The Delaware Industrial History Initiative (DIHI) is under way. The goal of DIHI is to document--digitally--Delawareans' experiences with industrialization and industrial decline. DHF has made grants available for such digitization projects, supported in part by the "We the People" program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The following project was granted funding by DHF in 2010:

Grantee and Project Name:

• Lewes Historical Society, Digitizing Records of the Lewes Maritime Industries

Purpose:

The Lewes Historical Society's project focuses on the town's maritime history. The Society is digitizing and making accessible online the records of industries that provided livelihoods for hundreds of people in the Cape Henlopen region and played an important role in our nation's development. Lewes' once thriving shipbuilding industry dates back to at least 1683, and the Society is fortunate to have written records, diaries, and photographs from employers and employees in maritime industries that were, and, in some cases, still are, located at the mouth of the Delaware Bay. Some of the materials targeted for digitization tell the stories of: Cato Lewis, who learned the shipbuilding trade as a slave and went on to found one of the first African-American-owned shipyards; Otis Smith's Fish Products Company, a menhaden fishery (menhaden is a fish used for fishmeal and fed to poultry, farmed salmon, etc.) that maintained facilities from Canada to South America and operated in Lewes until 1966; the Life-Saving Station Service, forerunner of the Coast Guard, which rescued hundreds of mariners during the blizzard of 1888; and, the Pilots' Association for the Bay & River Delaware, founded in 1896 in Lewes, which guided ships upriver to Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Trenton.

Technological Elements:

• Online records

Target Population:

• General public
• All DIHI projects, ideally, will be integrated in school and university curricula (not only as a source for teachers, but also as the product of student assignments, e.g., oral histories)
  
  

For more information on the Delaware Industrial History Initiative, click here or contact Program Officer Catherine Homsey at (302) 657-0650 ext. 14.