The Kegley Library at Wytheville Community College is a regional historical and genealogical collection, research center, and archive for Southwest Virginia.
The Kegley Library
The Kegley Library is a special collection of local history and family history housed in the Wytheville Community College Library. It is the result of a personal library that was bequeathed to WCC by noted historian Frederick Bittle Kegley in 1968. The original collection contained books, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, census records, manuscripts, WPA documents, journals, photographs, and maps. Since its inception the collection has grown considerably.
Once housed in a small room off the main library in Bland Hall, the Kegley Library now resides in a reading room and vault room in the Smyth Hall Learning Resource Center. The collection now includes over 5,000 books, 150 manuscript collections, 8,000 photographs, 500 maps, 9 cabinets of vertical files, 19,000 tombstone inscriptions, and 140 subject albums.
A comprehensive collection of local newspapers, court and census records, and oral history collection also are housed here. Local historians Mary B. Kegley and Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood have donated their impressive research collections and many other researchers have generously placed research material. Books and other material focusing on the history and genealogy of Southwest Virginia are continually added.
F.B. Kegley
In the pastoral St. John’s Lutheran Church cemetery amidst trees and meadow is the tombstone of one Frederick Bittle Kegley. It reads “Farmer, Historian, Teacher.” This epitaph neatly summarizes the life of the man who birthed the collections in the Kegley Library.
Born in a log cabin near Queen’s Knob in Wythe County, Virginia on 7 July 1877, Kegley was the product of generations of Southwest Virginia families. His entire family valued education and all eight children of Stephen Alexander Kegley and his wife Sarah Umberger Kegley attended college. F. B. Kegley, known to family as “Bittle,” attended Roanoke College, graduating in 1900 and eventually earning a master’s degree. After a stint of teaching at Wytheville High School, he returned to the small Lutheran college in Salem to teach English, history, Latin, and math for three years. Awarded a scholarship in 1905, Kegley matriculated into doctoral work in history and social science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This academic pursuit was short-lived, however, as upon the death of his father he returned home to manage the farm.
Kegley not only farmed his family’s land but also served as the agricultural extension agent, a position that took him on jaunts throughout Southwest Virginia. He met his wife, Fannie Withers in Abingdon, Virginia while working there; they married in 1914. The couple settled at Rose Hill Farm and, although they had no children, entertained countless nephews and nieces on this picturesque farm that still remains in the family today.
Kegley grew up with a keen interest in the history and genealogy of Southwest Virginia. He collected books and periodicals, manuscripts, and other materials. He roamed the countryside photographing barns, houses, farms, cemeteries, and landscapes. He commissioned mapmaker J. R. Hildebrand and artist Elizabeth Waller Wilkins to prepare illustrated maps that documented the settlement of the Mountain Empire. Additionally, he edited the quarterly magazine Mountain Empire for Southwest Virginia, Inc. in an effort to publicize the rich history and culture of his home. Kegley also supervised white collar workers in the Works Progress Administration project in Southwest Virginia; as well he served on numerous boards of historical societies and state agencies.
Kegley’s masterpiece was his comprehensive study of the Roanoke County and Botetourt County frontier circa 1740-1780 entitled Kegley’s Virginia Frontier, which was originally published in 1938. His emphasis on letting the records speak for themselves has helped generations of family researchers and historians understand the early settlers of this region. His method of consulting land records and vital records, then preparing maps of early neighborhoods, and finally visiting old home sites and farms proved invaluable. His co-worker, Mary B. Kegley, continued this legacy with her Early Adventurers on the Western Waters series. Upon his death on 4 May 1968, F. B. Kegley willed his research collection to Wytheville Community College with a desire to make these valuable records available to researchers far and near interested in the history of his beloved homeland. For more information on F. B. Kegley please see the article written by his nephew, George Kegley, in Wythe County Historical Review, July 1985.
Please see our Collections page for more information or contact us by going here.
The Kegley Library accepts donations of historical and genealogical papers, photographs, maps, newspapers, and other materials that are in keeping with the scope of library’s areas of interest. Please contact us for further information on the advantages of donating your materials. Kegley staff members are not in a position to evaluation donated materials to determine their value for tax purposes.
F.B. Kegley Library 