MHT Awards $300,000 in Non-Capital Grants

9 Organizations Receive Non-Capital Historic Preservation Grants

By Heather Barrett, Administrator of Research & Survey

The Maryland Historical Trust (MHT) is pleased to announce the FY 2020 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grant Program recipients. MHT received over $1 million dollars in non-capital grant requests this year and awarded nine grants totaling $300,000 to Maryland nonprofit organizations and local jurisdictions for fiscal year 2020. The funds for these grants were distributed from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority Financing Fund to MHT to support and encourage research, survey, planning and educational activities involving architectural, archeological and cultural resources.

Poplar Hill on His Lordship’s Kindness (1784-1786) is one of Maryland’s most sophisticated Palladian-influenced Georgian houses.

The goal of the Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grants Program is to identify, document, and preserve buildings, communities and sites of historical and cultural importance to the State of Maryland. MHT identified several special funding priorities for the FY 2020 grant cycle, including:  broad-based and comprehensive archeological or architectural surveys; assessment and documentation of threatened areas of the state due to impacts of natural disasters and ongoing natural processes; and projects undertaking in-depth architectural or archeological study of a specific topic, time period, or theme. This year’s grant awards ranged from $15,000 to $55,000.

The availability of fiscal year 2021 Historic Preservation Non-Capital Grants Program funds will be announced in the spring of 2020 on MHT’s website. Application deadlines and workshop dates will also be found on this page at that time.

For more information about the grant program, please contact Heather Barrett, Administrator of Research and Survey at MHT, at 410-697-9536 or heather.barrett@maryland.gov.  For information about organizations receiving grants, please contact the institutions directly.

University of Delaware – Regional Project

($48,800 grant awarded)

The project includes a cultural resource survey to document dairy farms and their associated farm structures in Carroll, Cecil, and Frederick counties, as well as the preparation of three brief historic contexts. The work is designed to be the first of a multi-year, statewide project to survey these threatened historic resources.

The upcoming preservation plan for Poplar Hill on His Lordship’s Kindness (1784-1786) will address the five-part-plan house, as well as the numerous domestic and agricultural outbuildings on the estate.

The John M. and Sara R. Walton Foundation, Inc. – Prince George’s County

($55,000 grant awarded)

The project will create a preservation plan for the main house at Poplar Hill on His Lordship’s Kindness and some of its most important outbuildings, including the smokehouse, dairy, slave infirmary, privy, pigeon cote, corn crib, garage/chauffeur’s apartment, and granary.

City of Frederick – Frederick County

($22,000 grant awarded)

This project entails revising and updating the Frederick Historic District National Register Nomination (1988), including a detailed and inclusive historic context to meet current standards to address the topics of African Americans, women, workers, immigrants, and LGBTQ histories. The project also involves re-evaluating the existing boundaries with justifications, establishing a period of significance, preparing a contributing/noncontributing map and corresponding list, and updated photography.

Somerset County Historical Trust, Inc. – Somerset and Dorchester Counties

($55,000 grant awarded)

Project work includes the completion of a historic sites survey (Phase III) for threatened resources in Dorchester and Somerset counties.

The Archeological Society of Maryland, Inc. – Location Undetermined

($15,000 grant awarded)

This proposal will partially fund the 2020 Field Session in Maryland Archeology at an as-yet undetermined site in the spring of 2020. The field session provides a hands-on opportunity for laypersons to learn archeological methods under the direction of professional archeologists.

In 2019, the annual Archeology Field Session was held at Billingsley House near Upper Marlboro in Prince George’s County. The session provides hands-on opportunities for the public to learn archeological field methods.

Chesapeake Bay Watershed Archeological Foundation, Inc. – Queen Anne’s County

($30,000 grant awarded)

Pedestrian shoreline and plowed field archeological surveys, shovel testing, excavations, and remote sensing investigations will be carried out on Parsons Island in Queen Anne’s County.  Parsons Island is currently eroding at a rate of approximately 1 acre per year.  A geoarcheological assessment of the island’s exposed shorelines will also be completed, and all data will be incorporated into a monograph on the island’s disappearing cultural resources.

Anne Arundel County – Regional Project

($37,000 grant awarded)

Anne Arundel County’s Cultural Resources Division (AACo) proposes a one-year archeological project to enhance the existing stewardship of the Robert Ogle collection. The collection (donated to the county in 2009) includes annotated quad maps, detailed notebooks, and photographs linking the collections to sites in Maryland. Many of “Ogle’s” sites do not survive, so the collection is the last record of these cultural resources. Funds will be used for the professional curation, processing, and cataloging of the collection, as well as to update Maryland Archeological Site Survey Forms and to produce a final report.

Baltimore Heritage, Inc. – City of Baltimore

($21,200 grant awarded)

Project involves conducting a survey of African American heritage sites in the Old West Baltimore National Register District, resulting in new or expanded Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) forms.

Town of Perryville – Cecil County

($16,000 grant awarded)

This project will involve using non-invasive archeological survey techniques to determine the presence or absence of outbuildings that supported the operation of Rodgers Tavern and the Susquehanna Lower Ferry. In addition, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database will be built for managing previously-collected archeological information, existing utility locations, anticipated construction, and the generation of new maps and analyses.