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The Pearl City Public Library District is a small library
in the northwest corner of Illinois.
It is located in Pearl City, a village
of around 650
residents, and serves
two thousand, five hundred and seventy four persons
in
the
surrounding area. Most of our patrons live in Stephenson County, but the
library has
some patrons that live in Jo Daviess County and Carroll County.
Pearl City is ten miles straight west
of Freeport, Illinois, and around twenty
miles south of the Illinois-Wisconsin border.
The
Pearl City Memorial Library was opened on April 10, 1946, in the former
pastor's basement study of the Pearl City Lutheran Church. Mrs. Mildred
Shroer and Mrs. Mary Brady got the idea of starting the library when they
were talking at the Pearl City Homecoming parade in 1945.The purpose of
organizing the library was to provide the community with a much needed and
desired library, and at the same time to honor the servicemen and women
that served and/or died in World War II.
The
library was a community affair, with furniture and books
donated by various local individuals. Three hundred and fifty books were
contributed locally, and four boxes of books on loan from the Illinois State
Library were mailed from Springfield to supplement the supply. Cash
donations from sixty-two individuals (designated Friends of the Library)
and
six organizations amounted to \\$105. Regular hours-from 2 to 5 and 7 to
9-each Wednesday and Saturday were announced, and anyone living either in
town or in the rural area was invited to take out a card at no cost. The
library was staffed by two volunteers each time the library was open and
members of the library board volunteered janitorial service.
In the November of 1946, the library was moved to the basement of
the Pearl City post office building, which was a more accessible location
than the church basement.
In
1964 the Pearl City Lions Club purchased and donated the Roy
Croffoot feed building for the relocation of the library, as federal
regulations made it necessary for the library to vacate the post office.
Through the promotion and encouragement of the Pearl City Lions Club a
successful referendum was passed in the spring of 1965, and the Pearl city
Memorial Library after twenty years as a volunteer organization, became
a
tax-supported township library, renamed the Loran Township Library.
In the spring of 1984 building plans were started for a new addition.
The
addition was completed, and an open house was held on February, 1985. In
June of 1987, the library changed its name again, and became the Pearl City
Public Library District, serving 2,574 persons in Pearl City and the
surrounding area.