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

FAIN: PW-277535-21

American Congregational Association (Boston, MA 02108-3704)
James F. Cooper (Project Director: July 2020 to July 2021)
Helen Gelinas (Project Director: July 2021 to January 2023)
Tricia Peone (Project Director: January 2023 to April 2025)

Digitization of approximately 18,000 pages of early American church records and associated documents from five institutions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, as well as the development of transcription technologies and workflows.

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 and 2018) 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.

Associated Products

New England's Hidden Histories (Database/Archive/Digital Edition)
Title: New England's Hidden Histories
Author: Congregational Library & Archives
Abstract: New England’s Hidden Histories is a digital project of the Congregational Library & Archives that digitizes and provides access to early New England Congregational church records. The project comprises an online collection of manuscript Congregational church records from approximately 1620 to 1850, which includes letters, sermons, diaries, conversion narratives (relations of faith), church disciplinary cases, account books, as well as lists of baptisms, members, marriages, and deaths. These valuable, but often overlooked, documents provide firsthand accounts of a broad range of community events, from ecclesiastical councils and town meetings to witch trials and revolutionary debates.
Year: 2005
Primary URL: http://www.congregationallibrary.org/nehh/main
Primary URL Description: Main webpage for the New England's hidden histories project. The project's digital archive is access from this page.
Secondary URL: http://congregationallibrary.quartexcollections.com/projects/new-englands-hidden-histories
Secondary URL Description: Direct link to the project's digital archive.
Access Model: open access

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