Caroline Maria Hewins

• Caroline Maria Hewins
• Born: October 10, 1846
• Died: November 4, 1926

Pioneer in library work for children, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the eldest of nine children, eight daughters and one son, of Charles Amasa He-wins, co-owner of a Boston firm of haberdashers, and Caroline Louisa (Chapin) Hewins. Her paternal ancestors had emigrated from England in 1656; her mother’s paternal grandfather was a Boston art collector and portrait painter. When she was two years old, the Hewins family moved to Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts, and five years later took up residence in a country house in West Roxbury. From her parents Caroline He-wins acquired a love of the outdoors, bird watching, and gardening. The Hewins home was always filled with books, and by the age of four her mother had taught her to spell and read.

Hewins’s early education at home was soon supplemented by attendance at a local private elementary school and at Eliot High School. By the age of fifteen she had developed a love of reading, and her private library included the works of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Pope, Tennyson, and Milton, as well as Harper’s and Atlantic magazines. In her last year at high school, she worked as a volunteer secretary at the West Roxbury subscription library. After graduating in 1862, she attended Girls’ High and Normal School in Boston for a year.

One day during her tenure at the school, the principal sent her to the Boston Athenaeum, a private scholarly library, to do some research. The library so impressed her that she was determined to work there. Her application was not immediately accepted, and she instead taught in private schools until 1866, when she became the assistant to the Athenaeum’s chief bibliographer, the noted librarian William Frederick Poole. From him she learned the basic techniques and elements of bibliography. She left the position after one year to study at Boston University, but she was determined on a career in library work.

In 1876 Hewins obtained a position in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Young Men’s Institute, a subscription library. As a result of her work, the institute merged with the Hartford Library Association in 1878, to become, in 1892, the Hartford Public Library—the city’s first free library. At the time of her appointment little was being done for children in libraries, but Hewins had a special interest in young people’s literature and began to work with the few children’s books in the institute’s collection.

One of Hewins’s major contributions to the library reform movement was the compilation of Books for the Young: Guide for Parents and Children (1882), the first list of good books especially for children. She also arranged for public and private schools to become regular subscribers to the institute, and for collections of appropriate books to be sent to schools in the area. In 1878, when the library started to publish a bulletin, she saw to it that reading suggestions for children were included. By 1893, the Hartford Public Library circulated over 50,000 children’s books each year, and in 1895 Hewins opened a small branch library at the North Street Settlement that contained an extensive children’s section. The work of the settlement so impressed her that she took up residence there for twelve years, working specifically with its children.

In 1904, the Hartford library opened a children’s room, and Hewins worked to spread the library movement to other areas of Connecticut. She was founder and first secretary of the Connecticut Library Association in 1891 and president in 1912. When the state legislature appointed a Public Library Commission in 1893, she became its secretary. A board member of the American Library Association (ALA), and one of its vice presidents in 1891, she was the principal organizer behind the creation of ALA’s children’s library division in 1900, and the first woman to speak from the floor of the organization’s annual assembly.

Hewins remained the head of the Hartford Public Library until her death, taking an active interest in community affairs and organizing an Educational Association that was a forerunner of the Parents and Teachers Association.

At the age of eighty she died of pneumonia in Hartford. Funeral services were held in the city’s Center Church.

Some of Caroline Hewins’s papers can be found at the New York Public Library. Her works include Books for Boys and Girls: A Selected List (1897,1904, 1915) and A Mid-Century Child and Her Books (1926). There is no full-length biography. Her life must be pieced together from scattered sources. The best modern sketch is in Notable American Women (1971). See also J. D. Lindquist, “Caroline M. He-wins and Books for Children,” in Caroline M. Hewins: Her Book (1954); M. E. S. Root, “Caroline Maria Hewins,” in E. M. Danton, ed., Pioneering Leaders in Librarianship (1953); R. R. Bowker, “Women in the Library Profession,” Library Journal, June 15, 1920; and the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 21 (1931). An obituary appeared in the Library Journal, November 15, 1926.