From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)

Mary E. Mace Spradling was born in Winchester, KY, the daughter of Mynor J. and Ella Nora Travis Mace. Rev. Mynor J. Mace was from Pittsburgh, PA. He married Ella Nora Travis in Winchester, KY, in 1911. The couple lived in Pittsburgh, then returned to Winchester. The family would move again, and Mary E. Mase briefly lived in Kansas City, Kansas, before returning to Kentucky (sources: 1919 Kansas City Census, 1920 U.S. Census, and 1930 U.S Census).

When back in Kentucky, Mary E. Mace was the librarian at Lynch Colored School in the 1930s and teacher-librarian in Shelbyville in the 1940s. She chaired the Library Conference of the Kentucky Negro Educational Association in 1950, and was a librarian at the Louisville Free Public Library.

Mary E. Mace Spradling left Kentucky in 1950 and would become the first African American professional librarian with the Kalamazoo Public Library. She also established the Alma Powell Branch Library in Kalamazoo. She retired in 1976, and in 1998 donated her personal library of 28,000 volumes to the Kalamazoo Valley Community College Library.

She was the author of "Black Librarians in Kentucky" [in The Black Librarian in the Southeast, ed. A. L. Phinazee], and of the reference volumes, In Black and White. Mary Spradling was the wife of Lewis Spradling (1905-1964). 

For more see Who's Who Among African Americans, 1975-2006; A Biographical Directory of Librarians in the United States and Canada, 5th ed.; "Many lives enriched by Mary Spradling," Kalamazoo Gazette, 01/30/2009, Editorials section; see Rev. Mynor J. Mace and Ella Nora Travis in "Colored Column," The Winchester News, 12 March 1944, p.13.