MAB Receives Third NEH Grant

Posted April 9, 2018 in General

MAB Receives Third NEH Grant

The Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA, has been selected once again to receive a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant. This grant supports the Eastern West Indies Records Preservation and Digitization Project. The grant was awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), in Washington, DC, and was announced today.

The NEH, created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities.

Our project was one of 199 humanities projects nationwide selected  to receive funding. The Moravian Archives was awarded the amount of $196,000, which will be used to conserve and digitize seven volumes of records, originating from Moravian missions on the Caribbean islands of St. Croix and Antigua. Spanning the years 1744 to 1891, these records were previously assessed by conservators and historians to be in the most critical condition.

This funding will continue the work made possible by a previous NEH grant awarded to the Archives in 2015. The NEH Grant awarded to the Archives in 2015 enabled us to assess over 120 linear feet of records from the Moravian Church in the Eastern West Indies, housed at the Bethlehem Archives originally transferred in the 1960s. This assessment surveyed the damage the collection suffered from harsh tropical climates and enabled us to prioritize the conservation and preservation needs and, digitization of these materials.