‘Wealth of treasures.’ Shop in rural Centre County is home to more than 30K books

If you’re looking to learn more about former presidents of the United States, go back in time to the Victorian Era or brush up on Civil War history, chances are Forefathers Book Shop has something for you within its 30,000-plus book collection.

Located in a former bank at 121 E. Main St., Rebersburg, about 40 minutes from State College, Forefathers Book Shop is owned by former Centre County Commissioner Keith Bierly and contains a massive selection of reading material that spans centuries. According to Bierly, the shop that opened in 2013 is home to some of the county’s best “world class” books.

Included in the store’s collection is about 750 World War II books, thousands of books on U.S. presidents, complete collections from authors like Charles Dickens and more, although the crammed store only holds about half of Bierly’s collection — he’s got another 20,000 in storage.

“Honestly I’ve got more books than I even know what to do with, and a bunch of them aren’t even [at Forefathers],” Bierly said. “Maybe someday all of them will end up in the shop, but I’m not sure. ... I’m just happy if people come in and find a book they like, or one that they’ll learn something from when they read it.”

Bierly’s love of books, specifically historical books, stems from early on in his professional career when he worked as a county magistrate, commissioner and eventually a member of former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s staff.

When Rendell lost re-election in 2011, Bierly decided to step away from the political scene and was faced with a tough question — what was he going to do in his retirement?

Being a man who loved literature, he decided to collect more books, and slowly started to form a stockpile that would eventually lead him to open Forefathers.

“I was going to a ton of book sales,” Bierly said. “Not just like yard sales and stuff like that — I’m talking massive book sales, probably a couple hundred of them across seven states. I was all over, up and down the mid-Atlantic, getting my hands on all the books I could.”

After a couple years passed, and a couple thousand books were collected, Bierly noticed that a bank had closed in his hometown, leaving a building vacant. It soon became the permanent home for the books he was looking to sell from his collection.

A yarn store operated by Bierly’s wife, Kim Bierly, was also once located in Forefathers, but the shop now only sells books.

Following his move into the building, Bierly arranged his books into different sections, and while you won’t see the Dewey decimal system there, each section is labeled with a sign and is regularly changed based on what Bierly thinks would go best there at any given time.

Currently, when visitors make their way through the shop’s heavy glass doors, they’re greeted by some local literature and a small stairway that leads them up into the main room of the shop.

On the left side of the main room sits a former bank clerk’s counter that’s been transformed into a checkout area. Across from the counter, where bank patrons once waited in line, are several densely-packed bookshelves that contain reading material from subjects like entertainment, religion, literature and more.

Located in the back of the main room is a hallway containing the shop’s bathroom and a smaller selection of outdoor-related books. The hallway opens up to the former bank’s lounge, complete with tables and seats, although its since been transformed into a room Bierly calls the “1968 Room.”

“I have books in this room that cover almost everything that went on during that year — and it was truly an incredible year,” Bierly said. “I was a freshman in college, and that’s the year, of course, [President John F. Kennedy] and [Martin Luther King, Jr.] were shot, the Nixon/Humphrey election happened and the Vietnam War was going on too. I’ve also got stuff that I think represents that time frame in television.”

The bank’s safe has also been transformed into display room for Bierly’s ever-expanding collection of president-related books.

Some of the presidents that make the most appearances in his collection are Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, with each president having at least 100 books to their names, in the shop and in storage combined.

Along the main room’s left side, past the counter, is an opening to a book storage area, a staircase to the shop’s bottom floor and another small room holding what Bierly estimates to be a collection of “around 1,200 to 1,500” Civil War books, with some wild west books sprinkled in too.

The shop’s downstairs contains even more literature, with six different sections waiting to be discovered. These sections include true crime, speech and writing, superheroes and villains, overall politics, novels and other miscellaneous history that didn’t fit elsewhere.

“I mean, between the upstairs and downstairs of the store, I’d hope that I’ve got a book for just about any subject that a collector, or someone who just likes reading, could ask for,” Bierly said. “This place just is such a nice little wealth of treasures and historic books that I think can really meet a lot interests.”

While Bierly’s collection of literature is massive, he doesn’t intend on stopping its growth. He’s hoping to collect even more books to sell either in person or online, although his online sales are currently on a pause.

“Nowadays I tend now to buy more books that I like, meaning that I’m buying stuff that relates to government,” Bierly said. “I’ve told people that I really don’t have any idea of what an exit plan for this place is going to look like — I mean I’m sitting here with 52,000 books. I could go out and buy 500 books from someone and they say, ‘why now?’ Well, I tell them that I’m not getting any younger.”

With no plans on slowing down, Bierly will continue to run his shop, but after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, its hours have been limited. Currently, the shop is open from noon to 5 p.m. each Friday and Saturday.