Roger Sessions: a personal portrait

Abstract

Driving north up the Connecticut River on Route 47 from Hadley, Massachusetts, one is led by signs to the local historic site, ‘Forty Acres’, or the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House. During summer months a dollar buys a guided tour of the museum-house built in 1752 and the possessions of six generations of families who lived there. With its deeds and diaries dating from the French and Indian Wars, a 178-year-old grandfather clock which keeps perfect time, former slaves' quarters, a Southern veranda (the ‘Stoop’) looking out onto the River, a secret stair-case, tales of a ghost, antique furniture, and portraits of ancestors who entered the clergy, taught at Harvard, or fought in the Revolution, the House radiates continuity with the past. One of its most famous residents, the Bishop of Central New York, the Rev. Dan Huntington, had a daughter named Ruth who grew up and met her future husband—her second cousin Archibald Sessions—at ‘Forty Acres’. Research on the biography of one of America's foremost composers, their son Roger, leads to ‘Forty Acres’, for he is a direct descendant of these New Englanders.