News Flash Home
The original item was published from 3/12/2021 4:32:00 PM to 3/18/2021 11:11:04 AM.

News Flash

All News

Posted on: March 12, 2021

[ARCHIVED] Clarksville Faces of Women’s History: The Women of Clarksville Federation of Women's Club

First Library

(This is the second in our weekly series of Clarksville Faces of Women’s History profiles for Women’s History Month.)

For Women’s History Month, we are recognizing the faces of Clarksville who have historically broken down barriers for women in our community.

This week’s spotlight is on a group of women who came together in the early 1900’s to establish a permanent public library in Clarksville-Montgomery County.

In the late 1800’s, Judge Tyler kept books in his office, which served as Clarksville’s first library. A permanent home for the library was an afterthought until the courthouse burned in 1900. After the fire, Wilhelmina Barksdale, the wife of former Leaf-Chronicle publisher William Barksdale, suggested that a building be purchased to serve as a library.

Women from across the community sponsored ice cream suppers, carnivals and concerts to raise money for the building. One early fundraiser, however, didn’t pan out when one of the women pointed out that many of the recipes in a cookbook they were selling contained alcohol and shouldn’t be endorsed, and the project was abandoned. 

Many of the women belonged to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, but around 1918, the Clarksville Federation of Women’s Club was chartered and the organization found itself in need of a home. 

A heated bidding war soon took place for the Elk’s Club building, which was considered prime real estate in downtown Clarksville. The bidding narrowed to George Rawlings and Sallie Hurst Peay, wife of former Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay.

Each time Rawlings placed a bid, Peay would counter by raising the bid by a single dollar. This went on for some time until the bid reached $6,000 ($114,000 in today’s currency) and once again, Peay countered by a dollar.

“A woman who has nerve enough to raise a $6,000 bid by one dollar deserves to win,” the auctioneer said. “So, I will knock it off to Mrs. Peay.”

With a final strike of the auctioneer’s gavel, Clarksville-Montgomery County had not only a Women’s Club, but a place for the public library after a 20-year wait.

The Clarksville-Montgomery County Library can now be found in its modern home at Veterans Plaza on Pageant Lane. Today, we take time to thank Mrs. Runyon, Mrs. P.L. Harned, Mrs. Albert L. Macon, Mrs. E.E. Laurent and Mrs. Peay, who signed the charter for the original public library nearly a century ago.

It was their dedication and perseverance that secured a public library for the Clarksville community. For that, we recognize them and the women of the Clarksville Federation of Women’s Club as some of the “Clarksville Faces of Women’s History.”

Special thanks to members of the Montgomery County Historical Society, who provided much of the historical information for this article. If you would like to learn more about women who have made history in Clarksville, go to https://bit.ly/3vmsFTG

Facebook Twitter Email

Other News in All News

O11

Clarksville elected officials sworn in

Posted on: January 5, 2023
20220420-Parking-Meters-8023

Free parking downtown until May 2

Posted on: April 22, 2022
Food Truck Mondays Poster

Food Truck Mondays coming to Public Square

Posted on: February 23, 2022
City Seal Blue

City offices to close for Presidents Day

Posted on: February 18, 2022
Weather Report Jan. 6

City offices working remotely

Posted on: January 6, 2022
City Mayor Joe Pitts

Mayor’s 2021 Thanksgiving Message

Posted on: November 23, 2021
Clarksville Thanksgiving JPG

City offices to close for Thanksgiving

Posted on: November 22, 2021
Mayor Pro Tem Smith

Frosty Morn Community Meeting Success!

Posted on: November 19, 2021
GFOA Certificate 2021

City earns 3 top financial recognitions

Posted on: October 18, 2021
https://cityofclarksville.com/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1059&ARC=1369
cityofclarksville.com
CC-MAIN-2023-06
118237
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:7P3MVMDBOB3BYKOZ3CIW75KFOBWHIUYR
<urn:uuid:6fe748b7-eff0-423c-83b4-29bb343d8e61>
2023-01-30T08:48:07Z
207.38.74.161
text/html
sha1:4ZBKBXCZP4P6RLNPX4AGGITQW2H4NTMR
<urn:uuid:7a2c55ad-118e-40a7-b4da-8ed4d3849906>
https://cityofclarksville.com/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1059&ARC=1369
response
<urn:uuid:5d8a1196-3476-40ef-b9ae-d8d0bbe87496>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2023-06
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January/February 2023
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-209
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/