Girard, Kansas was founded by Dr. Charles Henry (Hosea) Strong in 1867. During a hunting trip, Dr. Strong had decided to find the geographical center of the newly formed Crawford County. Upon shooting a deer, he marked the spot with a stake and claimed the land for a town to be named after his hometown of Girard, PA. A plaque and deer statue now marks the spot on the southwest corner of the Crawford County Courthouse lawn.1

By 1869, the area was rapidly growing. Dr. Strong had laid out school district boundaries, and schools were holding classes in most of those districts. Sunday Schools of a variety of denominations were meeting every Sabbath.2

Girard also boasted a total of 32 newspapers, including the city’s current paper-The Girard Press- and The Appeal to Reason. J.A. Wayland served as the Appeal’s first publisher and later Emmanuel Haldeman-Julius. The Appeal to Reason quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper in the world, at its peak distributing over 4 million copies! After the failure of the Appeal, Haldeman-Julius began publishing Little Blue Books on a variety of topics as a way to make information available to people of all social classes.3 Girard soon became known as the "Literary Capital of the United States" according to the Chicago Daily News.4
In the early 20th century, Girard was privileged to become one of the smallest towns to have both a Carnegie Library and a first class post office, both of which are still in existence today. Girard Public Library was built in 1906 with a donation from Andrew Carnegie in the amount of $8000. Miss Blanche Warren served as the present building’s first librarian. The post office was first established in Girard in 1868. The current building was erected in 1918 when it was upgraded to first class, largely in part to the success of The Appeal to Reason and Little Blue Books.1

1 Genesis of Girard, William C. Cuthbertson

2 http://members.aol.com/dougstrong/charles.html, Doug Strong

3 Window to the Past: Celebrating Eighty Years in Girard, Kansas, a project of the Girard National Bank

4 http://skyways.lib.ks.us/towns/Girard/ehj.html