The Bill Memorial Library in Groton, adjacent to Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, was founded by Frederic Bill, a publisher and linen goods manufacturer, who was born in the part of Groton which is now the town of Ledyard and who retired to a farm in Groton on the Thames River. The library, dedicated to the memory of Bill’s sisters, Eliza and Harriet, began in 1888, as a room in Groton’s First District Schoolhouse. The Bill Library building, designed by the Worcester architect, Stephen C. Earle, was dedicated in 1890. Bill expanded the library in 1907, enlarging the main reading room and providing space for a natural history museum. The library was again expanded in 1994. After the death of his first wife, in 1894, Bill married Julia 0. Avery, the libary’s first librarian.