The accomplished Mrs. Elizabeth Dwight Sedgwick, [1] to whom Mr. Lowell refers, kept a famous young ladies' school, a " character-factory, " she called it. One of her pupils living in New Orleans says: " The girls all adored Mrs. Sedgwick, she was so good to us; she was far ahead of her time in Greek, Latin, and Hygiene. Hawthorne used to bring little Una to see us, and one of her pretty childish phrases was, 'I don't memory that.' Fanny Kemble was a household word, and the girls counted as the great intellectual event of their lives the delineation of Shakespeare's men and women by the 'tragedy queen' (as Dr. Holmes calls her) on Mrs. Sedgwick's piazza, where visitors and neighbors gathered around, every one electrified by that wonderful voice."

With the proceeds of a single night's reading Fanny Kemble gave a clock to the Church on the Hill, and planned one "for the poor "finding there were no poor in Lenox she gave a reading for that historic institution the Lenox Library.

The Library of Lenox was founded as a Social Library in 1797, through the Rev. John Hotchkin, a prominent educator. (The old Hotchkin house stands on Cliffwood Street, the residence of Miss Anna Shaw.) The home of the Charles Sedgwick Library is in the second courthouse, purchased and presented to the trustees by Mrs. Adeline E. Schermerhorn "to exhibit her affection for the beautiful town in which she had so long passed her summer days. " A fund was the gift of Ammi Robbins of New York, a native of Lenox. Its first treasurer and librarian was Elijah Brewer. The treasurer for twenty-two years was the Hon. Richard Goodman, and the Hon. John E. Parsons of New York is the president. In 1874 the trustees were judge Julius Rockwell, [2] Charles Kneeland, Richard Goodman, Richard T. Auchmuty, and F. Augustus Schermerhorn. Among interesting documents preserved at the library are a letter of General Washington to the Hon. Jonathan Williams, Esq., Egleston Collection, and the non-importation agreement signed by the Inhabitants of Lenox 1774.

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