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 cataloged 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 shown below from left to right are volunteer Pam Hollandsworth, Library Director Patricia Ross with Fieldale’s Anne Copeland and Mr. Sam Eanes( not pictured is 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."

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