ALISON J. BAIGRIE ALESSIOS (????-1965)

Alison (or Alice) Baigrie was born in New Jersey and lived there until at least 1907.

She received a certificate from the Pratt Institute Library School in 1907 and began working as assistant at the Children’s Museum in Brooklyn. 

In 1909 Baigrie joined NYPL as an assistant working with schools.  Two years later she was promoted to head the Chatham Square Branch, considered a very diverse slum district.  A newspaper reported that she courted the many immigrants in the branch’s neighborhood and was referred to as "my friend" in 27 different languages.  In 1916, Baigrie married Elias Alessios (1888-1970), a musician. 

When Alessios transferred out of Chatham Square, Ruth Wyper (the children’s librarian) wrote that “Mrs. Alessios’ leaving was a great blow to the neighborhood.”  Her obituary noted that Alessios "was fired with a sense of a public library as a social agency" 

In 1942 Alessios was named head of NYPL’s Library for the Blind.  She made a name for herself there by recognizing that veterans blinded during World War II had different needs than the traditional blind users, and so Alessios started a program to record textbooks to help the veterans with occupational rehabilitation.

Alessios resigned from NYPL in 1948 for family reasons but the following year began to work at the Traphagen School in New York City.

During her career, Alessios published four children’s books between 1938-1957 and authored two articles and an ALA pamphlet on Greek books.

CHARLOTTE HUSTLER MEADE (1876-1967)

While June had the birthdays of three women who were active unionists and also served as Branch Librarians, July’s first birthday has a different distinction.  July 2^nd would be the 135^th birthday of Charlotte H. Meade who was listed in the New York City Social Register during her entire 43 year career as a librarian.  Both Meade’s father and her mother’s father were Rear Admirals in the US Navy and the 1910 US census listed her mother (a widow) as having “her own income”  but no occupation.

Late in 1898, a year after her father Richard Worsam Meade III had died, Meade wrote to John Shaw Billings, Director of NYPL, and asked for a position in the Reference Department but was told there were no openings.  Instead she joined the New York Free Circulating Library in 1899 and was there in 1901 when it consolidated with NYPL.

Charlotte Meade was First Assistant at the George Bruce and St. Agnes branches before being promoted to Branch Librarian at the Aguilar Branch.  After two years at Aguilar she took a leave of absence for unknown reasons.  She returned to NYPL in 1911 and served as First Assistant at the St. George and 96^th Street branches.  She was then promoted again to be Branch Librarian at St. George, 1912-1917, and then transferred as Branch Librarian at St. Agnes where she served until her retirement in 1941.

Meade was one of the half dozen early NYPL librarians who had articles published in the professional literature.  In September 1904 Library Journal published an extract from Meade’s promotion thesis which focused the reading choices of children of different ethnic groups.