Heritage Harbor Foundation donates $137K to nine organizations

PATRICK T. CONLEY,  president of the Heritage Harbor Foundation, said the idea behind the grants was to “increase our knowledge of R.I. history and to encourage research especially in areas which have been previously neglected.” Here he stands at his Conley's Wharf building along Allens Avenue in Providence.  / PBN FILE PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
PATRICK T. CONLEY, president of the Heritage Harbor Foundation, said the idea behind the grants was to “increase our knowledge of R.I. history and to encourage research especially in areas which have been previously neglected.” Here he stands at his Conley's Wharf building along Allens Avenue in Providence. / PBN FILE PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

PROVIDENCE – In an effort to promote and increase knowledge of Rhode Island history among the state’s residents, the Heritage Harbor Foundation donated $137,537 to nine organizations which lead projects that encourage further interest in the Ocean State’s past.

Patrick Conley, president of the Heritage Harbor Foundation, said Tuesday the idea behind the grants was to “increase our knowledge of R.I. history and to encourage research especially in areas which have been previously neglected.”

Grant recipients are as follows:

  • Save The Bay received $21,278 toward the creation of a database which chronicles the history of environmental advocacy. This project will be completed prior to 2020, the Providence-based organization’s 50th anniversary.
  • A $20,000 grant was awarded to the Newport Historical Society to help fund the documentation of the Native American legacy on Aquidneck Island.
  • Providence-based Rhode Island Council on the Humanities will use $20,000 from the Heritage Harbor Foundation to expand its app, Rhode Tour, which allows smartphone and tablet users to learn about the state’s historic sites.
  • A $20,000 grant to Warwick’s Steamship Historical Society will allow secondary students, as well as the general public, to experience Rhode Island’s maritime heritage through web-based learning.
  • A multi-touch computer table will be purchased through a $19,000 grant to the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket. This will be a new platform for visitors to view images and visual displays of mill life in Woonsocket and the Blackstone Valley.
  • Stages of Freedom received a $17,500 grant to fund an oral history project focusing on the Lippitt Hill neighborhood of Providence.
  • Adult English-language learners will learn about Rhode Island’s immigration history through a $7,220 grant to the capital city’s Lippitt House.
  • A $6,259 grant was awarded to Jamestown’s Beavertail Lighthouse Museum for the purchase and installation of advanced touch screen displays. This technology will provide a better display for visitors looking to know more about the history and technical information behind lighting, lenses and fuels used by lighthouses in Narragansett Bay between 1749 and the present.
  • With the help of a $6,300 grant, the Pawtuxet Village Association will digitize the community’s history-themed periodical, The Bridge. In addition, the association will conduct workshops and tours to introduce the public to aspects of life dating back to the era of Roger Williams and Samuel Groton that survived to present day.

Funding for the 2016 grants came from $161,000 in investment proceeds made during 2016 by the $3.6 million endowment managed by the Rhode Island Foundation, said Conley. He added that the remainder of the annual profits would be added to the $3.6 million endowment total.

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“Funds generated through investments made by the R.I. Foundation will enable us to finance numerous heritage-oriented events and activities of a lasting nature throughout the state of Rhode Island,” he said of the Heritage Harbor Foundation’s mission.

Rhode Island is one of four states in the union that does not have a museum dedicated to the state’s history and since the 1980s the Heritage Harbor Foundation has been advocating for the creation of one. Due to the economic instability of the early 2000s and the withdrawal of the organization’s development partner, Baltimore-based firm Struever, Eccles and Rouse, in 2006, the Heritage Harbor Corporation was forced to abandon its efforts to install such a museum in the Narragansett Electric South Street power station. At that point the museum had been 80 percent developed, but the corporation then switched to a foundation and began a new mission – funding projects which encourage the teaching of Rhode Island history.

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