National Trust for Historic Preservation (Drayton Hall)

Purpose: Expanding Educational Services Drayton Hall, a National Trust historic site, will use the funding to make accessible to multiple audiences a nationally significant, and as yet largely untapped, collection of documents, drawings, and photographs that tell a story of our nation's history and culture. The Drayton Hall is one of the oldest unrestored plantations in the nation and is home to the Drayton Papers Collection. This collection contains plantation records, correspondence, essays, notes on various subjects, slave lists, architectural drawings, plats, wills, deeds, sketches, and photographs dating approximately from 1700 to 1900. This project will add some 1,000 historical photographs relating to Drayton Hall since the mid-19th century to the museum's digital database, provide searchable keywording for both the Drayton papers and the historic photos, provide archival storage for the historic photo collection, and expand the distribution and use of the collection through the Internet and other technologies.