A corner of the Carter Library at Fairlynch Museum
At the tenth Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Fairlynch on 22 March 1979, Priscilla Hull, as Chairman of the Management Committee of the Museum, reported that the Library, under the care of Mrs Van Meter, was “now available on certain days each week, or by special appointment.”
A young Frances
http://www.vanmetre.com/images/People/Eugene_VM/eugene_van_meter_family.htmThe Manchester Center
The Manchester Street Library owed its origins to an initiative taken in 1939 by two members of Lexington’s Kentucky Junior League, an organisation of women committed to improving the community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Their efforts began with providing library facilities at the
Image credit: The Goodman Paxton Photographic Collection, Special Collections,
The school, founded in 1912 and funded by a mixture of private donations and public funds, was a progressive model for elementary education with facilities and programmes far ahead of the times, but it also exemplified the era of school segregation in Lexington Lincoln
By spring 1940 the women volunteers had become deeply involved in improving library facilities at the school, repairing old or worn-out books, cataloguing and accessioning new ones and of course encouraging children to read. It was clear that such a facility was badly needed at times when the school library was closed. By 1 June of that year, the volunteers, now 15 in number, were running what became known as the Manchester Street Library in an old store-room near the
The volunteers themselves took it in turns to do a stint in the library, helping approximately 25 children to select books, and, as librarian Amelia King Buckley put it, “holding story hour, keeping peace and always remembering that the library must not acquire a schoolroom atmosphere.” Their aim was to build up a feeling among the children that it could be fun to come to the library and borrow a book, and that all the books belonged to all of them and they must care for them accordingly.
The actress Colleen Moore in 1921
When the
The Library itself was evolving, organising visits to a printing shop, a dairy and a farm and encouraging the children to produce plays. Books for all ages were added to its stock. It gained a new dimension when it developed a sewing club where a group of mothers could learn to make new garments out of leftover clothes from jumble sales. The club disbanded each year in late winter and early spring when the women took jobs in local tobacco factories.
Further outside help and recognition of the Manchester Street Library’s worth came when the Kentucky branch of the National Society Daughters of Colonial Wars decided to make a regular contribution to help with the purchase of attractive patriotic books, the first ones that had been bought new.
In 1938, work had been started on a low-cost public housing complex known as
The Library, by now with a collection of approximately 3,000 books also benefited from community funds generated by a government initiative during World War Two. It was able to move from the old storeroom to a nearby four-room house at
But by 1951 the importance of the Manchester Street Library as a book centre had diminished thanks to the mobile library set up by Lexington Public Library. The following year the name was changed to the
The librarian had already begun offering, as a contemporary magazine put it, “personal and mental hygiene guidance... offering assistance with government and job application forms... providing scholarships and urging school attendance, teaching piano lessons, lending ear to boy-girl problems, advising on clothes buying, and numerous other activities for which there was no other neighborhood clearing-house, and with which the neighborhood family units were unable to cope.” The Center continued to offer field trips for children in the Lexington
The late 1950s saw a dramatic increase in the range of services that the Center offered, from meeting room space to counselling for adults. Together with its Recreation Director Julian Walker (1928-2011) Frances Van Meter launched a fund-raising campaign in 1960 which resulted in the demolition of the 144-year-old building on Manchester Street
On retiring as Executive Director of the Centre in 1966 Frances Van Meter worked for four years at the Lexington Public Library. She then fulfilled what had seemingly been a childhood dream by moving to England in 1970 and settling in Budleigh Salterton, Devon . Or rather, at Clover Cottage in Ting Tong, a triangular piece of land on a hill overlooking the town and a few miles further west of it.
The view from Ting Tong on a misty autumnal day, looking east towards Peak Hill and Sidmouth: the sea is somewhere out there
For Frances Van Meter the distinction was important: in 1978 she became involved in a six-month battle with the Television Records Office over her address, officials having decreed that Clover Cottage was on
The newspapers had a field day. Frances Van Meter had approached her friend East Devon Councillor Anne de Winton, a Budleigh Salterton resident and published author. Council officials joined the fight to try and arrive at a solution, though the Sidmouth Herald commented that this may have added to the confusion.
There was naturally insufficient space in the newspapers for all that erudition displayed by the lady from
It was at this time that Frances Van Meter became involved with Fairlynch, a community project which must have seemed tiny by comparison with her achievements in her home state. Her readiness to do battle with officialdom as well as her scholarship would no doubt have appealed to the Museum’s founders. Fairlynch co-founder Joy Gawne remembers her as “statuesque” and an excellent Librarian. “Van Meter... like the gas meter, she would say to introduce herself. She would be typing away in the Library and visitors at the Museum would apologise thinking that they had gone into an office by mistake, but she would welcome them and insist on showing them what was on the shelves.”
The results of her research into Ting Tong were published in a folder dated 14 May 1986. A further project concerned the history of Knowle Village
At around this time she moved from Ting Tong to a flat at Pinewood in Westbourne Terrace, off Budleigh Salterton’s West Hill. She died in the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital
It was Frances Van Meten who as Fairlynch’s first librarian laid the foundations of what is now the Carter Library. Our Museum has not had its own librarian for some years now. Maybe a Friend of Fairlynch will be inspired to fill the vacancy if they read this story of the lady from Lexington
In 2010 the Manchester Center Board of Directors made the difficult decision to close the Center in
With much acknowledgement to Jonathan Jeffrey’s ‘Looking Back: A History of the