Local history

With the awarding of history-related grants totaling nearly $34,650, the W. E. Smith Family Charitable Trust surpassed $100,000 in grants awarded for the second year in a row. The Trust awarded nearly $66,000 to applicants in May.

Applications were submitted from historical organizations, museums, libraries, schools and other nonprofit groups throughout Southwest Ohio. Included were requests for support of museum displays and storage materials and equipment, community outreach programs, collections management and care, publishing projects and other events, archival projects and programs.

The Smith Trust was established by the estate of Ophia Smith, longtime Oxford resident who wrote books on Oxford history, and together with her husband W. E. Smith, who chaired Miami University’s history department and was first Director of the William Holmes McGuffey Museum, collaborated on research and writing of a three-volume “History of Southwestern Ohio: The Miami Valleys,” and other published works, both together and separately. This fall’s grants went to:

■ Atrium Medical Center, Middletown: To expand its Legends project of booklets, banners, and a video to document and promote its history.

■ Butler County Historical Society: Grant money to upgrade its desktop computer; fund programming and exhibits and the Speakers Bureau, and items for collection storage materials.

■ Enjoy Oxford (formerly the Oxford Visitor’s Bureau): To update and print its Black History Tour booklet featuring area sites and features of significance pertaining to Black History.

■ Friends of Chrisholm, Trenton: To print postcards of features of the Chrisholm farmstead, and produce interpretive signs for its pollinator garden.

■ Historic Southwest Ohio, Cincinnati: In support of the planned exhibit “Social History of Southwest Ohio: Late 1700s-1900”

■ Hamilton Lane Libraries/Cummins Local History Room: In support of purchase of microfilm of the Fairfield Echo newspaper for easier access by library users, staff and researchers

■ Middletown Historical Society: For receiving artifacts from a U.S. B-17 plane that crashed in German-occupied France in World War II, piloted by a Middletown native; and a second award for the Historic Excello Lock Tenders House exterior period painting

■ Monroe Historical Society: For electrical upgrades for exhibit and display lighting.

■ Over-the-Rhine Museum, Cincinnati: In support of completion of the African American History Walking Tour “Walking the Stories” tour series in Over-the-Rhine.

■ Oxford Museum Association: For improving storage conditions for its collection of clothing, lace and tatting, and quilts including purchase of acid free archival boxes and tissue.

■ Preble County Historical Society: In support of digitizing the society’s collection to make it accessible on-line to the benefit of researchers, genealogists, and others.

■ Trenton Historical Society: In support of purchasing display cabinet and developing exhibits of items from Olympic gold medalist Zach Apple, Trenton native, and Walnut Grove Swim Club.

■ West Chester Union Twp. Historical Society: For reprinting of the history of Union Centralized School, “Our Alma Mater,” originally written by D. Russell Lee, former Butler County Superintendent and formerly Superintendent of the Union School District.

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