Preserving and Digitizing the Historic Documents of a Colonial Hudson Valley community: New Paltz, New York (Implementation)

FAIN: PW-277485-21

Huguenot Historical Society (New Paltz, NY 12561-1415)
Josephine Bloodgood (Project Director: July 2020 to April 2025)

Cataloguing, conservation, and digitization of four collections from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century: the Huguenot Historic Street Archives; the New Paltz Town Records; Records of the Reformed Church; and genealogical records of the mid-Hudson Valley. Online access to the collections would be available through NYHeritage.org and a stand-alone project website.

Historic Huguenot Street seeks funding to implement the preservation and digitization of significant historical documents from its own archival collections, as well as portions from the Town of New Paltz, the Dutch Reformed Church of New Paltz, and the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at the Elting Memorial Library. The proposed project consists of early-American documents ranging from the mid-1600s to 1830 (the latter date encompassing the point at which most enslaved people in New York State were legally emancipated). The grant would fund: 1) cataloguing and metadata creation, 2) preservation, as needed, by a team of trained conservators, 3) digital imaging, and 4) making these digital collections available online. The project is based on planning documents developed under an NEH Humanities Collections and References Resources (HCRR) Foundations grant (2018-2020).

Associated Products

New Paltz Historic Documents on NYHeritage.org (Web Resource)
Title: New Paltz Historic Documents on NYHeritage.org
Author: Historic Huguenot Street
Abstract: The New Paltz Historic Document Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a collaboration between four New Paltz institutions with collections of historical documents: Historic Huguenot Street, the Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at Elting Memorial Library, the Town of New Paltz, and the Reformed Church of New Paltz. 3,729 items totaling over 24,000 pages have been uploaded as part of Phase 1 of this project (2021-2024).
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://nyheritage.org/collections/new-paltz-historic-documents

New Paltz Historic Documents Project website (Web Resource)
Title: New Paltz Historic Documents Project website
Author: Historic Huguenot Street
Abstract: A website intended to promote the project and to provide tips and video tutorial on how to search and browse the collections at https://nyheritage.org/collections/new-paltz-historic-documents
Year: 2024
Primary URL: http://www.newpaltzhistory.org

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