Sallie Lou Wilson
Note: most of this article is taken from a short autobiographical sketch written by Sallie Lou Wilson. The information from the sketch is in quotation marks.
“Miss Sallie Lou Wilson lived in Summerville the first few years of her life and went to a one room school, then her family moved to Hampton and she entered the fourth grade. There was not much advancement after the eighth grade so she was sent to Ouachita College where she entered the prep department. After six years there she graduated with an AB degree.”
“Her first experience in teaching was in the elementary department in Hampton school, but when her father died in 1922, she had to resign to wind up the estate and take charge of the farming interests.” Her father was Dr. D. F. Wilson and her mother was Zoie Weisinger Wilson.
“She began teaching again in 1945 in high school out here. She also set up a library in the dressing room off stage, the first in the school. There was no money to purchase new books but there were a few old books left from the W.P.A. Library and the patrons donated some from their libraries – all of which had to be accessioned. Then she taught in several other schools in the county.”
“During the summer of 1947 she was one of 50 people in the state given a scholarship from a North Carolina University for the advancement of libraries in Arkansas. This was a short course in Library science at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Later in the summers of 1950 and 1952 she studied Library Science in Peabody College at Nashville, Tennessee.”
“In 1959, Mrs. Kare Neal and Miss Freddy Schader with the cooperation of County Judge Jesse Autry, who with appointed board members, organized the Calhoun County Library. The library was given a loan of 600 books with Miss Sallie Lou appointed as Librarian. They were placed in a very small room – called the ‘cubby hole’ in the Courthouse. At first this was opened only on Saturday afternoons, then in 1962 it was opened five afternoons a week. This arrangement continued until 1965 when the library was moved” across the street.
Miss Sallie Lou is remembered for all she contributed to the county over the years. The Museum has a photo made in the “Cubby Hole” Library in the courthouse, two of her workbooks from her time in Ouachita College, a portrait of Miss Sallie Lou, and a number of her papers and photos.
