NJDARM: Saving America's Treasures, The American Revolution in New Jersey, Main

In October 2004, the National Parks Service and the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded full funding of New Jersey State Archives' proposal to the Save America's Treasures (SAT) grant program. The project, titled The American Revolution in New Jersey: Preserving our Documentary Heritage, entails professional conservation treatment of over 5,200 leaves of Revolutionary War documents. These range from militia records, eyewitness battle accounts and inventories of property damage caused by British and American troops, to court books documenting treason cases, Loyalist papers, and legislative petitions. The State Archives' proposal was among the highest scoring out of nearly four hundred applications, making the preservation of these manuscripts the SAT document conservation program's national priority in 2004.

At the time of the announcement, the federal grant of $347,000 also represented the largest paper conservation award made by the SAT program since its establishment in 1998. The grant will be matched dollar for dollar by the New Jersey Public Records Preservation Fund established by New Jersey P.L. 2003, c. 117. In total, nearly $700K will be devoted to treating these fragile, eighteenth-century manuscripts and books.

Following a competitive bid process, and award of the project to the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, the first group of manuscripts was sent to the conservator in July 2005. Over a three-year period, the project will preserve a vast body of documentation enabling broader interpretation and understanding of the conflict that gave birth to our nation. With professional treatment, these national treasures will survive for many generations to come—in their original form and also in microfilm and digital images made possible by the preservation efforts we invest in today.

Chief of Archives Joseph Klett and Collection Manager Ellen Callahan manage the project, with support from staff archivists Janet Jackson, Vivian Thiele and others.