U.S. grant pays to restore Hamilton House on Nevis, add Constance Baker Motley exhibit

The U.S. State Department awarded $245,000 to the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society to restore Hamilton House, overhaul the Alexander Hamilton Museum and build a permanent exhibit on Constance Baker Motley, the daughter of Nevisian immigrants and first Black woman to serve as a federal judge.

Nevis is a 36-square-mile island in the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean. It forms the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis with neighboring St. Kitts and has its own government, the Nevis Island Administration.

Alexander Hamilton, a Founding Father and the first U.S. Treasury secretary, was born on Nevis. His mother’s family, the Faucetts, lived in the Gingerland area from about 1700 to 1745, the Nevis Island Administration said in 2022.

The Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation is funding the restorations, the Nevis Tourism Authority said in a news release Thursday.

Society Executive Director Terysia Herbert and U.S. Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Karin Sullivan signed the grant documents at a ceremony on the museum grounds, the society said in a statement Tuesday.

“Nevis has given the world extraordinary people, and this investment ensures their stories are told where they began,” Premier Mark Brantley said in the Tourism Authority’s news release.

“Hamilton House and the new Constance Baker Motley exhibit will deepen the bonds between Nevis and the United States, enrich the experience of every visitor to our island, and remind our young people of what Nevisians have achieved on the world stage.”

CyArk, a U.S. nonprofit that creates 3D digital records of heritage sites, will handle digital preservation and interpretation. Raimie Richardson, a Caribbean heritage and curation specialist, will help write the museum’s account of Hamilton’s early years in the Caribbean before he sailed to North America.

The State Department ran its 2026 round of the fund as a “Freedom 250” edition marking 250 years of American independence and the fund’s 25th year, the department’s funding notice shows. It set aside $6 million in public diplomacy money for 25 to 35 grants ranging from $25,000 to $250,000.

The notice prioritized sites linked to notable Americans and “historical sites of significance to diaspora communities in the United States.” Each U.S. embassy’s written case for its project, including how it fit Freedom 250, was worth 25 of 100 points, the highest scoring category.

The notice also lets the department cancel awards at its convenience, including when it decides a project no longer serves the national interest.

Sullivan, Brantley and society President Isabel Byron spoke at the signing. The U.S. Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados, which covers St. Kitts and Nevis, called the grant part of its celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence in an October 7 Facebook post.

“It will help protect this important historic site and ensure future generations can learn about Hamilton’s Nevisian beginnings and American legacy,” the embassy said.

The embassy’s post did not mention the Motley exhibit.

In a Freedom 250 statement published in July, Sullivan described the anniversary program as “a global effort to commemorate the founding ideals of the United States.”

Hope Trott attended the signing on behalf of the family that previously owned Hamilton House. A society representative described the museum building in 2022 as “the Trott House, also known as the Hamilton House,” the Nevis Island Administration said.

Motley was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1921 and died in 2005. She was also the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and the first woman to serve as Manhattan borough president.

A 2023 exhibition on Motley’s family at New Haven’s Dixwell Community Q House ended with the family going back to its land on Nevis and planning to restore property there, the New Haven Arts Paper reported.

The fund is also paying for conservation of the Bath Hotel, built around the island’s hot springs, through a $403,000 grant, Caribbean Journal reported in February.

When U.S. Ambassador Roger Nyhus toured the Bath Hotel in February 2024, Brantley told him the renovations “have been done in large measure through the assistance of the United States Government,” the Nevis Island Administration said. Nyhus also visited Hamilton House on that trip.

Since 2001, the fund has spent $128 million on more than 1,270 projects in 134 countries, and it gave out 37 grants in 2024, a State Department fact sheet shows.

The department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs runs the fund. Congress gave the bureau’s exchange programs $667 million for the 2026 fiscal year, $74 million less than the year before. The White House’s 2027 budget request would cut the bureau’s programs 68% from that level, NAFSA reported.

On Nevis, 2026 capital projects from the ministry that oversees culture include a subvention to the Culturama festival and renovation of the Nevis Performing Arts Centre, the island’s budget estimates show. The Nevis Island Administration’s 2026 budget totals EC$284.4 million.

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