Caroline Henderson Griffiths

Caroline Henderson was born in Covington, Indiana, and raised in Lafayette, the daughter of Albert Henderson and Lorana Richmond Henderson. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1880, as one of the first women to graduate from Purdue University.[1] Her older brother Charles Richmond Henderson was a sociology professor at the University of Chicago; her older sister Julia Henderson Levering wrote a book on Indiana history.[2][3]

Henderson wrote a handbook on wood carving, published in 1887.[2][4] Griffiths was an officer of the Indiana Soldiers' Aid Society in 1898.[5] In Indianapolis, she supported the Flower Mission Home for Incurables,[6] a hospital she helped establish in 1903.[7] In 1918 she edited The Greater Patriotism, a collection of her late husband's speeches.[8]

After World War I, Griffiths headed the American Book Committee on Children's Libraries,[9] organized to deliver children's books and library furniture to Belgian and French communities recovering from the war.[10] Griffiths is credited with bringing the first children's libraries and reading rooms in Paris and Brussels.[11] The L'Heure Joyeuse programs also provided training for children's librarians; the Paris site counted writer Claire Huchet Bishop among its first librarians.[12] "In establishing children's libraries and reading rooms in Belgium and France," she explained, "we are only paying a little on a very large debt which America owes to Europe for the delightful hours the children in every generation have received from the great storytellers in Europe."[9]

Henderson married lawyer and diplomat John Lewis Griffiths in 1889.[13][14] She was widowed when Griffiths died in London in 1914.[15] Their home in Indianapolis is now known as the Kemper House, and houses the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana.[16] She died in New York in 1937, aged 75 years.[7] Her grave is in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.