Head of the Hartford Public Library for over fifty years, a founder of the Connecticut Library Association, national leader and pioneer in library services for children.

Caroline Hewins was born in Roxbury , Massachusetts , the oldest of nine children. She was educated at home and at private schools. After graduating from the Normal School of Boston , she was hired to do research on the Civil War for the Boston Athenaeum and then was recruited to run the Young Men's Institute Library in Hartford which was housed in the Wadsworth Atheneum. This was a private subscription library of about 600 members. In 1891 Hewins helped to found the Connecticut Library Association and in 1892 presided over the change of the Institute from subscription library to public library with registered patrons soon numbering in the thousands.

Hewins is best known for her advocacy work on behalf of children's books and children as readers. In 1882 she published Books for the Young, the first bibliography designed for children; in 1888 she published a history of children's books in the Atlantic Monthly; in 1900 she helped found the Children's Section of the American Library Association (she was the first woman to speak at an ALA conference); and in 1904 she opened one of the first public library children's rooms in the country which became a model for children's services nationwide.

Caroline Hewins was both an innovator and a reformer. She opened the Library on Sundays to serve working people and she established the depository collections that led to the modern branch library system. Hewins is credited with transforming the library into a major cultural and intellectual resource for the city of Hartford . In recognition of her contributions she was the first woman to receive a Master of Arts Honoris Causa from Trinity College . In 1951 she was one of 40 librarians named to the Library Hall of Fame.