Nancy Locke Meyer - Visit to PPH in May 2023
I hope I will not be the only one to use this section of the PPH website since I know many family members continue to donate artifacts, serve on the Board, attend activities, contribute financially and come for visits.
I brought my 21 year old grandson, Joss Ettrick, in May for the two of us to spend time at Forty Acres. It was a few weeks before the official opening and Susan Lisk and Brian Whetstone were incredibly kind to allow us in while they were still up to their elbows cleaning winter cobwebs and unveiling furniture from their protective sheeting. We pitched in a little. My grandson, who is a 3-D modeling major at Pratt with a great visual sense, took hundreds of photos. I’m sharing a few here.
I have not been inside the house for over 50 years and most of my memories are as a child visiting with my grandmother Eleanor Fisher Grose of Amherst. If you read my other post you’ll know I have spent about the last 5 years immersed in reading about PPH and our ancestor’s role in enslavement and the slave economy. Being in the home, for several hours over two days, is still seeping into me. I wrote a whole book of poetry based on my made-up images. Now I am synching those with the physical “reality” of the house.
What do I absorb from an empty structure? What new stories emanate from a pewter teapot, Elizabeth Porter Phelps’s writing desk with light streaming in the window? Where did Zebulon Caesar, Peg and others enslaved on the farm sleep? We can guess but not know. The power of objects (or their absence) evokes “musings.” That is what any museum is really about to me. I muse about our role in forming white supremacy and also our love of land, education and fighting for equitable relations.
When I asked Joss what was his takeaway from our visit, he observed that no surface in the house was level! As a Californian, he knows about Spanish Missions but not houses older than 1940. Today I told my niece Corinne Lippie, James Locke’s daughter, some of our family history that, like me, she never knew. Her interest is piqued, and I wonder what she will take away if she visits.
I know there is a reunion in the works to gather all the PPH family. We have so much to learn from each other and from this unique historical site. I can’t wait.
Nancy Locke Meyer
August 2023
