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IN 1962 MARY CELESTA JOHNSON WEATHERLY of Fort Payne, DeKaIb County, became the only Alabamian to be named American Mother of the Year. Her contributions, however, went far beyond typical notions of motherhood to include a lifetime of commitment to improving the quality of life in her community. Weatherly's work in promoting education, most notably reading, created a legacy of libraries and enhanced literacy in northeastern Alabama.

The daughter of Sara Adeline Washington and Marion Lorenzo Johnson, Mary Celesta Johnson was born in the small town of Hollywood in Jackson County, Alabama, in 1890. Her mother was a direct descendant of George Washington's brother Samuel. Although staunch Baptists, her father's parents named him for the itinerant Methodist evangelist Lorenzo Dow, who had traveled throughout New England and the South at the turn of the nineteenth century, sometimes staying with Johnson's ancestors during his travels. Both the Washington and Johnson families were local landowners. In addition, Mary's father owned and operated a local store.1

Mary, along with her brothers Frank and Walter and a sister, Catherine, attended elementary and high school in Hollywood. Both Mary and Catherine attended Alabama Girl's Industrial School, now the University of Montevallo. Mary entered the school in the fall of 1906 and spent her first year taking preparatory classes.2 The following year she enrolled as a freshman, taking core courses in English, mathematics, science, and history, with additional classes in spelling, geography, and Latin. According to family tradition, Mary's father believed that two years of education was all that a young woman required, not an unusual mindset for the place and times. Thus, after the 1907-08 school year, Mary returned home, passed the teaching certification exam, and began a four-year tenure as principal and teacher of a small country school at Fackler, in Jackson County.3

Between the customary five-month terms of the school year, Mary clerked in her father's store. One of her favorite pastimes when not teaching or working was horseback riding. One story relates that while racing down a country road one day, she startled a young man who was out for a stroll. Thus began the courtship of Mary and George Irving "G. I." Weatherly, who asked Mary's parents for her hand in marriage in a letter of October 1911, stating, "I write to tell you that Mary and I want to get married ... and I beg for your consent."4 Mary and G. I. married on November 11, 1911, and moved to Foley, Alabama. In 1912 Mary gave birth to their first child, Sara. G. I. Weatherly served on the Baldwin County Board of Education and became Foley's first mayor in 1915. In 1916 the Weatherlys moved to Albertville, Alabama, where G. I. operated a store and began a career in banking. Mary gave birth to their second child, George Irving Weatherly Jr., in Albertville. They would adopt a third child, Walter, in 1930.5

In October 1919 the family moved to Fort Payne, where G. I. took a job as cashier for the town's First National Bank. He would work his way through the ranks, eventually becoming president. The Weatherlys also joined First Baptist Church, where G. I. would in time serve as church treasurer, Sunday school teacher and superintendent, and deacon. Mary served as a Sunday school teacher and participated in other church committees. She became particularly active in the Woman's Missionary Union, in which she helped to organize First Baptist's Gault Avenue and Northeast mission churches. Beginning in the mid-1920s, she returned to the elementary classroom and continued to teach until 1932.6

G. I. and Mary also participated in many civic clubs and organizations throughout their lives. She belonged to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and became a charter member of the Fort Payne Woman's Club. Known for her outstanding book reviews at club meetings, she encouraged other members to read, to the extent that some members began referring to the group as "the book club." She also belonged to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs (AFWC), the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), the Alabama Literacy Council, the DeKaIb County Literacy Council, Landmarks of DeKaIb County, the American Red Cross, the DeKaIb County Cancer Crusade, and the Heart Fund Association. What must have been one of her greatest honors was her appointment on December 8, 1941, as the first female member of the Fort Payne Board of Education.7

The Weatherlys' civic activism was the product of several motivating factors. Communities expected prominent families to take leading roles in local affairs, and it was not unusual for professional couples in small towns such as Fort Payne to be involved in a number of civic concerns. The Weatherlys' close association with First Baptist Church offers another explanation. The theology of some southern evangelicals underwent a transformation in the early decades of the twentieth century. Although the doctrine of personal salvation remained the cornerstone of belief, the idea of changing the social environment as part of a divine directive was gaining a foothold. This social progressivism first took hold in the larger, metropolitan churches, where influential leaders began to address the issues of housing, worker's rights, child labor, and social welfare in general. The movement spread across the state and region through Baptist associations, as it did through other Protestant denominations. It was not unusual, therefore, for Baptists such as G. I. and Mary Weatherly to embrace this view of community activism.8

It was Mary's involvement in the AFWC, however, that provided the immediate impetus for the development of library services in Fort Payne and DeKaIb County. Unlike libraries in the North, most southern public libraries grew out of private initiatives spearheaded by civic organizations and especially women's groups. Northern libraries were well established by the middle of the nineteenth century. Their growth and strength can be attributed to the region's strong economic viability, a demand for scholarship, the presence of a number of institutions of higher education, and an advocacy for publicly supported education.9 In contrast, until the beginning of the twentieth century the South was both unable and unwilling to provide the resources to support such public services. The Civil War left the South in a state of economic ruin. Moreover, most white southerners held to an individualistic view of community that opposed taxation for more than the most basic government services. The idea that local governments should be responsible for education was slow to develop, resulting in few good public schools, unequal school systems divided by race, and illiteracy rates that ran higher than national averages. With public schools supported at only a basic level, public libraries could expect little or no funding from the public coffers.10

Alabama was no exception. The majority of the state's population was rural and poor. Illiteracy rates were high and property taxes low. There was little tradition or incentive for state and local governments to use tax monies to create and support public libraries. By the beginning of the twentieth century, however, several civic and educational groups began to recognize the importance of libraries and began lobbying both state and local governments to provide support for public libraries.

A majority of these civic organizations were women's clubs. In 1889 the members of a New York City women's group called Sorosis, once exclusively a literary club founded by journalist Jane Cunningham Croly in 1868, hosted a conference of women from around the nation. On the last day of the conference, attendees took steps to organize the represented clubs under an umbrella organization named the General Federation of Women's Clubs. Originally envisioned as an organization to promote women's self-education and improvement, it quickly began moving into areas of social concern such as child labor, workplace safety, civil-service reform, and conservation. The organization served as a model for state federations of women's clubs throughout the country.11