a global folk music concert series held outdoors in the Sunken Garden!
Wednesday August 2, 2023 at 6:30 Evelyn Harris with Giving Voice
Sunday October 8, 2023 at 2:00 Viva Quetzal
Tickets are available at the door: $12 for adults, $2 for children 16 and under, and free for Card to Culture participants. Cash only please. Picnickers are welcome on the museum’s grounds starting at 5:00 pm. We are a smoke-free, carry in/carry out site.
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Wednesday Folk Traditions is funded, in part, by grants from: the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency, through its Festivals and Programs Grants; the Amherst and Hadley Cultural Councils, local agencies funded by Massachusetts Cultural Council; Robinson and Cole; Easthampton Savings Bank; Gage-Wiley and Company, and with generous support from many local businesses.
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Historic Places & Open Spaces
Book talk and signing with Alain Munkittrick
July 30th, 2023 2:00 pm
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We are delighted to host architect, scholar, and author Alain Munkittrick for a presentation and signing of his new book Historic Houses of the Connecticut River Valley (Arcadia Publishing, 2023) The author’s presentation details the contributions made by Hadley’s 18th and 19th century family farmsteads to the evolution of the Connecticut River Valley’s historical and geographical landscape, and features previously unpublished photos of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum taken by Clifton Johnson between 1920-1940. Following the presentation, guests will be able to purchase a signed copy of Mr. Munkittrick’s newly published book.
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Introducing the “Forty Acres and Its Skirts” National Register Historic District
A public talk and walking tour
August 6, 2023 1:30 pm
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The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will host a celebration to introduce the “Forty Acres and Its Skirts” National Register Historic District, Hadley's newest historic district, with a talk by Brian Whetstone, PhD, on Sunday, August 6, 2023 at 1:30pm in the Museum’s Corn Barn. The public presentation invites all to learn about the process and research that went into this successful National Register nomination and designation, and will include a tour of the historic landscape.
This new “Forty Acres and Its Skirts” national historic district designation includes 114 acres and 20 historic buildings and structures on both sides of River Drive was completed as part of a National Park Service “Underrepresented Communities Grant” awarded to the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 2020. Marla R. Miller, PhD and Brian Whetstone, PhD, were hired by MHC to update the existing National Register documentation for the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Historic House, which was listed individually in 1973, and to develop a district to include Phelps Farm and Kestrel’s Elizabeth Huntington Dyer Field and Forest Conservation Area and the associated agricultural land owned by the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation. Their work focuses discussion on the importance of groups and individuals underrepresented in the historical record and includes enslaved and Native people, indentured servants, free Blacks, day laborers and Polish agricultural workers.
Brian Whetsone will present these stories and more that emerged during the two years of researching and developing the nomination, and will provide background on the nomination process. Following his talk, Whetstone will lead a walking tour of the PPH Museum grounds to illustrate the new landscape features and historic buildings significant in telling the stories of "pastkeeping," labor, and social history at the museum.
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Reading Frederick Douglass Together & Stopping Stones Opening Ceremony
September 23, 2023
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Reading Frederick Douglass Together will present a reading of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro”. This public presentation will coincide with the installation of commemorative Stopping Stones, a national project of the Engagement Arts Fund that memorializes sites of enslavement through brass plaques. In partnership with the BIPOC descendants’ organization, Ancestral Bridges, the Stopping Stones Project will install plaques in the sunken garden in a ritual honoring the lives and histories of six people who were enslaved at this farmstead. This event is free and made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities.
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Records of Past-keeping: Twentieth Century Labor at Forty Acres and
Dr. James L. Huntington’s Scrapbooks
A research report with Elizabeth Pangburn and Amelia Yaeger
August 30, 2023 5:00pm
Free admission
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Like his great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Porter Phelps, Museum founder, James Lincoln Huntington, kept a handwritten, daily record of his life and work at Forty Acres. The PPH Archive contains three large, bound journals dating from 1922 to 1964, in which Dr. Huntington recorded notes on his medical practice and pasted in newspaper clippings about friends and family. These "scrapbooks" also reflect his interest in the Colonial Revival and document the work of preparing Forty Acres to become a historic house museum. Reading with and against the grain of Dr. Huntington's account of life at Forty Acres, a tantalizingly incomplete story emerges of the men and women whose labor maintained the farmstead, and physically created the PPH Museum.
In this talk, Elizabeth Pangburn and Amelia Yeager will report on research undertaken by students of Dr. David Glassberg (UMass) to reveal newly uncovered labor histories at Forty Acres during the first half of the twentieth century. This project situates the labor of the men and woman who worked at the site within a broader network of personal and professional relationships across the Connecticut River Valley, and highlights Hadley's rich history of craftsmanship, farming, and pastkeeping.
Pangburn is a PhD student in History at UMass, and holds an MFA from UMass and an BA in Art History from Purchase College who specializes in Dress history and public history. Yaegar is a MA student at UMass in the History Department who studies literary history and public history. UMass students Christian Castaing, Maya Gonzales and Abigail Thomsen contributed to this project.
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We are looking for nature loving folks to join a new gardening group to help steward the historic gardens and support our efforts to remove invasive species on the grounds. This group will work to preserve the historic planting and is part of a larger initiative that includes a grant-funded USDA Pollinator Plan. You can learn more about the North Garden and it's original steward, Scotsman and Revolutionary War captive, John Morrison, here. Questions about what to expect or want to sign up? Email pphmuseumassistant@gmail.com!
Click on the flyer below to share with your green-thumb friends!
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The recent rains have been devastating for local farmers. The CSA Stone Soup and the Somali Bantu Farmers who grow crops on Porter-Phelps-Huntington fields have seen all they planted—so close to being ready for harvest—drowned and contaminated by flood waters from the Connecticut River. If you can, please help these farmers recover from these terrible losses.
Stone Soup Gofundme
Somali Bantu Farmers Gofundme
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The Porter Phelps Huntington Museum is open for tours June through October, from 1:00pm-4:00pm, or by appointment. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 under 16, and free for participants in the Card to Culture program. Many local libraries sponsor free passes to PPH, ask your librarian if you can check one out! Picnickers are welcome, the site is smoke-free and carry in/carry out.
Visitors can walk a portion of the original 1752 farm land on a trail system that includes 350 acres of preserved land. Built by Conservation Works, the trails were created with a grant to the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission from the Mass Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Transportation in cooperation with the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, Kestrel Land Trust, the Trustees of Reservations, the Mass Department of Conservation & Recreation, and Private Landowners.
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