In Union There Is Strength: The Farmers' Institute and the Western Literary Union Library

Abstract

Housed in what is now a Quaker meetinghouse in southern Tippecanoe County, Indiana, is the remnant collection of a mid-nineteenth-century library from an early academy. Unlike many of its type, it was never disbursed or absorbed into another library collection. The collection itself is an example of educational and literary society libraries that existed before the development of public libraries or libraries in public schools. The library also supported a literary and debating society that was the center of the intellectual life of the surrounding community. This article places the library in the context of Quaker educational philosophy, popular ideas of education of the day, and its relationship with educational reformist movements both within Indiana and at a national level.