The Hampton County Library was organized in 1936 with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration. The library was first housed in the Methodist Sunday School but in 1941 moved into the new county agricultural building which provided two rooms for the library.
Library service in Hampton County owes much to Miss Izora Miley who, as Hampton County Home Demonstration Agent, was largely responsible for fostering and keeping alive the idea of public library service throughout the county. For ten years before the library was established, Miss Izora carried books in her own car to isolated rural communities. Wherever she went she encouraged reading and the use of books. When the Hampton Library was organized, she became a member of the board of the library and furthered every effort to improve and extend public library service in Hampton County and in the region. In 1976 when the handsome new Hampton County Library headquarters building was dedicated, Miss Izora was the guest of honor. The building was constructed on a piece of choice property in downtown Hampton which she had donated to the county as the site of the new library building.
In 1941 with WPA assistance a regional library serving Allendale, Barnwell, and Hampton Counties was established. In 1942 Barnwell dropped out of the region and in 1947 Jasper County became a member. The history of library service in each of the three counties in the region is the history of the regional library.
Board Chairmen
Mrs. W.C. Mauldin, 1947-50
Mrs. Free Latrop, 1955
Mrs. Frank Rivers, 1952-53; 1956-59
Mrs. J.H. Wood, 1960-62
Mrs. W.L. Rhodes, 1963-64
Mrs. E.A. Anderson, 1965-69; 1971
Mrs. Martha Bee Anderson, 1970
Mrs. Frank McClure, Jr., 1972
Mrs. Hugh T. Lightsey, 1972-74
Ellen Peters, 1975-76
Evelyn Thomas, 1975-76
LaClaire Laffitte, 1977-79
Peggy Cox, 1980
LaDoris Jenkins, 1980
Librarians
Mrs. Bessie DeLoach, 1946-67
Mrs. Griselda Bowden, 1968-74
Mrs. Brenda Rhoden, 1976-78
Mrs. Kathleen B. Moore, 1976-78
Estellene P. Walker,
"So Good and Necessary a Work": The Public Library in South Carolina, 1698-1980
(Columbia: South Carolina State Library, 1981), pp. 31-32.
A note on the text