Sacramento County
Biographies
CORNELIA DOUGLAS PROVINES
CORNELIA DOUGLAS PROVINES.--Prominent among the efficient librarians for
whom California of recent years has come to
be known in the library world is Miss Cornelia Douglas Provines,
librarian of the Sacramento County free library. Well-read and well-traveled, and therefore
well-posted, she is a graceful and interesting conversationalist and easily
impresses one with her fitness for such a post of varied possible service to
the public at large, and especially to that considerable number desiring some
mental stimulus.
She was
born in St. Louis, Mo., the daughter of Alexander Provines, also a
native of that city, and the granddaughter of William Provines , who was born at Londonderry, Ireland, and was a descendant of a
Huguenot family originally driven from France at the time of the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. This
grandfather William was a graduate in medicine of the famed University of Edinburgh, then as now one of the
greatest medical schools in all Europe, and also a graduate of the University of Glasgow, and he applied for a
commission as surgeon in the French navy under Napoleon. He did not wait for it, however, but
concluded instead to come to the United States; and having arrived here,
located in Kentucky. There he received the desired-for commission;
but he had established himself this side of the ocean, and so never made use of
the honor.
He
married in Kentucky to Miss Mary Brook, a native of Scotland, and after practicing
medicine for a while in the Blue Grass State, he went north and located
in St. Louis. Later he
removed to Columbia, Mo., where he was prominent in the University of Missouri, and where he also
practiced medicine and was distinguished as a fine physician and surgeon, and a
leader in Presbyterian circles. The
father of our subject graduated from that university, and then became a
merchant in St. Louis. He was a wholesaler in coffee and tea, and
known throughout the Mississippi Valley.
About
1882 he brought his family to California and located for a while in Sonoma County, near Cloverdale, where he
had a farm; and then he took to ranching near Healdsburg, at which place he
passed away in 1909. He had married Miss
Cornelia Douglas Bissell, a native of St. Louis and the daughter of Captain
Louis Bissell, who was born in New York of an English family, founded in New Amsterdam, N.Y., in 1615 by John
Bissell. Captain Bissell, after
graduating from West Point, served in the United States Army in the War of
1812; and three years later he retired and located at St. Louis, where he became a large
planter, owning a farm now in the city of St. Louis, which he sold to help
establish a city waterworks. His second
marriage was to Mary Douglas, a native of St. Louis and also a member of an old
St. Louis family. Five
girls and three boys, all living, made up the Provines
family.
Miss
Cornelia Douglas Provines was educated at the
St. Louis Collegiate Institute and in the collegiate department at Stewart
Hall, in Virginia, after which she returned to California and served as librarian of
the Healdsburg public library. Desiring
to still better equip herself for that important field of professional
activity, she took a course at the University of California, making library work her
specialty, and then put in three years at the Stanford University Library. Next she served in the state library at Sacramento, and during that time
attended the State Library Training School. For six months she was librarian in historic
San Luis Obispo; then she resigned to accept the position as librarian of the
McHenry Public Library at Modesto, as well as county librarian of Stanislaus County, a
position she assumed in July, 1911, continuing until December 30, 1919, when
she resigned to accept her present position as county librarian of Sacramento
County, the responsibilities of which she assumed on January 5, 1920. Through her experience and efforts she has
built up the library, making it one of the best of its size in the state; while
she has come forward into leadership and influence as a member of the
California Library Association.
Transcribed by Suzanne Wood.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With
Biographical Sketches, Page 615. Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, CA.
1923.
© 2007 Suzanne Wood.