Lela Caldwell Adams was an historian, a woman who loved family history and researching family.  At one time she was the only person who researched genealogy and/or family history in both Henry and Patrick Counties as she helped people from across the United States find their family in these counties through correspondence.  She was interested also in the War Between the States as while researching her family she found that four great-grandfathers in her family served during the war as Confederates. 

While pouring over their adventures she acquired an incentive to find out all that she could about the Civil War.  She volunteered at the Bassett Public Library where she helped genealogy patrons in the 1970s.  Family vacations while her children, one daughter and two sons, were growing up became research trips, as the family planned trips so that Lee could visit libraries and archives. 

She spent countless hours not only at the Library of Virginia but at the archives in Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas where she had lived before her marriage to Roy Adams, a DuPont retiree and realtor. The entire family shared Lee’s interest in history and Mr. Adams has allowed her collection to be housed at the Bassett Historical Center, 36 volumes of family history.