Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Musings for May 4, 2026.
In 2017, I went to the Kezar Library in the village of Romeo, to inquire about doing research, for I had been researching my family history, for what would be now about 30 years. I was asked if I would be willing to do the genealogical research on the owners of the many Romeo historical homes in the village. It would be used when an inquiry might be made about who had lived in these homes before a present owner might have bought their home. I created files that the library could use, and found this research to be very interesting, while also ‘getting to know’ the subjects I was working on. They were stories about how this area and the village in general became the community that is thriving today.
One of these stories is about Samuel and Nancy Kezar, who originally came to the area from Turner, New York, where they built a home in the ‘Queen Anne’ style at 180 Church Street in 1894. Samuel would pass away in 1898. The Romeo Book Club and the Romeo Monday Club would organize the Romeo Public Library and be maintained by Nancy Kezar and her daughter in their home until 1908. Mrs. Kezar and her daughter eventual moved to the west coast. She would come into an inheritance and remember their time and life in Romeo, asking her agent to come up with a plan to give a free standing library building to the village of Romeo.
A well known architect named Henry Whitfield from New York created a design and local contractor Archibald H. Robertson would build the library according to a design, where the general appearance was to be ‘home like’ and imitate and ‘old English Inn’. For anyone having used this library, that was accomplished. A lot was secured on the corner of Church Street and North Main (Old Van Dyke Road). The deed contained a proviso that this gift would revert to the heirs of the Kezar’s if and when the property was no longer used for library purposes.
In 1911, the building was dedicated in a public ceremony, and a gift of a $1000 dollars worth of books from Henry Glover Stephens, a philanthropist and collector was added to the already 871 books in their collection. The library was to become then known as the Romeo Free Public Library. The library would acquire a new name in 1969 when the Romeo District Library was formed by a resolution of the Romeo village council, in conjunction with the Bruce and Washington Township Boards. With the village of Romeo sitting in both Washington and Bruce Townships, there would be two representatives from each entity. By 1970, it was realized that an addition would be needed that would triple the size of the structure, and a dedication ceremony would take place in March of 1971. A second branch of the library would be opened in 2001, from a generous donation from Roland and Kathleen Graubner, of land and called the Romeo District, Graubner Branch.
The Romeo Community Archives would open to the public in the lower level of the Kezar Branch in 2017, a home away from home for those of us interested in researching. It continues to expand its research abilities and now has the complete Romeo Observer Newspapers from the early 1870s, all digitized for easier access. If you are an obituary reader, you have never read an obituary until you have read the works of art that have been written all those years ago while documenting with a flair the lives of those that had passed way.
I want to thank the Kezar Community Archives for use of the documented material used here today. And on that ‘wee note’, till next month Monday, June 1, 2026.
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Linda Osborne Cynowa 