Western Massachusetts tourism and history officials hope more funds are coming from Beacon Hill after two local history centers received small grants to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding.
Massachusetts 250 is the state campaign to promote the country’s upcoming July 4, 2026, birthday — the semiquincentennial of when 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence.
Celebratory events occurring up until then are expected to bring in millions in state tourism revenue.
The Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism this fall awarded $1.5 million to 37 state organizations for 2025.
But only three associations west of Fitchburg, including the Springfield Preservation Trust and the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley, were among the awardees, in all totaling $30,000.
“I think MOTT has certainly heard loud and clear from us that a very, very small portion of funds came to sites here in the Western part of the state,” said Kelly Fellner, superintendent of the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, which organized a regional committee to advocate for Springfield/Western Massachusetts 250. “Hopefully that will be rectified.”
Competition for the tourism grants was “fierce,” according to Office of Travel and Tourism Executive Director Kate Fox.
There were 172 grant applications totaling nearly $9 million, with only 27 applications coming from Western Massachusetts, which “underscores the rigorous selection process and the high caliber of proposals,” she told The Republican.
The Pioneer Valley History Network is a consortium of more than 80 museums, historical societies, libraries, and historic sites across Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire Counties.
Network President Cliff McCarthy said that it was no surprise that there were few applications for Massachusetts 250 funds from the region. “This demonstrates how our smaller museums and historical societies just don’t have the resources to seek out, write, and apply for grant money,” he said.
Meanwhile, the network’s website, Revolution Happened Here, features narratives of the war’s impact, realized through local objects and documents.
“The seeds of dissent sprouted in the farms and fields of Worcester County and Western Massachusetts,” McCarthy said. “We likely had less to lose than the merchants of Boston — who were tied directly to the economy of England – but the citizens of these rural areas recoiled under the taxation and heavy-handed treatment of the mother country.”
The Armory’s Fellner said the local Massachusetts 250 committee has been meeting since June with members including the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau, local media and regional historical associations.
“The key is to connect with people today,” Fellner said. “How do we talk about the spirit of innovation, that kind of a revolution, if you will, that encourages people to have pride in Springfield and Western Massachusetts?”
1Berkshire, a nonprofit that promotes the Berkshires, received $7,500 for website marketing.
The Springfield Preservation Trust, which advocates for the city’s historic places, received $5,000 for the development of a cemetery tour titled “Voices from the Grave: Heroes of the American Revolution,” which is planned for May 2025.
“We are thrilled to have been awarded a grant,” said Springfield Preservation Trust Director Erica Swallow. “While Springfield doesn’t have Revolutionary-period buildings, we have people, so we’re going to tie them to concepts of the era and include the women and people of color who were so instrumental.”
Research for the event is spearheaded by Derek Strahan, former Preservation Trust board president and host of the podcast “Western Mass History.”
“Western Mass. mirrored what was going on in Eastern Mass.,” Strahan said, “just not under the same watchful gaze of the British Redcoats. … We do get overlooked because almost all the big Revolutionary War heavy hitters were out east.”
The cemetery tour will feature reenactments of Springfield’s John Worthington, who remained loyal to the British, and Susan Freedom, an enslaved woman.
More than 45 Black residents of Hampden County served in the Continental Army, oftentimes for at least three years, according to the book “Black Families in Hampden County, Massachusetts: 1650-1865,” by Joe Carvalho.
The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum in Hadley will focus on at least one such soldier. The museum received a $17,500 award from the Office of Travel and Tourism, said Karen Sánchez-Eppler, president of the board of directors for the Museum Foundation. She said the funds will help turn completed research into a six-panel exhibit, “Hadley and the American Revolution: Stories of Independence and Servitude.”
Most enslaved people at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House, called Forty Acres, were connected to the spirit of the times, Sánchez-Eppler said.
For instance, when a 10-year-old enslaved girl died there, a few days later, her 13-year-old sister Rosanne gave birth to a daughter whom she named Phillis for her recently deceased sister.
“It was totally coincidental, but very moving and striking to me, that this happened the very same week of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and of Paul Revere’s ride,” Sánchez-Eppler said.
The exhibit will also feature the narrative of the family of a Hessian soldier for the British who later worked at Forty Acres and of the enslaved servant Cesar. He was purchased in 1770 by Charles Phelps before his marriage to Elizabeth Porter and was sent to Fort Ticonderoga in 1776 where he served as an enslaved man.
The grant will fund advertising and signage in the garden designed by John Morrison, a British prisoner of war indentured at Forty Acres, Sánchez-Eppler said, as well as a spring lecture series, a concert of Revolution-themed music and another by an Indigenous singer.
The grant will fund advertising and signage in the garden designed by John Morrison, a British prisoner of war indentured at Forty Acres, Sánchez-Eppler said, as well as a spring lecture series, a concert of Revolution-themed music and another by an Indigenous singer.
