Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum

So I am a little partial to the wyckoff house since these were my ancestors! At one point the wyckoff family owned 110 acres of what is now know as Brooklyn. It’s not located in the best area of Flatbush but you can’t pick and move history. It’s a small house that holds a lot of history for the establishment of NYC. The wyckoff family among other immigrants helped established modern day NYC. The NYC city flag was established around the same time frame as the house. The colors of the flag are blue, orange and white. These are the same colors that the Knicks and Mets to represent their NYC roots. The blue represents the British, orange for the Dutch and white for the American Indians.

If you live in Brooklyn you must go

The house is the oldest house in NYC (The first room was since 1652) but they only opened as museum for public since 2000. Currently they can only be seen on guided tours. We were there in time for the 3 PM tours. (Winter only have 1 and 3 PM tours)
The place looks interesting and well kept. Friendly & knowledgeable staff. There wasn’t much activities going on when we were there but we heard the staff said it’s because the weather is cold. They told us to come back in spring…
We’ll go back…

We went on a Home Schoolers’ Day and really enjoyed all the fun activities and learned quite about life during the Colonial Period. We were able to make apple cider using the press (apples went in core and all), make perfume from herbs grown in the garden, churn butter, paint tiles (to simulate the Delft tiles around the fireplace), make ink from red cabbage and then write with quills made from drinking straws. There was a woman making corn bread in the fire pit outside. The children enjoyed picking black raspberries from the bushes beside the house.
Another time they had games out for the children to play– stick & hoops, lawn bowling, catch the ball in the cup on a stick, etc. The kids had a blast.
The tour of the house included seeing a wall of the house which was left exposed so that we could see shells and corn cobs used as insulation. The children were able to touch and handle some of the old fashioned household items and guess what they were used for.
The staff there was absolutely wonderful.