{{short description|American librarian}} {{Multiple issues| {{Context|date=September 2022}} {{More citations needed|date=September 2022}} }} {{Use mdy dates|date=July 2020}} {{Infobox person/Wikidata|fetchwikidata=ALL|dateformat=mdy}}
'''Elizabeth A. Dwyer''' (1866 – March 28, 1944) was the first woman to be appointed to the staff of the United States Library of Congress in 1893.<ref>U.S. Civil Service Commission, Women in the Federal Service (Washington, D.C.: Civil Service Commission, 1938), 3–6, 9.</ref>
== Biography == Elizabeth Agnes Dwyer was born on September 29, 1866, in Bonita, Texas, to Judge Thomas A. and Annie (Croker) Dwyer. In 1882, she worked for the post office and for G. W. Baldwin and Company.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdw03|title=DWYER, ELIZABETH AGNES|last=WIEDENFELD|first=MELISSA G.|date=June 1, 2010|website=tshaonline.org|language=en|access-date=October 21, 2019}}</ref>
In 1890, she graduated from a San Antonio business college and in 1891 moved east to become a "congressional reporter" for the ''National Economist''.<ref name=":1" />
In 1893, Dwyer was appointed to the Library of Congress<ref name=":1" /> with the support of congressmen Roger Quarles Mills and James Slayden, who sent letters to the librarian John Russell Young requesting her promotion and transfer.<ref>R. Q. Mills to John Russell Young, September 10, 1897; James Slayden to Young, October 13, 1898, John Russell Young Papers, Library of Congress Archives, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.</ref> Dwyer was making $900 annually by 1897, which was a lower pay for the staff at the Library of Congress. Her job title was simply "assistant."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6DXd3TkxhDYC&pg=PA181|title=Women in Print : Essays on the Print Culture of American Women From the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries|last=Danky|first=James Philip|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|year=2006|isbn=9780299217846}}</ref> Dwyer worked in the Copyright Office, though in 1898 she wrote to John Young, reminding him of her trailblazing as the first prominent woman employee there, and requesting a transfer.<ref>Bessie A. Dwyer to John Russell Young, June 10, 1898; David Hutcheson to Young, September 20, 1898, Young Papers, Library of Congress Archives.</ref> Young asked David Hutcheson, the library superintendent, to transfer her to the Reading Room. Though Hutcheson claimed she was not strong enough to work there, Young transferred her, likely due to political pressure.<ref>John Russell Young to Hon. C. W. Fairbanks, September 17, 1898, Librarian's Letterbooks, vol. 27, p. 444–46, Library of Congress Archives.</ref><ref name=":0" /> thumb|Bessie Dwyer (1919) In 1903, Dwyer resigned from the Library of Congress and moved to the Philippines for a new library position.<ref>Chief Clerk's Letterbook, November 9, 1898, p. 1, Library of Congress Archives</ref> Her sister, Marie U. Nordstrom, took her place at the Library of Congress until the mid-1920s.<ref name=":0" />
== References == <references />
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==External links== * {{wikisource-inline|Woman of the Century/Bessie Agnes Dwyer}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dwyer, Bessie A.}} Category:1866 births Category:1944 deaths Category:Library of Congress Category:People from Texas Category:American people who died in Japanese internment camps Category:American reporters and correspondents Category:19th-century American women writers Category:20th-century American women