Sawyer Free Library in Gloucester, Essex County, United States | Library

Welcome to the Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester, United States. Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Library has served the Gloucester community since 1830. The Library has a collection of over 100,000 items, a wide variety of programs and cultural events, and a friendly, service-oriented staff. The Library reaches near and far, both in the Library and from our high-speed access to the Internet.   The antecedent of the present Library dates back to February 15, 1830 when nearly 100 Gloucester residents met and formed the Gloucester Lyceum.

Thereafter, the directors of the Library ended the earlier tradition of membership fees to use the Library and prevailed upon Mr. Sawyer "with his reluctant consent" to name the Library the Sawyer Free Library. The Library did not yet have a permanent home. Several different locations and another major fire followed in the course of the next decade.  In 1884 Mr. Sawyer fulfilled his plan by purchasing this prominent residence and donating it to the Library corporation. Books are the food of the mind; from the earliest years of childhood books are sought to feed the intellect, and so from school to college; later on they are a course of recreation to the idler, the tools of the student, the scholar and the man of letters."

Today, the Gloucester Lyceum & Sawyer Free Library continues as a public charitable corporation as designated under a charter granted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts June 10, 1872. Its purpose remains to serve as an institution for "maintaining a free Library, lectures, collections in natural history and works of art, and the promotion of intellectual culture generally." The Library continues to be governed by members of the corporation comprised of community members interested in the Library and its mission. Corporators elect new members at the annual meeting as well as a president, vice-president, treasurer, and clerk who comprise the executive committee.