Past Grant Project Examples
The Grant Program supports different types of projects for Network to Freedom designated Sites, Facilities, and Programs. These include work to preserve historic structures, development of new interpretive and educational programs, and creation of site wayside exhibits as well as supporting additional scholarly research on Underground Railroad History. The Grant program also makes funds available for applicants with verified Underground Railroad stories to complete new site nominations. Below are a handful of examples of successful grant projects from the last several years.
WAYSIDE SIGNAGE: Jackson Ranch Church and Martin Jackson Cemetery – Hidalgo County, Texas
This Grant Program exists to help our NTF designated partners share Underground Railroad Histories with the public. Successful projects can be as simple as creating a single wayside sign to share Underground Railroad history with visitors. Jackson Ranch Church, Inc. was awarded $2320 to create and install a sign interpreting the story of the Jackson family assisting freedom seekers fleeing southward to Mexico and crossing the Rio Grande River during the late 1850s. NTF staff additionally supported the project by helping to edit sign text and advise on graphic design.
SITE LISTING APPLICATION GRANT: William Grimes Burial Site – New Haven, Connecticut
The Grant Program also supports writing Network to Freedom nominations for new sites. The most important aspect for the success of these projects is having completed research which verifies the connection of the site to Underground Railroad history. The grant becomes support for writing the nomination.
The William Grimes Burial Site Listing Application Grant was awarded $5,000 and was very successful. William Grimes was a freedom seeker born enslaved in Virginia and after a series of sales of his person, escaped by sea from the port of Savannah,
Georgia. William Grimes lived his life in freedom in New Haven, Connecticut and published the earliest narrative of his life in 1825 with an expanded edition in 1855.
His story became the interest of his third great granddaughter, Regina Mason, a Californian. She was exceptionally well versed in her ancestor’s history, having published on the subject in 2008 with English professor William L. Andrews. Writing the application went through two drafts and then was presented and approved for listing in the Network to Freedom.
CREATIVE INTERPRETATION: Angola Maroon Community – East Bradenton, Florida
The NTF Grant Program supports telling stories of freedom seeking in many non-traditional ways. $37,700 was awarded to one of our most creative proposals to date – the creation of a comic book series! Angola’s Maroon community has a long history of freedom seeking, starting in the 1770s, runaway slaves and born free Blacks in Spanish Florida formed their own independent settlement, resisting slavery and building their own community. To share this history the stewards of the site collaborated with local artists to produce 6 amazing comic books interpreting this past. The comic books stand on their own, but together tell the dramatic saga, from enslavement to resistance, freedom, attack, and eventual safety in the Bahamas. Combining words and images makes material come alive in the imagination of readers and helps to connect this rich past with younger audiences.
DIGITAL INTERPRETATION: Button Farm Almanac Tour – Germantown, Maryland
Innovative projects to digitally engage public audiences in Underground Railroad history have also been funded by the NTF Grant program. The Menare Foundation was awarded $64,148 to create “Rooted Wisdom Walks: Button Farm Almanac Self-Guided Tour,” a digital supplement to their long-standing Underground Railroad immersion experience. The Menare Foundation worked with media consultants to create a self-guided, audio-based tour and digital application that provided visitors with a sensory experience of the landscape crossed by self-liberators. The tour utilizes a series of focused, unscripted conversations with experts discussing historical figures, artifacts, and working components of the farm captured in audio recordings, images, and hands-on activities. Local High School students also participated in the development of the tour, assisted in the scripting of tour stop introduction videos, captured photographs of the farm, and acted as production crew for the on-site recorded audio segments.
PRESERVATION and EDUCATION: Smith Chapel Cemetery – St. Charles County, Missouri
Smaller preservation projects and partner collaborations are a perfect candidate for NTF Grant awards. Smith Chapel cemetery is home to three freedom seekers: Benjamin Oglesby, Martin Boyd and Smith Boyd. The one-acre property originally included an African American church and school along with the cemetery, which holds over 100 ancestors of the local community who have lived here for generations. Over the years many of the headstones were broken and damaged with serious needs of repair. Preservation of this cemetery and its stories was desperately needed, as the descendent community was also vanishing.
The NTF Grant Program provided $16,603 to support students at St. Charles Community College led by a local historian, a cemetery preservationist and a college professor to preserve the cemetery’s headstones and its stories. As part of several
American History course, 75 students learned about the history of the cemetery, created biographies of the interred, participated in restoring the cemetery through surfacing and cleaning headstones, and recorded oral histories of the descendant community. This focused collaborative effort created an educational opportunity for students, while preserving and honoring the memory of the St. Charles County African American community.
BRICK-AND-MORTAR PRESERVATION: Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church – Burlington, Ohio Missouri
The NTF grant program has also played a role in supporting portions of larger traditional preservation projects. In 2023, the Network to Freedom awarded a grant of $100,000 to the Macedonia Restoration Project to stabilize the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church. Founded by the free-black community in the late 18 th century and believed to be the oldest black congregation West of the Appalachian Mountains, the Church itself was built in 1849. Located near the Ohio River, the congregation has a rich oral tradition and well-documented history of assisting freedom seekers to move along the Underground Railroad northward or to settle among their community.
By the 2010s, the church itself had fallen into disrepair due to neglect and water infiltration. Thanks to the concerted efforts of local preservationists at the Macedonia Restoration Project, a plan was outlined and over $370,000 in funding secured from a
variety of sources to preserve the church towards making it accessible and open to the public as a significant site along the Underground Railroad. The Network to Freedom grant provided for necessary siding, roof, and door repairs for the church.