The Virginia Department of Historic Resources has been awarded $200,000 in maritime heritage grant funds by the National Park Service for the Maritime Trade Heritage Preservation Subgrant Program.
The funds will be used to help preserve objects and collections while educating the public about the state’s long history in maritime-based trade and the role of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color individuals and communities in that trade, said a press release.
Dr. Elizabeth Moore, Virginia State Archaeologist, described the subject as an “important and understudied aspect of Virginia’s maritime history” and said that the materials that will be preserved “can be the only evidence of the lives of people associated with them” because the targeted communities “often do not appear in documents and written histories.”
VDHR plans to award between two and 10 subgrants varying from $10,000 to $150,000 to local governments, nonprofit organizations, and tribal entities through the program, said the...