Three Village Historical Society: Setauket Walking Guide

Setauket’s Revolutionary-era history is concentrated in a compact area around Main Street, North Country Road and the village green, and the Three Village Historical Society (TVHS) is the local organization that interprets much of it. Its headquarters sit at 93 N. Country Road in East Setauket. According to the society’s official site, its mission is to explore local history through education and to collect and preserve artifacts, documents and other materials of local significance. The “Three Village” area, in the society’s description, takes in Old Field, Poquott, the Setaukets and Stony Brook.

Video: Three Village Historical Society on YouTube

The society and its headquarters

The Three Village Historical Society was founded in 1964 by community members, received a provisional charter from the Regents of the University of the State of New York in 1966, and received its absolute charter on September 27, 1968, according to its about page. For its first 34 years it used rented or borrowed space. In 1998 it bought the building it still occupies, a two-story farmhouse built around 1800 and known as the Bayles-Swezey House, which the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities had moved about 300 yards to its present 2.2-acre site in the early 1960s.

The neighboring Thompson House, dated to 1700 on the society’s page, is owned by the Ward Melville Heritage Organization.

The SPIES! exhibit and visiting hours

The main attraction inside is SPIES!, an interactive exhibit on the Culper Spy Ring, the network centered in Setauket that operated from 1778 to 1783. The exhibit page explains that after Nathan Hale was captured and executed, George Washington asked Benjamin Tallmadge, his chief of intelligence, to organize a ring. Admission is listed at $10 for adults and $5 for children and students, free for members, and the ticket also covers the Art History Gallery.

Exhibit and gift shop hours on the society’s home page are Thursday, Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., and Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. A Culper Spy Ring audio tour, designed for a cell phone, is offered as a downloadable PDF on the exhibit page, which gives visitors a self-guided option for the surrounding streets.

A boulder on a Setauket village green in autumn, one of the Revolutionary-era sites on a Three Village Historical Society walking route.

Guided tours in 2026

The society’s tours page lists Tri-Spy Tours, a Maritime History tour and an Abraham Woodhull walking tour, plus private tours for families, schools and community groups. Details on the Tri-Spy page are specific enough to plan around.

Walking: about two hours and two miles, in groups of 20 to 30, starting at the entrance of Frank Melville Memorial Park at 1 Old Field Road. The listed price is $25 per person.
Biking: about two hours, in groups of up to 10, starting at the society’s headquarters. Riders bring their own bicycle and helmet. The page gives two different distances (5 miles and 10 miles), so the length is worth confirming at booking.
Kayak: about two hours for up to 12 people, run with Paumonak Tours, at $60 per person.

Participants must be 14 or older, payment is required in advance, and tickets are non-refundable, although a cancelled or rescheduled tour earns a credit toward another date. When the page was read in mid-October 2026, most 2026 dates were marked sold out, while a walking tour on Saturday, October 24, at 10 a.m. had just been added. Private walking or biking tours are listed at $250 for up to six people.

The Woodhull tour, titled “Walk Through History,” runs about 90 minutes from Caroline Episcopal Church at 1 Dyke Road and costs $25, or $20 for members, according to the tour page. The same page describes a maritime walking tour, “Down the Ways: The Wooden Ship Era,” starting at the Brookhaven Town Dock on Shore Road in East Setauket and scheduled around low tide. The society’s events calendar lists a maritime walking tour on November 7, so the exact date deserves a check before heading out.

A colonial-era church and old cemetery in Setauket, a stop on historical society tours.

Sites a visitor can actually walk

Several stops named in the Tri-Spy route are public sites clustered around the village green and Main Street.

Patriot’s Rock. A large glacial boulder in the Old Setauket historic district. An Untapped Cities guide reports that Patriot forces sheltered behind it during the 1777 Battle of Setauket, and that a plaque placed in 1927 by the Mayflower Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution marks the skirmish. A review of a TVHS walking guide in TBR News Media notes that the plaque carries an incorrect date, a reminder that the guide’s authors advise checking against an original source.

Caroline Church of Brookhaven. The building dates to 1729 and its burial ground to 1734, per the same Untapped Cities article, which also reports that bullet holes remain in the belfry. A separate post covers the church in detail: the history of Caroline Church.

Setauket Presbyterian Church. The present building dates to 1812, and its cemetery holds the grave of Abraham Woodhull, who used the alias Samuel Culper. The graveyard is the subject of another local article, and the broader Culper story is told in this profile of Woodhull.

Jayne Tavern. Built in 1750, moved in 1890 to Tavern Way and restored in 1942, according to Untapped Cities. The Tri-Spy page names the Tyler-Jayne Tavern among its stops.

Emma S. Clark Memorial Library. At 120 Main Street, the library is the final stop of the society’s family walking guide, Founders Day: Discovering Setauket, Brookhaven’s Original Settlement, which begins in front of the Setauket School on Main Street. TBR News Media’s review says the book is intended as “a walking tour guide for families who love exploring and bringing history to life.” Copies are sold at the society’s gift shop and through the society’s website.

The Tri-Spy route reaches further than the green. The tour page also names the Strong Family Cemetery, the creek at Conscience Bay, the Timothy Smith House and the General John Roe Satterly House among its stops, and the kayak version passes the birthplace of Benjamin Tallmadge. The family walking guide adds the Setauket Grist Mill and Tyler Bros. General Store, which receive a full page and two pages respectively, along with notes on building markers, archaeological points of interest and architectural details.

Planning matters more than distance. Because the society publishes no walking times between stops, a visitor building a self-paced route can use the guide’s order, from the school on Main Street to the library, as a framework and then add the church grounds.

A quiet harbor-side dock near Setauket, where maritime history tours explore the Three Village shoreline.

Annual events tied to the sites

Several recurring events use the same locations. The society’s Culper Spy Day, which the event page lists as its 12th edition on Saturday, October 3, 2026, spread self-guided stops across the Three Villages, from Patriots Rock and Caroline Episcopal Church to the Drowned Meadow Cottage Museum in Port Jefferson.

The Spirits Tour is a graveyard storytelling event. The 2026 page gives a theme of “Founding Families: Before the Revolution, 1655-1775,” with a Saturday, October 17 date, a rain date of October 24, and a notice that tickets are sold out. The page describes first-person stories of people who shaped Setauket and Stony Brook, including members of the Setalcott community and Black families of Historic Christian Avenue and Laurel Hill. A 2022 report in TBR News Media located that year’s tour in the cemeteries of Caroline Episcopal Church and Setauket Presbyterian Church.

Later dates on the calendar include a Winter Holiday Market on November 29 held indoors at the Setauket Neighborhood House, and a Candlelight House Tour on December 4 and 5. The society also runs a farmers market, listed as ending on October 30 for 2026.

Practical notes

The society’s phone number is 631-751-3730, and its email address is hello@tvhs.org.
Exhibit hours are limited to four days a week, so a weekday visit may find the building closed.
Tour listings sell out; the society’s pages show availability by date.

General information only; this article does not substitute for the society’s own scheduling and admission details.