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Historic New England awards six Community Preservation Grants

Nov 3, 2023

Each year, Historic New England awards one Herbert and Louise Whitney Fund Community Preservation Grant to a small to medium-size heritage preservation organization in each New England state.

Historic New England is committed to telling the whole story of the region’s history. These grants support projects that save and expand the stories shared in our communities. This year, Historic New England awarded grants of $1,250 to the following six organizations.

Connecticut

New England Civil War Museum

The grant will be used to research and fabricate interpretive panels on the experience and successes of the 29th CT Infantry. This all-black regiment was key to many Union victories and operations, and other minority units during the war, correcting a narrative that has mostly ignored them. The museum will also seek research material on these Connecticut units to create a resource for visiting researchers.

Maine

Maine Museum of Innovation, Learning and Labor

This grant will be used to print labels and signage, and supply materials for the museum’s 2024 exhibition Labor – The Visible and the Unseen. The exhibition expands upon conversations and relates to the current exhibition Who We Are/Who Are We which explores immigration and identity. The 2024 exhibit will feature local stories, explore different kinds of labor and laborers, and investigate how habits of perception influence our attitudes about labor.

Massachusetts

Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum

The Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum will use this grant to translate their self-guided tour into Spanish and Portuguese and complete an app-based audio and visual accompaniment to the tour as part of a multi-year accessibility project, thus creating a more welcoming and inclusive space for New Bedford’s significant Spanish and Portuguese-speaking population.

New Hampshire

Manchester Historic Association

This funding will help the Manchester Historic Association will begin the process of listing the Samantha Plantin House, which was built by Manchester’s first Black female landowner, on the New Hampshire State Register of Historic Places. The grant money will be used to hire an architectural historian to create a building and significance study.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island Black Heritage Society

The grant will fund repairs to the only interpretive sign commemorating God’s Little Acre, the historically Black section of Newport’s Common Burial Ground. The burial ground was created in the mid-seventeenth century and contains some 3,000 memorial markers, including the largest surviving collection of markers of enslaved and free Africans from the Colonial era in the United States.

Vermont

Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village

This funding will help conserve a paper lithograph that is the showpiece of the permanent exhibition In a Different Hue: Race and Representation on display at the Old Stone House Museum and Historic Village. The exhibition discusses conflicting historical narratives, shared memory and meaning making, and racial stereotypes in Orleans County history and modern-day America.

See a list of previous recipients.

Herbert and Louise Whitney Fund for Community Preservation

The endowment fund that supports Historic New England’s Community Preservation Grants Program is named in honor of Herbert and Louise Whitney to recognize their deep appreciation and love of all things New England, in particular the Bishop family farm in North Woodstock, Connecticut.

Media Contact: Susanna Crampton, [email protected]