New England's Hidden Histories: Providing Access to Founding Documents of American Democracy

FAIN: PW-259029-18

American Congregational Association (Boston, MA 02108-3704)
Margaret L. Bendroth (Project Director: July 2017 to October 2019)
James F. Cooper (Project Director: October 2019 to present)

The addition of at least 18,000 pages, finding aids, and select transcriptions to the New England’s Hidden Histories collection of early New England church records.

New England's Hidden Histories is a program, sponsored by the Congregational Library and Archives, to collect and display on its website all extant seventeenth- and eighteenth-century church records of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine as well as supporting ecclesiastical papers—diaries, synod records, sermons, etc. We propose to continue and expand ongoing efforts (funded by NEH in 2015) to create a minimum of 18,000 new digital scans over the course of three years, along with finding aids and other tools (including transcriptions). We intend to expand our geographic scope to regions, like Maine, that are historically under-documented, and to strategically extend partnerships with like-minded institutions that embrace our mission and are eager to do their part to move it forward.