Morristown & Morris Township Library

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From the Morristown & Morris Township Library website:

In 1916, Grinnell Willis, a retired textile merchant who lived in Morristown since 1889, approached the Library Trustees and offered to pay the entire cost of a new fireproof building.

The new Library would be built in "grateful remembrance of the love and affection bestowed on his late wife by her friends and neighbors in Morristown." The day after Mr. Willis made his offer, an Act of Incorporation for the Morristown Library was filed. Its object was "to establish and maintain a free public library and reading rooms, to establish and maintain an art gallery and museum for the encouragement of arts and science, to establish and maintain a collection of books and documents of historic interest and to advance the literary and educational interests of the community." On December 13, 1917 the Library, with 8,000 volumes and a staff of four was opened to the public. [1]