The Southampton Historical Museum has received a matching grant of $50,500 from the Gardiner Foundation to be used for the restoration of the 1830s Red Creek Schoolhouse. The schoolhouse, located on the grounds of the Rogers Mansion museum complex, was originally built to educate 40 children in the historic village of Red Creek.
Red Creek was located on Peconic Bay near the border of Hampton Bays and Flanders. With shipbuilding as the main industry, between the 1820s and 1870s, Red Creek was an industrious, self-sustaining community with a blacksmith, shoemaker, farmers, carpenters, boatmen, fishermen, baymen, sailors, a general store, a church, and an oil factory, and of course, their children to be educated. As the whaling industry declined in the late 19th century, Red Creek disappeared. Today, the schoolhouse is all that remains. It was purchased by the Southampton Historical Museum in 1953 for $400 and moved to the Rogers Mansion complex.
Today the schoolhouse is popular for school field trips, so children can learn about the education of Southampton children from nearly 200 years ago. The restoration will preserve this historic building.
- Southampton Historical Museum [Official]