It took a 1954 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court to open it, but six decades later, the Harriett M. and William B. Folsom Memorial Library in Brinkley remains a landmark in the Monroe County town.
In addition to featuring a collection of more than 7,000 books and materials, the library on Cedar Street also serves as a meeting place for the public. More than 75 people are enrolled in the library's literacy program, and this month the library received the Arkansas Literacy Council's Outstanding Business Partner award for 2017.
For 61 years the library has been funded primarily by a trust fund left by William Folsom, but now library trustees are seeking donations to help the facility with maintenance repairs, costs of computers and Internet connections, utilities and other expenses.
"We're not going to lose the library, but repairs add up," said Martha Pineda, director of the library. "One of the columns on the front is coming loose, and keeping the Internet is expensive.
"We just want people to know that there are small libraries in small towns that are struggling."
The library operates independently and is not part of the the Phillips-Lee-Monroe Regional Library System. It does not receive millage revenue and instead operates mainly on the trust left by Folsom, who also decided to donate his home for renovation into the library after his death.
Folsom loved the written word, Pineda said. He and his wife bought the town's newspaper, the Brinkley Argus, in 1891 and he ran it for a half-century.
The couple built their two-story brick home on a 70-foot-by-150-foot lot on the corner of West Cedar Street and North Main shortly after a March 8, 1909, tornado destroyed nearly 1,000 of the town's homes and killed 60 people, according to an article about Folsom in an article that took a commemorative look at the library's 50th anniversary in a publication by the Business and Professional Women of Brinkley.
The city rebuilt, and in 1912 President Theodore Roosevelt stopped there to give a short speech about the Progressive Party, which Folsom covered for his newspaper.
Folsom promoted Brinkley and Arkansas. In 1916, he created the "Arkansas Exposition on Wheels," a 10-car train that traveled around the country promoting Arkansas as one of the fastest-growing states in the country, according to the September 1916 issue of the Wells Fargo Messenger, a historical magazine published in the early 1900s.
In November 1949, Folsom, who had recently retired from the newspaper, announced his plans to donate his home to be made into the library after his death. He said he and his wife, who had died a year earlier in 1948, designed their home with plans in mind to renovate it into a library.
Folsom created a deed of trust with instructions for creating the library. He named as trustees C. Hamilton Moses, president of Arkansas Power and Light Co.; Charles Partee, superintendent of the Brinkley school district; and W.W. Sharp, a Brinkley attorney and member of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville board of trustees, according to the Business and Professional Women of Brinkley's publication.
Folsom died May 20, 1953. A nephew and niece, who were left $2,000 and $1,500, respectively, in Folsom's will, attempted to break the deed and filed suit, arguing that Folsom was mentally incompetent at the time he made the will.
Doctors said Folsom had pneumonia and suffered from dementia at the time of his death.
Folsom's deed was upheld in a chancery court hearing in Forrest City on July 13, 1953, but relatives appealed and the case ended up in the state's Supreme Court.
In 1954, Justice Paul Ward wrote his majority opinion, in 223 Ark. 489, saying Folsom's deed was written with a sound mind.
"Old age, physical incapacity and partial eclipse of the mind will not invalidate a will if the testator has sufficient capacity to remember the extent and condition of his property without prompting, to comprehend whom he is giving it, and be capable of appreciating the deserts and relation to him of others whom he excluded from participating in his estate," Ward wrote in his opinion.
"The weight of the evidence shows that the testator in this instance had many times expressed the intention of giving the bulk of his property to establish a library for the town of Brinkley, that he fully comprehended the extent and condition of the property which he owned; that he knew whom he was giving it; and that he fully realized the relation which he bore to appellants and their natural claim to his bounty."
The library opened April 1, 1956.
Pineda said the first floor is reserved for shelving and books. There is also a former law library where lawyers once congregated to study law. They still use a room in the house on occasion for taking depositions, she said.
The second floor is not used by the public and contains an old kitchen and bedrooms.
"People have told us they'd be lost without the books and research and ability to meet people here," Pineda said. "This is an instrumental part of their lives."
This month a woman who said she was homeless entered the library seeking assistance, Pineda said.
"What other place would have a better list of resources?" Pineda asked.
The director called a minister, who said his church would help the woman. Pineda drove her to a local hotel, and the minister paid for her lodging.
"We help a lot of people," she said.
The library sits across from Brinkley City Hall, and Mayor Billy Hankins sees it each time he steps outside.
"It's essential," he said. "It's a wonderful thing to have for our town, and we are proud to have it. It's a landmark for Brinkley."
City Attorney Baxter Sharp, who serves as one of the library's trustees and whose grandfather was an original trustee, said the library operates on an annual budget of $19,200.
In addition to buying books, library administrators also hold an Arkansas Literacy Council program that serves 75 people.
"A lot of the public doesn't know that we don't receive any funding from the county," Sharp said. "The county gave us some money to help operate in the past, but they stopped that a few years ago."
Pineda said Folsom's trust has kept the library operational for more than 60 years.
"We are just going to keep on trucking," she said. "We want to get more funds so we can start thinking of our future."
State Desk on 05/29/2017