Schlesinger Library awarded $150,000 to digitize Blackwell collections

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study today announces the launch of a new Blackwell Family digitization project supported by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The $150,000 grant funds a two-year project to digitize five Blackwell Family collections, which span from 1784 to 1981 and detail the activities of members of the Blackwell family, who were leaders in abolition, prohibition, health care, women’s suffrage, and education.

“We are grateful to receive this grant from the NHPRC to digitize our archival collections of the Blackwell Family, who were leaders of historical importance in the social reform movements from the 18th to the 20th centuries. This digitization project helps bring the library’s holdings on the lives and work of women in America to researchers and the public in new online formats,” said Marilyn Dunn, executive director of the Schlesinger Library and librarian of the Radcliffe Institute.

The grant enables the Schlesinger Library to digitize nearly 190,000 pages of the Blackwell Family collection, featuring correspondence, diaries, financial records, photographs, drawings, writings, and other papers of four generations of the U.S. branch of the family, assembled by George Washington Blackwell and his descendants.