Carol Gaal, Wagnalls Memorial Historian, Answers Our Questions

In this episode, we had the honor of speaking with Carol Gaal, the Wagnalls Memorial historian and Mabel Wagnalls Jones reenactor. Dive deep into the fascinating life and enduring legacy of Mabel Wagnalls Jones, the visionary behind the iconic Wagnalls Memorial Library. Whether you're a history buff, a lover of libraries, or someone inspired by influential women, this episode is a must-listen!

Transcript

Avari [00:00:00]:
On today's episode, we welcome the Wagnalls Memorial historian and the Mabel Wagnalls Jones reenactor, Ms. Carol Gaal. Welcome to the Junior Librarian podcast. This podcast is written for kids by kids to help them learn more about the Wagnalls Memorial Library. Welcome to the podcast, Ms. Carol.

Carol Gaal [00:00:25]:
It's a pleasure to be here.

Avari [00:00:27]:
Can you tell us about the early life of Mabel Wagnalls Jones and what inspired her to have found the Wagnalls Memorial Library?

Carol Gaal [00:00:34]:
Sure. Let's see. Mabel Wagnalls was born in 18/69. She was the only child of Adam and Anna Wagnalls. Adam Wagnalls was cofounder and president of the Funk and Wagnalls Publishing Company. That was a publishing giant. So Mabel was born. She never lived in Lithopolis.

Carol Gaal [00:00:52]:
Her parents were born in Lithopolis. Mabel pretty much grew up in New York City. She did not grow up poor little rich girl. She did not. It wasn't until 18/90 that the money started coming in for her family. By that time, she was 21 years old. But always education, theater, music, writing, all those things were important. Her mother actually taught her at home, which was unheard of at that time.

Carol Gaal [00:01:19]:
She never went to a school. Her parents thought it was very important to provide opportunities for Mabel. For example, when she was 8 or 9 years old, she and her mother spent a summer in Paris so that she could learn how to speak French. Wow. She said her greatest debt to both of her parents was always the encouragement they gave her to attend good theater. So money was still tight, but her parents still gave her an entire dollar a week to spend on the theater. At this point, her father was only making 7 or $8 a week, but that kind of money was spent because it was important to her family. That lasted from the time she was 13 to 17.

Carol Gaal [00:02:03]:
Once she turned 17, her mother had taught her all the piano she could. This tells you a lot about how important education was to her mother and father. When Mabel was about 5 years old, her mother came to Mabel and said, I'm gonna teach you at home, Mabel. And you know what? I think you would make a great author and musician. And all of her education was based on those two topics. Sure, she learned math, etcetera, but for the most part, it was all about writing. It was all about the piano. So now she is she is 17 years old.

Carol Gaal [00:02:44]:
Her mother has taught her all the piano she could, and so they decide to move to Berlin, Germany.

Avari [00:02:51]:
Oh.

Carol Gaal [00:02:52]:
Right. There was a piano conservatory there. It was taught by Franz Kulloch. Tuition fees were meager. They lived fruGaaly. They always lived fruGaaly, and she and her mother stayed there for 4 years. She learned from Franz Kulloch. It was a great education.

Carol Gaal [00:03:11]:
She only saw her father each summer, which was hard on all of them, but it was a great education for her. So now when you hear all that and then you see what we have here at the Wagnalls Memorial, what Mabel built, does it make sense? Because we have a library. We have a theater. We had her pianos. She had, 2 Steinways. 1 of the Steinways is still here. All that, and also, there was artwork from the beginning. There was poetry here from the beginning, letters written to her by her dear friend, O'Henry, an author.

Carol Gaal [00:03:53]:
It was all here because she not I think she started off thinking this was going to be a library, but as she delved into it more and more, knowing that she was building this to honor her parents, she realized that a library just was not enough. So all those other things, she also added to the memorial.

Avari [00:04:14]:
Mabel, she sounded so amazing. Like, she loved the community, and she wanted to help the community and provide education.

Carol Gaal [00:04:23]:
That is exactly it. She had grown up. Her mother always told her, I wanna do something special for the little town that had never had anything done for it, And that's what Mabel did. So it wasn't just to honor her parents, but it was also to provide all the treasures that were not available to her parents when they grew up here.

Avari [00:04:46]:
She just sound like she wanted help. That's so

Alba [00:04:48]:
cool. Mhmm.

Avari [00:04:49]:
She just very, like, lend it a hand.

Carol Gaal [00:04:52]:
That's exactly right.

Avari [00:04:53]:
More people don't know about this. She's so she did so much for everybody else.

Carol Gaal [00:04:57]:
I told you how she was not raised poor little rich girl. When they first moved to New York City, they lived in 2 small rooms. So the one room was her mother and father's room. The other room was the everything room. Mabel was really excited because her parents had decided to purchase a secondhand grand piano for her. So there was a very large piano in this very small apartment. So during the day, Mabel played that piano, and at night, she slept on it. And that is the truth.

Carol Gaal [00:05:27]:
It's the truth. And so that's just how they lived.

Avari [00:05:30]:
Wow. Mhmm. Live, eat, breathe, sleep piano.

Carol Gaal [00:05:34]:
Right.

Avari [00:05:36]:
Can you tell me a little bit more about the architecture of this library and what kind of architecture it is?

Carol Gaal [00:05:41]:
Sure. The architectural type that it is is Tudor Gothic. And it's it's very interesting. When she first met with Ray Sims, who was the architect, he was thinking probably Georgian or colonial architecture made sense in this town, but right away, she said, no. I want it to be Tudor Gothic. And that's because that's the architecture she enjoyed with her mother those 4 years that they were in Berlin, Germany. So, again, not only did she not only want to honor her parents, provide opportunities for the village, she also wanted to tell her family story.

Avari [00:06:21]:
So what exactly is Tudor Gothic?

Carol Gaal [00:06:24]:
When you think of Harry Potter, That's Tudor Gothic. It's a style of architecture. It it's gonna be a little bit darker. It's going to just it's Harry Potter. That's that's that's the easiest way to explain it.

Avari [00:06:41]:
Like castle like.

Carol Gaal [00:06:42]:
Castle like is a good is very good. Yes. Exactly.

Avari [00:06:46]:
Could you share a memorable story or anecdote about Mabel that reflects her character or her passion for the library?

Carol Gaal [00:06:53]:
Sure. I'm gonna tell you a story that I read about. It was it was in an interview. Ray Sims was the architect, and he talked about this is his story. 1 evening, they were having dinner. Ray Simms, his wife, Mabel Wagnalls and her husband, Richard Jones, mister Weiser, George Weiser and his wife, and a couple other notable people here in Lithopolis. They were having dinner together. And one of the people read a story, like a magazine story, a story out of a magazine, I believe.

Carol Gaal [00:07:28]:
And it might have been a little bit racy or something. Well, mister and missus Weiser, their eyes just got all big, and they didn't know what to do. But Mable, she just laughed. She thought it was funny. People knew she was brilliant. People talked about that, but she was also very, very real. There was another there was another story Ray Simms talked about. At one time one time, Mabel was having dinner with his family, with Ray Simms' family, and their child was there at the dinner.

Carol Gaal [00:08:03]:
Mabel hardly even touched her meal. She was so engrossed talking to their child. He was, at that time, collecting signatures. It was like a hobby of his, and Mabel just became all engrossed talking to him about those signatures and what the different signatures he had and why they were important to him. So she was always

Avari [00:08:26]:
Infatuated with other people's minds?

Carol Gaal [00:08:28]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. It wasn't about her. It was always about other people. Another story this is really, really neat. Okay. So Mabel would come here a lot.

Carol Gaal [00:08:39]:
She would not have just thrown money at the library the come to the the site, the job site. She had come here. They were cutting down the trees because they needed to make room to actually build the library. So this was at the beginning stages. And Mabel came, and one of the workers ran over to her and she he he said to her, oh my goodness, Mabel. What are we going to do? I cut down this this tree and there's 4 baby owls in it. And she told him, don't don't worry about it. We're gonna remember them.

Carol Gaal [00:09:17]:
So if you go into the adult fiction area here at Wagnalls, you'll see 4 owls up above the post, and that's what those 4 owls are about. And today, those owls the owls today act as our mascot, if you will. They've never been forgotten.

Avari [00:09:38]:
Wow. She's incredible. Mhmm. In addition to building this library, she was also an author and musician. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Carol Gaal [00:09:47]:
Sure. Mabel ended up writing 8 books. Wow. Right. She really enjoyed music. So quite a few of those books were about opera singers and about opera. She wanted to make opera. At that time, only rich people went to the opera.

Carol Gaal [00:10:06]:
She wanted to make it more available to the regular people. So writing about it was a was her way of doing that. She wrote 8 books. She also was a concert pianist, And she combined her 2 loves, writing and music. She called it imagery and music. What that was is she if you can imagine her playing classical piano pieces as a child, she would get bored. So while she was playing those pieces, she would make up stories in her mind about what they were about. Imagery and music, what that was, she wrote a story and she'd play a little bit of it.

Carol Gaal [00:10:45]:
And then the narrator would read a little bit more of that story. She'd play more of it until the end of the story till the end of the piece. And she gave quite a few concerts that way throughout the northeast, the New England states, really, and, they were a grand success.

Avari [00:11:03]:
So how do we see these things in the library's collections today?

Carol Gaal [00:11:07]:
We have quite a bit of memorabilia from Mabel. The first thing was she became good friends with Doe Henry, who was an author, and they wrote letters back and forth. She would come back to visit her grandmother. The year was 1903. Mabel was 34 years old. She was visiting her grandmother in Lithopolis. She starts writing letters to this author that she was impressed with, o Henry. And he started writing letters back, and he would write things like, well, what how are you? What is going on with you? Mabel wrote about Lithopolis because that's where she was.

Carol Gaal [00:11:48]:
O'Henry became obsessed with Lithopolis. So Mabel would explain the different things to him. She kept those letters, and they became one of her books, Letters to Lithopolis. Well, we have those original letters here at the library that you can see. They're in a display case, and they're in the same display case that they were from the very beginning. Those are here. If you come, you can see those. We also have 8 she wrote 8 books.

Carol Gaal [00:12:18]:
We have her books here. She loved art. We have her father, one of their publications, famous publications for Funk and Wagnalls was the literary digest. We probably have 20 plus original paintings, illustrations from the literary digest. The most famous ones being the 2 Norman Rockwells that we have. So if you come to the library, you can see those Norman Rockwells.

Avari [00:12:45]:
She really knew everybody, didn't she?

Carol Gaal [00:12:47]:
She really did. She was a New York socialite. Another good friend of hers was Harry Houdini, the famous magician. So this is in the 19 like, 1916. They became friends.

Avari [00:12:59]:
Was it Harry Houdini an escape artist?

Carol Gaal [00:13:01]:
Sorry. He was. He was an escape artist. Thank you for that. He not only did he do magic, but he also did his that's what he was mostly known for. And it's kind of funny because we have a letter from him that you can see, and it in it, he says, you are right in saying my name is being observed. Perhaps I may eventually get in the dictionary sometime. Well, don't you know that was in 1916? In 1919, the Funk and Wagnalls dictionary has Houdini in it as a word, and it means you pull the great escape.

Carol Gaal [00:13:38]:
Isn't that something? So all those things are here. We have poetry from a good friend of hers. His name was Edwin Markham. He wrote he's probably most famous today for the poem Lincoln, a man of the people. He wrote that poem, and he recited that at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial. We have that poem here written in his handwriting to Mabel and to Richard. We have 2 tower rooms. The first tower room was filled with Edwin Markham's poetry, like 30 of his poems.

Carol Gaal [00:14:14]:
The 2nd tower room was filled with John Dunsmore, another family friend. He was a famous artist. The second tower room was filled with John Dunsmore's artwork. That's right from the beginning. So not only was there the library, the theater, the her books, there were there were the 2 tower rooms filled with poetry, filled with artwork. She wanted everybody to come here and enjoy and dream.

Avari [00:14:41]:
What were some of the challenges Mabel faced while establishing the library, and how did she overcome them?

Carol Gaal [00:14:47]:
First of all, Mabel, she grew up hearing her mother say she wanted to do something special for the town. Mabel did not know what that was, and they didn't really have the money anyway. And then when there was money, they didn't know what she couldn't figure out what would honor her parents. Mabel married in 1920. She married Richard Jones. She was 51 years old. Wow. And they moved from New York City she moved from New York City to Long Island.

Carol Gaal [00:15:19]:
On Long Island, the home that they bought needed some work, and her husband, Richard Jones, started working on the house. She realized he could build. It almost seems like it came as an epiphany to her. That's what we're going to do. We're going to build a library. That's what would honor my parents. So that was the first hurdle was just deciding how to honor her parents and obtaining the money. That hurdle was crossed, and then it was Lithopolis actually means city of stone.

Carol Gaal [00:15:51]:
It's Greek for city of stone. Litho is stone, Polis is city. So there was a stone quarry right across where our parking lot is today. There's a ravine. There was that was a stone quarry. That stone quarry had gone out of business. Mabel wanted to use that stone. And the reason that that stone quarry had gone out of business was because concrete had come in.

Carol Gaal [00:16:13]:
Nobody wanted stone anymore. It was all about concrete. Mabel bought that stone quarry. She hired everybody back, gave them jobs, and that's who worked on this building.

Avari [00:16:25]:
Wow. She was really ahead of her time. She knew what she wanted.

Carol Gaal [00:16:29]:
She really, really did. The another thing that she wanted to do was give an architect a chance, somebody who had never really built anything big before. She asked around, and she got the name of Ray Sims here in Columbus, and that's who she hired. Now her New York friends, if you can imagine such a thing and there were only 300 people who lived here in Lithopolis. So she decides to Mabel decides to build a library, build the theater, all those things, use the stone quarry, hire those employees back, give an architect a chance who had never built anything before. Her New York friends thought she had lost her mind. And they said to her, all that for 300 people, what are they even going to do with it? And Mabel replied, even if it was only 3 people, even if it was only 3 people, I would still build this memorial because it's to honor my parents. So she was very single-minded and knew what she wanted to do, and they always figured out a way how to make things work.

Carol Gaal [00:17:43]:
Something else that's very interesting, and it's it it's been here since almost from the beginning of the opening of the library. There is a plaque. She had her husband, have it done, and on it, it says something about this memorial was built for all people irregardless of race, creed, or religion. This was 1925.

Avari [00:18:11]:
She was very ahead of her time.

Carol Gaal [00:18:13]:
Mhmm. And she knew what she was talking about. She lived in New York City, so it wasn't like she was naive. She wanted this for anybody who came. And that's just and she did not the thing was, the way she overcame a lot of her, obstacles or whatever, she did what she thought was right. Period. And she stuck to her guns.

Avari [00:18:36]:
Wow. Mhmm. That's incredible.

Carol Gaal [00:18:38]:
Mhmm. She was really something.

Avari [00:18:40]:
She was. She knew exactly what she wanted. She did what

Carol Gaal [00:18:42]:
she wanted to do,

Avari [00:18:53]:
So how can people learn more about Mabel Wagonals?

Carol Gaal [00:18:56]:
There are quite a few ways. First of all, she wrote books. One of her books was the light in the valley. That book is about her mother and about her family. So you can we have that book here. You can check it out. You can read it. We also I give tours as Mabel the 1st Tuesday of each month at 7 o'clock.

Carol Gaal [00:19:16]:
It lasts about an hour. I am also happy to give tours to any group that wants to set one up that would work for them at at a time that would work for them. You can set that up by calling the Wagnalls Memorial and asking about those tours, and we can get something set up. I also give monologues as Mabel. They're 15 minutes, and it talks about there's 2 parts. The first part, I talk about Mabel and her family. I I am Mabel, and I give a monologue. I give the monologue the first part of the monologue.

Carol Gaal [00:19:51]:
Mabel's sitting in the library. She's reflecting about her past. In the second part, Mabel is giving the actual speech that she gave on the day of the dedication. I I'm happy to come to any meeting, etcetera, and provide that monologue. Another thing we have is there's letters to Lithopolis, that book that the letters between her and O'Henry. That's that's very interesting reading. We have that book here. We also have a little booklet.

Carol Gaal [00:20:21]:
It's called Mabel's musings, and I wrote that as Mabel about the building of the library. And it's, again, it's in her voice. So it it's Mabel's a lot more interesting than than I am than Carol. But so those are there's all different kinds of ways. Thanks for asking.

Avari [00:20:40]:
Mabel Wagnalls was the definition of a girl boss?

Carol Gaal [00:20:44]:
Yes. Yes. She was. Oh.

Alba [00:20:49]:
Can you describe a day in the life of Mabel Wagnalls Jones during the early years of the library? Sure.

Carol Gaal [00:20:55]:
She was she was quite busy. That's a and that's a very good question because it wasn't as if she just built the library and then was done with it. She continued to work on the library and with the library to keep it running, to keep everything going pretty much for the rest of her life. She lived until 1946. The library was built in 1925. So she was busy. She had a business manager. His name was Ralph InGaals.

Carol Gaal [00:21:25]:
She would meet with mister InGaals every week, and it was so funny. Whenever something happened at Wagnalls, they wanted to call Mable. Mable this, Mable that. Oh, what do we do about this? What do we do about that? As you can imagine, it was a lot. She kept telling them, do not call me. Call mister InGaals. Wow. She did not wanna talk to miss they did not want to talk to mister InGaals.

Carol Gaal [00:21:53]:
They wanna talk to Mabel. But she kept telling them, I I'm not going to you need to talk to mister InGaals. He comes and he meets with me every week, and we figure everything out together. I'm not going to figure out anything without mister InGaals, so just call him. And don't you know, maybe it cut down on half of the calls, but I I think they were still calling her quite a bit. So a lot of her her life was running the Wagnalls Memorial. Another thing, rather early on, where she wanted to have a writing contest for high school kids, I believe. And I don't know if it happened or not.

Carol Gaal [00:22:30]:
We have letters, and she's talking about it. But don't you know that we have a writing contest? It is called the ink in stone. And so it's kind of exciting that even though Mabel's not here, that writing contest, we're having one now, and that's that's such a tribute to her. But she spent she would get letters. As you can imagine, 1929 is when the stock market crashed. People became poor. She received all kinds of letters, all kinds of requests from people for money to help them. And she would she would reply back, I'm sorry, but it's everything I can do to keep the Wagnalls Memorial going.

Carol Gaal [00:23:12]:
So she built this library. It cost $500,000 to build, and then she endowed it, which means that she continued to put money forward to keep everything running. And it was a private library. It was just for the people of Lithopolis, so there were no funds coming from the state or from the government or anything. It was all just funded by her. It was a pleasure for her to do. She loved it.

Alba [00:23:41]:
Wow. That's so cool. How has the library evolved since its inception, and what do you think Mabel would say about the library today?

Carol Gaal [00:23:49]:
I think she'd be very pleased. First of all, she'd be very pleased to be sitting here talking to you today. They were very forward thinking, her family. So a podcast, they she she couldn't even imagine what a podcast would be. But as a way of getting information out, as a way of sharing her family's story, and as a way of encouraging people your age to find out more, to get involved with their library, she would have been over the moon. She would have been over the moon about the ink and stone writing contest that's going on. She'd be excited about a podcast, and we're we're going to be getting a podcast studio. How many libraries have podcast studios? But Wagnalls does.

Carol Gaal [00:24:46]:
And, again, she would just be ecstatic. She'd be very pleased. And we still at the same time, we still have the old collections here. We have the Norman Rockwells. We have the letters from Houdini. We have the letters from O'Henry. We have the paintings from John Dunsmore. The literary digest covers all of that.

Carol Gaal [00:25:09]:
She'd be very pleased and that it's still serving this community and that the people who do work here, we work here because we love it. And that would have made Mabel very happy too.

Alba [00:25:22]:
And that's so cool to think about how she would have loved the community.

Carol Gaal [00:25:27]:
Yes. Yes. And I don't know what it is about Lithopolis, but always, we've had quirky characters in this town, and they love the library. Mabel would be pleased to know that they're welcome here, that we love them, that we enjoy serving them, anybody. And she said that right from the start, irregardless of race, color, or creed, and that's what we're all about. She'd be very pleased.

Alba [00:25:54]:
Are there any traditions at the Wagnalls Memorial Library that were started by Mabel Wagnalls and continue to this day.

Carol Gaal [00:26:02]:
Most definitely. The Wagnels memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1925. That was Memorial Day weekend. To this day, Memorial Day is still the big day for Lithopolis. We're even getting ready to celebrate our 100th anniversary, our centennial of the dedication of Wagnalls. And we're starting it on this Memorial Day, 2024, and we will continue it then until Memorial Day 2025. And the reason we're doing that is because Memorial Day has always been the big day for Lithopolis.

Alba [00:26:43]:
How does the library honor Mabel Wagnall's legacy and its current operations and community engagement?

Carol Gaal [00:26:50]:
To give an example of how committed Mabel was to this community, not only did she build this library, but I believe it was shortly after the library was built or right before it, they were getting ready to close down the Lithopolis post office. And Mabel worked hard to make sure that it stayed open, and it did. So we have a post office today, thanks to Mabel Wagnalls. That kind of community involvement continues today at Wagnalls. The Wagnalls Memorial is very engaged with its community. So Memorial Day activities, they not only happen here at Wagnalls, but in the town itself. And there is a committee that works on the Memorial Day festivities. There's always representation from the Wagnalls Memorial.

Carol Gaal [00:27:46]:
When Mabel passed away, 1946, she left in her will that the foundation had to do 3 things, keep the library going, keep cultural and educational events happening here at Wagnalls, And then the third thing was scholarships. She started a scholarship fund. And what that was, if you started high school in and you lived in Bloom Township, your college was paid for. This happened for many years. My husband, who graduated in 1972, so is that 26 years later, he started school here when he was a freshman in high school. They moved here. His college was paid for by Mabel.

Alba [00:28:34]:
Wow.

Carol Gaal [00:28:34]:
And we continue to give those scholarships today. Obviously, college is a lot more expensive now, and there are a lot more people living here. So it's doesn't go to everybody, but you can apply and scholarships are given. Last year, I believe $17,000 was given in scholarships.

Alba [00:28:52]:
That's amazing.

Carol Gaal [00:29:03]:
Program. That's a lot of lives changed. That's a lot of lives improved.

Alba [00:29:09]:
What message would Mabel Wagnalls have for today's generation, especially those who are passionate about literature and community service?

Carol Gaal [00:29:17]:
That is it. Another you guys have asked me great questions today. I really appreciate that. It would be the same message that she had for the children back in 1925 and the younger people in 1925. In the fiction library above the fireplace, there's an etching and it's in Mabel's handwriting. It's from one of her books, Rose Bush of a 1000 years. That etching reads, dreams long dwelt on among to prayers and prayers wrought in faith come true. And I believe she wrote that for the younger generation and for all generations to come.

Carol Gaal [00:30:04]:
It is exactly how she was raised. So, basically, what she's saying is dream. Dreams long dwelt on. Think about it for a while. Dreams long dwelt on amount to prayers, and then pray about it. Is it worth it? Is it worth my time? Is it worth my energy? So dream song dwelt on amount of prayers, and prayers wrought in faith. What that means is I'm going to believe that it's going to happen. So now we have dream song dwelt on a month of prayers and prayers wrought in faith, and here comes the end come true.

Carol Gaal [00:30:39]:
And that's how you make things happen. As a young person, think about what's important. What do what would I like to accomplish? And then pray about it. Is it important enough? Is it worth my time? Is it worth my effort? And if the answer is yes, then go. Go and do it. Know that you're gonna have to work hard, but you will accomplish your goals. And guess what? Let's say it doesn't work out the way you thought it would, imagine how much you will have grown through the experience. There are always things to learn.

Carol Gaal [00:31:11]:
There are always things to accomplish and Mabel, that's why she built this library.

Alba [00:31:19]:
Thank you for joining us today, Miss Carol,

Avari [00:31:21]:
and helping us learn about how incredible Mabel Wagnalls was.

Carol Gaal [00:31:25]:
It was my pleasure. You two gals are amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Avari [00:31:33]:
Well, that concludes today's episode. I hope that you enjoyed learning a little more about Wagonals. Bye.