Rhode Island Foundation: Grant Will Bring Smithfield History To Life

By Chris Barnett, the Rhode Island Foundation

PROVIDENCE, RI — A Smithfield nonprofit is among nine organizations that will receive grants for everything from documenting African American history to supporting a traveling exhibit that will detail the rich stories of the state’s immigrant communities. The funding is through the Archive, Document, Display and Disseminate (ADDD) Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation.

“By providing the resources to bolster libraries and other civic, cultural and literacy-focused organizations, we can enlarge their position as community centers that encourage dialogue around important topics,” said philanthropist Herman Rose, who created the ADDD fund in 1986. Over the years, it has awarded nearly $400,000 in grants.

The Greenville Public Library in Smithfield received funding to purchase equipment that will make it easier for patrons to access the digitized archives of the former Smithfield Observer newspaper and the Mary Mowry Collection.

“These collections are vital resources for patrons looking to learn more about their family history or reconnect with the past,” said Cassie Patterson, assistant library director.

“Because the Observer newspaper archive spans three generations, it has become a historical database of key local events and a way to trace family history, in addition to offering a native lens on events of historical significance,” she said.

“The Mary Mowry Collection contains years of her research, including notes, family trees, deeds, news clippings and other ephemera. These documents trace prominent Smithfield families back to the founding days of our town,” Patterson explained.

The primary goals of the Foundation’s ADDD fund are to increase public access to information through preserving and promoting print, digital or other material and to provide challenge grants for fundraising campaigns for the acquisition of equipment, special collections and publications among other material.

The other recipients of this year’s grants include Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island to convert its oral history project, “My Story, Our Community,” into a traveling exhibit that will be staged in every Rhode Island city and town; and Stages of Freedom to print 10,000 copies of “On the Rhode to Freedom: Black Historic Sites in Rhode Island,” a self-guided, statewide tour of upwards of 55 historic sites related to the state's African American history, people and events.

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