File photo Delores Talley, the president of the Boyds/Clarksburg Historical Society, sits in the Boyds Negro School in December 1999.

The Boyds Historical Society received $2,500 towards making the Boyds Negro School climate controlled and storing archive materials at the historic one-room schoolhouse. The Boyds Civic Association received $2,347 for improvements to its existing town signs and installing one new sign in the small town, which lies northwest of Germantown.

The grants are awarded by the Upcounty Regional Services Center and are intended for small projects that will benefit a community in areas such as capital improvements, beautification, crime prevention or youth activities. The grants mailed out this week are the balance of $50,000 in total grants awarded this year as part of the program.

The historical society will put the grant towards its efforts to document former Boyds Negro School students and their relatives, said historical society Vice President Eskin Huff.

The money will be used to vent the attic of the one-room schoolhouse on White Ground Road in hopes of one day installing a heating and cooling unit there. The historical society wants to install a heat pump that will act as a dehumidifier, a project that will cost $4,500 to $7,500 in additional funding, Huff said.

The heat pump would make the building better equipped to house the school's archives. The school grounds are often wet and the building becomes damp in the summer, with mildew collecting on the ceiling, Huff said. The group would also like to heat the schoolhouse so that it could host meetings there during the winter.

The county grant will also go toward the purchase of a fireproof vault to store archive materials and acid-free containers, such as plastic sheets for storing photographs.

The historical society's archiving effort includes gathering material for a documentary video that is in production called "Boyds Negro School: Historic Lives."

Former students and families gathered at the school in October for a Remembrance Day, honoring living alumnae of the school, which was open to African-American children in first through eighth grade from 1896 to 1935. The event served the dual purpose of honoring former students and providing interviews and footage for the documentary.

"The archiving is something that needs to be done now because the last students -- there are eight of them alive -- they're not going to be around much longer," Huff said.

The historical society is researching other sources of funding and may apply for additional grants through the Maryland Historical Trust, Huff said.

The Boyds Civic Association will use its grant to erect a sign with the town name and a message board where the association can post announcements such as the date and time of upcoming town meetings, said President Jim McDaniel.

The remaining money will be used to improve four signs that bear the town name and stand along White Ground, Clopper, Clarksburg and Barnesville roads, entering the town. The town erected those signs a few years ago using money from a similar county grant, McDaniel said.

That grant money came from a county budget surplus that was given to community organizations, he said. This time the Community and Neighborhood Initiatives grants were included as part of the fiscal 2001 county budget.

The Upcounty Regional Services Center received 68 applications for grants this year, but was only able to award 29 grants, said Marilyn Balcombe, the Germantown outreach coordinator with the center. The grants range between $1,000 and $2,500 each.

"We feel very fortunate that ours was granted," McDaniel said.

Organizations that did not receive grants this time around might have missed their opportunity for county funding of their projects. County Executive Douglas M. Duncan recommended that the grants not be included in the 2002 budget, Balcombe said.