden. She worked everyday in her garden up until her death. Thank you for sharing her story.
Oh, Melissa. What a wonderful person Grace must have been! I found her story simply fascinating and she definitely qualifies as a strong woman who should have been more famous. Lucky you, that she graced your life. Follow the blog for more stories like Grace’s!
Linda:)
I was fortunate enough to go to church with Grace when I was a young child. I’ll never forget the long dark braids that she wrapped around her head or the beautiful fresh cut flowers that she would cut from her garden and put in a large vase in front of the pulpit each Sunday. I enjoyed visits on her porch and playing in her yard when I was little. I am reading my second book about the Pack Horse Librarians right now and my mother just informed me yesterday that Grace was part of this program. I am thrilled with all the information I am finding in my research today!! Apparently she truly was a very strong, amazing woman that made a difference in many lives!
Chasidy, I was so impressed by Grace’s story that I had to write about her. There is a great children’s book, Down Cut Shin Creek by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer, and they used an interview given by Grace. That’s how I learned about Grace. Once I started to research her, I was hooked on the story of the Pack Horse Librarians. My favorite book on them is The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson. Lucky you that had Grace in your life!
linda:)
I am currently reading the Book Woman of Troublesome Creek and just finished The Giver of Stars recently. After talking to my mother about Grace this evening, I found out that she is a cousin on my mother’s side of the family. I printed off lots of info online today to read. It has been so neat learning about all of this!
Grace was my great aunt, I spent many days at her home. She was a wonderful cook, a strong woman, a caring and loving woman. I always thought her name was very fitting for her. Her long braids also fascinated me, her and my grandfather Leonard both had such dark beautiful hair. She had a picture hanging on her wall of her during her book delivery days.