The Librarian and the General
Buried with Incunabula
In 1917, General Rush C. Hawkins, a retired Union General in the U.S. Civil War recruited Margaret Stillwell as Curator of the Annmary Brown Memorial Library in Providence.
Hawkins had acquired a library of 450 incunabula (printed books published before 1501) and also bought any book by or about anyone named Hawkins. His clearest passion, however, was for his wife, Annmary Brown.1
Three years after recruiting Stillwell, General Hawkins unexpectedly died being hit by a taxi while crossing the street. The library trustees discovered that the promised endowment for the library had never been officially put in his will. With extremely limited funding and little support from the library trustees, Stillwell faced numerous challenges in continuing her work. She remained dedicated to completing the work General Hawkins had hired her to do, even though he had not left any funds with which to accomplish it.2
Margaret Bingham Stillwell
Margaret Stillwell worked as curator at Annmary Brown Memorial Library from 1917-1953.
During this time, she became a prominent bibliographer. Her greatest achievement was the massive survey Incunabula in American Libraries, a Second Census, published in 1940 and usually known simply as “Stillwell.” Her autobiography, Librarians are Human: Memories in and out of the Rare-Book World, 1907-1970, 3 details her life as a woman in a career where there were few women. She was the first woman admitted to the Grolier Club in 1977.4
The American Bibliographical Society has established the Margaret B. Stillwell Legacy Society in her honor.5
Stillwell lived to be 97 and in retirement was instrumental in building a public library in Greenville, Rhode Island.6
Annmary Brown Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island. New England. February 8, 2012.
Stillwell, Margaret B. General Hawkins as He Revealed Himself to His Librarian, Margaret Bingham Stillwell (Providence: 1923).
Margaret B. Stillwell, Librarians are Human: Memories in and out of the Rare-Book World, 1907-1970 (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1973).
Goff, Frederick R. “Margaret Bingham Stillwell: A Personal Reminiscence.” Gazette of the Grolier Club, n.s. 26/27 (1977): pp. 30-37.
News, Events, Publications, and Awards. The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 2021 115:4, 549-565.
Greenville Public Library. History-1948-1956