Bay City Library
Bay City, Matagorda County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Organized in 1912, the Bay City Public Library was first housed in the J. P. Keller Insurance Company office. The non-profit Bay City Library Association, also formed in 1912, spearheaded community fund raising efforts to operate the library. Land was purchased in 1913, and a library building was completed in 1914. The first librarian was Miss Josephine McCullough. A new library building was constructed in 1958, and a friends of the library organization was formed in 1977. The Bay City library became part of the Texas state library system in 1987. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Organized in 1912 and first tucked into an insurance office, the Bay City Public Library owed its start to the Bay City Library Association, whose community fundraising bought land and completed a dedicated building by 1914 under first librarian Josephine McCullough. A new library rose in 1958, a Friends group formed in 1977, and in 1987 the library joined the Texas state library system.
Why it matters
Grassroots libraries like Bay City's reflect the Progressive-era faith that a self-organizing community could bring learning and opportunity to a small Texas town.
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Related people
- · Josephine McCullough
Related events
- · Founding of the Bay City Public Library (1912)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Presbyterian Church of Bay City
Bay City, TX
Bay City was barely a year old when settler Alexander D. Hensley organized an interdenominational Sabbath school in 1895, worshipping in the county courthouse until a Presbyterian covenant formally created this congregation in 1898. Hensley also helped found a Mexican-American Presbyterian church in town, teaching Sunday school in Spanish for years. The congregation raised its first frame sanctuary in 1903 and replaced it with a brick building at this site in 1936.
Bay City Methodist Church
Bay City, TX
This Methodist congregation began in 1870 with circuit-riding ministers serving settlers along the Colorado River at Red Bluff. When the town of Bay City was surveyed in 1894, the church relocated, bought one of the first town lots, and by 1897 raised Bay City's first church building—a steepled frame structure that doubled as a Union church for other denominations. Successive sanctuaries followed, the fifth dedicated in 1958, as the congregation grew alongside the town.
Matagorda County
Bay City, TX
This corner of the Texas coast was home to the Karankawa people and the landing place of the French explorer La Salle in 1685. Colonists of Stephen F. Austin settled the area between 1822 and 1836, and the municipality of Matagorda organized under Mexican rule in 1834 before becoming Matagorda County in the new Republic of Texas. Erected by the state in 1936 for Texas's centennial, the marker honors early settlers, delegates to the conventions that declared independence, and Mary S. Wightman Helms, remembered as the first woman teacher in Texas.
Ira Ingram, First Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives
Bay City, TX
Vermont-born Ira Ingram came to Texas in 1824 and threw himself into building the new Republic, representing Matagorda in its First Congress and serving as the first Speaker of the Texas House from October 1836 to April 1837. At his death in 1837 he left $70,000 to Matagorda's schools. The speakership he inaugurated grew into one of the most powerful offices in Texas government—third in line to the governorship—held over the years by figures like Sam Rayburn, later Speaker of the U.S. House.