A plan to capture the history of the Underground Railroad in Kansas is history.

Board members of the Douglas County Historical Society voted Thursday to reject a $20,470 grant from the National Park Service — a move some fear could jeopardize the area’s future as a center for historical tourism.

The grant would have paid for part of a $50,000 project to display a wall-size mural and develop interactive exhibits at the society’s Watkins Community of Museum of History, 1047 Mass. The rest of the money would have come from private donations, as yet unsolicited.

While the board previously backed the project — both by approving the grant application a year ago and agreeing to permit fund raising to help defray costs — that support formally evaporated Thursday.

In a secret ballot, members voted 8-4 to stop the effort that less than a year ago had been considered a beacon of hope for a board stung by leadership squabbles, declining finances and questions about its very survival.

“In hindsight, our real mistake was when we approved this with too many questions and too little discussion — but we had a lot going on then,” said board member Steve Glass, alluding to problems surrounding the board’s decision to demote and force the resignation of longtime museum administrator Steve Jansen.

“We were all looking for something that might be a positive. … I feel really badly that we haven’t handled this better as a board … but what’s happened has happened.”

Dennis Dailey, another board member who supported the Underground Railroad project, argued the project still deserved a chance to succeed. Project organizers repeatedly were rebuffed in their efforts to seek donations, he said, by the very museum that would hold the fruits of their largely volunteer work.

“The notion that we bungled this is obvious,” said Dailey, who seeks grants as a professor at Kansas University. “But we need to see if they can pull this off.”

¢ 6News video: Watkins Museum’s board votes to cancel grant

Judy Sweets, the museum’s archivist, would have served as the project’s director had it been allowed to proceed. She said the museum’s administrative committee rejected her fund-raising efforts for the past four months, prohibiting her team from seeking donations from people or organizations that otherwise might donate to the historical society’s general operations.

Glass and a few other board members agreed that they didn’t want competition for a scarce supply of financial resources, but Dailey argued it wasn’t their place to decide where other peoples’ loyalties should lie.

“We don’t own any potential donor,” he said.

Phil Godwin, the board’s president, said Sweets would have been paid $7,000 for administering the grant. Tolly Wildcat, a researcher, would have received $4,000, and her husband, Wayne Wildcat, would have received $30,000 for painting the mural.

Questions about the project’s financing and administration proved to be too much for the society to risk, Godwin said, given that the organization already is struggling to maintain its basic goal of documenting and educating the community about the history of Lawrence and Douglas County.

But supporters of the project argued that by rejecting the grant, the society was damaging its tarnished image even more. And the rejection won’t make it any easier to attract $1 million in grants for a larger “Bleeding Kansas” district based out of Lawrence, said Kerry Altenbernd, who is active in the effort.

“We told the National Park Service to take a flying leap,” he said. “Why would they ever give us another grant?”