Admission: $5 adults, $3 TVHS members and children 12 and under. Others times available by appointment. Click here for more information about this exhibit. To schedule an appointment,Call the Three Village Historical Society Monday-Friday 10:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m. at 631-751-3730 or email us at info@tvhs.org

This interactive exhibit presents the little-known Culper Spy Ring that was active during the American Revolution from 1778 to 1781. George Washington suffered heavy losses at the beginning of the war for independence from the British. He soon realized that credible information about British troop movements was vital in preparing a successful campaign. After the capture of Nathan Hale, Washington asked Major Benjamin Tallmadge, his Chief of Intelligence, to organize a spy ring, now known as the Culper Spy Ring.

SPIES! tells their exciting story through the use of:

• Interactive Software with fun-filled educational games.
• Hands on activities that include writing with quill pens and invisible ink.
• Decoding Spy Letters using Tallmadge's Spy Code.

The Sailing Circle: 19th Century Seafaring Women From New York, is a collaborative exhibit produced by the Three Village Historical Society and the Cold Spring Harbor Whaling Museum. The Sailing Circle features wives who went to sea with their captain husbands on deep-water merchant, whaling ships and coasting vessels. The Sailing Circle was on exhibit at Mystic Seaport, America's leading maritime museum located in Mystic, CT, and at the Castle Gallery at the College of New Rochelle. It is now in the gallery at the Three Village Historical Society headquarters in Setauket.

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Carrying a wife or child aboard ship was a privilege reserved for the captain. The captain's wife faced a dilemma to stay on land with friends and family yet be away from her husband, or to go to sea and raise a family and make a home in isolation and uncertainty.

Wives who chose to go to sea attempted to create domesticity amid an intensely male workplace. It's no wonder upon meeting a "sister sailor" - either in a distant port or even mid-ocean - these women formed a "sailing circle" akin to the "sewing circle" they had left on shore. The "sailing circle" offered a customary female network to an otherwise isolated existence on board ship.

Honolulu, a stop for many whaling ships, was the port where many women were left for months waiting the birth of their child. While the captains and crews continued their whaling voyage in the Pacific or into the Arctic waters, women were left either on their own or in the care of Hawaiian missionaries. The captain would return to port to resupply his vessel and retrieve his wife and infant child, now several months old. While older children may have been left at home in the care of relatives, the youngest children were generally taken along. Whaling families endured voyages from two to four years.

The families of coastermen led a somewhat more comfortable existence than the whaling family. Unlike whalers with their ocean crossing voyages, coasters, as their name indicates, stayed closer to the land. Smaller crews, larger living quarters and shorter voyages allowed for more of the comforts of home. Long Island Sound coaster wives may have plied the waters with their husbands all week long but on Sundays their vessels could be found docked at the nearest port.

The exhibit included over 100 objects, artifacts and prints from the collections of the two sponsoring institutions as well as the Oysterponds Historical Society, the William Steeple Davis Trust, several New England museums and a number of private Long Island collectors.