The Middletown Library has been a part of Aquidneck Island's social fabric for just over 176 years. In 1848, The Miantonomi Circulating Library and the Middletown Free Library were founded to serve the people of Middletown. Initially, the Miantonomi library was a small installation in what is variously identified as the "district one schoolhouse" and the "northwest school district schoolhouse" which would later come to be known as the Oliphant School house. Both libraries - under the financial auspices of Joshua C. Brown and George A. Brown - joined into one in the year 1876, whereupon the Middletown Free Library Association was formed. This initial form of the Middletown Free Library was somewhat transient, occupying at least three different locations from 1875-1903. At the end of those ~30 years, the library finally acquired the means to construct a home wholly its own thanks to a generous donation from the Bailey family. In 1903 the Middletown Free Library constructed a small building next to the schoolhouse on Oliphant Lane; this building would serve as the home of the MFL until the end of the "Middletown Free Library" name.

In 1948, the Middletown Free Library began celebrating 100 years of operation. One of the many ways that this massive milestone was celebrated was by a set papers detailing personal and organizational histories of the library. Only two are extant, but they tell the story of a library that has fought against adverse conditions, rallied under unusual circumstances, and strove to equip the people of Middletown with educational reading. Mrs. Maxwell Peckham delivers a straightforward chronology of the early years of the library, noting that neither the MFL nor the Miantonomi Library kept adequate records and for all intents and purposes the recorded history of the library began in 1875. The other paper, by one Mr. John Spooner, recalls his experience as a student in the Oliphant School in 1878, and how the library has evolved over the 70 years that he has witnessed; from a locked cabinet behind his teacher's desk to the small building filled with just about 5,000 volumes in 1948. Five years later, the Middletown Free Library again had reason to celebrate, as the 50th anniversary of the building they called home was upon them. Only a single article survives from this anniversary, and it presents a short history of the library adding several details to the histories compiled just a few years earlier.

This was not the first time in the library's history that such information had been compiled by people close to the organization. In the early 1900's, a man named Daniel Chase put together a history of the Middletown Free Library spanning from the dual foundations to just about 1900 - with a brief mention of the building constructed in 1903. Daniel Chase being, presumably, a descendant of Daniel M. Chase - the first dedicated Librarian of the Middletown Free Library. Chase writes about the lost early histories of the Miantonomi and Middletown Free Libraries, as well as the incorporated Middletown Free Library's relocation to the yard of the "place where [he] now live[s]". As will become clear through exploring the rest of this documentary history, Librarians across time here at the Middletown library have had an eye toward preserving and promulgating the history of the library as a community institution.  To the left, you can find a copy of the original paper as well as a typed transcription.