The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum presents a talk by musicologist Poe M. Allphin titled "Girlhood and the Guittar: A Musical Microhistory of the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family, 1767-1837." The talk, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Zoom at 6 pm on Wednesday, November 16th, 2026.

The history of the music that has filled Forty Acres, a Hadley home, throughout the generations is older than some parts of the house, as illuminated by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century diaries, letters, and music books in the family papers. Today, the house still holds many objects from the Porter-Phelps-Huntington family’s musical past, including a few musical instruments and many music books. In the 1790s, Elizabeth Whiting Phelps (Huntington) acquired a “guittar” that was played by at least three generations of young women in the family. This talk explores Connecticut River Valley music and girlhood in the long nineteenth century through the collections at PPH.

Poe M. Allphin is the Museum Education Coordinator at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum. He received his PhD in historical musicology from the CUNY Graduate Center. Allphin’s scholarship, which appears in Resonance and Contemporary Music Review, has previously been supported by the New England Research Fellowship Consortium and the Center for the Humanities at CUNY.