Acton’s first and oldest library began in 1883, when Phineas Wetherbee met with 39 others at the West Acton railroad depot to form a Citizens’ Library. A farmer who served as a town selectman from 1880 to 1883, Wetherbee was also a benefactor of the library, bequeathing his home on Windsor Avenue to the library association upon his death in 1894. The c. 1840 Wetherbee House has served as the library building ever since.

Clara Hosmer Hapgood Nash (1839-1921), the first woman admitted to the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine and first woman admitted to the bar in New England, was the first librarian.

Photo courtesy of the West Acton Citizens’ Library