Mary A. Breck Snell

Mary Adams (Breck) Snell was born in Milton, Massachusetts, on November 26, 1868, the daughter of Charles E. C. Breck and Mary S. (Stone) Breck. On July 14, 1915, at Milton, she married Ora M. Snell, a widower born in Palmyra, Maine, who as O. M. Snell had done surveying and engineering work for the town of Billerica in the early 1900s. He died in Billerica on July 26, 1919, aged 78. The town reports call her Mrs. Mary A. B. Snell, and once Mrs. O. A. Snell.

About 1923 she became librarian of the Bennett Public Library, then run by the private Bennett Public Library Association with the help of a town appropriation (see Library Director). The library grew quickly under her care. The directors reported for 1927 a circulation of 23,822, an increase of 15,850 since 1922, and wrote that "the steady increase in circulation has called for much more work on the part of the librarian, who has given very freely of her time"; an assistant had to be hired for rush times and book repair. In 1931, when circulation reached 31,728, association president Lucy B. Collier noted that she was always willing to borrow books the library lacked from neighboring libraries and the state commission, and that year the whole collection was rearranged and card-catalogued with the help of a state field advisor. She was herself among the donors of books in 1932.

During her tenure the association opened its Pinehurst branch on September 23, 1937, and began placing book deposits in the schools. In the 1943 report, association president A. Warren Stearns asked for "appropriate recognition by the townspeople of the wonderful service to the Town by Mrs. O. A. Snell, who through her twenty years of active, generous, and loving attention to the welfare of the town, has served as its librarian."

She died on January 7, 1945, aged 76. President Ellis E. Cram wrote that she "was dearly beloved by all who knew her," the directors bought a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in her memory, and a desk lamp was later given to the library in her memory as well. The 1945 town report printed a memorial to the "Beloved Librarian of Bennett Public Library Association for 21 years." She was succeeded by Alice May Harriman, and she is buried in the Lowell Cemetery in Lowell.

References

1. Report of the Bennett Public Library, 1927 (growth of circulation; work of the librarian)
2. Report of the Bennett Public Library, 1931 ("Our Librarian, Mrs. Mary A. B. Snell")
3. Bennett Public Library statistics, 1937 (Pinehurst Branch opened September 23)
4. Report of the Bennett Public Library, 1943 (tribute to Mrs. O. A. Snell after twenty years as librarian)
5. Report of the Bennett Public Library Association, 1944 (death of Mrs. Mary A. B. Snell, librarian 21 years)
6. Deaths recorded in 1945 (Mary A. B. Snell, January 7, aged 76 years 1 month 12 days)
7. Bennett Public Library report and In Memoriam, Mary A. B. Snell, 1945
8. Find a Grave: Mary Adams Breck Snell (birth, parents, 1915 marriage to Ora M. Snell, burial in Lowell Cemetery)