When the First Baptist Church in Gainsboro burned in 1995, a local architect wanted to save the ruins -- four walls and the tower. Edward W. Barnett was an architect by profession, but his passion was preserving history.

Barnett, of Fincastle, died Friday, leaving behind a meticulous collection of notes and documents preserving the history of black communities in Roanoke and Botetourt County. He was 59.

Friends said he had been ill for a while. His family declined to give a cause of death.

"Although his physical presence is no longer here, his desire to protect and preserve quality architecture and black historical contributions will always be with us," Evelyn Bethel, president of the Historic Gainsboro Preservation District, said Monday evening. "His talent was greatly appreciated by some -- by most -- but the economic rewards were not as great as they should have been."

After serving in the Peace Corps and attending the University of Virginia School of Architecture and Harvard School of Design, Barnett eventually started his own architectural firm, Barnett Co., in the Roanoke Valley, where he had grown up.

Churches and other places of worship often made the to-do list for his firm. A report for the Georgia Episcopal Camp & Conference Center prompted Savannah's Episcopal Bishop of Georgia, H.W. Shipps, to write that the work was "splendid!" according to a note Shipps sent to Barnett in 1985.

Barnett's extensive document collections were still at his home when he died. He lived with his sister, Judy, 64, in the house their family had built.

"We're going to have to go through historical documents," she said, unsure of the extent of the records her brother kept -- he was a quiet man. She listed what she could remember in the personal archives: papers, notebooks, pictures on his laptop, census records -- some dating back well into the 1800s, she guessed.

John Kern, director of the Roanoke office of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, said he'd like to see those documents, too.

"He was very generous, and he photocopied for me things that he had researched," Kern said. What the Roanoke Regional Preservation Office has of Barnett's work is "just the tip of the iceberg," he added.

Much of Barnett's research delved into the history of Roanoke's Gainsboro neighborhood and the work of Oscar Micheaux, the first black man to direct a feature film. Barnett was instrumental in working with Kern to get a memorial plaque for Micheaux on Henry Street.

"He's done more than I know about," Kern said. "He was the institutional memory of Gainsboro."