Hadley farmhouse receives federal grant for historic preservation

Updated: Sep. 15, 2024, 5:39 p.m.|Published: Sep. 15, 2024, 5:31 p.m

Dave Canton | dcanton@repub.com

Stewards of a farmhouse constructed in 1816 in Hadley have received money from the National Park Service to revitalize the historic structure.

It’s one of seven western and central Massachusetts properties that were awarded National Park Service Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization grants. Together, the awards totaled $650,000. The grants were announced recently by the Pioneer Valley Regional Ventures Center, a subsidiary of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. “These funds never came to Massachusetts before, so we applied on behalf of the Venture Center and received the full amount,” said Shannon Walsh, historic preservation planner for the PVPC. “These grants are specifically for rural communities, less than 12,500 populations and must have an economic development component.”

She said the Venture Center is a nonprofit arm of the PVPC that can accept and administer certain grants.

The grants are popular in other New England states, especially Vermont, Walsh said.

The Phelps Farm in Hadley received $100,000 part of the funding needed for the full restoration of the 1816 home and farm just off Route 47, also called River Drive, about three miles from the town center. The Asher Benjamin-designed farmhouse has deteriorated over the years, a far cry from the majestic homestead of Charles Porter Phelps, the wealthy attorney, international trader, and the scion of the nearby Porter-Phelps family estate. The interior of the house remains much as it did when the Phelps kids ran through the narrow hallways. Original wainscoting and moldings are caked with more than 200 years of coat after coat of paint. The floors of the upstairs creak and sway just a little with the passage of wary visitors.

The house remains almost as if in a time capsule. The two kitchens — summer and winter — remain as originally built, complete with brick cooking fireplaces. The formal parlor has its original fireplace as well, built around the flue that warmed the two floors of the building. Phelps built the homestead for his family of six children. The farm remained an active dairy farm well into the late 1980s and portions of the property are continuing to be farmed under agricultural preservation restrictions.

Some restoration work has begun on the property with a previous Community Preservation Act grant of $150,000, Porter-Phelps Foundation President Karen Sanchez-Eppler said.

An auxiliary roof was built over the original roof of a portion of the structure called “The El,” an extension of the main house proper to provide space that probably included workshop areas and perhaps some living spaces for farmhands. The roof-over-the-roof is designed to protect the old roof structure as it is rebuilt and reinforced. Sanchez-Eppler said the foundation hopes to bring the farm back to its original condition as part of the nearby Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum.

The other projects awarded the National Park Service grants in Massachusetts are the First Congregational Church in Blandford, which needs a new roof. Walsh said the church is owned by the Blandford Historical Society and sponsors a summer concert series.

Memorial Hall in Monson sought funding to improve its roof. Its auditorium area is used as a performance space. The Goshen Town Hall received a grant, as did the Methodist Episcopal Church in Ware and the Phelps Farm in Hadley.

Two Worcester County properties were included in the regional grant in conjunction with the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission. The Hardwick House in Hardwick and the Richard Sugden Public Library in Spencer received funding.

The grants run between $50,000 and $100,000 per project, with the money to be used for gap funding to aid in the rehabilitation of underutilized or endangered historic anchor properties. All eligible projects were previously listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and the projects are slated to be completed by August 2026.

Federal humanities grants go to Porter-Phelps, colleges’ learning institutes

By SCOTT MERZBACH

HADLEY — Enslaved from 1770 to 1776 at the Forty Acres homestead in Hadley, now known as The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum, Caesar Phelps wrote a letter from Fort Ticonderoga, where he was serving in the Continental Army, to his owner, Charles Phelps, asking that he not be sold again.

After sending that letter, Caesar disappears from recorded history, the remainder of his life unknown today.

Margaret “Peg” Bowen was enslaved when she was 12 and gave birth to two children at Forty Acres, but then negotiated with Charles Phelps to be sold to a man in Bennington, Vermont, so she could be with her husband. Peg was later sold back to Charles Phelps and returned to Hadley in 1778, earning her freedom four years later. Ceasar and Peg are among several enslaved individuals and indentured servants, including two British soldiers, who lived and worked at the Forty Acres farmstead, and whose underdocumented lives should become better known through additional research that will be completed using a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The money is coming to the museum in advance of the 250th birthday of the United States in 2026 and will mostly go toward undergraduate research. It is one of three local projects sharing portions of $37.5 million being provided for 240 projects across the country.

“When the museum was first founded, it was to tell the stories of Revolutionary heroes,” says Karen Sanchez-Eppler, who is leading the project titled “Forty Acres and the American Revolution: Stories of Independence and Servitude.” “We’ve been working for the last bunch of years to expand the narrative that tries to honor all lives lived in connection to the place.”

The farmstead, built in 1752 by Moses Porter, is full of Revolutionary War era materials and stories from Elizabeth Porter Phelps, the second-generation owner whose diary, beginning in the 1760s until her death in 1817, is a primary source for much of the knowledge about those who lived and worked there.

“In an ideal world, this will allow us to know more about their lives,” Sanchez-Eppler said.The other two local projects will support institutes for K-12 educators.

At UMass, $171,962 is going toward “The Souls of Black Folk,” a two-week residential institute for 25 high school teachers to learn the fundamentals of African American studies.

During the course of the program next year, instructors will work with teachers who have expressed interest in preparing to offer the new Advanced Placement African American Studies course or expanding their content knowledge and pedagogy in African American studies.

The institute is being led by Toussaint Losier, associate professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies; Yolanda Covington-Ward, who chairs the Department of Afro-American Studies; A Yemisi Jimoh, a professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies; and Keisha Green, associate professor of teacher education and curriculum studies at the College of Education and co-founder and co-director of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research.

Losier said the team that put this grant together carried out a series of teacher enrichment workshops with Massachusetts educators focusing on the fundamentals of African American studies. These workshops were supported by an Interdisciplinary Research Grant that was oriented to addressing the professional development needs of Massachusetts educators. In addition to the federal project, the instructors are committed to doing further professional development with educators in Springfield.

At Amherst College, $200,000 will support “Punishment: The American Story,” a three-week residential institute for 25 middle and high school teachers on the meanings, purposes and history of punishment in the United States. This is being led by Austin Sarat, the college’s William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, and will be held on the Amherst campus next July.

Back at Porter-Phelps Huntington, Sanchez-Eppler said an exhibit will be ready for next summer in the Corn Barn that will tell the stories of Caesar and Peg, along with indentured servants John Morrison and George and Mary Andries. Morrison, a British soldier from Scotland, was captured from a ship in Boston Harbor and sent to work at Forty Acres. An ornamental gardener, he brought his expertise to Hadley, and remnants of the garden are still visible.

George Andries is presumed to be among the Hessian soldiers defeated at Saratoga and then marched eastward to become an indentured farmer. Both Andries are referenced in Phelps’ diary.

“These stories about those who came and decided to stay in the New World, to become American farm laborers, is another part we don’t tell much,” Sanchez-Eppler said.

The hope is to have Morrison’s garden completed by the summer of 2026.

Sanchez-Eppler said that the research can yield interesting stories, like that of Capt. Stephen Fay, who bought Peg Bowen and then, even as his son Jonas was instrumental in writing the Vermont state Constitution adopted in 1777 prohibiting adult slavery, agreed to sell Peg back to Charles Phelps, with the bill of sale witnessed by his son.

“That stands stark as an example of the contradictions between independence and servitude during the American Revolution,” Sanchez-Eppler said.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.

Corn stalk fiddle gets its moment: History and music meet this weekend for ‘Corn Stalk Fiddles: Soundscape & Place in 19th Century Hadley’

Daily Hampshire Gazette | by Paige Hanson

Published: 06-27-2024 2:11 PM

Alan Weinberg, co-president of the Hadley Historical Society, holds a chorus book from the 1800s. PHOTO BY PAIGE HANSON

Today and tomorrow, June 28 and 29, in the Hadley Public Library at 7:30 p.m., the Hadley Historical Society and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will be presenting “Corn Stalk Fiddles: Soundscape & Place in 19th Century Hadley.”

The show will be performed by The Red Skies Music Ensemble, a musical group that is dedicated to blending music and history to present stories that any audience can connect with. This show will also feature theatrical performances, archival images and interpretive narration.

“It’s important to show the role of music, especially in rural communities, like Hadley. It was so important to social life before television and social media,” said Alan Weinberg, co-president of the Hadley Historical Society. “Music was one of the primary ways of entertaining and passing the time. People shared the music, regardless of their status in the community. The show is going to highlight the music and the types of music that were played.”

The story begins in Hadley in the late 1800s when a young woman named Fanny Allen wrote a letter to her father, Elam Allen, who was in Ohio at the time. In the letter, Fanny told her father that her brother Otis was making a corn stalk fiddle.

This letter was inherited by Fanny from her father and was given to the Hadley Historical Society, and was lost in their collection for decades … until just a couple years ago. 

Trudy Williams, director of the Red Skies Music Ensemble, discovered the missing letter and decided that the story would make a great musical performance.

“The show itself will be kind of a combination of old-time music, theatrical vignettes, narration and archival photographs,” said Weinberg. “As we continued the research, we read a lot of the diaries of people from the 19th century, men and women talked about going to singing school, dances, listening to music, going to the Lyceum, and being entertained. So it was a thread that ran through the whole community.”

It’s important to note that corn stalk fiddles were considered more like children’s toy instruments, yet Weinberg says they played a prominent role in the musical landscape of Hadley.

One of the highlights of the show will be a reading of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “The Corn-Stalk Fiddle,” which will be put to music and sung by the Corn Stalk Fiddle Children’s Choir, directed by Cindy Naughton.

Weinberg says that while the Hadley Historical Society typically produces smaller-scale productions, this performance will be unlike any other event they have put on before. Grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and donations from the Hadley Cultural Council made the production possible.

“We hope people will be entertained and informed by the show, it should be very entertaining musically,” said Weinberg. “It’ll provide a window on the rural social life in and around Hadley in the 19th century that people may not be aware of, and it will also connect them with the music. It should be lots of fun.”

The Hadley Public Library is located at 50 Middle St., and there is a $15 suggested donation for the performance.

UMass Amherst journalism student Paige Hanson is Arts & Features intern for the Gazette and Recorder.

Bring on the summer music and arts: Concert series and more return to Hadley and Huntington →

Daily Hampshire Gazette | by Steve Pfarrer

Published: 06-07-2024 12:33 PM

Multi instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist Tim Eriksen kicks off Wednesday Folk Traditions at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum on June 12. Image courtesy Porter-Phelps- Huntington Museum

Summer brings outdoor music as well as any number of artistic performances, including theater, literary readings, dances and more.

And it’s not just big blowout events like the Green River Festival.

In Hadley, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has readied its 43rd season of Wednesday Folk Traditions, a weekly series that brings a range of acoustic performances — traditional folk, blues, Latin and West African rhythms, and more — to the museum’s sunken garden.

In Huntington, meantime, the 14th year of the North Hall Arts Festival opens shortly with a concert by the jazz ensemble Tone Forest, which mixes world music with fresh improvisation. Later in the summer, roots music, Broadway tunes, and more are on tap in the historic building.

Wednesday Folk Traditions opens June 12 at 6:30 p.m. with a performance by Tim Eriksen, the Amherst multi-instrumentalist, composer and ethnomusicologist who’s a leading interpreter of older styles of American folk and roots music, from love songs to ballads to shape-note singing, both from both New England and Southern Appalachia.

Eriksen, who’s taught songwriting and music history at Dartmouth College, Amherst College, and a number of other places, has also had his music featured in a number of films and plays, and he’s performed with musicians as diverse as Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson.

To recognize Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in 1865, the Amherst Area Gospel Choir performs as part of Folk Traditions on June 19, in what will be the 12th annual Horace Clarence Boyer Memorial Gospel Concert.

The choir, whose repertoire includes songs drawn from spirituals, African diaspora, Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band hits, and original music by Horace Boyer, will also recognize the late Dr. Boyer, who was a key part of the local music community, a UMass Amherst professor, and minister of music at the Goodwin Memorial African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Amherst.

And on June 26, the Talamana Trio, which blends Indian and Middle Eastern music with American jazz and folk, comes to Porter-Phelps (all shows there begin at 6:30 p.m.).

The group brings together some unusual instruments and backgrounds: Robert Markey plays the sitar following years of study in India; Jim Matus plays the laoutar, a lute/guitar hybrid; and vocalist and composer Laila Salins, a native of Latvia, has performed in opera and music theater and as a storyteller.

Concerts in the Hadley series later this summer will include sounds from Uganda and others parts of East Africa (Gideon Ampeire), blues, roots, and rock (StompBox Trio), and a range of Caribbean music (Jose Gonzales and Criollo Clasico).

More information on the Folk Traditions series is available at pphmuseum.org. Tickets are $12 for adults and $2 for audience members 16 years and under. In the event of rain, concerts take place at the Wesley United Methodist Church at 98 North Maple Street in Hadley.

In Huntington’s North Hall, meantime, the summer arts festival begins June 16 at 2 p.m. with Tone Forest, a trio of top jazz players with Valley roots: pianist Miro Sprague, bassist Marty Jaffe, and guitarist Jason Ennis, who now live in Los Angeles, New York, and Pittsfield, respectively.

The ensemble, first formed in 2018, draws from jazz, world music, and plenty of improvisation, creating a sound — on original compositions as well as new arrangements of other music — that’s both lyrical and grounded in a sense of groove.

On June 30, also at 2 p.m., North Hall is trying something new: The Story Cafe, which is billed as a celebration of the Valley’s crop of “enormously talented short-story authors.”

Area actors Ellen Barry, Raye Birk, Candace Barrett Birk, who combined have decades of experience in theater, will read selected work from a range of western Massachusetts writers: Jane Yolen, Stephen Billias, Joy Baglio, Rick Paar and Marisa Labozzetta, the goal being to transport the written word into new worlds of “joy, discovery and connection.”

Programs in the Huntington arts festival later this summer will include roots music, old-time jazz, and selections of opera and show tunes. More information is available at northhallhuntington.org.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.

Hadley Town Meeting passes almost all articles, 184 residents attend →

The Reminder | by Doc Pruyne

Published May 14, 2024

HADLEY — Hadley’s Town Meeting on May 2 was attended by 184 residents. Those in attendance saw a singular exchange between resident Thomas Fyden and Planning Board Chair Jim Maksimoski.

Fyden stepped to the microphone during discussion of Article 23, an article that would allow battery storage facilities in the residential, farming and industrial zones of the town, but not the overlay district for aquifer protection. Fyden said there have been four catastrophic fires in the last year due to battery storage facilities, three in New York State, that required evacuations. He called out the Planning Board for ignoring the dangers of lithium ion battery technology.

“The Planning Board never said they’re safe,” Fyden said. “Members of the board compared this to Chernobyl, Love Canal and Three Mile Island. That’s the [Planning] Board that said that … [and] if it’s not safe enough for the aquifer it’s not safe for the farmland, for the residential.”

Maksimoski, chair of the Planning Board, blamed the Attorney General’s office.

“I’ll be perfectly blunt with you,” Mosimoski said. “The majority of the Planning Board is 100% in agreement with you. However, the state has said … you cannot prohibit and you can’t unreasonably regulate.”

According to Moderator Kirk B. Whatley, the article passed 180-3.

Dozens of residents left the meeting after earlier votes on funding a new ladder truck and water storage tanks, two large ticket articles that elicited questions. Fire Chief Michael Spanknebel explained the town’s current ladder truck requires major repairs and will probably soon need to be taken out of service. Many commercial and residential structures require ladder trucks to get to the roof, where solar arrays now complicate venting. Funding for the truck will be voted on at the Annual Election in a few weeks. If that funding article fails, the Town Meeting vote to authorize purchase will be moot. Article 17 passed 183-1.

Replacement of the water storage tanks, carrying a $9 million price tag, prompted questions that revealed the tanks may not cost that much. The consultant from Tighe and Bond said a large contingency, added as a standard precautionary measure, may not be spent. A grant through the federal Department of Agriculture may cover as much as 20% of costs. Voters passed Article 18, 182-1.

Article 19 asked residents to fund the Hadley Drinking Water Asset Management Plan for $155,000. The actual out of pocket cost will be $31,000, so voters passed the article unanimously.

Article 20 requested $185,000 be moved from free cash and a special account for ambulance receipts, to allow incoming payments for ambulance transport, a new service in town. Article 20 passed unanimously.

Article 21, an article to fund the enlargement of a culvert running from Route 9 to East Street, requested $250,000 as a local contribution that will make possible a Mass. Vulnerability Preparedness program grant for $1 million. The current ditch floods periodically. The new culvert will be 9.5 feet wide and six feet tall. Article 21 passed 182-1.

The Board of Assessors submitted Article 22, asking voters to accept provisions of Clause 41C of Chap. 59, Section 5 of Massachusetts General Law, that would broaden the group of residents eligible for tax relief. Article 22 passed unanimously.

Article 16 sought authorization to purchase real property at 234 Middle St., a lot and house adjacent to the DPW facility. Amy Cole, an abutter at 236 Middle St., asked why the article requests $105,000 more than the asking price. She also commented there are two bald eagle nests near the river boundary.

Selectboard Chair Amy Parsons said, “We feel it is a very valuable property for the town.”

Voters agreed. Article 16 passed 163-21.

At the beginning of the meeting, Joyce Chunglo, member of the Selectboard and very active in town government, was honored with a citation for her many and varied contributions. During discussion of Article 9, the omnibus budget, Chunglo became even more popular when she made a motion to forego reading the budget line by line. Moderator Whately seemed surprised when residents asked no questions about the operating plan for fiscal year 2025 of $21,698,814. Article 9 passed unanimously.

The Phelps Farmhouse, a structure dating to the early 1800s, will see renovations after Article 14 passed with voters. The article sought $150,000 in funding from the historic preservation and undesignated funds of the town’s Community Preservation Act, or CPA, monies. Questions arose about the relationship between the foundation that owns the building and the town, whether the town would have any control over how the farmhouse would be used, and whether it would be of benefit to town residents.

Andy Morris Freedman, a member of the CPA Committee, recommended the funding.

“This is just the first phase of a project that will make Hadley the envy of the Pioneer Valley,” Morris Freedman said. “It’s the history of your parents and grandparents … It’s a beautiful house.”

Article 15 sought $40,000 for renovating the exterior windows of Town Hall. A few questioners sought information on the details, after which residents passed the article unanimously.

Article 1, which sought a debt exclusion to fund the purchase of the ladder truck, was passed over. The rest of the articles in the warrant were consent articles, required by the commonwealth, that enable town government to carry out standard business. Those articles, combined, passed in a single vote.

Joyce Chunglo, still smiling after a three hour meeting, made the motion to adjourn.

Artifacts from Black and Afro-Indigenous residents of Amherst tell a lesser-known history →

New England Public Media | By Jill Kaufman

Published February 12, 2024 at 1:10 PM EST

Several generations of a Black and Afro-Indigenous family from Amherst, Massachusetts, have been archiving photos and artifacts, connected to how and where they and others lived in the town hundreds of years ago.

Dozens of people came out the first week in February to celebrate an exhibit of photos and artifacts that tell largely unknown stories of these Amherst residents.

“Ancestral Bridges: Celebrating Black and Afro-Indigenous families who lived and worked in Amherst in the 18th through early 20th centuries” will be on view in Frost Library through this summer.

The show, on the first and second floor of the library, is curated by Ancestral Bridges founder Anika Lopes. A couture milliner and former Amherst town councilor, she's turned decades of her family's research into the non-profit.

All her life, Lopes said, she has heard from relatives about who and where she came from. Lopes, who is Afro-Indigenous, grew up in the largely white town. For decades, her grandfather and great-grandfather collected artifacts and stories of Amherst residents who started Black businesses and churches in town — and who provided homes to other Black and Afro-Indigenous people coming to Amherst from the South.

After her elder relatives died, Lopes said she sort of inherited the job of keeping their work going.

“[Ancestral Bridges] is a collective of family members, genealogists, experts in the field. We don't put anything out until it's documented. It's not hearsay; it’s not Ancestry.com,” Lopes said.

The public history they’ve been building and showcasing comes from what Lopes called a rare kind of deep dive, not just for her family, but for the public.

“The work [being done] uplifts the Black and Afro-Indigenous history of Amherst,” Lopes said, “that for the most part has been erased and is unknown to most of the community.”

The exhibit at Amherst College has been up since last year, though Lopes added several new artifacts, including a letter from November 1863, which she said shows her family's connection to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.

“[The] letter was written by Charles Thompson, who is my four times great uncle. He was a member of the Fifth Cavalry during the Civil War," Lopes said.

The letter was written on the back of sheet music, typical of the times. The letter itself is personal and loving, from Thompson to his sister Mary, about longing to see family again. It was recently found by a family member, hidden in a picture frame, Lopes said.

According to the exhibit, Thompson, his father and other family members were among the soldiers in 1865 sent to Gavelston, Texas, to establish the end of slavery — even as the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863.

Also among the photos is one of jazz musician Gil Roberts — born in 1896 in Amherst — posing with a banjo.

At one time, Roberts was internationally acclaimed, but because he was Black, Roberts couldn’t play in the U.S., according to the exhibit. He traveled to Europe, where he performed with Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong.

Roberts returned to western Massachusetts for health reasons and later worked as a janitor at Amherst College.

The exhibit features several other photos and stories of the college’s 19th century Black employees. It's only recently the school has included them in its history, according to the exhibit.

About a hundred people came out for the late afternoon event, including Lopes’ mother, her 96-year-old aunt, Lopes’ elementary school teacher and a former leader of the Nipmuc tribe in Massachusetts.

“I have to give a special shout-out to all of these ladies in the front row,” Lopes said.

The women have been her mentors, Lopes said, and she "stands on their shoulders."

Shirley Jackson Whitaker, a physician, artist and member of Ancestral Bridges board, was among them. At the microphone, Whitaker spoke about another Ancestral Bridges event she took part in last year, at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museumin nearby Hadley.

Whitaker, along with storyteller and former Amherst College Dean of Students Onawumi Jean Moss, were part of a ceremony last September remembering six people enslaved at the Porter-Phelps farm in the 18th century.

Whitaker performed a song she wrote, imagining the experience of one of the enslaved, Margaret (Peg) Bowen, unable to leave anything to her children.

“My little girl, you will always be, even if they take you away from me," Whitaker sang.

Many at the library event, like about 70% of Amherst, were white. To everyone, Lopes reiterated her goal, to make the history and legacy of local Black and Afro-Indigenous people visible.

“We're talking about two cultures that weren't meant to even have a history, let alone know their history, let alone being authority and telling their history,” Lopes said.

Part of that is about what comes next for Amherst.

Allegations of discrimination, including racism, have roiled the school district in recent months. At the same time, there’s a plan underway to distribute a $2 million reparation fund to the town's Black community.

Phelps House fixes, Town Hall repair plan in line for $190K in Hadley CPA funds →

HADLEY — Community Preservation Act money for an initial phase of fixing up an early 19th-century farmhouse at the Porter Phelps Huntington Museum and hiring an architect to evaluate and prepare the 1840 Town Hall for renovations is being recommended by the CPA C0mmittee.

At its March 4 meeting, committee members unanimously endorsed spending a combined $190,000 from the CPA account to fund proposals that will come before voters at annual Town Meeting in May. The money in the CPA account comes from a 3% surcharge on property tax bills combined with a match from the state.

For the 1816 Phelps House, $150,000 would go toward about $250,000 in critical priorities, including roof stabilization, structural reinforcement in the basement and abatement of mold. Phelps House was built by Charles (Moses) Porter Phelps across River Drive from his childhood home and has been in disrepair since last being occupied in 1988.

“I think this is a fabulous proposal,” said committee member Andy Morris-Friedman. “I can’t think of a better use for CPA funds. I hope it can be first of many cooperative efforts to make a historical focal point of Hadley.”

If approved by Town Meeting, there would then be a grant agreement between the nonprofit museum and the Select Board, with the money available in July.

The only other CPA project proposed is repairs at Town Hall. Department of Public Works Director Scott McCarthy explained that exterior work is needed, including to the windows, siding and cement steps at the rear of the building.

“We’re looking to get some funding together and to make repairs,” McCarthy said.

The $40,000 in CPA money will pay for design services to evaluate the building and then prepare a design and construction bid documents.

“We’d like to keep the building as historically correct as possible, using modern materials,” McCarthy said.

Town Administrator Carolyn Brennan said a breeze goes through most of the offices in the building because of the failing windows, many of which are caulked in place and haven’t been washed or cleaned in many, many years. “They are not repairable,” Brennan said.

The front steps, side steps and the ramp also need to be looked at by experts.

Morris-Friedman said it is tricky to use CPA money when talking about replacing something historic, like windows, with possibly modern windows. But since the money is only being asked to pay for architectural work, not the actual purchase of windows, he didn’t see a problem.

“For this particular project, I don’t think that’s an issue,” Morris-Friedman said.

Town Hall has benefited from CPA money in the past. In 2006, the CPA Committee recommended and Town Meeting approved $150,000 for painting the building the following year, preparing it for the town’s 350th celebrations in 2009.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.

On The Mark - Interview with Porter-Phelps-Huntington President of Board of Directors Karen Sanchez-Eppler

8/02/2023

On The Mark, a radio show hosted by Mark Auerbach along with Guy McLain on WSKB 89.5 FM Westfield Community Radio, recently interviewed the President of the Board of Directors for the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, Karen Sanchez-Eppler. Click Below to view an archived video of the radio interview through the WSKB Community Radio Youtube page.

Expanding perspective: Porter-Phelps property in Hadley wins designation as larger National Historic District

8/04/2023

by Steve Pfarrer, Amherst Bulletin

HADLEY - In 1973, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington house in Hadley, which dates to 1752, won designation on the National Register of Historic Places, the federal program that supports and coordinates efforts to protect the nation’s historic and archeological resources.

Now, half a century later, the historic house has become part of a much larger property that’s also been named a National Historic District under the purview of the National Park Service, a designation that in turn recognizes a broader history of the area.

“For a long time, the focus here was on the house and this kind of romanticized version of Colonial history,” said Brian Whetstone, a public historian who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“But there’s a much broader story to tell,” said Whetstone, who was a key part of the research team that did the legwork to win designation for the new historical district.

Disclaimer: This article misreports the name of the grant project that funded the expansion of the new historic district; the correct grant title is a NPS Underrepresented Communities Grant, a specific initiative of the NPS to expand diverse representation in the National Register of Historic Places. Additionally, the article misreports the research of Alison Russell; Russell has studied Charles Porter Phelps, the son of Elizabeth Porter Phelps and Charles Phelps, Jr., who built Phelps Farm in 1816. The article misreports the administrative history of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum; Doheny Sessions served as curator of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum from 1968-1976; Susan Lisk became curator in 1978.

Click here to view the full article.

Introducing the "Forty Acres and Its Skirts" National Historic District

8/02/2023

by The Reminder

HADLEY - The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will host a celebration to introduce the “Forty Acres and Its Skirts” National Historic District, Hadley’s newest historic district, with a talk by Brian Whetstone, Ph.D, on Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023 at 1:30 p.m. 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 and was completed as part of a National Park Service “Underrepresented Communities Grant” awarded to the Massachusetts Historical Commission in 2020. Marla R. Miller, Ph.D. and Whetstone, 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.

Mass Humanities awards $160K to Valley cultural organizations

7/28/2023

by Steve Pfarrer, Greenfield Reporter

HADLEY - Mass Humanities has awarded more than $160,000 to five cultural organizations in the Pioneer Valley to help them sustain or increase their staffing, with the larger goal being to help those groups “create, restore and grow humanities programs.”

In the Pioneer Valley, funding has been provided to the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation in Hadley ($40,000); The LAVA Center in Greenfield ($40,000); Nueva Esperanza in Holyoke ($40,000); the Cummington Cultural District ($24,960); and KlezCummington ($16,000).

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, which runs the historical museum of the same name, will use the grant money to fill two new part-time positions, one to oversee educational programs and work with interns, and the other to coordinate preservation work on historical structures on the property.

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Floodwaters claim Hadley CSA farm’s harvest

7/15/2023

by Scott Merzbach, Daily Hampshire Gazette

HADLEY — Eight acres of tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, leeks, beets, peppers and garlic, all about ready to harvest at the height of the growing season for Stone Soup Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture summer shares, will soon be plowed under after being inundated by water from the Connecticut River this week.

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Mass Humanities awards $1.2M in culture sector recovery grants

7/11/2023

by MassLive

NORTHAMPTON — Mass Humanities on Tuesday announced that 35 state groups organizations will receive $1.2 million in grants, the largest single disbursement in the agency’s history.

Mass Humanities is the commonwealth’s leading funder of humanities programs. The 2023 Staffing Recovery Grants will go to nonprofit organizations to sustain and expand the work hours of current employees or to hire new staff to help restore and grow programs across the state.

Awards ranged between $16,000 and $40,000 and were targeted at groups with budgets of $500,000 or less, and five or fewer full-time equivalent employees.

In the Connecticut River Valley, grant recipients included the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation of Hadley, $40,000; Local Access to Valley Arts (The LAVA Center) in Greenfield, $40,000; Nueva Esperanza of Holyoke, $40,000; the Cummington Cultural District, $24,960; and Klez Cummington, $16,000.

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Research reinterprets legacy of Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum

7/05/2023

by Dylan Corey, The Reminder

HADLEY – The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum (PPH) hosted a free public program funded by Mass Humanities on June 29 called “Three Generations of Reinterpretation at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum,” which included numerous historians and graduate students presenting new information about the site that was discovered thanks to the grant and a box of receipts, journal entries, photographs and other documents that were recently retrieved from a nearby attic.

“We’re gathered here on Nonotuck land, the homeland [of Native Americans], all of whom were displaced by the arrivals of European families like the Porters who came to Hadley in the 17th century,” said President of the PPH Foundation’s Board of Directors Karen Sánchez-Eppler. “The museum recognizes the responsibility to acknowledge the peoples of this land as well as the histories of dispossession alongside enslavement that generated the wealth reflected in this historic property. [The museum] is working to examine, address, and reflect on these difficult but necessary histories. Today’s program reflects the ongoing nature of that work and the significant steps taken just this past year to start a new version of reparations and storytelling in this place.”

The speakers included three graduate students of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst that have undertaken different aspects of the museum’s reinterpretation funded by the grant. Brian Whetstone has focused on revising the site’s nomination to the National Register of Historic Places by uncovering changes made to the house and James Lincoln Huntington’s vision of family legacy, colonial heritage and historic preservation that prompted the opening of the museum in 1949.

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Kestrel Land Trust proposes new loop trail in Hadley

2/01/2023

by Scott Merzbach, Amherst Bulletin

HADLEY — A new loop trail overlooking the historic Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum property that will allow walkers to take in a view of the farm fields along the Connecticut River is being proposed by Kestrel Land Trust for its Dyer Conservation Area.

The trail work at the 35-acre site, which will supplement the existing Mount Warner Connector Trail, is being brought before the Conservation Commission Tuesday as a request for determination of applicability.

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Porter-Phelps-Huntington Awarded $10,000 for Preservation Projects

6/10/2022

by Preservation Massachusetts

PLYMOUTH, MA - Preservation Massachusetts, in partnership with The 1772 Foundation, is pleased to announce the 16 recipients of the 2022 historic preservation matching grant program for Massachusetts. Preservation Massachusetts is the statewide non-profit historic preservation organization dedicated to preserving the Commonwealth’s historic and cultural heritage and The 1772 Foundation plays a leading role in promoting historic preservation nationwide. 

 In this latest grant round, the 1772 Foundation worked with statewide historic preservation organizations, including Preservation Massachusetts, to administer 1:1 matching grants of up to $10,000. Grants were given to historic preservation projects for building exteriors. At their quarterly meeting, the trustees of The 1772 Foundation awarded $126,000 in grants to 16 Massachusetts projects, based on recommendations from Preservation Massachusetts. 

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum was awarded $10,000 for exterior painting and surface restoration, roof and porch repair, and window repair/restoration.

Securing funding for historic preservation projects remains a top priority for Preservation Massachusetts and other preservation organizations across the country. Erin Kelly, President of Preservation Massachusetts, stated that the continued interest in The 1772 Foundation matching grant “reinforces the need that exists for the many historic resources that we have in Massachusetts and the amount of work that is undertaken by the organizations that are responsible for them. She added that, “There is great need to expand funding opportunities for the many historic buildings that make up the places that matter to us from Cape Cod to the Berkshires. The work our grant recipients do today ensures that integral parts of our communities remain for tomorrow. We are grateful for the support of The 1772 Foundation and congratulate this year’s grant recipients.”

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Click here to read more about Preservation Massachusetts and 1772 Foundation.

Expanding the story: New research at historic Hadley home examines the lives of people who once lived or worked there

7/1/2022

by Steve Pfarrer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

As Joshua dos Reis led a group of visitors through the historic Porter-Phelps-Huntington house on a recent tour, he paused in a front room, known as the “Long Room,” of the 270-year-old Hadley home. Pointing to a graceful arch near some tall windows, he said “With this arch, the family was basically saying ‘We are rich. We are prosperous.’”

For years, that’s been a big part of the story of the historic house, a home that was owned by six generations of the same extended family before being turned into a museum in the mid-20th century. The people that originally built the home in colonial Hadley and then expanded it developed a prosperous farm with hundreds of acres of land, and the house later became a summer home for wealthy descendants of the original Porter family.

Because the home was owned by the same extended family, the property, once called Forty Acres, has been a treasure trove for historians, giving them access to thousands of original letters and documents as well as furnishings, providing a valuable window into 18th- and 19th-century life in the Valley.

But in the last few years in particular, research about the home and farm has broadened considerably, taking into account the lives of others who once lived and worked on the property: enslaved people, indentured servants, farm and dairy laborers, artisans and seamstresses. The museum is also learning more about the Indigenous people who lived on the land before European settlers arrived.

“We have a new version of representation and storytelling here,” Karen Sánchez-Eppler, a professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College, said earlier this week during a presentation at the museum. “We’re able to tell a broader story of the other families and people who make up the history of this land.”

In fact, Sánchez-Eppler, who heads the board of directors of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, prefaced her remarks by noting “We’re gathered here on Nonotuck land” — land that was also used or crossed by Mohican, Nipmuck and other Native peoples who eventually “were displaced by European settlers … We recognize this is a difficult subject to contend with.”

Sánchez-Eppler was joined by a few other historians and three University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate students in history, all of whom have done fresh research about the Hadley property that was funded in part by different grants the museum was awarded in recent years.

The pandemic, which forced the museum to close to the public for two years, actually gave researchers more opportunities to dig into their work, says Susan Lisk, the museum’s executive director.

Brian Whetstone, one of the UMass students, spoke about James Lincoln Huntington, a family descendant and Boston obstetrician who in the 1920s began repairing the aging home and turned it into a museum in 1949.

Yet Huntington preserved a “romanticized” version of the property’s past, Whetstone said, by taking down aging farm structures such as an ice house and chicken barn and focusing visitors’ attention on the house and its colonial pedigree.

“He filtered what we see today to reflect what his vision of what the house was,” Whetstone said. “He erased the signs of a working landscape, sometimes by accident, but also by design … and reinforced the genteel image of life here.” (One old barn was moved in its entirety to the town center to become the Hadley Farm Museum.)

Yet the “refined, affluent lives” of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington family were only made possible by labor that Huntington had essentially “made invisible,” Whetstone added.

“That’s one of the things we’ve learned — just how deeply entangled life in our own area was in the Atlantic slave trade, even after slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts,” said Sánchez-Eppler.

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Historic home in Hadley tells the tale of slavery, redemption

5/24/2022

by Staasi Heropulos, The Reminder

HADLEY – When Moses and Elizabeth Pitkin Porter built their home in 1752, they probably didn’t think they were creating a museum that would capture the history of their family and slavery.

Shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is once again open to the public. The inside of the home represents lives frozen in time – six generations of family members who began their journey here as slaveholders. The first and second generations ran a dairy farm and made cheese that was famous and shipped all over the world. 

The third generation earned its wealth through international trade including commodities that were based on slave labor. But it wasn’t long before the family became actively involved in progressive causes, joining the growing anti-slavery movement.

The evolution of the family reflects changing mores and attitudes in the country. The museum tells the story of one family’s journey from the 18th to 21st centuries.

“We are now including the stories of the indigenous people whose land was taken to build the house. They were also enslaved and worked here. There were also indentured servants including young boys and black laborers who worked at the farmstead. Those are the stories we are integrating as we look at the past,” said museum Executive Director Susan Lisk.

Lisk said the house is a unique historical resource in Hadley, with its significance extending past the well-preserved eighteenth-century architecture of the home. What is also noteworthy is the home was built and lived in by six generations of the same family.

While the museum was closed during the last two years of the coronavirus pandemic, there was a lot of activity inside the building. The facility received several grants it used to research new parts of the family history and make improvements to the museum.

“We’re excited to be able to reopen especially with all the grants and projects and research that have been going on while we were closed. There’s lots new to tell,” said Lisk.

The museum is open for guided tours only June 1 to Oct. 15, Saturday through Wednesday from 1 to 4 p.m. The museum is closed on Thursdays and Fridays.

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