New "Forty Acres and Its Skirts" National Register Historic District Annoucned
Boundary of the Forty Acres and Its Skirts historic district.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation is pleased to announce that a new National Register historic district, “Forty Acres And Its Skirts,” has been designated encompassing the museum property, the associated Phelps Farm complex across River Drive, and other historic resources and agricultural land in the vicinity. The project was supported through a National Park Service Underrepresented Communities Grant to the Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) in partnership with the Porter-Phelps-Huntington (PPH) Foundation. The goal of the district nomination was to update and expand the existing National Register documentation for the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Historic House, listed individually in 1973, incorporating the associated historic resources and focusing discussion on the importance of groups and individuals underrepresented in the historical record. This includes enslaved and Native people, indentured servants, free Blacks, and Polish agricultural workers. The new district encompasses about 114 acres on both sides of River Drive and extends the period of significance to 1978. The National Register of Historic Places is the nation’s official list of buildings, structures, sites, and objects that retain integrity and are worthy of preservation. The Underrepresented Communities Grant awarded for this project was one of only eighteen awarded nationwide by the National Park Service in 2020.
Karen Sánchez-Eppler, President of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Board of Directors, describes the research undertaken for this National Register nomination by Professor Marla Miller and Brian Whetstone, both of the UMass Amherst Department of History, as “detailed and far-ranging, providing an extraordinary amount of information about the land, the buildings themselves, and the daily lives of the many very different people who lived and labored on these properties over more than two centuries. The histories we care about change over time, and the new nomination works to answer questions about environmental impact, immigration, the economics of these properties, and their labor histories that simply were not being asked before. Now we know that the 1816 buildings at Phelps Farm were paid for in significant part by profits Charles Phelps made trading in sugar and other products of enslaved labor. The museum has always known and talked about the six people enslaved at the museum property, but now we also know about the many free Black men and women who provided hired labor at both properties, some of whom also managed to buy Hadley land of their own. Until just two years ago there were no people of color who owned farms in Hadley, but there were Black owned farms here 120 years ago. This is local history that matters for our present.” The tour of the Museum has been rewritten to incorporate this wider history.
Professor Miller noted that "bringing historical understanding of the site more firmly into the 20th century has been fascinating. Particularly rewarding for us as researchers has been exploring the history of dairy industry in 20th-century Hampshire County, and narrating more thoroughly the story of the creation of the museum in the second quarter of the 20th century, and learning more about the many ways local families contributed to that effort."
Phelps Farm was donated to the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation in 2022. Sánchez-Eppler notes that “the farmhouse preserves many original features—including, which is very rare—a kitchen ell that experienced very little modernizing renovation and still contains original shelving and hardware. But the house has been unoccupied for over 30 years and will take lots of resources to stabilize and restore.” The inclusion of Phelps Farm in the new historic district makes the property eligible for a variety of state and national grants. A significant portion of the acreage in the new district, on the east side of River Drive, is under the stewardship of Kestrel Trust, which has partnered with the PPH Foundation on efforts to increase visitorship and appreciation for the preserved cultural landscape.