Established by a $10,000 bequest from lumberman and former state legislator Thomas Blythe Scott, the Merrill library opened in March, 1891. The library was among the first twenty public libraries in the state, established one of Wisconsin's first "traveling libraries" in 1895, and was the first public library in the state to conduct English language classes for immigrants (1905). A Carnegie Foundation grant funded this Prairie School building, designed by Claude and Starck, in 1911.