Many of us have known at least one person in our lifetime that was totally unselfish, tireless in their mission to be of service to others. As humans, we naturally take them for granted until on one day they just aren’t there anymore.

Miss Anna Bier taught art in the Greenville Ohio public Schools on all grade levels for thirty-six years. Art class, as we know it today, was totally different in 1910. There were no school budgets for supplies, no trips to galleries, no books on techniques. But Anna always came prepared with her basket of goodies. Buckeyes, colorful and curiously shaped leaves, seed pods of milkweed and jimson, cardboard for small hands to construct small looms and enough yarn for forty youngsters to weave their own marble bags and purses. Often the cost of these supplies came out of her meager earnings.

Upon her death, Miss Bier willed her home and all of its contents to the future hope that Greenville would become “a place where people of all colors, all creeds, and all walks of life could work for the development of artistic skills and higher cultural standards for their community”.

Grateful for her contribution to their small community, residents established the Greenville Art Guild, Inc. in 1939, incorporating both visual and performing arts. Meetings and classes were held in the East Fourth Street home until a fire in the later 1970s.