In this Lima Citizen photo from November 1958, W.A. Davisson (seated), program chairman for the Cloverleaf Literary Club, discusses the year’s topics with Marjorie Gallagher, head of the reference department at the Lima Public Library. According to the Citizen, 20 literary groups relied on the library for program information in 1958.
Long before Google, there was Gallagher.
“Mrs. Marjorie Gallagher, new head of the reference department in the Lima Public Library, says that calls on department resources are many and varied,” The Lima News wrote in September 1946. “Such problems as ‘how to keep cool in hot weather’ are not to be wondered at. But when almost simultaneously the department is confronted with ‘how to fire up boilers,’ its puzzlement is frank, Mrs. Gallagher says.
“Preoccupation with ‘how to be a perfect hostess’ is overshadowed in gravity by ‘study of the effect of alcohol on children,’” The Lima News added. “Some people want to know the humidity of St. Louis, while others grapple with ‘how to build bird baths,’ plans for locomotives, gas masks or ‘laying out fields for plowing.’”
For nearly two decades, Gallagher and the reference department she headed would do their best to find the answers library patrons sought. When she retired in October 1965, columnist Hope Strong of The Lima News declared, “Already one of Lima’s best read and wittiest with fantastic retentive powers — able to produce the right quote for the exact moment — Mrs. Gallagher will be missed.”
Lima’s witty and well-read reference librarian was born Marjorie Florence Hooper on Oct. 27, 1904, in Battle Creek, Michigan, the daughter of Joseph and Leah Hooper. Her mother died in 1910, while her father, a Republican U.S. Representative from Michigan, dropped dead in his Washington office in February 1934 shortly after delivering a fiery speech on the floor of the House defending aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was embroiled in a controversy over air mail contracts.
Marjorie graduated from Michigan’s Olivet College in 1926. In November of the following year, she married prominent Battle Creek physician Dr. R.V. Gallagher, who died in August 1930, leaving her a widow before her 26th birthday.
In 1931, she began working as an assistant librarian in Battle Creek’s Willard Library while also writing a column for the Battle Creek Enquirer and Evening News on what the library had to offer. By 1938, she had become reference librarian at the Willard Library while also making occasional trips to Cleveland to work on a degree in library science at Case Western Reserve University.
After a decade at the Willard Library, Mrs. Gallagher moved on in April 1941 to nearby Fort Custer.
“She will be in charge of the new library at the fort service club, a central reading room for all enlisted men,” the Battle Creek newspaper reporter. “… It will be the first central library in the history of the fort and will contain about 3,000 books.”
Setting up a library on an Army post proved interesting, as the Battle Creek newspaper noted in August 1941.
“To keep soldiers from wandering in and taking out books before they had been classified, the librarians barricaded one door. … A realistic touch was added when one of the librarians put a broom across the pile and a sign, ‘Keep Out and Wait for Santa Claus.’”
The soldiers didn’t wait and soon pushed the barricade aside.
“Can you imagine,” an exasperated Mrs. Gallagher commented, “can’t he see we don’t want anyone to come through this door?”
Mrs. Gallagher organized and oversaw the Fort Custer library through World War II, as more than 300,000 soldiers passed through the fort for training.
In June 1946, she completed the degree work she had begun at Case Western in 1938. In July, the Battle Creek newspaper reported that “Mrs. Marjorie Gallagher, who has been spending the last few weeks here has gone to Lima, Ohio, where she has taken a position in the public library.”
Mrs. Gallagher moved into an apartment in the 300 block of West North Street and dove into the cultural life of her new home. She spoke about books, art and travel before groups of all sorts. She judged Christmas lighting and, as she had in Battle Creek, penned a column for The Lima News titled “Books in the Lima-Light” about what the Lima Public Library had to offer.
And she answered questions. An inquiry from a library patron in 1952 started her on the trail of Capt. Jacob Dawson, who was killed by a native American at Fort Amanda in 1812 and is buried there. Mrs. Gallagher’s research turned up an interesting tale and led her to write a story, which was published in The Lima News in December 1952.
“Capt. Jacob Dawson climbed a tree outside the stockade at Ft. Amanda one day in 1812 to pick some grapes from a dangling vine and gained immortality of a sort,” Mrs. Gallagher wrote, noting that “it wasn’t just a matter of ‘sour grapes’ with the Indian who picked off Dawson as he was picking grapes. She explained that Dawson was shot after one of Dawson’s “best riflemen,” at Dawson’s behest, killed an Indian who had been taking potshots at soldiers who wandered outside the stockade. The Indians “felt a natural resentment at their sniper having been sniped at so successfully,” Mrs. Gallagher wrote.
“Two days later, the story is Capt. Dawson went out to pick grapes from a vine which clung to a walnut tree. Climbing the tree, the captain tied himself to a limb to free both hands for the grape harvesting. He also made a fine stationary target for an Indian,” Mrs. Gallagher noted.
In 1953, Mrs. Gallagher began a popular Great Books course at the Lima YWCA.
“Purpose of the course is to stimulate interest and discussion of the world’s greatest books and their authors,” The Lima News explained in a September 1953 story.
After voters in November 1956 approved a bond issue for the construction of a new library at 650 W. Market St. to replace the cramped quarters on the northeast corner of Market and McDonel streets occupied by the library for a half-century, Mrs. Gallagher was instrumental in planning for the transition.
“Mrs. Gallagher uses the entire library of some 85,000 volumes as her ‘hunting ground,’” The Lima News wrote in April 1957, “and when the time comes for the move, she will be instrumental in selecting the materials which will remain in circulation, and those which necessarily must go into storage.”
In the mean time, Mrs. Gallagher and her two full-time assistants continued to answer questions such as, according to a June 1959 story in The Lima News, “Is there a law in Ohio forbidding the baking of lemon, cream, custard, etc. pies during the summer?” The researchers discovered there was such a law, but it had been repealed “several years ago.”
Questions about Alaska, which became the 49th state in January 1959, were also popular that year. Many of those queries, Mrs. Gallagher told the Lima Citizen in January 1959, were from those either “writing a paper on Alaska or preparing to go there on a vacation.”
Lima’s spacious new library opened in December 1960. Mrs. Gallagher retired as head of the reference department Sept. 30, 1965.
“She will be married to A. Sidney Hodgen, Battle Creek, Michigan, a longtime friend, the early part of November and reside in that Michigan city, which also happens to be her birthplace,” The Lima News wrote in October 1965.
Hodgen died in June 1970. Marjorie Hodgen, 69, died April 30, 1974, in Battle Creek.
SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
LEARN MORE
See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
