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220:, which the Saturday Evening Girls soon incorporated into their meetings. The girls learned how to produce and put on performances, including operas, folktales, and plays. The Saturday Evening Girls also studied classic and current literature, social philosophy, and political discourse. The club was not just effective in improving literacy, Guerrier also enlisted members of the Boston intellectual elite to speak to the reading group, "bringing the club's constituency into personal contact with prominent theologians, politicians, writers, and social reformers of the time."
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mother's siblings, Anna and Walton
Ricketson and her elderly Uncle Fox on her father's side. Guerrier later said of the Ricketson side of the family, a group of "well-to-do abolitionists, naturalists, and transcendentalists," that it was much like "com back to my own people." The Ricketsons were friends with individuals such as
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Guerrier believed the groups should govern themselves. As a result, the
Saturday Evening Girls created a newsletter, The SEG News, which ran from 1913 to 1917 and "reported on the activities of the club," news of its membership, reviews of events, informational pieces regarding the community of North
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The group was made up of "daughters of Jewish, Eastern
European, and southern Italian immigrants," which typically did not mix in the community as "invisible boundaries existed" based on language, religion, creed, and nationality. For many of the girls, this was the first time they were spending time
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Over the course of the following year, Guerrier and her fellow librarian professionals spent a great deal of time trying to get a bill passed by
Congress. They believed that there should be a national service that kept librarians up to date with all new material published by the government. Together
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During this time period, Edith Brown and
Guerrier spent time traveling to Europe. While there, they noticed the local women selling arts and crafts that they had created. After working with the Saturday Evening Girls, they decided that the members could also earn money by selling items they crafted.
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With the success of the
Saturday Evening Girls, Guerrier developed reading clubs for other age groups, from fourth graders to high school-aged girls. Every group met on a different day of the week and time and called themselves after their meeting day and time. By 1915, there were over 250 enrolled
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The nursery "developed community-based programmes aimed at overcoming social obstacles for the immigrant community" and it helped immigrant families become integrated into the
American way of life. While working on these programs, Guerrier found that the children's and youth programs at the North
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as a Second
Lieutenant of Colored Infantry. Edith's mother, Emma Guerrier (Ricketson) died when Guerrier was a young child. Guerrier spent a great deal of her childhood separated from her father and his side of the family due to his difficulty finding steady work. She lived at times with her late
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Before she left for
Washington D.C. to return to Boston, Guerrier took on yet another challenge. She believed the libraries of the time did a great deal of work that was underappreciated, and she thought they lacked sufficient government funding. She soon began to work on a new set of bulletins,
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Edith
Guerrier and Brown spent the following years living and working in Boston. In 1932, at the age of 60, Edith Guerrier's partner of almost 40 years, Edith Brown died. Eight years later, in 1940, Guerrier was reluctantly forced into retirement. During her retirement, she remained active,
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The funds Guerrier's father provided for her to attend school full-time were not enough, so Guerrier got a job at the nursery of the North Bennett Street Industrial School. The nursery, which catered to the families of lower class immigrants, was run by philanthropist and educator
281:"My business of making the library play a vital part in the organization took me to every department head in turn, as it was necessary to point out to these chiefs the services public libraries could offer as advertising agencies and mediums of approach to the American public"
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The reading groups Guerrier developed became very popular with girls in the community, especially a group of older girls who called themselves the Saturday Evening Girls. The Saturday Evening Girls were one of the original groups Guerrier worked with. Guerrier had a love for
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Bennett nursery were mostly targeted to boys. The few programs that targeted girls were "domestically oriented" and were "geared towards the reinforcement of gender-based role expectations." As a result, in 1899, Guerrier decided to create a girls' reading club.
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Guerrier wanted to send out these bulletins to all of the libraries to which the bulletins for the Food Administration had been sent, which totaled to more than eight thousand libraries.
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In the fall of 1917, Guerrier took a trip around the country to hand out bulletins for Herbert Hoover's Food Administration. The trip started in D.C. and sent Guerrier to cities such as
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in Guerrier's reading clubs. Working with the Saturday Evening Girls led Guerrier to believe that libraries could and should implement services for children into their mission.
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as the "Supervisor of Circulation," because her old position had long ago been filled. With time, Guerrier became the supervisor of the branch libraries in Boston.
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This book was a compilation of letters written by Guerrier herself and those of which she co-authored with powerful men of that time. Included are letters from
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with a helpful Congressman from California, the women drafted a bill. Unfortunately, after a great deal of time and hard work, the bill was not passed.
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Clark, Kellie D.; Richardson, Jr., John V. (2001), "Edith Guerrier: "A Little Woman of New England" on behalf of U.S. public documents, 1870–1958",
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which lasted for thirteen issues during 1917. Guerrier believed the library could play a larger role in American society than most thought possible:
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99:. Guerrier is best known for developing progressive library programs in the 1890s, including a reading program and a pottery studio for girls of
425:"A Case Study of the Progressive Era Librarian Edith Guerrier: The Public Library, Social Reform, 'New Women', and Urban Immigrant Girls"
156:. Guerrier originally moved to Boston hoping to become an artist. With monetary help from her father, she attended classes at Boston's
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volunteering as a librarian of the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety. Also during this time, she penned another book, titled
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The North Bennett Street services "underwent enormous shifts" similar to other changes seen in social welfare programs during the
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Guerrier was born in 1870 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her father, George Guerrier, was an English immigrant who served in the
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throughout the country, and she started the Food Administration Library Information Service. She initiated a bulletin named the
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at the North End Branch Library in Boston. In 1917, Guerrier took a six-month paid leave from her position at the
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In 1887, Guerrier's father sent Guerrier to school at the Vermont Methodist Seminary and Female College in
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Matson, Molly. (1992). “An Independent Woman The Autobiography of Edith Guerrier”. xxiii-xxxix.
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We Pledged Allegiance, a Librarian's Intimate Story of the United States Food Administration.
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Guerrier, Edith. (1992). “An Independent Woman The Autobiography of Edith Guerrier”. 3-135.
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Lifestyle changes : a clinician's guide to common events, challenges, and options
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Improper Bostonians : lesbian and gay history from the Puritans to Playland
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Over the course of those years, Guerrier spent time compiling a book titled
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Soon, The Saturday Evening Club branched out to form another club named the
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The Federal Executive Departments as Sources of Information for Libraries.
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510:"The Saturday Evening Girls (SEG) Club and the Paul Revere Pottery"
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Google Books: An Independent Woman: Edith Guerrier, Molly Matson
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An independent woman : the autobiography of Edith Guerrier
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535:, vol. 28, no. 3, Elsevier Ltd., pp. 267–283,
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In 1958, Edith Guerrier died at the age of eighty-eight.
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and also became the coordinator of its reading room.
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329:Assistant Secretary of the Navy
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236:Paul Revere Pottery
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150:Montpelier, Vermont
134:Ralph Waldo Emerson
130:Henry David Thoreau
325:Newton Diehl Baker
138:Amos Broson Alcott
125:American Civil War
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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