Without the cooperation of Miss Loretto Chappell, the Columbus College Archives would not have started when it did. When asked about creating an archives in the new library, Columbus College President T. W. Whitley simply said, "Go talk to Miss Chappell. If she approves, she has enough material to fill an archives." She understood the function of an archives. Not only was she a professional librarian, but she had known J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton during the 1920's. He was the pioneering archivist in the South, having collected the initial materials for the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Miss Chappell was thrilled by the prospect of an archives at Columbus College; here finally was a suitable place to preserve her grandfather's library. The irony is that most archives would not want books, but the Columbus College Archives could not have had a better initial donor. She gave the facility instant credibility. Her donation was front page news complete with a color picture in the Sunday Ledger-Enquirer. Her trust in the College Archives convinced others to give materials. She played an important role in acquiring other early collections, especially that of Louise Gunby Jones Dubose.

Miss Loretto's grandfather, Absalom H. Chappell (1804-1878), a lawyer, historian, and politician was born in 1804 in Hancock County, Georgia. Admitted to the bar in 1821, he lived in Sandersville (1821-26), Macon (1836-58), and Columbus (1858-78). He served as a trustee for the state university (then Franklin College of the University of Georgia), a state legislator and a senator, and in the U.S. Congress as a Whig (1843-44). In Columbus, he retired from active public life and planned to open a law school. He purchased Glen Lora, alarge house near town. As remembered by Miss Loretto Chappel, Glen Lora "was almost filled, upstairs & downstairs, with books. They never threw away a book. Even magazines, if they were good magazines, were saved by my grandfather. They were all there. I had them bound so they would look neater." Among them were A.H. Chappel's classic law books which he had planned to use in his law school, but which never materialized. He would write Miscellanies of Georgia at Glen Lora in the 1870s. A.H. Chappel's wife was Loretto Rebecca Lamar, the sister of Mirabeau Lamar who started the Columbus Enquirer in 1828 before moving to Texas and becoming the Republic's second president. One of A. H. Chappell's sons, J. Harris Chappel, became the first president of Georgia Normal & Industrial College for Women, now Georgia College in Milledgeville. Another son, L.H. Chappell, served as mayor of Columbus for 12 years, as one of the city's most progressive chief executives. His daughter, Loretto Lamar Chappell (1895-1987), perhaps because of her grandfather's books, was a bibliophile and became the city's best know librarian.