Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum secures National Park Service Grant

HADLEY—The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation (PPH) is pleased to announce that the Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) has received a grant of $19,050 from the National Park Service (NPS) through the Historic Preservation Fund to support a new National Register historic district encompassing the Foundation’s museum property as well as the privately owned Phelps Farm across River Drive/Route 47, which was built by Charles Porter Phelps in 1816 on land once part of the larger farmstead. This NPS award, an Underrepresented Communities grant, will include updating and expanding existing National Register documentation for the museum property to include information on the enslaved people, indentured servants, and prisoners of war, who worked at the site in the 18th century, in order to provide a broader and more inclusive history of the site. The grant will be administered by the MHC in coordination with PPH.

"We're a small museum closed for the season due to the pandemic and have been relying upon donations and small grants to keep us afloat this year, so this announcement has come at a critical moment and is a wonderful morale booster. We are thrilled about the award and honored to be selected as one of only eighteen projects nationwide," said PPH Executive Director Susan J. Lisk. "This new historic district will tell the stories of traditionally underrepresented people who lived, worked, and died here more than 200 years ago, as well as subsequent generations whose varied careers and interests reflect broader social and historical trends in the country up to and including the 20th century. The existing National Register documentation for the PPH museum house, now nearly 50 years old, omits these incredibly important stories, so we're excited by the opportunity to ensure this history is documented for posterity and archived here, at the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and at the Library of Congress. We're also excited that the new historic district will encompass the early 19th-century Phelps Farm across the street, which has its own rich history that has never been thoroughly researched or documented. We have a wealth of archival material to help tell this story and are looking forward to working with the MHC on the project, which is important for the history of the Connecticut River Valley as a whole."

This year, the National Park Service allocated $750,000 in Underrepresented Communities grant funds. The NPS states that the program "focuses on documenting the homes, lives, landscapes, and experiences of underrepresented peoples who played a significant role in national history.” Grants from this cycle “will help fund eighteen projects to eight states, six tribes, two local governments, the District of Columbia, and the Federated States of Micronesia." The Underrepresented Communities grant program is funded by the Historic Preservation Fund and administered by the National Park Service, Department of Interior.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House is an historic farmstead on the banks of the Connecticut River that today interprets life in rural New England over three centuries. Through the words, spaces, and possessions of the women and men who lived here, the museum portrays the activities of a prosperous and productive 18th-century farmstead. Members of this household along with numerous artisans, servants, and enslaved people made the property an important social and commercial link in local, regional, and national cultural and economic networks. In the 19th century the family transformed the estate into a rural retreat. In the 20th century the house was preserved as a museum by family members and now contains the possessions of six generations of this extended family.