Digitizing Delaware’s Industrial History

The Delaware Industrial History Initiative in the Digital Humanities is under way, thanks to an initial $35,000 in program grants made available to six organizations by the Delaware Humanities Forum. The six projects, which aim to digitize images, records and other materials that document Delaware’s industrial history, will help preserve the First State’s rich heritage. Over the next year, the Delaware Humanities Forum (DHF) will pursue multiple Delaware Industrial History Initiative (DIHI) goals. They include providing financial support to these and other organizations to chronicle local industrial records digitally, serving as a clearinghouse for ideas and materials, facilitating collaboration among diverse, statewide organizations and paving the way for technological advances (exploiting Geographic Information System [GIS] technology, standardizing methods and indexing related to digitization of Delaware materials and constructing a new platform and federated search engine) that extend access to Delaware’s industrial chronicles to students, teachers, and the public.

Following are summaries of the six projects based on their proposals.

o The Hagley Library, which is currently exhibiting a digital collection on its website, has received funding for its project, “Industrial Brandywine History.” Hagley is creating the first comprehensive, web-based historical overview of industrialization along the Brandywine River by compiling out-of-print and unpublished sources, dissertations and theses, and as-yet-unused resources at Hagley and elsewhere. The end product will be a free online database of records of all known businesses along the river from the 18th to the 21st Centuries, as well as maps and graphs. This project will serve as a teaching tool, provide a foundation for future scholarship and offer a reexamination of the development of business and industry in the Brandywine Valley as it relates to larger issues of US economic history. Users will include scholars and aspiring historians seeking insight into the commercial development context that is so fundamental to our local history and heritage.

o 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.

o The Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village’s “Your Food, Our Farms: Transitions in Delaware’s Diverse Agricultural Industry” project will explore the cycle of change in the dynamic and ever-responsive agribusiness world. These changes include giant farming industries, like poultry, as well as the return to the small farms of the past in the form of U-picks, Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and small-scale cattle producers. Farming defines rural life and culture, and as food producers, farmers are forever connected to all of us as consumers. Beginning with the first settlers, agriculture has played an integral part in Delaware’s history, from the cottage industries and small farms that dominated in the past to the giant, integrated agricultural industries that rule today. A dramatic loss of open land to development and urbanization has led to significant alterations in the farming industry, with farmers adapting to changes in markets, availability of resources and consumer needs. “Your Food, Our Farms” will illustrate the history and current significance of farming through an exhibit, website and educational materials, and will preserve and relate this essential Delaware story with a digital archive.

o Berkana Center for Media and Education will record and house (at the Delaware Public Archives) Governor Russell Peterson’s oral history of the passage of Delaware’s 1981 Coastal Zone Act which stopped the industrial development of the Delaware coastline. Despite multiple attempts to weaken it over the years, this bill is still one of the strongest pieces of state-based environmental legislation in the United States, and, according to Carol Hoffecker, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware, it “remains Delaware’s greatest and most comprehensive legislative achievement towards maintaining a livable environment.” Governor Peterson, then a Republican and former DuPont research chemist, recognized the future significance of industrial development not only to Delaware’s coastline, but to the quality of life for future Delawareans. He took a stand against Shell Oil’s plans to build a heavy oil refining port in southern New Castle County that threatened to destroy open spaces. Recognizing the conflicting values of industrial development and natural habitat preservation, Peterson and a small group of committed legislators bucked the corporate legacy of Delaware and effectively pitted local landowners against area businessmen and union workers against management. Their revolutionary efforts “forced” Delawareans to address the environmental movement directly. Governor Peterson has never been interviewed on video about this topic.

o The Milford Museum will digitize more than 1,000 images and develop electronic archives of its entire photographic collection. In addition, the Museum will establish a computer station to allow the public to conduct personal research on site. The Museum plans to use the new archives as a starting point for a Milford Museum website (projected for 2011) which will in turn be linked to the Delaware Public Archives. The Museum has had limited ability to display its considerable collection of historic photos and images of Milford and the surrounding area, despite evidence of growing public interest. Recent exhibits—The History of Baseball in Milford and Rock and Roll in Milford—could showcase only a small portion of the Museum’s relevant holdings. The electronic archives will provide much greater accessibility to the Museum’s collection for the entire community.

o The University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design, the Museum Studies Program and its Research Data Management Services will work together to digitize approximately 3,000 images owned by the Laurel Historical Society. The end product, the “Visual Catalog of the Waller Collection,” will serve as both a digital exhibit and research database. The Waller collection provides an unprecedented glimpse of rural industry, architecture and the material culture of everyday life from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries; converting it to a digital format will make it available to scholars and students around the world. The University will then re-house the negatives and prints in formats that will preserve the media and construct a platform for a visual data catalog that can be used in future projects. The Waller Photographic Collection is comprised of approximately 5,000 photographic negatives, dating from 1897 through the mid-20th Century, which are the work of a father-son photographic team in southwestern Sussex County.

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