The Tryon Palace Foundation receives a $50,000 Grant from the Mariam & Robert Hayes Charitable Trust ?for Education and Interpretation

The Tryon Palace Foundation is honored to announce the receipt of a $50,000 grant from the Mariam & Robert Hayes Charitable Trust for educational and interpretive programming. “We are grateful to the Cannon Foundation for its longtime support and for believing in Tryon Palace’s mission and future initiatives,” states Anne Schout, President of the Tryon Palace Foundation.

The grant will support the expansion of several new educational programs spearheaded by Chrystal Regan, Tryon Palace Executive Director. These include the popular NC Community Class series that began last summer, the In-Conversation series, and the soon to debut Colonial Cocktails series. The inaugural NC Community Class programs focused on the Indigenous peoples who lived in eastern North Carolina prior to European settlement, how their culture and economic relationships changed after the arrival of Europeans, and the devastating consequences that came after relationships turned sour. The Colonial Cocktails series will feature a signature cocktail followed by a discussion on the origins of its ingredients and their significance to colonial trade.

In the months ahead leading up to the United States Semiquincentennial, a portion of this grant will also support commemorative programming that highlights Tryon Palace’s significant place in American history during the revolutionary years as North Carolina’s first and last colonial capitol, and first state capitol. As the seat of North Carolina’s government leading up to and during the Revolution, New Bern was a center of pollical discourse.

The Mariam & Robert Hayes Charitable Trust grant will also help fund African American educational and interpretive programming in support of a public art initiative funded by Z. Smith Reynolds. The forthcoming art sculpture was inspired by Catherine Bishir’s book, Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, NC, 1770-1900.

The Tryon Palace Foundation and Tryon Palace are grateful to the Mariam & Robert Hayes Charitable Trust for this funding and for the many opportunities in programming that the funding provides.

The Mariam and Robert Hayes Charitable Trust was established through the will of Mrs. Mariam Cannon Hayes.

For more information about the Tryon Palace Foundation, please go to Tryonpalacefoundation.org.