John King Donated Thousands of Books to Cincinnati’s Library but Took a Secret to His Grave

Scanned by Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County

By 1879, after less than a quarter-century of operation, Cincinnati boasted a substantial Public Library housing more than 100,000 books and 10,000 pamphlets. Still, it made national news when a donor gifted some 2,500 more books to the library. This generous patron was not a wealthy bibliophile, nor a scholar bequeathing his professional archive. No, the benefactor was a crippled newsboy named John King.

It must be explained that “newsboy” was the accepted term for any person who sold newspapers and magazines on the streets, regardless of age. John King, at the time of his substantial gift was, in fact, 39 years old.

According to the newspapers, King was born in Cass County, Michigan, just over the border from South Bend, Indiana. His family were farmers, and John intended to till the land as his ancestors had done, but for a tragic accident. The Cincinnati Commercial [June 3, 1879] provided a detailed biography:

“At the age of seventeen a kick on the left thigh crippled him for life. For three years he hobbled around on crutches, when he was attacked by rheumatism, and his limbs so drawn up that he could get around only by crawling on his hands and knees. One day, while crawling about the room, he struck his right knee against a sharp object, which, with the help of a blundering surgical operation, stiffened the limb for life. Both legs were now useless, and for five years the poor boy was bedridden.”

While confined to bed, King developed a passion for reading. He read anything he could get his hands on, which, in rural Cass County was not much more than agricultural bulletins, the Bible and a variety of farmers’ almanacs. Useless on the farm, King sought work in Detroit and then moved to Cincinnati, where he found a job in the Spencer Brothers tobacco factory.

Within months, King faced a new challenge. He contracted smallpox and was admitted to the city’s pesthouse, an institution created to isolate contagious and incurable patients. Miraculously, he survived and was discharged after six months, finding work as a newsboy.

From "Harper’s Weekly", August 9, 1879

The newsboys of Cincinnati had organized a union for mutual protection and King was elected secretary of the organization, publishing extensive minutes of union meetings, usually containing some of his own editorial comments, in the local newspapers. For example, the minutes of an 1876 meeting, as published in the Cincinnati Star [September 9, 1876], include this observation:

“As our Union is not incorporated, and from present appearances never will be, it has probably accomplished all that, in the nature of things, it can; and all that can be done in the future is to keep what has already been gained.”

As an officer of the newsboys union, King had occasion to visit many of the news vendors and booksellers throughout Cincinnati and he often discovered good bargains. Eventually, he accumulated a substantial library, packed up in boxes in a small rented room at the corner of Third Street and Sycamore.

While carefully building his library, King suffered two more calamities. An acquaintance, a blind man, induced King to invest in a broom-making machine, but the cost of materials and fierce competition left him $600 in debt. Then, the bank holding all of his savings collapsed in the “Long Depression” of the 1870s, rendering him almost penniless.

A major fire nearby led King to worry about his precious books and he sent a letter to Thomas Vickers, director of the Cincinnati Library, offering 1,000 books to that institution so they would be kept safe. When library officials arrived at King’s modest little room, they found he had underestimated his collection, and that more than 2,500 volumes would be loaded onto the shelves of the then five-year-old Public Library building on Vine Street, south of Seventh. According to the Cincinnati Star [June 3, 1879], King’s gift was eclectic:

“The collection consists of history and philosophy, some of the best specimens of ancient and modern literature, biography, legal and medical works, religious works, public documents, &c.”

The donation was reported by national media, notably Harper’s Weekly, which ran a substantial account on August 9, 1879. On reading about King’s generosity and poverty, people around the country sent money and checks to King, who turned these gifts over to the Cincinnati Children’s Home.

A year after his famous gift, King married Nancy Rodgers, a very accomplished 23-year-old. Although Nancy was educated at Miami University, the death of her parents robbed her of financial security, and she was scraping by as a seamstress. Still, she loved to read and frequented the Public Library. One day, she was unable to find the second volume of a book she was reading. A librarian noted that the book was part of King’s donation and he might have retained the second volume. King had, and he gladly loaned it to Miss Rodgers. Within months they were married. King left the streets behind and opened a small newsstand and candy shop on Twelfth Street. Sadly, Nancy died from tuberculosis in 1883.

King closed up his shop and took a position as an assistant in the reading room of the Library. His health was never robust and, when he died in 1886, the coroner ruled that heart failure was the cause.

In death, King revealed that almost everything publicly reported about his life had been, if not an outright lie, substantially removed from reality. The revelation emerged with the delivery of his tombstone, paid for by the U.S. government to reward King for his military service. It turns out that King had served three years as a Union soldier during the Civil War, being regularly promoted and surviving several major battles when he was reportedly lying on his back in Michigan.

According to official U.S. military records, King enlisted with the 64th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment at Mansfield, Ohio, on October 21, 1861. He was promoted to corporal even before the regiment left training camp on November 27, 1861. He was promoted to sergeant a year later, in September 1862, and to First Sergeant shortly before he was mustered out at the end of his enlistment in 1864. Nothing in his military record mentions anything about disability or being wounded. His incapacitating injuries could only have occurred between the time of his discharge in 1864 and his arrival as a disabled person in Cincinnati in 1868, meaning he was somewhere between 24 and 28 when he was crippled, not a teenager.

Where did the story about teenage injuries come from? Why did the newspapers ignore King’s military service? Did they believe childhood injuries made a better story? Or did King intentionally not reveal that he had a successful career with a decorated Ohio regiment? Why did he cover up his Civil War years? Did he never apply for a pension?

Even the Cincinnati Post’s Leo Hirtl, who reminded readers about King’s generosity in a 1954 column, made no mention of King’s military service. Hirtl did check with the Public Library, however, to confirm that many of King’s donated books were still in circulation almost 80 years after they were unpacked at “Old Main.”