A library is incomplete without its librarians. Mabel Smith was the first professional librarian at the Olympia Public Library, now Olympia Timberland Library.
Olympia Looks For a Librarian
Olympia’s public library was a long time coming. The Woman’s Club of Olympia offered a public reading room but after a fire it was relocated to City Hall. With a grant from library-building industrialist turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, work started on a new building.
To run the library, the library board started a national search for a professional librarian. 11 applied. They chose Mabel Smith.
Ella Mabel Smith was born March 2, 1887 in Oconto, Wisconsin, to William and Charlotte Newbanks Smith. She went by Mabel rather than Ella. Her father was a cashier, and later director and vice president, of the Oconto Bank.
Smith attended Ferry Hall, a girls boarding and preparatory school. In 1912, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Letters and Science degree, studying library science. Smith then took a yearlong training course for children’s librarians at the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library. During that year she worked as an assistant in the children’s room.
Mabel Smith Comes to Olympia
Smith was working as a librarian in Watertown, Wisconsin, when she applied for the new job in Olympia. The board hired her for $90 a month, with an option to raise her salary to $100 a month.
Even before her arrival, Smith began planning and ordering books, furniture and office supplies for the new library. Current librarian Quinn Trott remained for three months to help Smith get the library started.
Mabel Smith arrived in Olympia on July 21, 1914 and went to work immediately. There was much to do to set up the library in the Carnegie building. After a delay in furniture deliveries, the library was dedicated a month behind schedule on Saturday, October 3. It opened for business the following Monday.
Making the Olympia Library
Besides growing the collection, Mabel tried to make the library everything it could be. Looking back over her first year on the job, Smith told the Morning Olympian: “We want the public to feel that it has a proprietorship in the library. A great many now avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the library, but we do not feel there are as many as there ought to be, and will not until everyone visits here. The aim is always to serve everybody.”
Smith’s exhibits drew in people. In April 1916 Smith featured playwright William Shakespeare. That November she put up an exhibit in the window of Harris Dry Goods for “Good Book, Week,” listing children’s books that would make good holiday gifts. During World War I she created a “War and Civilian Relief” bulletin board with newspaper clippings, maps and literature.
With her background, children were her focus, promoting the library as an educational institution. In October 1914 schoolchildren held a county fair in the library’s basement. Smith began a reading hour for kids that November.
In spring 1917 she held a birdhouse building contest for children and teens in cooperation with C.B. Gwynn, superintendent of Olympia manual training programs. The judges, including State Traveling Librarian Lou Diven, were pleased with all entries. The winning birdhouses were placed in Sylvester Park across the street. Some were sold at the library.
Smith also started auxiliary libraries in Yelm, Tenino, Rochester, and Union Mills.
Mabel Smith Leaves Olympia
She kept up family ties, taking long vacations to Oconto in 1915 and 1916. When her brother returned from Russia in 1915, he came to Olympia for a visit.
Smith resigned June 1917 to take a job at the Detroit Public Library. “Miss Smith,” library board president Janet Moore told the Morning Olympian, “has given exceptionally efficient service during her three years work here and the board is sorry to lose her.” Book circulation had tripled during her tenure.
Smith did not remain in Detroit long, coming to work in Seattle. She married Earle B. Williams (1890-1976) in June 1918 in Seattle. Williams had worked in Olympia for a time in the surveyor general’s office. In September 1918 Mabel was appointed a temporary librarian at the Yesler branch of the Seattle Public Library. From 1918 to 1919 Earle served in the army quartermasters corps.
The couple moved many times afterwards. The census records them in Centerville (now Stanwood), Washington in 1920, where Earle worked as a logging sawyer. After a stay in Pawhuska, Oklahoma in the mid-1920s, they were in Amarillo, Texas in 1930 where he was a construction contractor. In the mid-1930s they lived in Deadwood, North Dakota where he worked for the Forest Service. In 1940 the couple were in Longview, Texas, where Earle was a manager. No occupation was ever listed for Mabel except “housewife.”
Mabel Smith Williams passed away on September 2, 1968 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Her obituary mentioned she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Presbyterian Church. She is buried in Jackson, Missouri beside her husband who died in 1976.
While Mabel Smith’s time in Olympia was short, she left a lasting impact through the library she helped develop. The Olympia Public Library has seen many changes throughout the decades, but its commitment to education and community remains as strong as ever.
Big thanks for this article go to Pat Harper for her article, “Ella Mabel Smith: First Librarian at the Carnegie Library in Olympia, Washington,” Olympia Genealogical Society Quarterly, October 2013.
