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The Southampton History Museum is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization chartered by the New York State Board of Regents and incorporated under the New York State Education Department.
Our mission is preservation and education: We preserve and educate about local history and culture through our unique historic sites, archives, collections, and engaging public programs.
Red Creek Schoolhouse
17 Meeting House Lane, Southampton, NY 11968
FREE ADMISSION
Open May-November
Wednesday-Saturday, 11am-4pm
Museum complex grounds:
Open year round, sunrise-sunset
Parking:
Meeting House Lane (behind First Presbyterian Church)
West Main Street public parking lot
Murhardt Field public parking lot
Red Creek Schoolhouse just after restoration in 2018
One-room schoolhouses play a major role in colonial and early American history, especially here on Long Island. For generations, children gather together to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic in buildings like the Red Creek Schoolhouse.
Originally built ca. 1830 in the community of Red Creek. Today, Red Creek is one of eleven hamlets in the area of Hampton Bays in the Town of Southampton. Settlers were attracted to Red Creek by its convenient location on Peconic Bay. It was easy to travel by water other nearby communities, which supported the local fishing industry focused on Menhaden (aka bunker fish). As the fishing industry declined, Red Creek transformed into residential community of serene woody landscapes.
Detail, “Map Showing the Division of the Town of Southampton Among the Proprietors,” as sketched by William S. Pelletreau (1840-1918), undated. Document 912 from the Collection of the Suffolk County Historical Society
The Red Creek Schoolhouse was probably built by Jesse Terry (1801-1864), a successful businessman who grew strawberries as well as fishing and processing Menhaden. Terry and his family owned most of the land in South Port, an area now called Red Cedar Point. South Port had everything you could need, form a church and factories, to a small shipyard and, of course, a one-room schoolhouse.
Jesse Terry (1801-1864) via Ancestry.com
Jesse Terry began buying land and building in the South Port around 1824. The earliest known site of the Red Creek Schoolhouse appears on the 1858 Chace Map of Suffolk County, not far from the Terry family home. It is assumed that the Red Creek Schoolhouse was built sometime between 1824 and 1858, thus its date of construction is estimated to be ca. 1830.
Detail from the 1858 Chace Map
Over the years, the schoolhouse was moved a few times. First it moved about 1.25 miles southwest to a site shown on the 1873 Atlas of Long Island by Beers, Comstock and Cline. By 1878, it was relocated about 0.8 miles northeast to the intersection of Red Creek Road and Upper Red Creek Road, as shown on maps from 1894, 1902, and 1916. Next, in 1926, it was moved about 0.43 miles southwest to the property of William W. Hubbard for use as storage shed.
View of the schoolhouse while used by William W. Hubbard as a storage shed, c. 1940 (Southampton History Museum Collection)
William W. Hubbard (November 9, 1874-1959) grew up in the community and attended the Red Creek Schoolhouse. In his lifetime, Hubbard was a farmer, highway foreman, real estate broker, and at one time, a teacher at the Red Creek Schoolhouse. In 1953, sold the schoolhouse to the Southampton History Museum. It's final move to Rogers Mansion Museum Complex was partly made by barge, shipping out from Red Creek, then into Shinnecock Bay, a route many of its old students must have once sailed.
William W. Hubbard (11/9/1874-1959)
The Red Creek Schoolhouse has sat on the grounds of the Rogers Mansion Museum Complex for over 60 years, welcoming countless visitors, including students from across the East End. In 2017, this beloved building was restored thanks in part to a matching grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. During repair work, carpenter Nathan Tuttle discovered original chalkboards from the late 1800s preserved under the interior walls. Reopened in 2018, the Red Creek Schoolhouse offers visitors a glimpse of what life was like on eastern Long Island in the mid-1800s.
Chalkboards from c. 1892 that were hidden behind the interior walls
For more information on this building see the
Red Creek Schoolhouse Historic Structure Report (2016).
Virtual lecture on the Red Creek Schoolhouse presented by former staff member Connor Flanagan in 2020.
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