Name: MORE TO THE STORY: How Andrew Carnegie came to Hutchinson
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MORE TO THE STORY: How Andrew Carnegie came to Hutchinson

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Skip to main contentPlease purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue.Sign UpLog InPurchase a SubscriptionPlease to continue reading.Sign UpLog InPurchase a SubscriptionThank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Welcome! We hope that you enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!On your next view you will be asked to to continue reading.Thank you for reading!On your next view you will be asked to to continue reading.Thank you for signing in! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Thank you for reading!We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.Checking back? Since you viewed this item previously you can read it again.You are the owner of this article.Edit ArticleAdd New ArticleYou have permission to edit this article.EditHomeNewsSportsBusinessExtra!Photo/VideoJobsClassifiedsIn-Paper AdsCustomer ServiceNIEThere are many things in McLeod County that are uniquely named. We have communities named after specific people and places, and of course parks and streets that are named for events or people. You might ask yourself why Hutchinson has a library named after the American industrialist, Andrew Carnegie. The man who was once one of the wealthiest men in the nation surely did not live in the community, and possibly never heard of it before. So why then does his name crop up when mentioning Hutchinson?To answer the question, we first must look at the man himself.There are few people associated with 19th-century industrialism like Andrew Carnegie. He was born in Scotland in 1835 to William and Margaret Carnegie. The family was poor, and the home in which the boy was born consisted of one room shared with another family. In 1848 the family moved to the United States in search for a better life. At the age of 16, Carnegie took his first job as a secretary/telegraph operator for a railroad company. From there he rose through the ranks of the railroad business and by 1875 was venturing into the steel business where he would build an empire. To say he lived the American dream would be an understatement.In addition to being an industrialist, Carnegie was also a scholar, activist and philanthropist. Throughout his life, Carnegie gave millions of dollars toward anything he deemed for the public good. This, of course, included the building of 3,000 libraries across the nation. One of these libraries was right here.- Advertisement -The library in Hutchinson came from humble beginnings. The first volumes were donated by Asa Hutchinson in 1874. These books were dedicated to “the cause of a public library,” as a building had yet to be established. Once enough volumes were collected, the books were housed in the backroom of a community drug store where Asa Hutchinson’s son, O.D. Hutchinson, acted as a librarian. In 1901, the first library board in Hutchinson was elected. By the end of 1902, the collection of donated books included 352 volumes. A room to house the books was great, but what the community really needed was a library building. Just like it is in 2023, building a building was expensive in the early 1900s. To build a library, the board, which included Carlos Avery, was offered a $10,000 grant from Carnegie for a building. City voters accepted the offer in a special election. In 1903 bids went out for the building of Hutchinson’s Carnegie Library, and it opened in 1905.The first librarian of the new library was Miss Marjorie Wakefield. In 1914 she was succeeded by Miss Ella Adams. By 1917 the Carnegie Library was considered second only to the public school as an educational building. That year it was reported that books were checked out over 14,000 times.It goes without saying that the library has grown and evolved over the years. Gone are the days of the card catalogs, as records are stored electronically. The building itself, however, still stands proud in Library Square, the community’s public square that once was home to the stockade, which protected settlers during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Like it did back then, the site which now is home to the Carnegie Library is still serving the public well. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who will say that it won’t still be doing so in the years to come.— Brian Haines is executive director of the McLeod County Historical Society and Museum, 380 School Road N.W., Hutchinson. Do you have a historical anecdote to share? Haines can be reached at 320-587-2109, or by email at director@mcleodhistory.org.© Copyright 2023, MediaNews Group, Inc.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | ArbitrationPowered by BLOX Content Management System from TownNews.com.

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MORE TO THE STORY: How Andrew Carnegie came to Hutchinson

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