Was the Library Company Membership Restricted to White Men?

There was no expressed restriction on membership either by women or by non-white people. There's lots of indications in our archives of women borrowing books from the library just using the share of their husbands or their fathers or their brothers. But it was a place that was, as far as we can tell, was all white. And that's just a sad fact about what libraries were and what cultural institutions like this were in the 18th and 19th centuries.