PENOLA A Caroline County man is donating a collection of early Virginia histories, genealogies and manuscripts to the county library.

The collection contains more than 3,000 volumes and is so extensive it took Herbert R. Collins three single-spaced typewritten pages just to summarize it in the letter he wrote to propose the gift.

"Many times, instead of going out to dinner, I bought a book with [the money]," Collins said.

The collection includes a first edition of Caroline resident Robert Beverley's "The History and Present State of Virginia," published in 1705, and every other history of Virginia, Collins said, "beginning with Captain John Smith," whose published works began appearing in the late 1600s.

"You couldn't put that collection together today," Collins, 75, said as he turned the leather cover of an old book the color of a tobacco leaf to the title page of "A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution in 13 Discourses."

The book was published in 1797 by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher of Old Mount Church in Caroline. Boucher left the county for England to protest the Revolution but had a change of heart in England after reassessing his loyalties.

"He dedicated the book to George Washington," he said.

The collection includes books of all known Caroline authors; all known published death, marriage and cemetery records in the county; military records; census records; and diaries and travel journals pertaining to Caroline, Collins said.

Included are file drawers full of records, microfilm and photographs. Books include volumes on the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, who completed five paintings and his memoirs during two years in Caroline during World War II as the guest of a wealthy heiress.

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Collins lives in the house he was born in -- the 292-year-old Green Falls, which commands a sweeping view of the forested Mattaponi River valley. He retired years ago as curator-in-charge of the Smithsonian Institution's division of political history. He is a curator emeritus with the Smithsonian and has devoted a lifetime to collecting antiques and historic preservation.

"I was rocked in an antique cradle, so I started out that way," he said.

"He's just a special person," said Kay Brooks, director of the Caroline Library, about a mile down U.S. 301 from Bowling Green. The library will house Collins' collection.

"Some of these books are one-of-a-kind. The collection will be a wonderful resource," she said.

County Administrator Percy Ashcraft said the Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Collins last week accepting the gift. "We're proud of our history, and we know there is no one who has helped preserve it any more than Herb Collins," Ashcraft said.

The board asked Collins to give it until Aug. 31 to move the vast collection into the county library, where it can be maintained in a secure room with limited access.

Judging by its description, Collins' library "is quite an extraordinary collection," said Bob Strohm, executive vice president and rare book librarian at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

Strohm said he has never seen the collection and didn't know it existed until a reporter interviewed him. "It's remarkable to have something that absolutely pinpointed" to a particular county "and also be very, very deep," Strohm said. "I'm sure there's probably very few like it for other counties."

While he couldn't assess the total value of the collection, some volumes could be worth as much as $10,000, Collins said. He deliberately set out to collect everything he could find that had ever been written in or about Caroline "so anyone doing research on Caroline County could go to one collection and get it all."
Contact Lawrence Latané III at (804) 333-3461 or llatane@timesdispatch.com.