MVLS I Spy Oral History Interview

Abraham Glen House, Scotia, NY
Part 1: Audio Excerpts | Current Photo | Historic Picture

Transcript of audio excerpts

Speaker: Phyllis Bornt

I would like to introduce you to Mrs. Bornt who has agreed to be interviewed for us today. So tell us a little bit about yourself and how you first came to this community.

Bornt: Well, actually I was born here. I was born in Ellis Hospital and I lived here and went to Scotia schools, grew up here and then went off to college.

Q: Was this library much different before than it is now?
Bornt: Well, when I grew up, yes, it was quite a bit different. It started in 1929. There was a women's group and a women's book club and both of them were interested in turning this place into a library. It had been left to a Catholic Sisterhood by the last person that owned the house which was an Annie Collins. And that - the Catholic group did not want to take on this house. So various things happened for several years, ministers lived here or it was vacant.

And it was the two groups of women who decided it would be nice to have a library here and so they hired a librarian who lived upstairs here at that time with her mother, her husband and her son. And then the library was just a few of the rooms downstairs and so I can remember coming and we did have story hour and so forth. And they had the books by grade, you know, so that Children's Room they had the books for Third Grade, Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade and then the Junior High were out in one spot and so it was smaller and it's grown a lot since then.

Q: Do you think it's really special to have this building in the community?
Bornt: Yeah, there - it's 1730, I think, that the building was built for, I believe, the son of someone from, one of the sons from the Glen-Sanders family. And so, in a way, it reminds us of our heritage and our background.

Q: What events do you remember happening here? Are there any things that stand out among others?
Bornt: There used to be a - there used to be a barn and a small house in the back and I can remember that every year the firemen would have ice cream for the kids on the Fourth of July and they'd sometimes have doughnuts and cider for the kids to come down and have, you know, around Halloween. So it was, you know, a small pleasant community even then.

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