The Sangamon County Historical Society has been providing grants to local history related organizations and projects since 2004.
The Society’s Special Projects Grants committee reviews all applications and makes its recommendations to the Board of Directors. Winners are announced in June, and checks are presented at the annual meeting in June.
GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
There are limitations on the types of projects the Society will consider funding. They will be specified in the application document. All projects must be completed within a year and if applicable, grant winners may be asked to be part of or give an individual program about their project for the Society if appropriate. The Sangamon County Historical Society must be publicly acknowledged for its support. The form will ask you in detail to describe the proposed project, costs, purpose, prospective audience and more.
We will gladly accept donations to our Special Projects Fund.
Any amount is welcome.
Past Grant Recipients
2024
Prairie Skies Public Library District – $1,000 to digitize microfilm of three local newspapers covering the Pleasant Plaines area to preserve the content and make them more accessible to researchers. The newspapers to be digitized are the “Pleasant Plains Press,” the “Review” and the “Argus.” These newspapers covered the lives of people living in the towns and surrounding countryside. Some dated back to 1901.
Oak Ridge Cemetery Foundation – $600 to fund graveside markers of six Underground Railroad Conductors who did the dangerous work of being an Underground Railroad Conductor in Springfield and Sangamon County. The markers will recognize and document their places in history. Four of the markers are to be placed next to the conductors’ respective graves in Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Thomas Rees Memorial Carillon, The Bells Group – $1,000 to produce an educational video that can be used in K-6 grade school music classes. The video will include scripted storytelling with dialogue, filming on location with drone footage, creation of advanced stock video or motion graphics and professional music. The video also will be uploaded to YouTube to reach a wider public audience.
2023
Chatham Area Public Library - $1,000 to digitize a portion of 70 audio cassette tapes that contain oral history interviews conducted from senior residents in the community who reminisced about growing up in the 1920s and beyond. Once digitized, the recordings will be transcribed and then stored online at the Illinois Digital Archives in the Chatham Area History collection.
Central 3 Community First Project, Inc. - $1,000 to purchase several additional display cases to secure artifacts and loaned possessions being collected for exhibit at their restored First Black Firehouse Museum in Springfield.
Dana Thomas Foundation and Springfield Art Association - $1,000 to host a presentation on the work of nationally known artist and poet Leigh Gross Day and her friendship with Susan Lawrence Dana. Day was a life-long Springfield resident.
Temple B’rith Sholom -$1,000 for a bronze plaque to recognize and memorialize the location “Hebrew Ground” within Block 5 of Oak Ridge Cemetery. The plaque will honor the final resting place of 342 Jewish settlers of Springfield including the first Rabbi in Springfield.
Springfield Art Association - $1,000 to restore a mid-19th century sofa once owned by Illinois Governor Augustus French, who served as governor from 1846-1853. The sofa has been on display at Edwards Place, but needs to be reupholstered so that it can be utilized by visitors who cannot stand for long periods of time.
2022
Friends of the Original Leland Farm House Inc. - $1,000 to restore the Leland Farm House Summer Kitchen which has been moved from its original site to Washington Park. The funds will be used to reinstall the windows, a door and staircase as well as mason work for the foundation and a brick walkway outside the historic 1860s building. The building will be used to display information about the Leland family and original farmhouse.
Illinois State Museum Society – $900 to restore Vachel Lindsay’s Lincoln Top Hat at the Illinois State Museum. The 3-foot tall fiberglass version of Lincoln’s stove pipe hat was painted by artist Felicia Olin in 2009 as part of the city’s “Hats Off to Lincoln” project celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. Being displayed outside the museum for a number of years, the hat has suffered weather damage and now needs repainting.
Oak Ridge Cemetery - $1,000 to create a brochure and map which will identify and celebrate distinguished individuals of color buried at the cemetery. The booklet will assist descendants, historians and other interested parties in locating burial markers of African Americans interred at the cemetery.
Preservation Inc. - $1,000 for supplies and labor costs associated with drywalling the damaged ceiling and walls in practice rooms around the stage of the 1908 music conservatory on the former Ursuline Academy campus. Future plans include making the building useable for music lessons for which it was originally designed.