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.

Hadley foundation wants $150K in CPA money for Phelps farmhouse fixes

HADLEY — An initial phase of stabilizing the early 19th-century Phelps Farm, a farmhouse that became part of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in 2022, could depend on support from the town’s Community Preservation Act account.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation made a request last month for $150,000 in CPA money to supplement $106,000 it has already invested in repairs to the 1816 building, vacant since 1988.

“Despite the condition, the house is really this rare, intact example of this early New England domestic architecture,” Brian Whetstone, a public historian who serves on the foundation’s stabilization committee, told the CPA Committee in mid-February.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.”

Click here to view all grant recipients.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.

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.

Click here to view the full article.