The Marie Stuart Edwards Statue Outside The Peru Public Library

Part of the fun of travel is finding new things that you didn’t know about. I stopped at this library in Peru because it is one of the Carnegie Libraries in Indiana. I came away with some knowledge of a figure from Lafayette that I didn’t know about previously. Marie Stuart Edwards was born here in Lafayette, Indiana in 1880. A claim that I have seen is that Marie was the first girl in Lafayette to ride a bike. The idea of that bike ride and the statue that I saw in Peru is pretty cool. The bike was an important step for women because now they could go a little farther than their feet could take them. If you read this blog then you know that I like to make photos of St. John’s Church in Lafayette. That is where Marie was married to her husband Richard Edwards in 1904. After living in Michigan for a short time Marie started her life in Peru, Indiana. There in Peru Marie really found her voice and was a big part of society there. She was a huge part of the suffragette movement and her base was right down the road in Peru. Her accomplishments are too numerous for this little blog post. You can read an article about her here. It was very cool to see just how far someone from this small town in Indiana can go if they want to. She not only went far, but she blazed a new road to get there.

Carnegie Library Week

Over the years I have often photographed libraries without knowing why. Certain libraries just looked amazing in small towns so I made a photo of them. This year I found the thread that binds them together. They were all Carnegie Libraries. From about a fifty year span around the turn of the 20th century about 2,500 libraries were built with funding from Andrew Carnegie. At one point about 80% of the libraries in the United States were built in part with funds from Andrew Carnegie. At first in the United States he just built around his home of Pittsburgh, but over the years he grew his reach to many across the entire United States. When it was all said and done almost 1,700 libraries were built here in America thanks to Andrew Carnegie. He really left his mark on many small towns in the United States. This week I am going to show off five of these libraries that I have visited in the last couple of weeks.