Stirring the Ashes: A Remembrance September 23, 2023 2:00pm
THE PORTER-PHELPS-HUNTINGTON MUSEUM
Hosts
Stirring the Ashes
A memorial event in partnership with Stopping Stones Project and Ancestral Bridges
Zebulon Prutt (1731-1802), Margaret (Peg) Bowen (1742-1992), Cesar Phelps (1752-date unknown), Rose (1761-1781), Phillis (1765-1775), Phillis (1775-1783)
September 23, 2023 2:00pm at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum
Hadley MA —
On Saturday, September 23, in partnership with Ancestral Bridges, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum will host a commemorative Stopping Stones memorial markers ceremony. Join us as we stir the ashes in remembrance of six people who were enslaved during the eighteenth century at the Porter-Phelps farmstead in Hadley, Massachusetts. Acknowledging and learning about this difficult past is necessary to live responsibly in the present and strengthens our collective responsibility to create a better future. With soulful expression through music and renowned storytellers, Onawumi Jean Moss and Dr. Shirley Jackson Whitaker, we invite all members of the community to honor the lives and share the histories of Zebulon Prutt, Cesar Phelps, Margaret (Peg) Bowen, her daughters Rosanna and Phillis, and granddaughter Phillis who were enslaved at this farmstead. This program includes Reading Frederick Douglas Together, a reading of an abridged version of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech, “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro,” and an opportunity to visit portions of the house that recall those who were enslaved. This event is free and open to the public and supported by grants from Mass Humanities, Mass Cultural Council, and Stopping Stones, a national project of the Engagement Arts Fund.
MY business, if I have any here to-day, is with the present. The accepted time with God and his cause is the ever-living now. We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. Now is the time, the important time.
-Frederick Douglass
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation acknowledges that it occupies the unceded lands of the Nonotuck people. The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum contains a collection of the belongings of several generations of one extended Hadley family, dating back to the house’s establishment in 1752 by Moses and Elizabeth Porter. The farmstead, known as “Forty Acres and its Skirts,” was a year-round home for generations before becoming a rural retreat for the family in the 19th century. The house and its activities include the labor and livelihood of many artisans, servants, and enslaved people. Their lived experiences are being brought to the forefront at the museum in the form of a new tour and reinterpretation initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. A new tour foregrounds the lives of six enslaved men and women at the house: Zebulon Prutt, Cesar Phelps, Peg Bowen, Phillis, Rose, and Phillis. Additionally, the tour highlights the role of “pastkeeping” by exploring the home’s transition into a museum in the twentieth century. Recently, the museum was designated the “Forty Acres and its Skirts National Historic District” by the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and now encompasses protected farmland, forest, river frontage, nature trails, built landscape features and outbuildings.
The Museum is located at 130 River Drive, Route 47, Hadley MA 01035, and open for tours Friday to Monday 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm through October 15. For more information visit www.pphmuseum.org or call (413) 584-4699.
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