The Maryland Historical Trust recently announced the awarding of $300,000 to nine non-profit organizations and local municipalities to support the work of preservation research, updating architectural surveys and historical contexts, as well as, mapping, planning, and archaeology projects.
The Maryland Historical Trust receives a yearly appropriation from the state to oversee a variety of programs and regulatory functions, including: administering grant funding, overseeing the state office of historic research and survey, reviewing federal and state actions and projects that could have an impact on historic resources, and administering the state’s archaeology program and managing the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory.
The Non-Capital Grant is one of several incentive programs administered by the Maryland Historical Trust. The goal of the Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grants Program is to identify, document, and preserve buildings, communities, and sites of historical and cultural importance to the State of Maryland. Projects that support and encourage research, survey, planning and educational activities involving architectural, archeological and cultural resources are eligible for the Non-Capital Grant Program.
In this latest round, MHT received over $1 million dollars in Non-Capital grant requests this year and awarded nine grants totaling $300,000 to Maryland nonprofit organizations and local jurisdictions. Preservation Maryland is pleased to share the following information about each grant-funded project; adapted from the original announcement available on the Maryland Historical Trust blog.
Funded Non-Capital Projects
University of Delaware
Regional Project
$48,800 grant awarded
The project includes a cultural resource survey to document dairy farms and their associated farm structures in Carroll, Cecil, and Frederick counties, as well as the preparation of three brief historic contexts. The work is designed to be the first of a multi-year, statewide project to survey these threatened historic resources.
The John M. and Sara R. Walton Foundation, Inc.
Prince George’s County
$55,000 grant awarded
The project will create a preservation plan for the main house at Poplar Hill on His Lordship’s Kindness and some of its most important outbuildings, including the smokehouse, dairy, slave infirmary, privy, pigeon cote, corn crib, garage/chauffeur’s apartment, and granary.
City of Frederick
Frederick County
$22,000 grant awarded
This project entails revising and updating the Frederick Historic District National Register Nomination from 1988, including a detailed and inclusive historic context to meet current standards to address the topics of African Americans, women, workers, immigrants, and LGBTQ histories. The project also involves re-evaluating the existing boundaries with justifications, establishing a period of significance, preparing a contributing/noncontributing map and corresponding list, and updated photography.
Somerset County Historical Trust, Inc.
Somerset and Dorchester Counties
$55,000 grant awarded
Project work includes the completion of a historic sites survey for threatened resources in Dorchester and Somerset counties.
The Archeological Society of Maryland, Inc.
Location Undetermined
$15,000 grant awarded
This proposal will partially fund the 2020 Field Session in Maryland Archeology at an as-yet-undetermined site in the spring of 2020. The field session provides a hands-on opportunity for laypersons to learn archeological methods under the direction of professional archeologists.
Chesapeake Bay Watershed Archeological Foundation, Inc.
Queen Anne’s County
$30,000 grant awarded
Pedestrian shoreline and plowed field archeological surveys, shovel testing, excavations, and remote sensing investigations will be carried out on Parsons Island in Queen Anne’s County. Parsons Island is currently eroding at a rate of approximately 1 acre per year. A geoarchaeological assessment of the island’s exposed shorelines will also be completed, and all data will be incorporated into a monograph on the island’s disappearing cultural resources.
Anne Arundel County
Regional ProjecT
$37,000 grant awarded
Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Division proposes a one-year archeological project to enhance the existing stewardship of the Robert Ogle collection. The collection, donated to the county in 2009, includes annotated quad maps, detailed notebooks, and photographs linking the collections to sites in Maryland. Many of Ogle’s sites do not survive, so the collection is the last record of these cultural resources. Funds will be used for the professional curation, processing, and cataloging of the collection, as well as to update Maryland Archeological Site Survey Forms and to produce a final report.
Baltimore Heritage, Inc.
City of Baltimore
$21,200 grant awarded
Project involves conducting a survey of African American heritage sites in the Old West Baltimore National Register District, resulting in new or expanded Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) forms.
Town of Perryville
Cecil County
$16,000 grant awarded
This project will involve using non-invasive archeological survey techniques to determine the presence or absence of outbuildings that supported the operation of Rodgers Tavern and the Susquehanna Lower Ferry. In addition, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database will be built for managing previously-collected archeological information, existing utility locations, anticipated construction, and the generation of new maps and analyses.