History
Founding of the Friends
In 1973 the Friends of the Library held its first organizational meeting when 18 residents were called together by Thea Field to form a library support group.
The group started with $200 left over from the former Mansfield Center Library Association. Today, we have more than 150 members and over the past 10 years we have paid for Adirondack chairs for the lawn, the covered area in the playground, the vegetable garden, the ice cream social, adult and child craft programs; the list goes on.
The names on the roster of that first meeting may not be familiar, because many of them have passed on but have left an extraordinary legacy in establishing the Friends, such as Thea and Lowell Field (Lowell was the last chairman of the association’s board), Betsy Hamill, David Fischer, Luci Elmore, Charles McLaughlin, and Librarian Rita Braswell. The group voted to charge $1 in dues, or an equivalent amount of donated time.
Just before the Friends formed, the town took over the funding and operation of the library, which had been a private, non-profit organization with an elected board of directors. The town moved the library from its cramped quarters in the brick house on the corner of Browns Rd and Storrs Rd in Mansfield Center to its present building on Warrenville Rd.
To complete the real estate transfer involved in this, the private library required a corporate seal, which it did not have. The town purchased one for the library association, and it was used just once, to mark the transfer documents. The seal is now located at the Mansfield Historical Society for safe keeping.
By the fall of 1973, at its second organizational meeting, the Friends had 136 dues-paying members, a constitution, and a commitment to promote and increase the library’s facilities. That support for the library and growth in Friends membership have continued to this day.
Fun Fact: The beloved Friends of the Mansfield Library logo, featuring the iconic palladian window that still marks the original main entrance to the current Mansfield Public Library location, was created by local artist Editha Spencer (ES) back in the 1980s.
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