never married but lived with her longtime partner, Marie Todd, for thirty eight years. In May 1917, they took in a homeless boy named Wellington Wilson, and Countryman later was awarded guardianship of him. Wellington Wilson later changed his name to Wellington Countryman. He eventually married and had a daughter whom he named Alta Countryman after his adoptive mother. The Countrymans lived in Chicago, Illinois, and Wellington died in 1997. Gratia Countryman's eulogy summed up her life perfectly, "In her youth a library was a sacred precinct for guarding the treasures of thought, to be entered only by the scholar and the student... Her crusading zeal carried the book to every part of her city and county, to the little child, the factory worker, the farmer, the businessman, the hospital patient, the blind and the old." References Further reading Countryman, Gratia. Library Work as a Profession. (Published by Woman's Occupational Bureau 1930) Countryman, Gratia; Shaw, Robert Macgregor; Shaw, Virginia Buffington. "Gratia Countryman's letters to the family twenty three letters written by Gratia Countryman describing a European Bicycle trip in the summer of 1896" Countryman, Gratia. Culture and Reform: The Women and the Work of the Women's Club of Minnesota 1907–1914 Countryman, Gratia. The Privilege for Which We Struggled; Leaders of the Woman's Suffrage Movement in Minnesota Countryman, Gratia. Traveling Libraries and a First Step in Developing Libraries, (Boston 1905) Countryman, Gratia. Vocations Open to College Women, (The University of Minnesota 1913) Kendall, James Hosmer; Countryman, Gratia. '"Our Frontispiece" Bulletin of Bibliography. 13. 1929. (Worldcat OCLC 27) Roberts, Kate, Minnesota 150: The People and the Places that Shape Our State (2007) Pejsa, Jane. Gratia Countryman: Her life, her loves, and her library. (Nodin Press, 1995) Peterson, Penny A. Gratia Countryman, more than an ordinary woman. (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Hess, Roise and Co. 2006) Archives Gratia A. Countryman and family papers . Minnesota Historical Society, 1861-1953. 6 boxes. Countryman, Gratia Alta, faculty and alumni papers. University of Minnesota Archives, 1889, 1923, 1951. 1 box. External links Gratia Alta Countryman Digital Collection Hennepin County Library. Interview with Jane Pejsa, author of Gratia Countryman: Her Life, Her Loves, Her Library, interviewed by Margot Siegel, NORTHERN LIGHTS Minnesota Author Interview TV Series #328 (1995) 1866 births 1953 deaths American librarians American women librarians Minneapolis Public Library People from Hastings, Minnesota People from Minneapolis Presidents of the American Library Association University of Minnesota alumni Women's International League