The Carlyle Library Society, 1797-1844

The Reverend Paul Litchfield and 52 other residents banded together to found the Carlyle Library Society; it was open to anyone who could afford to pay the $1.50 yearly subscription fee. Lasting 47 years, the small library rotated between members' houses.

This notebook is the only artifact we have that belonged to the Carlyle Library Society. The left side indicates the monthly amount of money in the Society's treasury. The right side lists some of the Society's rules that members must abide by.

Two transcriptions of "Rules of Library"

"Convinced that a circulating library may be of singular utility for the diffusion of useful knowledge, we the subscribers hereby form ourselves into a Society by the name of the Carlyle Library Society, for the purposes of procuring and improving a Library for that end."

Of the many regulations set down by the Society, one was to set guidelines for the purchasing of books."Article 11: No book shall be admitted into the Library the object of which is to establish Deism or to endeavor to weaken the evidences of divine Revelation, neither shall any be admitted in which a vindication of the doctrine that all men shall finally be saved is attempted, nor any which directly tends to injure the morals of youth."