Amagansett Accepts 1802 Schoolhouse

The Amagansett School Board adopted a resolution to accept the donation of the original Amagansett schoolhouse, built in 1802 by Samuel Schellinger and thought to be the oldest on eastern Long Island, at its meeting on Tuesday.

In October, Huntington and Adelaide Sheldon, on whose Atlantic Avenue property the one-room structure is at present situated, notified the school district that they wanted to donate the schoolhouse. Pending approval by the New York State Education Department, it will be relocated to the grounds of the Amagansett School.

“We’re very excited here,” Eleanor Tritt, the district superintendent, said at the board’s meeting. Once the Education Department approves the donation, which she said it has pledged to expedite, a foundation will be dug for the structure. A welcoming ceremony, she said, might happen in the spring.

The schoolhouse was originally on “Amagansett Street,” now Montauk Highway, approximately opposite today’s school building. It was moved to the west side of Atlantic Avenue, at what is now the southern part of East End Cemetery, in 1864, and moved again in 1881, when it was auctioned to Marcus Hand. Mr. Hand sold it to Capt. Joshua B. Edwards, who moved it across the street to his backyard, which is now part of the Sheldon property.

Capt. Edwards’s son, Dr. David Edwards, handled the sale to Mr. Sheldon’s mother, Magda Sheldon, in 1936 or ’37. At that time, the building was filled with fishing nets, a dory, and flensing knives, which were used to cut whale blubber.

The building has not been used by the public since the late 1940s, Mr. Sheldon told The Star, when a small number of girl scouts used it as a meetinghouse.