Volume 14 Issue 1, Spring 2007

The Original Trustees:  Part 3

Amos Richards Eno, founding benefactor of the Simsbury Free Library, was the son of Salmon Eno, a Simsbury native and a member of the fifth generation of Eno’s in the New World.  As a young man, Salmon Eno studied under the town’s congregational minister, Rev. Samuel Stebbins.  Then he became a schoolteacher in the part of Berlin, Connecticut that is now New Britain, his mother’s birthplace.  There he met Mary “Polly” Richards.

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Volume 13 Issue 4, Winter 2006-07

The Original Trustees: Part 2

Amos R. Eno appointed ten trustees in 1874 to manage the affairs of the Simsbury Free Library. the composition of the board remained the same for more than twenty seven years, demonstrating the wisdom of Mr. Eno’s selection and the dedication of the men he chose. The Rev. J. Logan Tomlinson (1826-1906) was descended from Henry and Alice Tomlinson, who emigrated from Derby, Derbyshire, England to Milford, Connecticut, in 1652.

Volume 13 Issue 3 Fall 2006

The Original Trustees Part 1

During the Winter of 1872 and 1873, there was organized among the middle aged and the young people of this village a social and literary club. This society, prompted by it’s needs, agitated the matter of a public library. There had existed for some years an organization known as the “Simsbury Book Club”…

Volume 13 Issue 1-2 Spring-Summer 2006

A Predecessor of the Simsbury Free Library

Libraries did not begin with the idea that books would circulate. In ancient and medieval times a library’s major function was to preserve scarce texts for the use of scholars; the fabled Egyptian library at Alexandria and the collection in the monasteries of Europe are well-known examples of this type. An engraving done in 1600 clearly shows that the books in the library at the University of Leyden were chained to the shelves. Nearly two hundred years later when future Connecticut educator Henry Barnard entered Yale College he found its library was not open to underclassmen and that the only way he could gain the access he wanted to book was to join the Linonian, a debating society, and to serve unpaid as an assistant to its librarian.