One of New Jersey’s Most Photographed Landmarks Is Run by a Rutgers Alumna
The Historic Red Mill Museum in Clinton has appeared on postcards, magnets, T-shirts, oil paintings and the body United Airlines Boeing 757
Even if you’ve never stepped foot in the tiny town of Clinton, N.J., chances are you’ve seen its historic Red Mill.
One of the most photographed buildings in the state, its likeness has appeared on postcards, magnets, T-shirts, oil paintings and, yes, the body of a United Airlines Boeing 757 based at Newark Liberty International Airport.
The landmark 19th century grist mill, part of the 10-acre, 12-building Red Mill Museum Village complex, is overseen by 1996 Douglass alumna Gina Sampaio. It’s a role that requires her to wear many hats – including the swanky vintage ones she dons for the museum’s annual Kentucky Derby fundraiser.
“I’m writing the grants. I’m plunging the toilet. I’m jumping in if we need help with a school tour or hanging an exhibit. I do all the things most museum professionals do,” said Sampaio, who as executive director is one of only two full-time staffers at the museum. “That is because we, like most small museums, are always underfunded.”
A Hunterdon County native, Sampaio’s made a name for herself as curator, storyteller and history buff. From scrubbing centuries-old headstones to hosting graveyard ghost tours to uncovering the forgotten history of dozens of Native American children forced to assimilate with area farmers in the early 20th century, she’d immersed herself in local history, long before she took over the museum in November of 2023.
Sampaio grew up a few miles from the museum but her working relationship with the organization began a decade ago as a part-time tour guide, when her youngest of five headed to kindergarten. A one-time thespian who performed in one or two Cabaret Theatre productions at Rutgers, Sampaio embraced the role, wearing period costume to guide thousands of New Jersey school children on class trips through the former mill and Mulligan Quarry grounds.
“The tour guide position had so many things I liked. There was an element of performance, working with children, and that’s when I learned that the museum’s history is fascinating,” she said. “Having lived in the shadow of the Red Mill most of my life, not knowing the history here, learning about it and getting kids excited about it was in my wheelhouse.”
After several years as a tour guide and assistant, Sampaio left for a director’s post with the Lebanon Township Museum. That’s where she and a colleague were recognized by the New Jersey Historical Commission for “their outstanding service to public knowledge and preservation of the history of New Jersey,” after tracking down the stories of students from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School who were brought to Hunterdon County.
Ironically, Sampaio wasn’t interested in history until she came to Rutgers, when an assignment from her now-retired professor Michael Rockland – who founded the American studies department at Rutgers – taught her a new way to look at the subject.
“It was telling the story of where you grew up,” said Sampaio, who majored in Spanish and minored in American studies. “For me, looking with an outside perspective at my parent’s house (in Bethlehem Township, NJ) where they were running a home business – this place very near and dear to me – and describing what it was like geographically, historically – the little people’s stories, not those of people big and powerful – that felt real to me.”
At the Red Mill Museum Village, Sampaio is still guided by the ethos of that assignment from 30 years ago. Her goal, she said, is not only to authentically restore artifacts and structures there, but to bring them to life for visitors by imbuing them with the personal stories of those who lived and worked here.
Stories like those of local gravedigger, George Van Camp, or “Peg Leg” as he called himself after losing a limb in a train accident at age 7 in the early 1900s. Van Camp, who had family in the Mulligan Quarry’s Tenant House, made his home in a one-room shack – one of several on the grounds. One of those remaining shacks, restored to represent what Van Camp’s may have looked like a century ago includes the actual ladder he used to climb out of freshly dug graves.
“History doesn’t change, history is history. However, the stories we tell can change,” she said. “Do we only want to talk about what the people in power were doing at a given time? Or do I want to tell about how regular working class people were living, working and innovating during these times?”
While viewing Van Camp’s shack, visitors can log onto the app Bloomberg Connects – which, thanks to Sampaio, now partners with the museum – to hear an anecdote about Van Camp as told by 91-year-old Eldon Allen, who interacted with the gravedigger as a youngster.
Collaborations like the one with Bloomberg Connects align with Sampaio’s plan to modernize the museum experience for 21st Century visitors.
This year, she introduced the STEAM Engine Project to tours, which encourages guests to find examples of simple machines throughout the Mill. And she is putting to use a $10,000 grant from the Hanafin Foundation to create an artifacts lab where hundreds of tools from the original mill and quarry can be identified, digitized and displayed.
When Sampaio was a child and the museum was in its infancy, much of it was inaccurately curated. The mill was staged as a Victorian home. The Tenant House was turned into a faux general store. Buildings not original to the 1820s property – including a one-room schoolhouse and log cabin build in the 1970s – were added for interest. While structures integral to the village, including the hand-hewn lime kilns, were partially cemented over.
“They wanted to make it a Colonial Williamsburg,” she said. “They were trying to fabricate a narrative that wasn’t here.”
Sampaio is committed to continuing the process of restoring the space as close to its original form as possible. But that takes money. And lots of it. Restoring and repointing the lime kilns is at least $200,000. Then there are the annual costs associated with maintaining centuries old buildings.
That’s why fundraising is as much a part of her job as curating, said Sampaio. Organizing annual events including Haunted Mill, Winter Village and Festival of Trees, Kentucky Derby Party and Wheels for the Wheel car show, draw donors and dollars the museum depends on.
“I think that folks’ expectations of what a museum experience is has changed a lot,” Sampaio said. “They don’t want to stand around reading museum signage, they want things you can do, touch, watch and listen to.”
To support the Red Mill Museum Village, visit their donation page.
