Mary E. Dubbs Scott
My great-grandmother Mary E. (was it Elizabeth?) Dubbs Scott was a woman who had outside interests besides her life as a wife and mother of two. Mary was born in Union Township, Elkhart County, Indiana on 29 Jun 1868, the daughter of John and Matilda Miller Dubbs. She was one of six children, the fourth in birth order. The 1880 Census found the Dubbs family living in neighboring Van Buren Township, Kosciusko County near the town of Milford, where Mary would live for the rest of her life. At twenty-four she married a Milford man named William Oldfield Scott. Together they had two sons: my grandfather Angus Cleon Scott and my grand-uncle William Franklin Scott.
Although Mary was busy keeping house and being a mother, she found time to work in the family hardware store and to be an active member of the Grace Brethren Church's women's group and the Columbian Reading Circle. I was excited to learn about her involvement with the Reading Circle because I enjoy being a part of two book clubs. The Columbian Reading Circle members didn't limit themselves to monthly book discussions. Instead, in 1907 the group spearheaded the formation of the Milford Public Library Association. They started small in a room of the Hotel Milford with eighty books that were borrowed from the state and organized a community "book shower" to ask for book donations. In the years following, the library grew out of several temporary homes and in 1916 the library was awarded a $10,000 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Fund. With the help of that grant and tax funds from the town and townships, a permanent library (which still stands today) was built in 1918.
Mary passed away from carcinoma of the stomach on 10 Oct 1929, just eighteen days before the stock market crashed. She didn't live to see the family hardware store fail, to see her grandchildren to grow up, or to meet her great-grandchildren. But she was loved and she played a part in bringing the gift of a library to the town of Milford.
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