A placed people. The Porter- Phelps-Huntington Foundation’s mission is to share the heritage and life-stories of the place in Hadley Massachusetts known as ‘Forty Acres and its Skirts’ and to interpret the diverse histories that contribute to who we are today, and who we can be in the future.
This land was cultivated by Nonotock and other Indigenous people for millennia. It was claimed as common acreage when the town of Hadley was laid out in 1659. Here in 1752 Moses and Elizabeth Pitkin Porter erected a farmstead. After the Porter’s only child, Elizabeth, married Charles Phelps in 1770, the house was enlarged and refined. The labor that supported this
18th century farm was carried by many hands: enslaved workers Zebulon Prutt, Cesar Phelps, Peg Bowen, her daughters Rose and Phillis, and granddaughter Phillis; the indentured service of John Morrison, a prisoner of war during the American Revolution, and of two local boys; the hired work of women in dairy and house and of men in barns and fields; and the skilled labor of artisans. During the 19th century the property served as a rural retreat for descendants of the original owners, and in the 20th century family members preserved the site as an historic house museum. In 1816 the Porters’ grandson, Charles Porter Phelps, used profits from trade in plantation goods to build Phelps Farm across the road; it remained an active dairy until 1978, and now it too is part of the new “Forty Acres and its Skirts” National Historic District.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers are now housed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Archives and Special Collections (SCUA). The house was the heart of the large farmstead known as “Forty Acres” that included over 600 acres stretching from the banks of the Connecticut River to the top of Mount Warner, in North Hadley. Today, the house is surrounded by over 350 acres of protected farmland land, forest, and river frontage retaining its original rural setting. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is located on the National Tri-State Connecticut River Scenic Farm Byway.
Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan: The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation is grateful for the National Endowment for the Humanities and MassHumanities SHARP grants that sustained this unique historical resource through difficult years.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum at "Forty Acres" stands on the unceded homelands of Nonotuck peoples displaced by the arrivals of European families like the Porters who arrived in Hadley in the seventeenth century. The Museum recognizes our responsibility to acknowledge the peoples of these lands, as well as the histories of dispossession, alongside enslavement, that generated the wealth reflected in this historic house and museum. Using our collections, interpretation, programming, and through collaborative relationships, we seek to examine, address and reflect on these difficult histories.
Visit the Museum
Tours are offered May through October.