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Upper Lake celebrates its library's first century
UPPER LAKE, Calif. – The Harriet Lee Hammond Library in Upper Lake officially turns 100 years old this week, and as promised by the Lake County Library, a special Sunday celebration went on despite an afternoon punctuated by pouring rain.
However, as it turned out, the Sunday afternoon storms couldn't keep well-wishers, community members and library lovers away.
The afternoon celebration included music by the Upper Lake High School Band; a poetry reading by Wanda Quitiquit, a Pomo whose family hails from the Northshore; talks by Martha Fargusson of the Upper Lake Women's Protective Club, who helped fund the building originally, as well as Lake County Librarian Christopher Veach. There was also the chance for visitors to try a chocolate cake made with Winnie Riffe's famed 100-year-old recipe.
Hammond's great niece, Kit Everts of Mill Valley and her sons John of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Hamilton of Corte Madera also were on hand for the celebration. Hamilton Everts gave remarks at the event.
On display were silver name card holders that Harriet Hammond received from her brother-in-law, President Theodore Roosevelt, which the current owner loaned to the library for the event, along with some of Hammond's letters and an alphabet embroidery sampler she did as a child.
The Everts family also brought a large picture book that Harriet Hammond had kept of her time in Lake County, which Kit Everts said meant a lot to her great-aunt.
Linda Bushta, who had worked as a school librarian before coming to work at the Hammond Library 10 and a half years ago, called the event turnout “just wonderful,” especially since people had braved the wet weather to come out and hear the music and presentations, and pay a visit to the library's warm, welcoming environs.
While small, the Hammond Library – with its lovely redwood-paneled walls and craftsman styling – is comfortable, with tall rows of books, a few window seats and a fascinating history.
“It's a special place,” Jan Cook, a technician with the Lake County Library system who now works at the Lakeport Library but had worked at the Hammond Library for six years in the 1990s, told Lake County News. On Sunday she was among the featured speakers, discussing the building's history.
Part of what makes the library's atmosphere so welcoming is Bushta herself, with her twinkling eyes, genuine smile and her infectious affection for the building itself.
She pointed out that the library itself has weathered many storms over the years – from real physical ones to financial ones.
Yet, through it all, the library has remained a community fixture and a point of pride. And even in today's technologically driven world, in which the library now has a vast online catalog, its physical presence remains an important informational – and historical – resource to its community.
Discovering and building connections
Harriet Lee Hammond came from a prominent East Coast family, and had grown up in the affluent village of Chestnut Hill, located six miles from downtown Boston.
Her older sister, Alice Hathaway Lee, was the first wife of Theodore Roosevelt. Alice Roosevelt died of kidney failure on Feb. 14, 1884, at age 22, days after giving birth to the couple's only child, Alice.
Theodore Roosevelt would still maintain ties with his first wife's family after her death, as evidenced in his gifts to Harriet Hammond that were featured on Sunday. Hamilton Everts said his grandmother also was invited to the White House during the term of “Uncle Teddy.”
Hamilton Everts said Harriet Hammond grew up in the lap of luxury, yet would give that up to move to the West Coast in the late 1800s with her husband.
Kit Everts said her great-aunt met her husband-to-be, Charles Mifflin Hammond, while he was still a student at Harvard.
He graduated from Harvard in 1883, came to California to pursue agriculture, and then returned to Massachusetts and wed Harriett in 1888 in Chestnut Hill. “And then they came right back out here,” Kit Everts said.
In Upper Lake, the Hammonds had a 600-acre farm. Kit Everts said the crops they grew included figs.
The Upper Lake community began to discuss having its own library in about 1914, with the effort spearheaded by the Upper Lake Women's Protective Club, according to a library history provided by Bushta.
The club not only paid the first librarian – $16 per month – but aided in acquiring the land at the corner of Second and Main streets, which was purchased and donated by members Amy Murdock and Lottie Mendenhall.
The Hammonds supported that dream, but Charles Hammond wouldn't live to see it come to reality. He died in 1915.
In his memory, Harriet Hammond donated $6,000 for the building, and hired Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow – a prominent Boston architect who also was the nephew of famed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – to design Upper Lake's library.
Construction on Upper Lake's library began in June 1916. By the time the construction was finished and the building's dedication took place in October 1916, Harriet Hammond already had returned to the East Coast, and to Chestnut Hill, which would be her primary place of residence for the rest of her life, Kit Everts said.
The library history recounts that Hammond had attorney H. E. Witherspoon read a letter – in which she presented the library to the town – on her behalf to the hundreds of community members who attended the dedication ceremony.
The townspeople, grateful for her generosity, began calling the new building the Harriet Lee Hammond Library.
Kit Everts remembers living across the street from her “Aunt Hattie” in Chestnut Hill, where other relatives also lived as well, in the 1920s and 1930s. Hammond died in 1936, when Everts was just 13 years old.
Harriet Hammond didn't talk much about her experiences in the West, said Everts, who guessed that silence was because the family didn't approve of her going out to California in the first place.
Everts said Harriet Hammond remained active in a variety of organizations, and while she made her home on the East Coast, Upper Lake remained close to her heart.
For the rest of her life she would offer the building her support. When she died in November 1936, Harriet Hammond had made yet another provision for the library in the form of a bequest that provided money to build an addition in 1937 that is today used as a meeting room.
Not long after she started work at the library a decade ago, Bushta said she met four women in Upper Lake who had remembered the building of the library. Realizing at that point that none of them were likely to live to see the building's centennial, she proposed and led the effort to hold a 90th birthday celebration for the library.
That event, she said, helped prepare her and the county library system for what to expect in putting on a centennial celebration.
As she'd hoped, it offered a chance to celebrate the people who had been alive to see the library built. One of the women remembered her father using a team of horses for the soil fill work to prepare the site.
And, as Bushta anticipated, all four of the women who she wanted to honor have died since then.
In the time since, Bushta forged new connections – this time, with the Everts, who until earlier this year didn't know a library had been named for their relative.
“We didn't have any idea this library existed,” said Hamilton Everts.
He stumbled across it while doing an Internet ancestry search. He called the library to ask about it, and ended up talking to Bushta, who has done extensive research on Hammond's family. “She knew more about our family than any of us do.”
That led Kit Everts and her two sons to make their first visit to Upper Lake on May 4 – which just so happened to be Harriet Hammonds' birthday. Hamilton Everts called the date of the visit “complete synchronicity.”
He said his mother, brother and he had tears in their eyes when they saw the building for the first time in May.
Since then, they've stayed in touch with Bushta, who kept them apprised of the plans for the celebration.
Kit Everts lauded Bushta for her work in recording and promoting the library's history.
The connection that has formed between the family and Bushta is genuine, with she and Hamilton Everts playfully calling each other “cousins.”
Hamilton Everts noted that his great-great-aunt was quite a book collector, and as gifts for Bushta he and his family brought two leatherbound books that had belonged to Hammond and contained her signature.
They also gifted Bushta with a silver brush that Charles Hammond has given his wife for their 25th wedding anniversary in 1913, just two years before he died. The brush is engraved with the occasion and the reason for the gift.
Bushta was amazed by the present. Kit Everts said it was nice to find somewhere for whom the brush would mean something.
“It does mean something,” said Bushta.
Standing in the library with visitors and new friends, sharing stories and looking at Harriet Hammonds' picture book, Hamilton Everts looked perfectly at home, wearing period attire topped by a bowler hat.
“I think you should dress like this more often,” Kit Everts told her son with a smile.
For additional background on the library visit http://bit.ly/2dqczA5 .
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