About the Nabb Research Center

The mission of the Nabb Research Center is to cultivate and sustain the advancement of scholarly research through collecting, preserving, disseminating and providing access to records and artifacts which illustrate the rich historical and cultural heritage of the greater Delmarva region.

As part of its mission, the Nabb Research Centers also:

• introduces students, potential students and other interested persons to the vast historical, archeological and cultural heritage of Delmarva
• offers students a strong foundation in a variety of specialized studies in history, folklore and related fields
• serves as a foundation for life-long learning and research
• provides opportunities for interaction with the local and national community of researchers, educators, business leaders, family historians and others interested in Delmarva history and culture

The Center is open to all scholars, historians and genealogists researching the region of the Eastern Shore of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

The Nabb Research Center has been endowed by Cambridge, Maryland, attorney and philanthropist, Edward H. Nabb, as a repository for material pertaining to the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia). The Nabb Research Center was established to provide a "laboratory" for history students and a liaison between Salisbury University and the lower Eastern Shore region.

This centralized repository of materials serves:

• the Delmarva community at large, as well as family and local history researchers from across the nation
• professional business people including lawyers, surveyors and journalists
• students and scholars researching material for doctoral dissertations, master's degree theses, and school projects

Vision: The Nabb Research Center will be an institutional leader in advancing the preservation and understanding of Delmarva's historical and cultural heritage while serving as a primary resource for students, historical organizations and scholars.

Nabb Research Center History

In 1982, members of the Salisbury University History Department designed a course to prepare students for occupations other than secondary education, traditionally the goal of most of the school's history majors. Consequently, faculty designed a course that would open up the prospects of museology, family history, historical and vernacular architecture, archival management and preservation, and the like, making use of vast and largely untapped Delmarva Peninsula resources as the basis for case studies in these fields. Recognizing that historical land records, inventories and wills dating back to earliest colonial days were contained in as many as 36 different repositories scattered throughout the peninsula, faculty members Ray Thompson and Sylvia Bradley initiated an ambitious program of microfilm acquisition which was generously and enthusiastically supported by local researchers and family historians. Over the next decade, a complete series of county court records on microfilm for the entire region was collected - a priceless service to students and citizen-researchers alike.

The Center quickly became a popular repository for family journals and papers, surveyors' and civil engineers' papers, maps, research notes of local historians, book and pamphlet collections, business records and ephemera. The stuff of family attics, storage sheds and back offices - precious and irreplaceable documents which few citizens had the skills or resources to preserve for themselves - yet were of inestimable potential value to researchers in the region, found a home at the Center.