National Archives Grants -- May 2021
PUBLISHING HISTORICAL RECORDS
For projects to publish documentary editions of historical records.
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Mahwah, NJ
$160,000 to support the Jane Addams Papers, American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. Project staff will advance work on the digital edition, digitizing, transcribing and proofreading documents for the years 1925-1927. Project staff will also continue annotation work and drafting for Volume 4 (1901-1913) of the print edition. (PE-103145-21)
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
$160,000 to support the Papers of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. Project staff will complete final proofing and indexing of Volume 12 (1834) and advance editorial work on Volume 13 (1835). (PE-103146-21)
Cumberland University
Lebanon, TN
$149,968 to support the Papers of Martin Van Buren, eighth president of the United States. Project staff will publish all Series 4 documents to the website, advance editorial work on Series 6 and Series 12 documents, and complete 50 percent of annotation for Volume 2 of the print edition. (PE-103147-21)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$160,000 to support the Papers of George Washington, first president of the United States. Project staff will publish Volumes 29 and 30 of the Revolutionary War Series; advance editorial work on volumes 31-34, and add all content from Volumes 28 and 29 (along with 40 newly-found documents) to its University of Virginia Press/Rotunda online edition and to Founders Online. (PE-103157-21)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$160,000 to support the Papers of James Madison, fourth president of the United States. Project staff will publish Volume 12 and advance editorial work on Volumes 13 and 14 of the Secretary of State Series. Editors also will complete the manuscript for Volume 4 and continue editorial work on Volume 5 of the Retirement Series. (PE-103159-21)
University of Maryland
College Park, MD
$160,000 to support the Freedmen and Southern Society Project on the history of emancipation. Project staff will advance final pre-publication work for Volume 7 (Law and Justice), advance editorial work for Volume 8 (Family and Kinship), commence work on the final Volume 9 (School, Church, and Community) and add a selection of annotated documents to its website. (PE-103162-21)
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ
$129,391 to support the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States. Project staff will submit Volume 45 for inclusion in the Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition and in Founders Online, publish print Volume 46, complete and submit the manuscript for Volume 47, advance editorial work on three additional volumes (48-50), add additional materials and visualization elements to its freely-accessible online edition of Jefferson’s Meteorological Records, and plan for the development of a unified Early American Weather Records resource. (PE-103163-21)
University of Southern Mississippi
Hattiesburg, MS
$108,925 to support the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Digital Documentary Edition. This edition will ultimately contain nearly 20,000 documents sent and received by the Mississippi governors from late 1859 to early 1882. Project staff will complete all editorial work on an additional 1,700 documents. (PE-103167-21)
Villanova University
Villanova, PA
$87,500 to support Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, a collection of “Information Wanted” advertisements taken out by former slaves in African American newspapers from the early years after emancipation in 1865 through the early 20th century to assist with their ongoing search for lost family members. Project staff will identify, image, assign metadata for, transcribe, verify, and publish to the project’s website an additional 1,050 new advertisements. The project will complete all remaining work for its website redesign and expand its education resources. (PE-103168-21)
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA
$119,439 to support “Fame and Infamy: Walt Whitman’s Correspondence, 1888-1892,” bringing together for the first time all incoming and outgoing correspondence from the poet. Project staff will transcribe, annotate, and publish to the Walt Whitman Archive a final set of 450 letters, concluding the project’s work on Whitman’s incoming and outgoing correspondence for the final years of his life. (PE-103178-21)
Indiana University
Indianapolis, IN
$123,127 to edit the Frederick Douglass Papers, a national leader of the abolitionist movement. Project staff will complete final production steps for Volume 3 of the Correspondence Series and advance editorial work on Volumes 4 and 5 of that same series, as well as Volume 2 of the Journalism and Other Writings Series; and complete Phase Three of the ongoing digital edition migration to a new web platform, including an additional 500 documents. (PE-103180-21)
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC
$110,000 to edit and publish the Pinckney Statesmen of South Carolina digital edition. The completed four-volume “born-digital” edition will include an estimated 3,000 fully transcribed and annotated documents (selected from a universe of 10,000 documents) related to the brothers Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, and their cousin, Charles Pinckney, for the period 1769-1828. Project staff will complete all remaining editorial work and publish the final Volume 4 (1812-1828) of the digital edition and complete all remaining acquisitions and editorial work proposed for addenda and calendared documents related to both the Pinckney-Horry digital edition (originally published in 2012) and the Pinckney Statesmen. (PE-103181-21)
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Piscataway, NJ
$160,000 to support the Thomas A. Edison Papers, noted American inventor and entrepreneur. Project staff will continue its editorial work on the Edison General File for the years 1926-1929; complete the processing and uploading of 119,000 images for the image edition; enhance usability of Edison’s notebooks; and implement plans for crowdsourced transcription. For the book edition, project staff will continue to edit documents for Volume 10 (Jan. 1890 – Jun. 1892), and continue selection of documents and rough transcriptions for Volume 11 (Jul. 1892 – Dec. 1898). (PE-103185-21)
Stanford University
Stanford, CA
$160,000 to support the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers, a national leader in civil rights. Project staff will advance editorial work on Volume 8 (Sept. 1962 – Dec. 1963), continue Volume 9 (1964) accessioning work, and continue research in the digital collections of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library. (PE-103187-21)
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation
Springfield, IL
$94,775 to support the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States. Project staff will complete all editorial work on and publish an additional 450 documents in the Campaign Digital Edition of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln Digital Library. (PE-103192-21)
University of West Florida
Pensacola, FL
$87,500 to support the Papers of Roger Taney: A Digital Documentary Edition. Project editors are developing a free, publicly accessible, annotated, 9-volume digital edition of the personal and professional papers of jurist and Fifth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. During the proposed grant year, project staff will advance editorial work on Volume 1: The Bank War; accession 750 documents; and transcribe 1,000 manuscript pages. (PE103196-21)
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
$103,575 to support the John Dickinson Writings Project, which is editing and publishing The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, the “Penman of the American Revolution.” Project editors will complete all remaining pre-publication work for Volume 3 (1764-1766) and bring the manuscript for Volume 4 (1767-1769) to near completion. (PE103197-21)
ACCESS TO HISTORICAL RECORDS: ARCHIVAL PROJECTS
For projects that ensure online public discovery and use of historical records collections.
Delaware Public Archives
Dover, DE
$22,865 to support a project to digitize approximately 36 cubic feet of its Early Legislative Papers Collection dating from 1731 to 1860. The bulk of the collection covers the period from 1776 to 1792. (RH-103151-21)
Science History Institute
Philadelphia, PA
$132,875 to support Science, War and Exile: Oral Histories of Immigration and Innovation, a project to increase access to 350 hours of oral histories with 70 scientists who immigrated to the United States. Using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer tool, the Institute will add these interviews to its online digital collections. (RH-103153-21)
University of Georgia Research Foundation
Athens, GA
$81,727 to support a project to digitize and enhance the descriptive information for the correspondence and speeches of novelist, writer, and civil rights activist Lillian Smith housed at both the University of Georgia and the University of Florida. The collections total 37.5 linear feet and will be made available through the Digital Library of Georgia and the Digital Public Library of America. (RH-103156-21)
Seton Hall University
South Orange, NJ
$35,342 to support a project to process collections of papers of five pathbreaking New Jersey politicians: Arthur A. Quinn (1856-1957), state legislator and labor leader, Bernard Michael Shanley (1903-1992) who served on the White House staff during the Eisenhower Administration, Richard Joseph Hughes (1909-1992), New Jersey’s first Catholic governor (1962-1970), Brendan Byrne (1924-2018), governor of New Jersey from 1974 to 1982, and Donald Payne (1934-2012), first African American member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey (1989-2012). (RH-103158-21)
University of North Texas
Denton, TX
$126,989 to support a project to digitize 1,804 hours of audio-visual material from The Black Academy of Arts and Letters and transcribe 250 hours of speeches, lectures and literary readings drawn from African, African American and Caribbean arts and letters recorded between 1977 and 2013. (RH-103177-21)
Research Foundation of CUNY on behalf of Brooklyn College
New York, NY
$150,000 to support a project to catalog and digitize 62 hours of film footage from A Life Apart, a documentary related to Hasidism in America, 1992-1996. The unused footage serves as audiovisual field notes on the religious practices, cultural mores, communal organization, family life, inter-communal relations, and the Americanization of a distinctive immigrant community from the end of WWII to the last decade of the 20th century. (RH-103183-21)
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Inc.
Indianapolis, IN
$95,700 to process 482 cubic feet and create finding aids of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s administrative records from the director’s office and other museum departments, 1883-2017. (RH-103184-21)
Maryland State Archives
Annapolis, MD
$50,056 to support a project to digitize 18,000+ documents, dating from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century, that make up the alienated government records found in the Maryland State Papers collected by John Thomas Scharf (1843 -1898). As a member of the Maryland Historical Society, Scharf sought out and collected historical records from around the state, often rescuing them from certain loss and destruction. (RH-103188-21)
City of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
$133,934 to support a two-year project to enhance discoverability and access to City of Pittsburgh archival collections, including City Council records, Board of Viewers’ case files, and City Planning Department records. The project will arrange, describe, and rehouse seven collections totaling approximately 750 cubic feet that document the period 1816 to 2006. (RH-103189-21)
Union College
Schenectady, NY
$149,710 to support a project to enhance the current finding aid and online access for the John Bigelow Collection. Bigelow (1817-1911) had a distinguished career as an author, abolitionist, newspaper editor, diplomat, and influential public servant. He served as Consul General at Paris (1861-65) and Minister to France (1865), was co-owner and co-editor with William Cullen Bryant of the New York Evening Post, and was a founder and the first president of the New York Public Library. (RH-103198-21)
University of Colorado, Boulder
Boulder, CO
$116,916 to support a project to digitize approximately 192,700 pages of 3,854 silent film scores from Grauman’s Theatres. The collection includes complete sets of photoplay music and performance parts for full orchestra with performers’ and theater managers’ markings and indicia that provide information about the way this body of music was used to accompany silent movies, from 1912 to 1929. (RH-103202-21)
Rhode Island Historical Society
Providence, RI
$41,939 to support Brave, Enterprising Spirits: Documenting Rhode Island Soldiers in the American Revolution, which will digitize and make available approximately 6,400 pages of Revolutionary War regimental and Providence Hospital records from 1775 to 1783. (RH-103203-21)
University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
$149,814 to support a project to digitize and provide access to approximately 68,000 pages from the papers of five women who were pioneers in behavioral developmental pediatrics: Dr. Hulda Thelander, Dr. Helen Gofman, Dr. Selma Fraiberg, Dr. Leona Mayer Bayer, and Ms. Carol Hardgrove. (RH-103206-21)
Musical Arts Association
Cleveland, OH
$62,250 to support a project to digitize approximately 192,000 pages of program books dating from 1918 to 2009 that document performances by the Cleveland Orchestra and provide online access to 6,400 program books on the orchestra’s website. (RH-103208-21)
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
For projects that encourage public engagement with historical records.
Tennessee State Library and Archives
Nashville, TN
$150,000 to support Creating Classroom Engagement with Tennessee’s Historical Records, a project designed to facilitate opportunities for teachers and students in Tennessee to engage with historical records drawn from the collections of the Tennessee State Library and Archives through series of teacher workshops and webinars, and through expansion of the DocsBox program, which provides hands-on original and reproduction materials and historical primary sources to support Tennessee social studies curriculum standards. (DP-103182-21)
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, LA
$149,700 to support Freedom on the Move in New Orleans: Teaching and Learning the Hard History of Slavery in K-12. This project will create a curriculum to help students engage with the historical records in a database of advertisements seeking escaped people. Following instruction in the classroom, students will explore New Orleans and the region to visualize the social, spatial, and cultural histories of enslaved people. Students will then develop public-facing projects, including maps, visual art, and spoken word, and digital and video pieces. (DP103190-21)