Iron Mountain Supports New Digitization Project by the National Trust for Historic Preservation Detailing the Experience of Women and Enslaved Persons
Financial grant will enable the digital documentation of the Carter Family Collection at Oatlands Historic House and Gardens and help mount an exhibition on the women who lived and worked there
BOSTON and LEESBURG, Va., April 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), the global leader in storage and information management services, today announced its support for a digitization project and exhibition for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Oatlands Historic House and Gardens, a National Trust Historic Site. The focus of this project is the digitization of the Carter Family Collection, which chronicles the daily life of women and enslaved persons at Oatlands from 1861-1872.
The support, in the form of a financial grant and in-kind services through Iron Mountain's Living Legacy Initiative, celebrates Women's History Month, and includes the diaries of Elizabeth O. Carter and Kate Powell Carter (the wife and daughter of Oatlands founder George Carter), cookbooks, papers, and more, all of which document nearly 200 years of history at Oatlands. Additionally, the financial support will help fund an exhibition sharing the role of women at the plantation, featuring the two diaries.
Established in 1798, Oatlands is the embodiment of the American experience. It represents the growth of the young nation and the choice by the Carters to enslave people. On the eve of the Civil War, Oatlands was home to 7 members of the Carter family and 133 enslaved men, women and children. Oatlands reflects the stories of aspiration and struggle after freedom came, the legacies of which continue to this day. The land was donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1965, and the site is a National Historic Landmark. It is maintained by Oatlands, Inc., a non-profit organization.
"We're proud to support the Oatlands team and their commitment to giving voice to the experience of women and enslaved people during one of the most complex periods in American history," said Ty Ondatje, senior vice president, Corporate Responsibility and chief diversity officer, Iron Mountain. "The mission of our Living Legacy Initiative is to offer support to organizations who share our passion for preserving and providing access to our shared cultural history. Our hope is that by doing so we can ensure that we continually learn about, and learn from, this history and the stories of the people and places it chronicles."
Digitization of the Carter Family Collection will allow the Oatlands staff to make the documents available to the thousands of visitors who enjoy the property and its history. The original diary will be displayed during the exhibition about the role of women at Oatlands.
"The digitization of these historic resources and accompanying exhibition will help highlight long-hidden stories at Oatlands and allow for a fuller and richer history of the property to be shared," said Katherine Malone-France, interim chief preservation officer at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "We are enormously grateful to Iron Mountain for this generous grant and look forward to making these fascinating resources more available to visitors and scholars."
"For more than 200 years, Oatlands Historic House and Gardens and the Carter Family Collection have stood as documents of Civil War history in Loudon County," said Caleb M. Schutz, chief executive officer, Oatlands. "That history is made up of the lives and stories of everyone who lived and worked on the property, each of whom have a unique and important voice. We're thrilled to bring those to life for our visitors, and to have the support of organizations like Iron Mountain in mounting exhibits and sharing the experiences behind those stories."
About the National Trust for Historic Preservation
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a privately funded nonprofit organization that works to save America's historic places. savingplaces.org
About Oatlands Historic House and Gardens
Oatlands is a 360-acre self-supporting National Trust Historic Site and National Historic Landmark. The site features a stunning landscape with magnificent gardens, early 1800s mansion and garden buildings, including the Oatlands greenhouse, the second oldest greenhouse in the nation. For more information, visit www.oatlands.org or call 703-777-3174. Oatlands is located six miles south of the Town of Leesburg on U.S. Route 15. 20850 Oatlands Plantation Lane, Leesburg, VA 20175
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), founded in 1951, is the global leader for storage and information management services. Trusted by more than 225,000 organizations around the world, and with a real estate network of more than 90 million square feet across more than 1,450 facilities in over 50 countries, Iron Mountain stores and protects billions of valued assets, including critical business information, highly sensitive data, and cultural and historical artifacts. Providing solutions that include information management, digital transformation, secure storage, secure destruction, as well as data centers, cloud services and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps customers lower cost and risk, comply with regulations, recover from disaster, and enable a digital way of working. Visit http://www.ironmountain.com for more information.
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SOURCE Iron Mountain Incorporated
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