Educator, author, philologian, and bibliophile, Julian W. Abernethy bequeathed Middlebury his legacy, his library of over 5,000 volumes, which remain in the College’s collection to this day. Born in New Haven, Vermont January 23, 1853, Abernethy graduated from Middlebury in 1876 and went on to earn a PhD in Anglo-Saxon and English Literature at Yale University. His passion for literature and education guided his commitment to teaching and contributing to the study of literature, earning him a Doctor of Letters. A champion of coeducation, he served as principal of the Berkeley Institute in Brooklyn, New York, a school for the education of young ladies and published extensively on the importance of education for both sexes.

Abernethy also demonstrated his commitment to his alma mater, as a trustee for over twenty years, and in the gift of his library to the College. In his will, he stipulated that the books must be properly cared for, kept behind glass or in closed cases, and that if the College couldn’t provide adequate housing for his library, that it go to the Women’s College. His library, consisting of important first editions, many signed by the authors, included his Thoreau collection, over 750 items – books, pamphlets, and personal relics of Thoreau – which was likely the most extensive collection of works by Thoreau in the United States.

Abernethy died July 1, 1923, and his brother Frank D. Abernethy carried out his wishes and devotion to Middlebury, endowing a professorship in his brother’s name and donating to an endowment fund for his library. 1928 brought the official dedication of the Julian Willis Abernethy Library, and Dr. I.C. Smart remarked, “Books, his books, which he had collected through long years with patience and discrimination and great joy, which he knew and loved, living with them and by them, were not as books sometimes are to users, just tools to be left around, haystacks where one hunts for needles, but works of art, outbursts of inner light, children of choice souls.”