FREDERICK MORGAN CRUNDEN
Frederick Morgan Crunden was born at Gravesend, England, September 1, 1847, the son of Benjamin Robert and Mary (Morgan) Crunden. Coming to St. Louis while a child, he was educated in the public schools of that city and graduated from its high school in 1865, with a scholarship in Washington university. In the latter institution he took a course in the arts and sciences, graduating in 1868 with the degree of bachelor of arts. Teaching in the public schools of St. Louis before graduation, and later in the college faculty of the same university, he received the degree of master of arts in 1872.
His marriage to Miss Kate Edmondson was in 1889. During his college course Mr. Crunden took a vital interest in library work, and in January, 1877, he became secretary and librarian of the St. Louis public (then public school) library, continuing as such until 1909.
Equally identified with many other societies, local and national, he had been a contributor to leading magazines upon educational and sociological subjects, and had attained international fame before he was stricken in 1906 with the malady which resulted in his death October 28, 1911.
Mr. Crunden's public services were by no means confined to the distinctively library interests of his community and the country. He was particularly interested in the mutual relations of schools and libraries, developing them in St. Louis in a manner which served as a model for others, and contributing largely to the evolution of the present official relations of the National Education Association and the American Library Association.
In his public writing he has expressed most clearly and happily the fundamental principles of these relations, and it is a great pleasure to his friends, as it was to him in the last days of his life, to know that his statement of the value of recorded thought has been carved in granite on the walls of his cherished institution. Nevertheless it was to library work that the greater part of his time and thought was given, and it is the success of his work as a constructive librarian that naturally we most fully recognize. He combined high executive ability with a comprehensive knowledge of the contents of the collections under his charge. He had that sense of the real librarian, which has been said to be "an intensive perception of the needs of the present, and a prophetic insight into the needs of the future."
He worked zealously and unceasingly, first for the broadening of the work of the St. Louis public schools library, then for its conversion into a free public library, and finally for its development into a strong institution ranking among the great libraries of the land. It is pleasant to know that even in the last years he was able at times to follow its course along the lines forecast by him, and that he could realize the high appreciation of his services so generally felt by his fellow citizens.
Almost in the beginning of his library career, he began also his services to the American Library Association, which were secondary only to the work he did for St. Louis.
He attended first the Boston conference of 1879, and rarely after that did he miss a meeting. Elected councillor in 1882, he served the association almost continuously until his illness. He was vice-president in 1887-88, and under his presidency the Fabyans conference of 1890 took rank as the largest and one of the most successful meetings held up to that time. When the association met at St. Louis, in 1889, and again in 1904, he was a most thoughtful host, whose care for our welfare contributed largely to the success of those meetings. He served also as one of the vice-presidents of the Chicago conference in 1893, and as vice-president of the international library conference at London in 1897, and was one of the chief spokesmen of the association party. This list of offices by no means measures the debt of the association to him. The much longer list of committees on which he served would indicate better the character and breadth of his work, but even this would leave unexpressed the professional knowledge and the personal pleasure gained from his companionship by the individual members.
This sense of personal loss must be felt by all who met him in the other library circles in which he was interested, especially the Missouri state library association, of which he was the first president, and the New York state library association, whose annual meetings he so often attended.