DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture Denison, Texas, 1890. October the fourteenth, to be exact.
Ten women — ten early social leaders — sat down together and founded something they called the XXI Club. Ten founders, and yet the name isn't Ten Club. There's a little mystery baked right into the beginning, and this town has been living with it ever since.
These weren't women content to sit on the sidelines of their community. Not by a long shot. They went ahead and became a charter member of the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, which tells you something about the ambitions in that room from day one.
But here's where it gets good — really good. Six years after that founding, in 1896, the XXI Club built themselves a two-story brick hall. Two stories.
Brick. And that building wasn't just any clubhouse. It was the first woman's clubhouse in the entire state of Texas.
Think on that a moment. All of Texas — and Denison had the first one. Inside those walls they had facilities for music, for drama, for art.
This wasn't a sewing circle, friends. This was a cultural institution with a heartbeat. And if that weren't enough to cement their legacy, those same women gave Denison its first free public library.
Started it in 1896 — the same year that brick hall went up — and kept it going all the way to 1935. Nearly four decades of free books for anybody who walked through the door, courtesy of ten women who got together one October afternoon and decided their town deserved better. The marker calls them early social leaders.
I'd call them the ones who built the foundation everybody else got to stand on.
What the marker says
Founded Oct. 14, 1890, by ten early social leaders. A charter member, Texas Federation of Women's Clubs. Its 2-story brick hall, built 1896, was the first woman's clubhouse in Texas. Had facilities for music, drama, art. Gave Denison its first free public library, 1896-1935.