Pre-1937 Freeport Public Library Borrower’s Card No. 4873 issued to Marian E. Holmes
Freeport Public Library, Freeport, Illinois
The Freeport Public Library had modest beginnings in 1874 as a small collection of 250 volumes housed in a spare room at the YMCA, which was located over Emmert & Burrell’s drug store at 111 Stephenson Street in Freeport. A subscription fee of 75 cents quarterly permitted the subscriber to borrow books every Saturday afternoon and Wednesday evening. In 1889, the YMCA opened a new building at a site formerly occupied by the First Presbyterian Church at Walnut and Stephenson and made room for the small library.
On February 21, 1901, the Carnegie Corporation provided a $30,000 grant to build a new public library building. In 1902, the new public library opened at 314 West Stephenson Street with 19,000 volumes. Designed by Patton and Miller of Chicago, the new library was the first Carnegie library in Illinois. By 1924, the library had issued over 1,200 library cards and inventory had increased to over 43,000 volumes. As the years passed, the city outgrew the West Stephenson Street building, so in 1991 plans were put into motion to construct a new, modernized building. After years of planning, a new 40,000 sf building was opened on Douglas Street in 2002. In 2017, the old Carnegie building underwent a $2.3M renovation and now serves as Freeport’s City Hall.
Marian E. Holmes
Marian Elaine Holmes was born in Illinois on May 5, 1889. She married Lloyd Eugene Holmes (1886-1930) and had one son, Stanley Campbell Holmes (1929-2005). After being widowed in 1930, she and Stanley moved to Florida where she was a bookkeeper and secretary. She died in Panama City, Florida in 1966.
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