Finally tonight, preserving critical parts of New Jersey and American history.

Two centuries ago, a black farmer named Peter Mott founded Snow Hill.

It's what you now know as Landslide, New Jersey.

It was a free black community bought by abolitionists for freed and escaped slaves before the Civil War.

Well, today, the landslide Historical Society is rich with artifacts, including letters, photographs, posters, records, videos and more.

And thanks to thousands of dollars in federal support, the group will now be able to modernize and digitize their impressive collection.

Raven Santana visited the launch Time Historical Society to see the significant history that will be saved.

Nestled among this residential community is the Peter Mott house.

Peter Mott was a black farmer who built the house in 1845 and used it to help hide those seeking freedom and who were part of the Underground Railroad Network.

I mean.

There are stories here of people who were pursued.

Formerly enslaved people who were pursued here by so-called slave catchers or bounty hunters.

And the community rallied around them and repelled those people.

So there's a rich history of people working together and trying to help one another.

Lynda Shockley is president of the Land Side Historical Society, which has committed itself to preserving and maintaining the Mott House.

She says on a yearly basis, they receive about 1200 visitors who travel to visit the Now Museum, located in the only historically African-American Incorporated municipality in the northern United States.

We get calls.

We get emails from people who say, I think my grandfather is buried at the local cemetery.

And it's amazing.

There may be something in our collection that will speak to someone who's been searching for information about people.

Shockley says that search will get a lot easier now that the Historical Society was awarded a $34,000 grant, part of $6 million in federal support for 30 institutions nationwide to digitize its collection of artifacts, including documents, photos and deeds, including these shown here.

The vision is right now we get lots of calls from historians, genealogists and academics who want to know about one side.

This will lighten the burden on our president to go and look through boxes in order to provide this information.

Schimmel Jordan, who was the former president of the African American Genealogy Group in Philadelphia, is chief curator of the project.

She says the grant will prevent history from being forgotten or erased.

The erasure is real.

We have the landscape is disappearing.

We also have the people who knew what that landscape used to be.

They're disappearing as well.

And they have all of this rich stuff in their homes.

And so this project, just the awareness of it, people are starting to say, Hey, why don't I take this over to the one side historical society?

Jordan says more than a thousand different items are set to be digitized.

In this will be included tons of manuscript collections, images in various forms, videotape, some ancient format video, actual hard box videos.

Also programs.

One side was known to have more secret societies than most communities of its size.

Like they said this in the late 1800s, they said this.

And so as such, we have a rich lots of programs, tickets.

Jordan says the goal is to make the collection available when the Municipality of Long Side celebrates their 100th anniversary in 2026.

Friendly Spotlight News on Raven Santana.