Corsicana Public Library
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The women's clubs of Corsicana were instrumental in opening the city's first public library in 1901 at W. 6th and Main St. The city created a library board in 1904 and secured a construction grant from the Carnegie Corporation the following year. In 1906 the Carnegie Library opened at W. Collin and N. 12th St. The building included a large auditorium which held numerous community gatherings. Mrs. Mattie Houston served as head librarian from 1908 until the 1940s. A new library was completed in 1967 to house a collection that had grown to over 40,000 volumes.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Corsicana's women's clubs opened the city's first public library in 1901, and their efforts soon won a Carnegie grant that built a permanent home in 1906, complete with an auditorium for community gatherings. Mattie Houston served as head librarian for more than three decades. By 1967 the collection had outgrown its walls and moved to a new building.
Why it matters
It reflects two great forces of the era: the Carnegie library movement that spread free reading across America, and the women's clubs that built the nation's civic and cultural institutions.
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Related people
- · Mattie Houston
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Annie Carpenter Love
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Tennessee-born Annie Carpenter came to Navarro County as a child in 1876, steeped in family stories of pioneer forebears. She taught school before marrying William F. Love in 1901, and in the 1930s she set out to preserve local heritage, gathering artifacts for a museum room at the county courthouse. In 1933 she published her "History of Navarro County," grounded in research and interviews with aging pioneers.
Katie Daffan
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Katie Litty Daffan built a remarkable public career at a time when few women did, working as a teacher, author, journalist, and clubwoman. She served as an officer of the Texas State Historical Association, wrote several books including a Texas history textbook, and edited the literary pages of the Houston Chronicle from 1921 to 1928. Deeply active in the United Daughters of the Confederacy, she led the Confederate Woman's Home in Austin from 1911 to 1918, and later taught and wrote a column in Ennis, where she died in 1951.
Samuel Wistar Johnson, M. D.
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Georgia native Dr. Samuel Wistar Johnson began his medical career in Atlanta before settling in Corsicana, where he became a respected physician and was elected mayor in 1900. During his term the city gained a public library, spurred by its women's clubs, and Johnson also had a hand in Corsicana's pioneering oil industry. He later moved to Dallas, died there in 1922, and is buried in Corsicana.
St. John's Episcopal Church
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St. John's grew from Episcopal missionary work that reached the Corsicana area in the 1850s, organizing as a mission in 1871 under the Rev. Virginius Gee. Three years later the congregation built its first church on land donated by the Simkins family, and the parish was formally established by 1876. In the 1940s it ran an Episcopal school said to be the first in the Dallas Diocese.