In the years leading to Ohio statehood in 1803, citizens of Ames Township decided to establish a stock-owned circulating library. Because cash was scarce during Ohio's frontier era, some citizens paid for their $2.50 shares through the sale of animal pelts, which merchant Samuel Brown took to Boston for sale in the spring of 1804. There he acquired fifty-one volumes, mainly on history, religion, travel, and biography, as the first accessions for the Western Library Association. Senator Thomas Ewing later said that he paid his share with ten raccoon skins, giving rise to the collection's popular name, the Coonskin Library. Judge Ephraim Cutler was the first of many librarians who kept the library until 1861.