Bassett Historical Center Building Fund

The Bassett Historical Center of the Blue Ridge Regional Library serves Henry and Patrick Counties and the City of Martinsville as the regional source of history and family history.  The collection includes material from all counties in Virginia along with materials from other states including Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia.  

            The Library includes the personal collections of Lela Adams, Grady Garrett, John B. Harris, Eunice Kirkman, O. E. Pilson, Thomas D. Perry, and the musical instruments of William G. “Bill” Hill. Other resources include 9,496 family files, 2,518 history subject files and 11,074 books. Over 6200 patrons used the library in 2004 from all 50 states and 9 foreign countries. 

A committee including Ronnie Stone, Chairman, Truman Adkins, Vice-Chairman, Dr. Mark Crabtree, Phil Dalton, Hal Hubener, Mary McGee, Mary Elizabeth Morten, Beverly Millner, Robert Petty, Tom Perry, Pat Ross, Betty Scott, Daphne Stone, and David Wright Mrs.Michelle Stone-Agee, Ronald D. Haley, and David E. Rotenizer, has established a fund to build a 4,000 square foot expansion to the existing building.

For more information or to make a tax deductible donation contact the

Other Henry County Links

http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oldmill/libtext.htm

http://www.rootsweb.com/~vahenry/

www.myhenrycounty.com

http://www.brrl.lib.va.us/Bassettcollections.htm

The Best Little Library in Virginia

     From the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror written in 1085 in England to the latest research on the Goblintown Grist Mill in Patrick County there is only one local resource that holds both and that is the Bassett Historical Center of the Blue Ridge Regional Library, in my opinion, the best local history library in Virginia.

     Many years ago while reading Henry Wiencek’s The Hairstons, An American Family in Black and White on page 175, I came across a section on finding obscure material at the library in Bassett. Intrigued I began to visit the library. Over the years in researching J. E. B. Stuart, I have traveled from West Point to Kansas to many libraries, but I never cease to return to the banks of the Smith River. If you are stuck on a genealogical question, finding an ancestor from the Civil War or just want to kill some time reading about Thomas Jefferson, this is the place for you.

     The historical center contains nearly 7000 family files and books on all the local families, bound material and books from all the counties in Virginia and many counties in West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Copies of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, William and Mary Quarterly, Virginia Genealogist, Magazine of Virginia Genealogy, Appalachian Quarterly, Family History Magazine, AAHGS News, Ancestry and Piedmont Lineages are among the periodicals you will find at the Center.

     A visit to the banks of the Smith River might include an opportunity to talk railroads with Kenny Kirkman. Patrick County’s own Pamela Hollandsworth volunteers cataloging the papers of my mentor O. E. Pilson. Other collections include those of Lela C. Adams, John B. Harris, Grady Garrett, Eunice Kirkman, Ruth F. Morris and the Henry County Bicentennial Collection (29 volumes) made up of transcribed records from minute and/or order books, plus loose papers found in the Henry County Courthouse. Internet connections to Ancestry.Com, AncestryPlus, and HeritageQuest provide the patrons with census records and can be a used as a guide when one is searching for someone not in the immediate area. They also provide social security records of a deceased person, plus vital statistics, military records, and books in which a family surname is referenced.

    For years, the historical center was located in the back room of the present building, but in 1998, the regular library moved across Highway 57 to a new facility leaving the entire building on the banks of the Smith River to the Historical Center. Today, the back room over looking the river contains military and Native American materials. If you want to find your ancestor in the Civil War, there is no better room to begin that search. All of the Howard Virginia Regimental Series along with the entire index of Confederate Soldiers published by Tom Broadfoot, the Time-Life series on the war and most of the Official Records of the war are present with many supplementary publications. You can work with large screen computers as George Stoneman and Jubal Early peer down on you from pictures above the door and if you sit in the right place you can look upon Sauratown Woman or a glance to the shelves will bring you in contact with my favorite item, a brick from Stuart’s birthplace.

     The staff of the Blue Ridge Regional Library’s Bassett Historical Center are Library Director Patricia Ross with Fieldale’s Anne Copeland, Sam Eanes and Cindy Headen )will come through for you too. Copeland summed up what any historical library should do, "the amount of material we are able to share with the public only came about because so many people were willing to share with us."

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