Union Township Public Library - Ripley, Aberdeen, Russellville

06/12/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
Thank you to everyone who supported the Friends of the Library book sale on Saturday. We've never seen tables empty at the end of a sale, but we did this weekend! It was a fun day in Ripley—bargain hunting at the Women's Club Thrift Store and treasure hunting at the Friends book sale—both good organizations to support.
If you didn't get a chance to sign up your child for the summer reading program last week, no worries! We will continue to sign up throughout June. There are programs every week with a fossil or dinosaur theme, so we hope you will stop in and join us at any of our branches.

Aberdeen is known as Gretna Green for the extraordinarily high number of marriages performed there. The name comes from the town of Gretna Green in Scotland, where since 1754, young couples could marry without parental permission. In Aberdeen, it started with Thomas 'Squire' Shelton, who was Justice of the Peace of Huntington Township from 1816-1870, marrying thousands of couples. There are some records and indexing of his work. Then in 1870, Squire Massie Beasley took over the job. From 1870-1892, Squire Beasley was the go-to man—some weeks he married over 20 couples! The clipping is from the Maysville Republican December 15, 1883. Alas, his ledgers recording the nuptials were destroyed in a house fire in the 1940s. Many of the newlyweds came from Kentucky, some from as far away as West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Reading some of the newspaper clippings, the couples sometimes had close calls of 'escape' from parents who didn't approve of the marriage. We will never have a list of all the marriages, but we have collected lots of clippings, with more to find. Our project is to find many of the listings posted in the local newspapers and then, to assist future researchers, index them by name. This is an ongoing project, and if you want to help out, stop by the Aberdeen library where the indexing is being done.

06/08/2026

06/04/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
The Ripley Friends of the Library have started the sorting! We were unpacking some of the new bags, boxes and armloads of donations for our summer booksale this Saturday, 10-4 in the annex. Few of the highlights were enough Amish/inspirational fiction to fill a table—normally we have just enough for a single row. So...if you enjoy authors Beverly Lewis, Wanda Brunstetter, Kim Vogel and the like, there are lots to choose from in this sale.

We also have a stack of books from the Duck Dynasty Robertsons if you are a fan. Do you scrapbook, or are thinking about it? We received a load of books and magazines—enough creative ideas to keep you busy for a long time. Of course, tables filled with history, cookbooks, biographies, children's and young adult books. How-tos from decorating to woodworking, and many, many fiction titles. Great for reading under a tree, on the beach or in that most comfortable chair in the house. We are trying something a little different this sale—there will be a table of non-book items, but paper oriented! Currently, there are a few David Klein Amtrak posters—while not in mint condition, the color is bold, and flattened and framed, they would look awesome. Old calendar, early lightbulb boxes with bulbs, board game board with fun graphics, a few postcards (sorry, not local, we keep those!), obsolete Pennsylvania Railroad paper items and more as we dig for ephemera.

If you came to sign up for our Summer Reading Program this week, you know the drill and thank you. If you were unable to bring your kids to the 'kick-off' program, no worries! You can sign up anytime, come to the programs or just read towards your goal. Stop in at any of our three libraries to get started.

A reminder that every Monday morning at 11:00 in the Ripley library, we are having 'Summer Shake' for kids—fun, organized activities to wake up your body and mind!
Happy June to all, and we are expecting a great summer here at the library.

05/28/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
Thinking about schools this week with graduations all over the place. This 1911 postmarked postcard shows the school that was located on the property where the old 1915 Ripley school (now apartments) is located. We've included the 1904 Sanborn map to help orient the placement of the building, as well as where the town hall was—corner of Second and Market. According to an 1876 reprinted article by Chambers Baird, this building was built in 1850, after the Ripley College was torn down in 1849.

This week is the 'calm before the storm' as next week we begin the happy chaos of summer reading for kids as well as the Ripley Friends of the Library summer booksale on Saturday, June 6th. Both events are fun and both require a bit of work! We hope that parents/guardians will take the time to bring their kids to the library to enjoy the variety of programs as well as checking out books they want to read— no assignments, no reports. Our goal is to remind kids that reading can be fun to do. To the parents, reading over the summer is important, the habit made helps prevent summer slump, and come school time this fall, kids that have read over the summer have a much easier time getting back into the groove.

05/21/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
While we have posted this before, it is still one of the most appropriate postcards we have leading up to Memorial Day. With the flags strewn through the cemeteries on veterans' gravesites, it is time to be grateful for the sacrifices all of the men and women veterans have made for our country, and to honor those who died in service.

We will be closed on Monday, May 25th in observance of Memorial Day.

With the unofficial beginning of summer, school graduations and all that rolls around the end of May, we will be jumping into June with lots of activities and fun. First week of June we will be signing up kids for the Unearth the Story reading program, (Ripley June 3rd, Russellville June 4th and Aberdeen June 1st). Call, check our Facebook or stop in to your favorite library and get the details. Then 1st Saturday in June (6th) the Ripley Friends of the Library will be having their summer book sale 10-4—we have some awesome books to pique your interest. Some are brand-new, some are old and collectible and of course, everything in between. We will have a special table of old and interesting ephemera (old paper stuff), local author books, cookbooks, history, lots of fiction, kids books and more. Come to grab a bag of beach reading, add to your collection, or find something you didn't know you needed! Then we will get the annex ready for Wednesday, June 10th at 1:00 p.m. when we welcome Freddy Fossil's Dino Show for kids of all ages.
New items of local interest. Last year we added Caleb Frantz's book on Rev. John Rankin titled The Conductor—this week we added the unabridged audio on CD version of the book. The Unique Eats and Eateries of Ohio: The People and Stories Behind the Food by Brandy Gleason travels all over the state to find restaurants with a local twist, and Brown County's addition is Ripley's own Ripley Dinner Bell! GG Lofton is even pictured on the cover. The restaurants covered are well-known to hole in the wall, and each has a 2-page spread, making it fun reading and possible destination traveling for the summer.

05/15/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
We are straying from the Ripley/Brown County area for this week's postcard. A patron donated this to our collection, and we thought it interesting and hope you do as well. Looking at a 1913-14 Maysville directory, F. H. Traxel & Co. Bakers & Confectioners was listed. In a 1950 article, much was written about their famous beaten biscuits that were shipped all across the United States. By 1950, Traxel's was a fine dining restaurant on W. Second Street in Maysville.

Our apologies for the downtime of our newspaper archives database. The company that manages it for us was doing an upgrade, and if you were trying to look something up during the last few days, you may have been caught in the "spinning forever" action with no result. As of Monday morning, it seems to be working just fine. There are a few changes and an increase in speed, so all good. We've finally boxed up our 2025 newspapers to be sent for processing, so soon they will be available to search. In the meantime, we have most of 2025 in duplicate copies if you need to look something or someone up.

We can tell that the schools are getting close to wrapping up the year as we are having classes visit to get the library tour and the pep talk about our highly anticipated summer reading program. With the theme 'Unearth a Story' we get to have fun with dinosaurs, archaeology and just enjoyable reading. We'll have free bags, reading goals that are pretty easy to reach, and awesome programs. Sign-up will start at all three libraries during the first week of June—not far away! (Ripley June 3rd, Russellville June 4th, Aberdeen June 1st)

Time is ticking on purchasing a RULH Alumni Dinner ticket here at the library. The group needs to have 'final' numbers for table set-up as well as food! Tickets are available at the front desk through Monday the 18th.

05/08/2026

From the desk of Alison Gibson, Director
For many of you, this was the building of high school memories! Bristow Drug Co. had these printed, possibly in the 1950s. Just a reminder, the RULH Alumni dinner is less than 3 weeks away, and tickets are available at the Ripley library as a convenience, but they are also available online.

We are less than a month away from our start of the summer reading program. We will be having awesome programs at all three libraries, fun incentives for ages 3-11, and for the older tweens and teens, we will have our scratch-off slips for small prizes that worked well last year.
The Ripley Friends of the Library have set their date for the summer booksale. Saturday, June 6th from 10-4. We've received a good number of donations since the last booksale and it is always a great opportunity to pick up some summer reading, non-fiction special interest, extra kids books, cookbooks, history and soooo much more.

Books due out this month that should interest our readers include: James Patterson's next in the Women's Murder Club 26 Beauties, Michael Connelly's Ironwood, Kathryn Stockett (author of the very popular and provocative The Help) offers The Calamity Club, of course Freida McFadden keeps readers in suspense with The Divorce, and Nora Roberts tantalizes with The Final Target. For a few non-fictions, we are offering American Rambler: Walking the Trails of Johnny Appleseed by Isaac Fitzgerald, National Geographic's Small Towns U.S.A. (alas, no town in Brown County made it!), David Sedaris' crazy observations in The Land and Its People and Cody's Wish: A Boy, a Racehorse and a Fight for Life. As always, this is just a small sampling of the titles we will be adding in May.