Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum reopens with new research to share

6/02/2022

By Richard Damas, Spectrum News 1 

HADLEY, MA - After a two-year hiatus because of COVID-19, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley reopened to the public on Wednesday afternoon.

The historic home was built in 1752 and remained in the same family for six generations.

The home contains many artifacts, including kitchenware, writing utensils, and furniture over 300 years old.

Elizabeth Porter Phelps, one of the homeowners who became widely known for her successful dairy farm, kept a diary of her experiences, including stories many haven’t heard before.

“There were other families living here,” Karen Sanchez-Eppler, the museum’s board president, said. “There were families of enslaved people in the eighteenth century who were living in this house.”

According to Sanchez-Eppler, while the museum was closed, they received multiple grants from the state to further their research into the history of the home and the colonization of Hadley and the history of Black labor and agriculture.  

Joshua Boston, a slave who was emancipated from the Porter family, became a widely known laborer throughout the valley for his building and linen threshing skills before eventually buying land to call his own.

“In the late 18th century, early century, there was a Black man who owned a farm in Hadley,” Sanchez-Eppler. “That’s a story nobody has been telling. And one of his day labor jobs was to help build a new kitchen space into this house to make its dairy business expand.”  

Boston was entrusted with many roles during his time in the valley, including caring for others through a tax called “The Overseers Of The Poor.”

“There was this fund that belonged to the town and then you would pay individuals to take care of other people,” Sanchez-Eppler said. “And so Joshua Boston was being paid by the Overseers of the Poor frequently to take care of other members of the Black community.”

The museum will be open for guided tours from June 1 to Oct. 15, Saturday through Wednesday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m with it being closed on Thursdays and Fridays.

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Back in business: Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum in Hadley to reopen

5/18/2022

by Steve Pfarrer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

HADLEY — The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, closed for much of the last two years because of the pandemic, will reopen to the public June 1.

And when it does, museum officials say they’ll be offering new tours of the historic 18th-century house that will tell a more complete story of the people who lived and worked on the property, from Native Americans who predated white settlers to enslaved people and servants who once worked on the land.

Other longtime programs, such as Wednesday Folk Traditions, which features appearances by noted ethnic folk music performers and ensembles from New England, will also resume.

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Museums & Social Issues Journal publishes "Joining Reinterpretation to Reparations"

4/19/2022

Museums & Social Issues Journal recently published an article written by Marla Miller and Karen Sánchez-Eppler about the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum’s recent reinterpretations, agricultural and environmental preservation, and the museum’s collaboration with a Reparative Farming project enabling Somali refugees to grow their own crops.

ABSTRACT

In 1752, on land cultivated by Nonotuck and other Indigenous people for millennia, Moses and Elizabeth Porter established a farmstead along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. This property remained in the family for 200 years, becoming a museum in 1949. A traditional historic house museum for decades, more recently the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has shifted focus to the site’s enslaved, indigenous, and hired laborers. More inclusive storytelling is necessary, but the museum also seeks more direct impacts. In spring 2021 the museum collaborated on a Reparative Farming project enabling Somali refugees to grow their own crops. The museum plans to expand this pilot-project into a permanent program for communities of color – enacting links between racial and environmental justice. This co-authored provocation situates this fledgling project within larger interpretive genealogies, suggesting ways small museums can begin to confront the histories of colonization, enslavement, and displacement they narrate.

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Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum to offer virtual-only programming for 2021 season

6/7/2021

by Phillip Bishop, WWLP

HADLEY, MA – The Porter-Phelps Huntington Museum has announced they will be closed for in-person programming this 2021 season for public health reasons.

This will be the second season that the nearly 270-year-old house museum will be offering virtual-only programming.This season the museum will be hosting a free online series: Bridging the Past and Present.They’ll also be adding new collections and archive material to their website. The museum will still be taking donations to keep them going after this season.

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Federal grant will help Hadley’s Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum acknowledge slaves who worked on 18th-century farm

7/27/2020

by MassLive

HADLEY — The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum plans to update offerings to include information on slaves, indentured servants and prisoners of war who worked on the farm property in the 18th century.

The updates will be part of the creation of a new National Register historic district paid for with a $19,050 grant from the National Park Service administered by the Massachusetts Historical Commission.

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Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum Receives MCFF Grant

HADLEY—The Porter-Phelps-Huntington (PPH) Foundation is pleased to announce that it has been approved for a $16,000 capital grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund (MCFF). This is the third grant the foundation has received from MCFF since it was established in 2006. The matching grant will support preservation and maintenance work not addressed through previous grants, including painting, window restoration, roofing, flashing and gutter replacement, driveway repairs, carpentry repairs and lolly column replacement.

In addition to the capital grant, MCFF’s application review panel suggested that a Systems Replacement Plan (SRP) would benefit the foundation’s overall facility planning efforts. This provides an additional $7,000 to develop a 20-year capital needs assessment for the museum and its mechanical systems.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House, known as Forty Acres, is an 18th-century farm on the banks of the Connecticut River that today interprets life in rural New England over three centuries. Through the words, spaces, and possessions of the women and men who lived here, the museum portrays the activities of a prosperous and productive 18th-century farmstead. Members of this household along with numerous artisans, servants, and enslaved people made Forty Acres important social and commercial link in local, regional, and national cultural and economic networks. During the 19th century the generations transformed the estate into a rural retreat. In the 20th century the house was preserved as a museum by family members and now contains the possessions of six generations of this extended family. The house, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is surrounded by over 350 acres of protected farmland, forest, and river frontage. The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is also the Way-Point Center for the National Connecticut River Scenic Byway, for which it hosts a panel exhibit on the natural history of the Valley, the Museum’s history, and sites along the by-way for travelers.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is located at 130 River Drive, Hadley, on Route 47 just two miles north of the junction of Routes 9 and 47 in Hadley. Although the museum and way-point center are closed and the cultural programming cancelled for the 2020 season due to the coronavirus pandemic, information about the museum, the families that lived here, and its collection are available on its website www.pphmuseum.org, where donations can also be made to assist in the maintenance and preservation of the museum and grounds. Additionally, while the facilities are closed, a pedestrian trail system beginning at the museum and traversing the farm fields along the river and to the old buggy path to the top of Mount Warner, remains open, although the museum asks that any users practice regular social distancing and carry masks in case they encounter others on the trail.

Pandemic cancels North Hall Arts Fest, Porter-Phelps music series

5/16/2020

by Steve Pfarrer, Daily Hampshire Gazette

Two weeks after the Green River Festival was canceled for 2020, two longstanding summer arts series have also fallen victim to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Organizers of the North Hall Arts Festival in Huntington, and of the summer concert series at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum in Hadley, have canceled their 2020 seasons because of the pandemic.

The Huntington festival had planned on offering 11 events, ranging from jazz, country and baroque music to theater, at the town’s historic North Hall between May 23 and Sept. 20. But in a statement, organizers said given safety concerns and the uncertainty of the pandemic’s duration, “we believe that cancellation is the safest course of action.”

And at the Porter Phelps Museum, home since the 1980s to the summer music series Wednesday Folk Traditions, organizers say their research into pandemics of the 19th and 20th centuries has convinced them that “the impact of COVID-19 will be with us for a long time.”

Until an effective vaccine is developed, museum Director Susan Lisk said in statement, the Hadley museum will be closed not just for Wednesday Folk Traditions (seven concerts) but for a smaller summer music series, A Perfect Spot of Tea, as well as all other public programs and events.

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Music by the river: Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum readies summer series

06/26/2018

by Steve Pfarrer, Amherst Bulletin

HADLEY - One of the highlights of summer, aside from beaches, baseball and barbeque, is outside concerts — and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley has no shortage of shows this year.

And, in a tradition that dates back almost four decades, you can hear some of that music as you sip tea and munch on pastries donated by area bakeries and restaurants.

The Hadley museum, an historic farmhouse dating to the mid 1700s that was home to six generations of an extended family, has since the early 1980s featured Wednesday evening summer concerts that explore folk and traditional music from different cultures. On Saturday afternoons, meanwhile, visitors can hear a range of sounds — jazz, blues, a capella — during the “Perfect Spot of Tea” shows, which take place on the museum’s back veranda.

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Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley preserves centuries of family history

08/24/2016

by Alexi Cohan, MassLive

HADLEY - Generations of family histories abound in Western Massachusetts, and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley preserves an 18th century home where the story of a family is shared with visitors.

Located in the heart of a large farmstead and sitting on 27 acres of land, the museum attracts visitors for tours and to participate in programs and concerts throughout the summer.

One of their most successful programs, "A Perfect Spot of Tea," draws between 40 and 50 fans each week, welcomed to sit "friendly style" to drink tea and eat pastries as they enjoy a musical program on a Saturday afternoon. This weekend will offer the final "Spot of Tea" performance. There is a fee of $10.

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MuseFLASHES: Kathy Greenwood’s ‘A Stitch in Time’ at Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum and lots of other arts happenings in the Amherst area

06/1/2016

by Amhest Bulletin

AMHERST - “A Stitch in Time,” an exhibit of collage and textile work by Kathy Greenwood, will be on view through July 31 at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum at 130 River Drive in Hadley.

The objects and images that populate the work allude to stories, relationships and observations of daily living. The ephemera of home — heirlooms, implements and cast-offs — can invoke personal memories as well as conjecture about the lives of others.

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