The Jacobus family moved to Los Angeles in 1881 and settled in East Los Angeles. Mr. Jacobus purchased 14.45 acres at the northwest corner of Griffin Avenue and Patrick Street directly from John S. Griffin, the founder of East Los Angeles. The family home, at what would today be 2675 N. Griffin Avenue was across the street from the Salvation Army ‘True Love Home.’ Sadly, Isaac Jacobus died of typhoid pneumonia on February 17, 1883, at the age of 48. The property was transferred to his widow, Sarah Eliza Jacobus, who sold parcels of land in the Jacobus tract in East Los Angeles (now known as Lincoln Heights) and was able to provide for the family.
In 1888, Mira Jacobus was valedictorian of her graduating class at Los Angeles High School, which then sat atop Poundcake Hill, which was approximately the southeast corner of Broadway & Temple. [In a bit of foreshadowing of Mira’s future, Mary Foy (City Librarian 1880-1884) was a very active participant in the Los Angeles High School Alumni group in 1888 and served on their Executive Committee.] Following graduation, Mira attended Wellesley College from 1888 until 1891. She was enrolled in the Classical course (which included the prerequisite to be able to translate both Homeric and Attic Greek by sight), but for some reason did not graduate. In November 1891, she returned to the family home on Griffin Avenue in East Los Angeles. She lived there for many years with her widowed mother, her sisters Agnes and Lavinia, and her brother Lyman. (Her other siblings- Levi, Leighton, Charles, and Annie, all died in childhood.)
Mira Jacobus sought a career in librarianship after a brief foray into teaching. She completed the coursework for the Los Angeles Public Library Training Class in December 1897 and was hired as an Attendant at the Los Angeles Public Library in April of the following year (Harriet Child Wadleigh was City Librarian at the time). In the LAPL annual report for 1900 she is listed more formally as Sarah M. Jacobus, an Attendant under the leadership of City Librarian Mary L. Jones.
It was Mary L. Jones who recommended Sarah Jacobus for her next adventure. In September 1901, Jacobus traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii, where she became the librarian (1901–1905) at the Kamehameha School for Boys. Newspaper reports during Miss Jacobus’ years working in Hawaii indicate that she worked also with the Honolulu Library (then known as the Honolulu Library and Reading Room) in some capacity, likely as a volunteer. In 1904, she traveled around the Hawaiian islands with the Honolulu librarian, Helen L. Hillebrand, including trips to Haleakala, Hilo, and Makawao. [Miss Jacobus must have been well-liked; she was offered the librarian job at the Honolulu Library in March 1907 but turned it down.]
Sarah Jacobus moved back to Los Angeles and, in October 1905, returned to work as an Attendant at the Los Angeles Public Library when Charles Lummis was City Librarian. A month later, she traveled to Pomona (approximately 30 miles east of Los Angeles, halfway between Los Angeles and San Bernardino. The population of Pomona was 5,526 in 1900, versus Los Angeles’ population of 102,499), where she temporarily took over the library while Pomona librarian Mabel E. Prentiss was on a leave of absence and working in Monterey. (Jacobus and Prentiss briefly worked together at the Los Angeles Public Library.) The lovely Pomona Carnegie Library, opened in 1903 on the corner of Main Street and Center Street, was a point of pride for the community and often the subject of area postcards. The library was considered an architectural beauty. Ultimately, Ms. Prentiss resigned as Pomona librarian in January 1906 and began work as a Library Organizer with the California State Library. Due to Prentiss’ excellent work for four years in Pomona, she was given the position to establish libraries in new districts or support libraries that were struggling.
Sarah Jacobus was officially installed as the Pomona librarian following Ms. Prentiss’ January 1906 resignation and immediately set to work boosting her new community. In her first weeks on the job, Ms. Jacobus spoke at a meeting of the Pomona Ebell Club’s Landmark section about the need to establish a “historical bureau” at the library that would give future generations an idea of Pomona’s everyday life in the early twentieth century. She sent letters to Pomona’s churches, clubs, schools, and organizations asking for their programs, leaflets, membership lists, memorial sermons, rules and constitutions of local organizations, publications of state, county, and town governments, books and pamphlets about Southern California (especially Pomona), as well as photos of local people, buildings, and streets. According to the Pomona Progress newspaper, she said, “The common places of our generation are the treasure relics of the next. We are trying to lay up for ourselves some of these treasures and ask for the cooperation of Pomona people. The town is justly proud of its library. This is the way to enrich it vastly and are [of] no cost to the giver.” She added a collection of braille books (loaned by the California State Library), instructed students on how to use the library, interfiled fiction and non-fiction in the card catalog, and mentored young librarians. Signs posted on the building were in English and Spanish to welcome the growing Hispanic population, and Spanish books were added to the collection. In 1918, Miss Jacobus hired a gentleman (Antonio Chavez) to oversee a small book collection at the newly opened Spanish Social Center in a building on Gordon and Third.
Miss Jacobus had an excellent relationship with the Library Board of Trustees and both touted the fact that the library drew people to Pomona. In 1907, board president Arthur M. Dole noted that the Pomona Public Library, deemed a progressive small library, “maintains the well-earned reputation of being accredited [among “those in the know” as] one of the best and most useful small libraries in the west.” The small library was, in many ways, similar to those of large metropolitan libraries. The library drew patrons from all over Southern California and built unique collections including sheet music, stereopticon slides, Californiana, art and travel pictures, clipping files, a pamphlet collection, and phonographs. Miss Jacobus also took a page from Hartford (CT) librarian Caroline M. Hewins and started a collection featuring dolls from around the world. The dolls became the basis of a multicultural program that Miss Jacobus presented locally and traveled around the southland, including to Santa Ana, Ojai, and Brawley. There were also doll parties at the branch that featured stories, music, and refreshments including sticks of candy and large cookies that the children at the library loved. (The doll collection has grown over the years with additions from subsequent librarians, and it's still in the possession of the library today.)
Pomona experienced steady population growth during the early twentieth century, thanks in part to a boom in the citrus industry, and the library benefited considerably. Under Miss Jacobus’ tenure, library card registrations and circulation numbers rose year after year. In 1908, it was noted that fifty-five percent of the residents of Pomona had a library card, and by 1911, according to Public Libraries magazine, the number of library cardholders in the city was up to sixty-eight percent of the population. The Pomona Public Library was praised for its reference services and its collections were larger than those of the libraries in nearby communities. Helping patrons with their informational needs was a popular service and the library was an early adopter of telephone reference, first noting it in 1908. Branches were also created in area schools to facilitate service to school children.
The Pomona Public Library was an early adopter of children’s library service in Southern California and launched its first story hour in March 1907. Miss Jacobus cited the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Greek myths children’s story hours as an inspiration. Sarah’s sister, Agnes Jacobus, led the popular Classic Myths storytime meant for those twelve and under. Sarah Jacobus was also an early proponent of summer reading programs. In the early twentieth century, librarians nationwide worked to find a solution for the decline in summertime circulation numbers. The Davenport (Iowa) Public Library’s summertime reading contests for children were successful and Miss Jacobus likely learned of them through her participation in ALA or from reading professional literature. (One hour each week was set aside for employees to read professional literature such as Public Libraries, Bookman, and Publishers Weekly; the objective was to make them more efficient.) By the early 1920s, the summertime Vacation Reading Club was in full swing at the Pomona Public Library and proved to be a popular program. During one year’s summer reading program, children were given badges when they enrolled. This provided free publicity for the library and enticed other children to sign up and get a badge of their own. Upon successful completion, the young readers were presented with a “diploma” signed by Miss Jacobus, along with the Superintendent of Schools, and the principal of whichever school the child attended. Another year the summer reading program was called the “Stay-at-Home Travel Club,” and the card catalog was described as the library’s compass. Each child had to prove they could use the “compass” to find what they were looking for before they could receive their diploma for summer reading. Summer reading themes for other years included the Treasure Chest Club, the Magic Highway Club, Enchanted Isle, and the Blue Diamond Vacation Reading Club.
Sarah M. Jacobus kept her community informed about the library and its offerings. She used the newspapers to share the library's statistics as well as events such as an amnesty program that allowed for long overdue books (which she called “dusty travelers”) to be returned—no questions asked!—without a fine during “Back Home Week.” Paid advertisements were tried in the 1920s but some, such as ads in the classified section of the Pomona Progress newspaper, might seem more costly than they were worth. On the contrary, Miss Jacobus spoke of a gentleman’s agreement between the library and the newspaper. If the library paid for advertisements, they often received more newspaper space than usual devoted to the library (e.g., a single display ad yielded approximately 50 inches of story space, according to a paper Sarah Jacobus gave at the 1924 CLA annual conference on the experiences of the Pomona Public Library). She also used newspapers to be transparent about the struggles that the library faced against termites, which were eating both the books and the building. Through the florid language that described the “onslaught” of “vandals of ancient times,” Miss Jacobus let the public know that termite-related repairs would be necessary and costly.
In addition to library annual report summaries and notices of special library events that were printed by the local press, the Pomona Public Library sent out a large volume of mail. These included invitations to visit the library sent to new parents, overdue notices that were sent when a book was 10 days late, and reminders of library card expirations. Interestingly, Assistant Elizabeth Harris was in charge of a list that tracked patron’s favorite topics and postcards would be sent to them when a new book came in that might be of interest. In 1919 alone, the library sent out 700 such postcards. She and the Pomona Public Library staff members and Board of Trustees hosted the Pomona City Council, Mayor, and representatives from the local press for yearly visits to the library. The visitors were shown around each department in the library while staff explained the work that was done thanks to the previous year’s library appropriation. According to news articles and write-ups in professional literature these yearly visits were met with generous feelings towards the library by the visitors. Pomona businessmen were also encouraged to use the library. In the 1920s, a series of ads from Pomona’s Mutual Building and Loan Association specifically touted Miss Jacobus as a person who could help you grow your profits via the information she and the library could provide.
Miss Jacobus’ outreach and community activism created goodwill that inspired local organizations to help the library. She spoke on a variety of topics to a number of organizations all over the southland. For example, she spoke about the use of secondary sources by children at a National Educational Association (NEA) convention in Alhambra, discussed current events at the Pomona Ebell Club, spoke to PTA parents about how the library could benefit their high school-aged children, led a book club and spoke on social problems at Pomona’s beautiful Pilgrim Congregational Church (where she was an active member), taught a twelve-lesson reading course about the best books and periodicals for women which was held at the YMCA Auxiliary, discussed modern poetry with the Pasadena Study Club, and celebrated a book-day luncheon at the famed Friday Morning Club in Los Angeles. As a result, donations poured in from library patrons, other libraries, and local organizations. She led the Women’s Auxiliary of the Pomona Chamber of Commerce, was on the executive board of the Pomona Red Cross, and was celebrated by the Pomona Woman’s Club. She also sat on committees to clean up Pomona, ridding alleys of trash and weeds. In 1927, Miss Jacobus was one of two women whom Pomona’s newspaper, The Bulletin, named as someone who made the city a better place to live, and it was deemed that “Pomona has no institution more worthy of praise than the public library.” Subsequently Miss Jacobus was included in the 1928 book Women of the West, which highlighted her interest in “civic betterment.”
The Pomona Historical Society is a Sarah Jacobus’ civic project that still continues today. During her earliest days as Pomona’s librarian she asked Pomonans to donate photos of Pomona, contribute the history of their organizations, and share their family stories with the library. Over the years, Miss Jacobus continued to present the library as a repository for local history and it was these materials that formed the basis of the historical society. The history of the organization can be found in their publication Pomona Valley Historian (April 1966, Vol. II-Number 2). Miss Jacobus sought out historians J.M. Guinn (co–founder of the Historical Society of Southern California) and Herbert E. Bolton (Chair of the History Dept at UC Berkeley), both of the California Historical Survey Commission, for information on starting a historical society. She was introduced to Margaret V. Allen of the San Diego Pioneer and Historical Society who gave her tips on building a successful organization. She also traveled to Redlands for several days to learn how their historical society (founded in 1900) organized their materials. With words of encouragement from the library’s Board of Trustees, Guinn, and Allen, Miss Jacobus held a meeting at the library in March 1916 that led to the creation of the Historical Society of Pomona Valley. Miss Jacobus was made curator of the historical society and the library was made the depository of local historical material. Lavina B. Kirkman, the library’s reference librarian, was put in charge of organizing the items and the library’s 1916 annual report gave a brief description of the cataloging methods used (e.g. the use of Subheads under Cities) and preservation efforts (e.g. making copies of frequently used materials to save originals from wear and tear).
The library’s Reference Department used the historical materials it gathered to create a document on the history of Pomona, widely used by the general public and students. In 1925, the historical society invited former Pomona residents to “Old Home Day” at the Los Angeles County Fair. Miss Jacobus, dressed in her mother’s 1880s wedding dress, represented the library and the historical society as one of the hostesses at the fair’s event. She was also part of a Pomona Chamber of Commerce committee dedicated to recognizing historic trails, buildings, roads, and sites. Members of the historical society often visited other nearby historical sites, such as Casa de Adobe near the Southwest Museum and the Pony Express Museum in San Marino, and enjoyed picnic lunches along the way. The lessons learned no doubt helped them with projects like restoration of the Palomares Adobe, just one of several historic buildings in charge of the Historical Society of Pomona Valley today. The society is headquartered in the former Ebell building where Sarah Jacobus once gave lectures.
