Three Village Historical Society

Membership Application

What Your Dollars Support

The Three Village Historical Society works within the community to explore, foster, preserve, and promote local history through education.  Educational programs are developed by researching, collecting and preserving artifacts, documents, and other materials of local historical significance.

ADULT PROGRAMS
Local history programs, featured by area experts are offered to the members and public free on the third Monday of January, February, April, May, June, September, October and November.  Expansion of this program will include the solicitation of visiting scholars to share their expertise with the society’s membership.  Field trips are offered to explore places of historic and cultural interest.

LIVING HISTORY PROGRAMS
Each year committees continue to research, develop and improve upon the scripts and customs that our actors and docents use to bring history alive.  Village Green Walking Tours are scheduled from April to November once a month on weekends. The Annual Walk through History, now in its fifth year, will feature residents of early 20th century Stony Brook. Spirits of the Three Villages Cemetery Tour come out of the ground each October with actors playing the parts of famous community residents.  The Candlelight House Tour links the past with the present by showcasing beautifully decorated private homes revealing the lives and lifestyles of past owners. 

FAMILY PROGRAMS *
Apple Festival is an autumn celebration of apples with games, traditional colonial cooking demonstrations, cider pressing and Johnny Appleseed.  American Heritage Camp fills the week between the end of summer and the beginning of the school year with colonial experiences for children ages 7-11 yrs.  *In partnership with the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, Benner’s Farms.

EXHIBITS
Exhibitions are mounted each year in the Society’s space at the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library.  These exhibitions examine national historic events through local eyes, or showcases new Society acquisitions.  Every five years the Society mounts a major exhibition. Expansion plans, now in the development stage, will allow us to mount a major exhibit on the Setauket Spies and acquire space to continue our growth.

SCHOOL PROGRAMS “HISTORY LIVE”
IN THE CLASSROOMS           
The Three Village Historical Society, in collaboration with students at Minnesauke Elementary School,  received the 2005 Save Our History,  national first place Bank of America Classroom Award given by The History Channel. 

Under the leadership of the Society, Part One of a five-part  process was undertaken in the 2004 school year to:
1) create an activity for the fourth grade curriculum.     
2)develop a genealogy database by putting together the names of everyone buried in the Three Village community;
3) undertake a cemetery preservation project to preserve the  stones;
4) use ground penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves; and
5) photograph every gravestone in the community.  

The Society also offers several local history programs for in-classroom presentation to New York City, Nassau and Suffolk County school districts, including “Native Americans on Long Island,” and Long Island During the American Revolution. To help them appreciate and understand our community’s history, every fourth grade student in the Three Village Central School District receives a copy of two Society publications; The Setauket Village Green Walking Tour” and “Discover Setauket.”  The Society currently underwrites the cost and distribution of these workbooks, written by members of the Three Village Historical Society to provide information not available elsewhere to our children.

 PUBLICATIONS
Significant publications written by Society members include our most recent "The Three Villages: Then and Now" and the works: “Images of America; The Setaukets: Old Field, and Poquott;” released in December 2005, and “Images of America: Stony Brook (2003);” “William Sidney Mount: Family, Friends, and Ideas (1999)” is sold in gift shops at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society, and other major cultural institutions throughout the five boroughs and on Long Island.  Invaluable reference books on local history and culture include “The Three Village Guidebook;2002” “Setauket: The First Three Hundred Years;1980 second edition” and “Discover Setauket: Brookhaven’s Original Settlement (1994); and “The Sailing Circle; 19th Century Seafaring Women from New York (1995),” written by Joan Druett and Mary Anne Wallace and published in cooperation with the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum, earned the Three Village Historical Society the The Award of Merit (1996) from the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH).  Publications may be purchased from the Three Village Historical Society gift shop or by mail. For more information click here.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION AND AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) bestows its prestigious Albert B. Corey Award rarely.  It has been given during the last sixty years to only five organizations nationwide.  The award recognizes primarily volunteer-operated historical organizations that best display the qualities of vigor, scholarship, and imagination in their work.  We are proud to say that the Three Village Historical Society, in competition with thousands of institutions nationwide that include Colonial Williamsburg and the Smithsonian, received this award in 1996 for Excellence in Local Historical Endeavor, in large part due to our publication, “The Sailing Circle: 19th Century Seafaring Women for New York.”

The History Channel, in conjunction with the national Preserve America initiative, established by President Bush in March 2003, share the belief that knowledge of our nation’s history is essential to the appreciation of our heritage.  Save Our History provides teachers with lesson plans, ideas and incentives for student participation to engage young people in community preservation projects.  Our in school program is now part of the 2005 Educator’s Manual, a national curriculum guide distributed for teachers and youth group leaders reaching students in Grades 2-12.