Carrie Watson: Library pioneer and engaged witness to KU’s origin story
In September 1878, nineteen-year-old Carrie Watson gave a friend a ride to campus, driving her horse and carriage up the Hill to the single four-story building that housed the University of Kansas at the time. Watson, who had graduated from KU the previous year, accompanied her friend inside – and had a chance conversation with an overworked chancellor that changed her life.
That fortuitous day on Mount Oread led to Watson taking charge of the university’s fledgling book collection, becoming KU’s first full-time university librarian nine years later, and a notable figure in university life for over half a century. Her remarkable tenure inspired the naming of Watson Library in her honor in 1924, the first academic building on KU’s campus to be named for a woman.
How it started
The campus that Watson and her friend visited looked much different than it does today. The university building, called simply “University Hall” at the time (later renamed Fraser Hall, then referred to as Old Fraser Hall once the current Fraser Hall replaced it) had been built on an essentially treeless hill in the approximate area where Fraser Hall sits today. A campus beautification project just the previous spring had planted 300 trees including the area now known as Marvin Grove.
After studying at KU for seven years, completing her preparatory work or what would today be high school there as well, Watson had been part of the university’s fifth graduating class of ten students. While Watson was a beneficiary of increasing opportunities for higher education for some young women in the late 1800s, the general expectation would have been that she live with her parents until marriage, then run a household and raise a family. After graduating from KU, Watson was pondering her father’s suggestion that she embark on a series of travels to meet extended family on the east coast.
When Watson arrived on campus with her friend that September day, the chancellor at the time, James A. Marvin -- the impetus and namesake of the tree-planting efforts -- was sitting in one corner of the room at a desk in front of the shelves that held the totality of the university’s book collection. Marvin was busy with a pen and paper, writing down the names, ages, addresses, and qualifications of incoming freshmen -- what served at that time as enrollment. Watson recounted the momentous interaction to the Kansas City Star in 1931:
“Suddenly I wanted to be back in the university – in some way a part of it. I began wishing I hadn’t been graduated so young. Many of the students were no older than I. ‘I wish I could do that for you,’ I told the chancellor. ‘Perhaps you could,’ he replied and so pointedly that I knew he must have felt the need of someone to help in that corner. 'If I let you take charge here, do you think you could keep order?’ he asked me. ‘You could do this work and look after the library.’”
Watson began work that day and continued her service to the library for 65 years, first as assistant librarian from 1878-1887, then as university librarian from 1887-1921. After retirement she served as librarian emerita and continued to work part-time until her death in 1943.
Living history
Watson was not only part of the beginnings of the library, but of the university and the state of Kansas itself. She moved from Amenia, N.Y., to Lawrence with her family when she was six months old, in March 1858, almost three years before Kansas would become a state. It was a multi-day trip with various legs of the journey made by train, boat, stagecoach, and horse and buggy. When Watson was five years old, she and her family experienced the raiding of Lawrence by William Quantrill’s pro-slavery forces, a traumatic and significant event in the Bleeding Kansas era. Nearly 200 men and boys were killed in the attack, and much of Lawrence, including Watson’s home, was burned. Watson and her family escaped from a back door through an alley as raiders arrived at their front doorstep.
Watson’s remarkable career at KU saw extensive change and tremendous growth at the university and libraries. She began working at a time when leadership roles and occupational opportunities for women were rare and extremely limited. Over the years she led the library’s expansion in staffing and materials and successfully advocated for increased collections and expanded library spaces. She sought opportunities to advance her library knowledge by connecting with other professionals and visiting libraries across the country, sharing what she learned with fledgling libraries across her state and as part of the early Kansas Library Association.
Life at Old KU
Watson saw much of what makes up the modern KU experience and traditions come to life during her time at the university. She witnessed the construction of many buildings along Jayhawk Boulevard and the first residence hall and cooperative dormitories for students. She had been working at the library for eight years when the first Rock Chalk chant was uttered and for 20 years when James Naismith came to town. She saw enrollment grow from less than a hundred to thousands of students, and she witnessed the beginning of the tradition of walking down the Hill for commencement when graduating class sizes and accompanying audiences grew too large for ceremonies in old Robinson Gymnasium.
While on duty at the library desk or in the reading rooms, there’s no doubt Carrie Watson embodied the stern persona of a disciplinarian, with a talent for keeping order and maintaining quiet study spaces. But she also expressed joy in working with students and being a regular part of their college experience, and she made lasting connections with them. In remarks at the 1890 Senior Class Banquet, where she accepted the seniors’ gift of a photo album, Watson noted, “I shall be very glad to have the pictures of this class where I can look at them for to me you have almost come to be a part of the library. It will seem strange indeed not to see your familiar faces in the alcoves and to hear your suppressed giggles.”
Watson was a widely known figure on campus and took part in various clubs and activities. She was one of the directors of the University of Kansas chapter of the College Equal Suffrage League, organized in January 1909, and an early member of the Zodiac Society, a community group with strong university ties focused on continuing education for women. In 1916, when the first transcontinental phone call on campus simultaneously connected Mount Oread with KU alumni in New York and California, she was invited to participate, a moment she recounted in 1923, when she was also included in the first university radio broadcast:
“To hear the voices and the remarks of well-known alumni at such a distance was so wonderful and exciting that I could not go to sleep that night. Now I am becoming thrilled over this radio meeting – another sleepless night I suppose. It overcomes me when I realize that so many KU friends can hear me speaking or at least I hope they hear.”
‘Watson hall stands’
During Watson’s tenure, the library evolved dramatically along with KU, from a few shelves of books in the corner of a room in Old Fraser Hall to the first dedicated library building in Spooner Hall in 1894. Watson oversaw the collection’s growth with the total number of volumes almost doubling from 55,000 in 1907 to over 100,000 by 1915. By the early 1920s Spooner library was bursting at the seams with around 150,000 volumes, and more student and staff workspaces were desperately needed.
Watson retired in 1921 but continued her work as librarian emerita and a part-time employee. She and KU faculty advocated for the library’s needs to KU Chancellor Ernest H. Lindley, who urged the state legislature to fund a new library that provided room for the growing collection as well as modern study and administrative spaces. The legislature provided $250,000, a sum that Lindley and library advocates feared largely insufficient for a building of the size and caliber needed. The amount allotted rose slightly to $310,000 and construction of the new library began in 1923.
Many KU alumni and prominent Kansans, including William Allen White and Jonathan M. Davis, the governor of Kansas at the time, wanted the new library named after Carrie Watson in honor of her dedication and decades of work. Chancellor Lindley opposed the naming of the library after Watson, though it’s unclear if his objections were a reflection of his view of Watson or a product of long-standing clashes with Governor Davis. Regardless, Watson’s supporters mounted a successful campaign to the State Board of Administration, who named the building in her honor.
In September 1924, the week Watson Library opened, The University Daily Kansan declared:
“[Watson Library] is the dream of the woman for whom it was named – a woman who has graduated from the University and has spent her life working for the real laboratory of the student body. Since her graduation from school Miss Watson has been building up the library. It was at the very beginning of the growth of the library that Miss Watson began her efforts to make the library one which was worthy of Kansas. She has succeeded. Her efforts have proved worthwhile. She is appreciated – and Watson hall stands.”
Watson herself may have summed up her legacy best, as she looked back on her career in 1931: “I have loved people and I have done my best to serve the students who came to the library.”
[Source Notes: The Carrie M. Watson Scrapbook in University Archives contains a wealth of documents and photographs; see “Reminiscences of Quantrill’s Raid of the City of Lawrence, Kas.; Thrilling Narratives by Living Eye Witnesses,” edited by John C. Shea, for an account of the raid by Watson’s father; see Kansas City Star, May 24, 1931, for a career retrospective and interview of Carrie Watson; see “The Library That Became a Labrinth” by John McCool for Watson Library history]
A Century at the Heart of KU
This year, beloved Watson Library celebrates its centennial as a cornerstone of the campus community. So much has changed in the world of information in the past century, and the libraries have been at the heart of KU’s learning and discovery through it all. Learn more and join us in celebrating this campus icon.