Historic Huguenot Street Awarded $349,956 from the National Endowment for the Humanities

(April 25, 2024)

I Love NY

Just as Historic Huguenot Street (HHS) wraps up a major three-year project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to conserve and digitize over 24,000 pages of New Paltz’s earliest documents, they received notification of a second grant of $349,956 from the federal agency to expand and complete the ambitious project. The additional funding will extend the project from the mid-1600s through the second half of the 19th century, encompassing another 18,500 pages from the HHS Archives, Haviland-Heidgerd Historical Collection at Elting Memorial Library, Town of New Paltz, and Reformed Church of New Paltz.

The documents being digitized convey countless overlapping references to diverse groups of people (including Indigenous and people of European and African descent), as well as places and significant events, including the U.S. Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Renowned historian and Yale Professor Emeritus Jon Butler has said, “Above all, [these documents] continue to reveal the chewy complexity of life in and around New Paltz and the Hudson Valley…these are wonderfully rich materials detailing two-plus centuries in the lives of women and men in a fascinating rural-town community…”