This photograph of Ernestine Rose (1880-1961) was taken by Eunice Telfer Juckett, probably in 1956, according to a note on the back. Ernestine was born in the Hayground area of Bridgehampton and named after a Polish-born suffrage leader, Ernestine Potowski Rose (1810-1892). Her parents, Stephen Rose and Anna Chatfield Rose, came from prominent local families, and her mother was a school principal.
Ernestine attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the New York State Library School in Albany, graduating in 1904.
In 1905, she became a librarian at the New York Public Library’s Bloomingdale branch, and then worked at the Lower East Side’s Seward Park and Chatham Square branches, which had large immigrant communities. In 1911 at Chatham Square, she became one of the first public librarians collecting Chinese-language works. She advocated for librarians to provide inclusive services without seeking to Americanize the immigrant communities they served, thus supporting traditions, cultures, and native tongues.
During World War I, Ernestine served with the American Library Association’s Library War Service Committee in Europe. After returning in 1920, Ernestine headed the N.Y.P.L.’s 135th Street branch in Harlem at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, which she supported. She championed overcoming racial divisions through books and art, developing a special collection on African-American culture in 1924. The next year, her fund-raising efforts enabled the purchase of the Schomburg Collection, now one of the largest research centers for Black culture. In Harlem she hired the first integrated librarian staff, mentoring trailblazers like Regina Andrews, Catherine Allen Latimer, August Braxton Baker, and Pura Belpré.
Ernestine retired in 1942, returning to Bridgehampton four years later. In 1956, after working with the Bridgehampton Tercentenary Committee, she became president of the hamlet’s historical society. Another resident, Ann Sandford, and Averill Geus of East Hampton rescued Ernestine’s photographs and papers from a Wainscott dumpster, getting them to the Hampton Library’s local history collection.
Andrea Meyer, a librarian and archivist, is head of collection for the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
