Albert Wardin - Primitive Baptist Library

I mentioned Albert W. Wardin, Jr. in the thread about state history books. I also would like to mention something of his work that will be continually beneficial to Baptist historical research.

Dr. Wardin secured a collection of Primitive Baptist materials of Elder S. A. Tolley of Atwood, TN for the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives in Nashville. I was concerned about what might happen to the vast amount of material Eld. Tolley had collected. According to one source, the collection contains over 11,000 associational minutes, 14,000 periodicals, and 1,500 books and pamphlets. Some of the materials date back to the 1700s.

Of course, it could have been better if the materials had wound up here in Texas.....

 

James, I can understand your concern. But actually this makes it accessible to many many people. My greater concern was that Eld. Tolley's materials might get lost in the shuffle, so to speak.

All of us who are collecting documents of Baptist history should make some preparations to see that our collections are preserved, whether it is in a SB library, a PB library, or even the public library. I have a number of things that are "valuable" to me, and possibly to later researchers, which might be relatively meaningless to my children or grandchildren (which I don't have yet!). Of course, I hope they will be interested, but that remains to be seen.

Besides, James, the Southern Baptists need to be reading some Primitive Baptist documents. They just might learn something!

 

Bro. James, I found this article online:
SBC library names research room for history prof Albert Wardin

The practical to your question "why the Southern Baptists wound up getting" these historical is that perhaps Albert Wardin saw their value and importance and made an effort to obtain them. I wonder if Elder Webb tried to get the materials?