Digitizing AHI Archives to Improve Accessibility

FAIN: ZDH-283437-22

New Deal Homestead Museum (Arthurdale, WV 26520-1113)
Jeanne Goodman (Project Director: May 2021 to January 2024)

The hiring of a collections and outreach administrator to make the its archives more accessible and create educational films about the history of Arthurdale, a planned community built during the Great Depression.

Arthurdale Heritage Inc. (AHI) was formed in 1984 to save its central buildings and to collect photographs, family stories, documents, and objects made and/or used there. Dedicated in 1934, Arthurdale was the first Depression built community by Franklin Roosevelt’s administration to help the unemployed. Eleanor Roosevelt was deeply interested in its success and visited over 30 times. We are slowly growing our digital outreach but are limited by our inability to pay for supplies and to hire someone with that focus. This grant allows us to buy the supplies, hire a professional to make videos about homestead families, and share their stories with the world. Some videos will tell stories suitable for classrooms. Stories about the lives of children in the 1930s and 1940s help students relate to those times. Others will cover coal mining, handicrafts, and rural life. They will be used on-site and on-line. All will make the period come alive for people today.