Chicago has been recently enriched by two great gifts, the Newberry and Crerar Libraries. Walter Loomis Newberry was born at East Windsor, Conn., Sept. 18, 1804. He was educated at Clinton, N.Y., and fitted for the United States Military Academy, but could not pass the physical examination. After a time spent with his brother in commercial life in Buffalo, N.Y., he removed to Detroit in 1828, and engaged in the dry-goods business. He went to Chicago in 1834, when that city had but three thousand inhabitants, and became first a commission merchant, and later a banker. He invested some money which he brought with him in forty acres on the "North Side," which is now among the best residence property in the city, and of course very valuable.
Mr. Newberry helped to found the Merchants' Loan & Trust Companies' Bank, and was one of its directors. He was also the president of a railroad.
He was always deeply interested in education; was for many years on the school-board, and twice its chairman. He was president of the Chicago Historical Society, and was the first president of the Young Men's Library Association, which he helped to found.
Mr. Newberry died at sea, Nov. 6, 1868, at the age of sixty-four, leaving about $5,000,000 to his wife and two daughters.
If these children died unmarried, half the property was to go to his brothers and sisters, or their descendants, after the death of his wife, and half to the founding of a library.
Both daughters died unmarried,—Mary Louisa on Feb. 18, 1874, at Pau, France; and Julia Rosa on April 4, 1876, at Rome, Italy. Mrs. Julia Butler Newberry, the wife, died at Paris, France, Dec. 9, 1885.
The Newberry Library building, 300 feet by 60, of granite, is on the north side of Chicago, facing the little park known as Washington Square. It is Spanish-Romanesque in style, and has room for 1,000,000 books. There will be space for 4,000,000 volumes when the other portions of the library are added. A most necessary part of the work of the trustees was the choosing of a librarian with ability and experience to form a useful reference library, which it was decided that the Newberry Library should be, the Public Library, with its annual income of over $70,000, seeming to meet the needs of the people at large. Dr. William Frederick Poole, for fourteen years the efficient librarian of the Chicago Public Library, was chosen librarian of the Newberry Library.
Dictionaries, bibliographies, cyclopædias, and the like, were at once purchased. The first gift made to the library was the Caxton Memorial Bible, presented Sept. 29, 1877, by the Oxford University Press, through the late Henry Stevens, Esq., of London. The edition was limited to one hundred copies, and the copy presented to the Newberry Library is the ninety-eighth. Mr. George P. A. Healey, the distinguished artist, also gave about fifty of his valuable paintings to the library. Several thousand volumes on early American and local history, collected by Mr. Charles H. Guild of Somerville, Mass., were purchased by Dr. Poole for the library. A collection of 415 volumes of bound American newspapers, covering the period of the Civil War, 1861-1865, were procured. An extremely useful medical library has been given by Dr. Nicholas Senn, Professor of Surgery in Rush Medical College. A valuable collection on fish, fish culture, and angling, made during forty years by the publisher, Robert Clarke of Cincinnati, has been bought for the library. A very interesting collection of early books and manuscripts was purchased from Mr. Henry Probasco of Cincinnati. The collection of Bibles is very rich; also of Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Horace, and Petrarch. There were in 1895 over 125,600 volumes in the library, and over 30,000 pamphlets.
To the great regret of scholars everywhere, Dr. Poole died March 1, 1894. Born in Salem, Mass., Dec. 24, 1821, descended from an old English family, young Poole attended the common school in Danvers till he was twelve, helped his father on the farm, and learned the tanner's trade. He loved his books, and his good mother determined that he should have an opportunity to go back to his studies.
In 1842 he entered Yale College, at the close of the Freshman year, spent three years in teaching, and was graduated in 1849. While in college, he was appointed assistant librarian of his college society, the "Brothers in Unity," which had 10,000 volumes. He soon saw the necessity of an index for the bound sets of periodicals in the library, if they were to be of practical use, and began to make such an index. The little volume of one hundred and fifty-four pages appeared in 1848, and the edition was soon exhausted. A volume of five hundred and thirty-one pages appeared in 1853; and "Poole's Index" at once secured fame for its author, both at home and abroad.