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.