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Dear friends and colleagues,
Join us this Sunday, August 6, at 1:30 for a special program with Dr. Brian Whetstone, co-investigator with Dr. Marla Miller on the National Parks Service Underrepresented Communities Grant, "The Forty Acres and Its Skirts National Register historic district," to celebrate the expansion of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum's historic designation from a singular building to a 114-acre historic district. The program will begin in the museum's corn barn and refreshments will be served.
Brian will kick things off with a presentation on the stories that surfaced during their two years conducting research for the historic district designation and the significance of the National Register of Historic Places to preservation work at the museum and in western Massachusetts. He will then lead a walking tour of the grounds to introduce the public to the historic landscape features and architectural elements that make up the newly enlarged district. Brian's tours balance rigorous scholarship with lively audience engagement–you won't want to miss this exclusive chance to go "behind the scenes" of the museum's new historic district with him before he embarks on a fellowship at Princeton in the fall.
A public historian and historian of late-twentieth century U.S. urban history, Brian is a 2023-2024 Princeton-Mellon Fellow and holds a Ph.D. in History and certificate in Public History from the UMass Amherst. Learn more about his scholarship and publications here.
We're looking forward to seeing you this Sunday, August 6th at 1:30pm!
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Left top: Brian and Marla uncovered this photo of Phelps Farm from circa 1890 in the attic of the historic 1816 farmhouse. Image credit: Unprocessed collections of (Moses) Charles Porter Phelps, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Bottom right: In this photo from 1945, Dr. James L. Huntington poses with his wife and sister in the Long Room, dressed for an event with The Amherst Historical Society. Image credit: Journal and scrapbook at the house at "Forty Acres" in Hadley, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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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 features and contributing structures that make up this new district.
This new “Forty Acres and Its Skirts” National Register 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 the Massachusetts Historical Commission 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 Trust's Elizabeth Huntington Dyer Field and Forest Conservation Area and the associated agricultural land owned by the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation. Their work focuses 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 Whetstone 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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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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