Carterton District Historical Society
Discover, understand, respect, value and share in our community’s yesterdays.
Carterton Library and Librarians
The early working men and women of Carterton decided that their growing township needed a public library.
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This was particularly interesting as illiteracy was not uncommon, yet access to ideas and education wider than their own experience was important to them.
In 1873 fundraising for a library began in earnest, initially only for a collection of books that would be available on loan. One novel fundraiser was penny readings in peoples’ homes. William Parker was enlisted to read volumes to small groups, many of whom were illiterate. Records suggest Richard Fairbrother, later the first mayor of Carterton, appears to have been the initial co-ordinator of the project.
Charles Rooking Carter, who had by then returned to England, became involved in the venture. In February 1874 Fairbrother received a list of 200 titles from Carter which he had selected for the library, having personally donated £12 towards this initial collection.
Carter was an important benefactor of Carterton and the town acknowledged this by naming the settlement after him in 1859. Although he never lived in Carterton, Carter owned sizable tracts of land in the district and represented Wairarapa in the General Assembly from 1859 to 1865. He made many benevolent contributions to the town, most notably, either by his gift or by his influence, Carterton acquired the land where the public buildings were later established. This included the present library site. His other contributions included Carter Home for elderly men, later Carter Court, and the area now known as Carter Scenic Reserve, plus numerous book donations to Carterton Library.
When the initial collection of 200 books arrived, it was stored in a small room in the town hall, as reported in the Wairarapa Standard, March 31 1874. The library was established on 24 March 1874 and William Parker was appointed librarian, at an annual salary of £7. A subscription rate was set at 10/- per annum with an entrance fee of 2/6. Carter continued to purchase books on behalf of the library and in London raised over £50. The collection had reached 700 books and had 50 members by February 1875 by which time it was debt free. In 1878 the library was moved to the new town hall. Carterton citizens decided it was now time to construct a purpose built library. It remained a subscription library managed by a voluntary committee until 1963 when the Carterton Borough Council took it over.
After further fundraising the present Carterton Library building was completed in 1881 at a cost of £336, thanks to Carter having acquired the land and William Booth suppling the timber. Carter maintained his interest and by 1884 the collection had grown to 2,388 volumes of high quality. At the time of his death in 1896, he also bequeathed part of his personal collection to the library.
Carterton Library was first established due to the efforts and inspiration of Carterton’s early settler working men and women. However, C R Carter’s tireless support was instrumental in the establishment of the collection and in the building of this, New Zealand’s longest serving purpose built library.
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Carterton Library
Sources:
Bagnall, A G - A History of Carterton The Story of the First Hundred Years of the Settlement of Carterton, 1857 – 1957, The Carterton Borough Council, Carterton, 1957.
Lawrence, W - Three Mile Bush, A History of the Wairarapa, W J Palamontain, Masterton, 1934.
‘The Oldest of Them All’, https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1TXYB_the-oldest-of-them-all-wairarapa?guid=0a00a73e-194d-43bc-9b87-a78704ede990, Accessed 3 March 2024
‘Carterton founder never lived in region’, Winter G - Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 Feb, 2016
Carter, Charles Rooking, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1c8/carter-charles-rooking, Accessed March 3 2024.
Wairarapa Standard, 31 March 1874​
William Parker - Settler, Librarian and A Man of Carterton Firsts
William Parker was appointed the first librarian at Carterton Public Library in 1874 and filled the position until 1896. In 1857 he was one of the first four settlers to be allotted and settled on a 10 acre town section in Three Mile Bush, later named Carterton, with his wife, Hannah, (Underhill). Parker’s Section 1 bordered High Street to the west and Hookers Line, later renamed Park Road after Parker, to the north. His home was situated on land which is now Memorial Square. Parker was later allocated a further 63 acres along Park Road.
The Parkers survived many setbacks. Sadly, their first child died on their journey to New Zealand and their second, born days after arriving in New Zealand, died and was buried on their Carterton section the following year. However, they subsequently had 11 surviving children. Another setback was the large fire in 1877 in which they lost a barn and other equipment worth £41.
To support his growing family Parker, formerly a factory metal worker in England, cleared his land and by 1860 he was able to grow and sell some wheat. Initially, he probably also worked building the road from Greytown to Masterton. In time he built a number of shops along his High Street frontage and leased them out, except for one which he sold to G W Deller.
Further supplementing these ventures Parker wrote letters for illiterate settlers and gave penny readings of books in peoples’ homes. These activities, plus his dance and music teaching, and his appointment as chairman of the School Committee all contributed to Parker being seen as an educated and artistic man. His habitually worn smoking hat could also have contributed to this impression! When Carterton Public Library was established in 1874, the learned Parker, was appointed librarian at an annual salary of £7.
This first library consisted of a collection of 200 books selected by C R Carter in England. He shipped them to Carterton where they were first housed in a small room attached to the hall.
Parker retained his position as librarian when the current Carterton Library was built in 1881. In 1904 Parker was presented with a book by Elizabeth Barnett Browning to acknowledge his services as librarian and Library Committee member.
In his later years Parker was beset with further losses. Hannah died in 1899 and in 1901 a large fire destroyed his home and a hall behind his house. However, Parker’s resilient spirit saw him rebuild and at the great age of 82 Parker married again to a woman many years his junior. This does not appear to have lasted as when Parker died in 1910 she was not acknowledged in his will. He was buried alongside his first wife, Hannah.
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William Parker - Settler, Librarian and A Man of Carterton Firsts
Sources:
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Bagnall, A G - A History of Carterton. The Carterton Borough Council, 1957.
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Relph, D - Early Carterton Settlers: William and Hannah Parker, New Zealand Memories, Jun/Jul 2019; n.138, Held at Carterton District Historical Society.
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William Parker - Carterton District Historical Society, Underhill Collection, Ref MS 0100, Date unknown.
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Carterton News - Wairarapa Daily Times, 14 November 1902.
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Disastrous Fires in Carterton - Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 7010, 18 November 1901. ​
Adam Ayles - History and Mystery at the Library
His former career required skills differing greatly from those of a librarian in 1896 small town New Zealand.
Ayles arrived in Carterton in 1892, via Australia, where he took his discharge from the navy in 1885. He was born in 1848 in Dorset, England. Having left school at 12 and worked four years on his father’s farm, he ran away to sea and served on a number of Royal Navy ships.
In 1875 Ayles served as Chief Petty Officer on the HMS Alert and joined Nares polar expedition in search of the North Pole. The ship became icebound and a party, including Ayles, set out with sledges to explore the northern limits of Ellesmere Island. Ultimately, it was only Ayles and his colleague, Lieutenant Aldrich, who remained fit enough to pull the sledges. All the other team members succumbed to scurvy and were unable to walk. Ayles attributed his ability to withstand the extreme cold and resist scurvy to his being a life-long teetotaller. He was supported in this view by newspaper reports of the day.
Ayles continued to assert he was a teetotaller while serving as librarian in Carterton, having been appointed from 11 applicants in 1896. This is interesting as his itinerant friend, James Cox, wrote in his diaries (now held in the National Library of New Zealand) that he regularly enjoyed a tipple of whisky and literary conversation with Ayles. Possibly supporting Cox’s statement, the Archaeological Monitoring Report carried out in 2011, before the Carterton Events Centre was built, discovered empty whisky bottles in wall cavities and under the floorboards of the librarians’ flat inside the library building. These particular whisky bottles were in common use during the period Ayles lived there.
It was a great shock to Cox when his friend, Adam Ayles, was suddenly and unexpectedly forced to leave town on 17 April, 1899, accused of ‘committing a disgusting offence’, as Cox wrote in his diaries. It was all the more suprising as according to contemporary records Ayles was a respected pillar of Carterton society, holding the office of Worshipful Master of the Masonic Lodge, serving as a vestryman of St Marks Church and as President of the Carterton Rovers Football Club. The library committee also recorded satisfaction with Ayles’ work on many occasions.
What was this alleged offence? Did it relate to Adam Ayles being a secret whisky tippler or was it something else entirely? Ayles was never again heard of in Carterton.
This mystery has never been explained…
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Adam Ayles - History and Mystery at the Library
Sources:
Fairburn, M - Nearly Out of Heart & Hope. Auckland University Press. 1995
Old Colonists, etc. Ayles, Adam. The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Volume 1, Part 2. 1997
Warman, M - British Immigrant made mark in Arctic World, Wairarapa Times Age. November 12 2002.
What Artic Explorers Found. Evening Post, Volume LXIII, Issue 3, 4, January 1902, Supplement. P 5​
Melville Dewey - A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place
Melville Louis Kossuth DEWEY (10 December 1851 – 26 December 1931) was an influential American Librarian, Educator and inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of Library classification.
As a boy he had a mania for systems and classification. He was obsessed with the number 10. He slept 10 hours and wrote 10-page letters. He liked to organise his mother’s pantry and earned money for doing chores. He then walked 10 miles to buy a dictionary with his savings.
He was interested in reforming the English language to make reading and writing easier. As a young adult he changed the spelling of his first name to ‘Melvil’ to eliminate those inefficient and unnecessary letters at the end of his name. For a time, he even spelled his last name ‘Dui’. He would have been diagnosed as having OCD today.
He enrolled at Amehurst College in Massachusetts in 1870. In 1872 he began working in the college library. This experience convinced Dewey that Libraries could be used to educate everyone, so he committed himself to improving Libraries. Dewey graduated in 1874 and became acting Librarian for Amehurst College.
In 1876 Dewey published ‘A Classification & Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging Books and Pamphlets of a Library’. This book outlines what became known as the DDC. The system was gradually adopted by Libraries around the world.
In 1883 Dewey became Chief Librarian at Colombia College (now University) in New York City. He founded the first Library school there in 1887. However, he upset the authorities at Colombia when he allowed women to attend the Library school. In response he removed his school to the University of State of New York, in Albany in 1888.
Dewey was the director of the New York State Library from 1889-1906. He completely reorganised the State Library, making it the most efficient in the country.
He started the Travelling Library, Library for the Blind and the Inter-loan Library.
A promotor of winter sports, he also helped organise the 1923 Olympics at Lake Placid, where he started a health resort. There was a $10 membership and people were required to turn their lights out at 10pm. He was very bigoted and only allowed white Christians into his resort. He could also spell the way he wanted there.
Those biases were reflected within the DDC which marginalised some of society eg it classified gay and lesbian subjects under ‘Abnormal’, ‘Psychology’, ‘Perversion’, ‘Deranged’ and ‘Medical Conditions.’ A large part of a Librarian’s job is keeping their books in order on the shelves.
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He was obsessed with women, as in hugging and kissing them. This led him to lose one of his Library jobs.
He married Annie Godfrey and they had a son, Godfrey. After the death of his wife, he married Emily McKay Beal.
Melvil Dewey died of a stroke, on December 29, 1931, in Lake Placid, Florida.
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Melville Dewey - A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place
Sources:
www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com
Britannica.com