Researching your family's history

I recently purchased a copy of the now-rare history of the Montagues, one of the original settler families of Hadley. The book, with the incredibly long title History and Genealogy of the Montague Family of America, Descended from Richard Montague of Hadley, Mass., and Peter Montague of Lancaster Co., Va..., was published in 1886 following a meeting of Montague descendants in Hadley in 1882. It is an invaluable volume, with interesting pictures, drawings, anecdotes, and, of course, excellent genealogical lists.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, historians, writers, and genealogists--professional and amateur--produced countless volumes on various American families--far more than I would have thought before I began researching. There was an index to genealogies of American families printed in 1900 and written by Daniel Steele Durrie that runs to over 350 pages. It was the fifth edition of a work first published in 1868. At first it had 10,000 references. At the fifth printing, it had 50,000, giving some idea of how popular genealogical research was at this time.

For Hadley and surrounding towns, there are other genealogies of families that lived in the area other than that of the Montagues. In addition, Sylvester Judd included some genealogical notes in his History of Hadley, first published in 1863. First editions are, not surprisingly, rare and hard to come by, but it has been reprinted numerous times. Lucius Boltwood used some of Judd's notes for his own Genealogies of Hadley Families (published in 1862), which, in later editions of Judd's work, was tacked on as a supplement. Editions published more recently include both works in one volume.

For people interested in researching their genealogy, there are obviously the online sites, such as ancestry.com. But there is a certain satisfaction--and, dare I say it, romance?--to sitting down in a library with a musty old volume and looking up your ancestors by hand. In western Massachusetts, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in the Springfield Quadrangle has an excellent genealogical library--including over 20,000 genealogical books--and would be an excellent place to begin research.

If you'd like to purchase genealogy volumes, Higginson Book Company of Salem, MA specializes in reprinted volumes. For old editions, I recommend abebooks, eBay, Barnes & Noble's used and out of print section, etc.

Hadley's 350th

Beginning the "Save Hadley!" blog in 2009 certainly was auspicious, this being the 350th anniversary of the town's founding (but it wasn't incorporated until 1661). For those of you interested, Hadley is having several 350th anniversary celebrations throughout the year. The official website is here, and there's all kinds of information available. Take a look!

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum Opens Today!

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, a seasonal historic house museum in Hadley, opens today for the summer. This museum contains a remarkable collection of artifacts from one huge extended family that lived in Hadley since 1659, and in this house from 1752 until the middle of the 20th century. And not only did the family amass a whole lot of interesting furniture, china, textiles, and other objects--they left behind a treasure trove of written material, too, which has been invaluable to social history studies done about the area. Elizabeth Porter-Phelps, the daughter of Moses Porter, who built the house, kept a diary for a few decades the late-18th to early-19th centuries, which has proved an invaluable contribution to women's history of the period. The museum sells a book about her diary called Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter-Phelps and Life at Forty Acres by Elizabeth Pendergast Carlisle. It's worth a read if you're interested in this sort of thing. You can also read a facsimile of the diary itself in the Amherst College Archives.

This post might be a bit similar to one I posted last month about the museum, but I really do love this place and it really need your support to stay open. The 1-hour tours are a measly $5 and you can see a house that looks as if a the family just got up and left sometime around 1800. It's really a time capsule worth seeing.

I'll certainly post more about PPH in the future. It's located at 130 River Drive in Hadley, MA (River Drive is Route 47), about 2 miles north of Route 9.

Hadley Grass--Asparagus!

An article in Saveur caught my attention the other day when I noticed that it was about "Hadley Grass". That would be asparagus, for those of you in the know. I wasn't, to be honest, but I figured out why when I kept reading: Hadley, with its excellent soil, produced some of the finest asparagus in the country for much of the 20th century until a fungus all but killed the roots of the crop back in the 1970s (before I was born). Asparagus is still grown in the area, but not on the scale that it once was. David Nussbaum, the writer of this article, does a fantastic job of describing Hadley and its farmers and the asparagus legacy.

Since Hadley's asparagus crop is no longer huge, today the vegetable is mostly sold at local farm stands and stores. So, while asparagus is still in season, go out and buy it at farm stands! I bet it's delicious. I know my family's (grown in Granby) is.

P.S.--Does anyone remember road signs that read "Welcome to Hadley--Asparagus Capital of the World"? I'd love to see a photo if anyone has one!

Land Trusts

There was a comment posted on one of my blog entries a few days ago asking about land trusts. The author, Cynthia, has roots in Hadley, as I do, and wanted to know a trust to which she could contribute.

This is a great question. On a more general level, there are lots of land trusts in Massachusetts, large and small. See the list compiled by the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition. It's pretty long and fairly comprehensive, I believe.

For the Hadley area, the Kestrel Trust is a good organization that I would recommend to receive your donation(s). They work in Amherst, Belchertown, Granby, Hadley, Leverett, Pelham, South Hadley, Shutesbury, and Sunderland--all towns that need more land preserved against development pressures. Kestrel Trust was very involved in generating awareness of the significance of Hadley's Great Meadow, which is a fascinating landscape on the Connecticut River. Its network of long, thin plots dates back to the 17th century, when the English colonists laid them out, and is "pre-enclosure" in layout, which means that its design is based on medieval farming practices of Europe. Most of the United Kingdom's fields were "enclosed" in the 18th- and 19th-centuries, while this common layout has survived here, directly linked to an older farming style that has practically died out in the "Old Country".

I know that the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is actively involved in land conservation as well, so it would be worth donating to them. They have done a very good job preserving land around the museum and are still working hard at this.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I'll try to answer!

Introducing the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum

One of my favorite sites in Hadley opens to the public, as it does every year, on May 15: the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum. This museum has been around for decades and stores the objects and stories of one extended family that occupied the house and surrounding lands for six generations, beginning in the 1750s.

It's worth going to visit and seeing the interiors, which look as though they could still be occupied. It's worth wandering around the grounds, which, while not extensive, are peaceful and pleasant. In the "North Garden" is a bed of roses supposedly planted by a Scottish servant some 200 years ago.

You can visit the musuem's website here. I'll say right away that it's not very good and could use a redesign or at least some updating. Updates have been sparse, and it hasn't really changed since I worked there three summers ago.

The museum is a quintessential example of the small historic house museums you can find scattered throughout the United States. In telling the stories of one extended family, it tells the story of America.

The family left behind a huge trove of papers (and is still leaving them behind--even when I was there bequests were still coming in. I sorted through some documents going back to the 1820s.) that are now stored at the Amherst College Archives and are accessible to the public. Diaries, letters, books, poetry, etc., have all survived from this highly literate family. The collection ranges from the 1690s through the 20th century. Many scholars have used the collection as a resource, most recently, perhaps, by UMass historian Bruce Laurie in a book called Beyond Garrison about the abolitionist movement.

In addition to house tours, you can visit the museum grounds during the summer for concerts and for a "traditional" tea ceremony on the long back porch, which was once the route for the servants to access the various parts of the house. The tea services have musical accompaniment as well. You get Earl Grey tea along with a dessert provided by a local shop.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum in future posts. If you have a question, e-mail me about it.

Hadley Farming in the Local Paper...

The Springfield Republican ran a story this past weeking about the tradition of farming in Hadley, and while it didn't specifically touch on issues of preservation, it makes clear the importance of farming as a tradition to this town. Let's hope it stays that way.

Read it here.