"^^^^ './t*L*JtJt«U'irfj»W-***W**"'' f V. \ 6^1^^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 092 229 339 DATE DUE mmr- ^^!^. '^^W g ^iii.jlljl j j^' < 't^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092229339 o ■o o PROOF EDITION THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN: THE RECORD OF THE PROGRESS OF THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE ISSUED IN COMMEMORATION OF ITS SEMI-CENTENNIAL AND OCCUPANCY OF ITS NEW BUILDING; TOGETHER WITH THE History of the City of Brooklyn FROM ITS SETTLEMENT TO THE PRESENT TIME EDITED BY HENRY W. B. HOWARD ASSISTED BY ARTHUR N. JERVIS WITH NEARLY THIRTEEN HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS PUBLISHED BY THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE 1893 The Eagle Printing House. COPYRIGin BY THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. t . PREFATORY. This volume is essentially a picture of contemporary Brooklyn. Originated as a souvenir of a signifi- cant period in the history of a daily newspaper, the aim was to represent the simultaneous development of the city of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, during the half-century just closed; the journal con- tributing its effective part to the growth of the city, and itself expanding as the city grew. Brooklyn as it was fifty years ago, and Brooklyn as it is to-day, were at the outset the leading themes, with the wonder- ful contrasts developed in a comparison of the two Leading up to this, the history of Brooklyn from the date of the earliest settlement has been broadly sketched, without either intruding unduly on the primary topics, or repeating in elaborate detail the minutia; of a story that has been fully told already in existing volumes. The salient features of a past that accounts in large measure for what we see about us to-day have been comprehensively grouped in the introductory chapters of the book. But in treating of the Brooklyn of the present day, the attempt has been made to describe in detail all its varied aspects — its public institutions, its associations of every name, and its citizens. To this end every effort has been made to collect full and accurate information. The reader may assume that the editors have applied for intelligence concerning every subject that could properly form a part of such an account of the interests and activities of the city ; and while the responses have been so general as to result in a practically complete book, any omissions must be ascribed to failures to furnish the facts applied for — doubtless unavoidable in some cases, since the interests are so numerous, the sources of information so varied, and the necessity of reasonable promptness in publication so imperative. But the efforts for completeness have been so persistent that it is believed that no similar compendium will be found more accurate and full than this. To secure accuracy great pams have been taken to go to the most authori- tative sources and to submit the written accounts for revision to those furnishing the material. Such a work of course has been accomplished only by the cooperation of many. It would be impos- sible to name all who have most kindly given facts for this volume, or even those who have taken the trouble to put them into printable form. To this great number of individuals and officers of associations a general acknowledgment is here extended. But special recognition is due to some whose contributions have been considerable in extent and importance. Introductions to the several chapters have been written : on "Brooklyn of To-day," by Alexander Black ; on "Literary Life in Brooklyn," and "City and County Government," by Charles Harvey Genung ; on " Charities," by Herbert F. Gunnison ; on " Political Life," by Solon Barbanell ; on " Clubs," by Frederick Mitchell Munroe ; on " Social Life," by Cromwell Childe ; on " The Stage," by Charles M. Skinner ; on " Sports, Athletics and Pastimes," by Henry Chadwick ; on "Real Estate and Suburban Development," by Arthur M. Howe; and on "Churches and Religious Denomi- nations," and " Secret Orders and Special Societies," by Frederick W. Webber, who also arranged and edited both these chapters and was engaged on editorial work throughout the volume. The descriptions of the " Private Art Collections" are from the pen of Weston Coyney ; the account of Prospect Park is by Perriton Maxwell ; Edgar Mayhew Bacon contributed a considerable portion of the early historical chapters, and the careful study of Henry Ward Beecher was written by John R. Howard. Acknowledgments are also due to Willis A. Bardwell, of the Brooklyn Library, and Miss Emma Toedteberg, of the Long Island Histori- cal Society Library, for many courtesies and privileges accorded to the editors. In securing material for the illustrations of this volume the editors have been most fortunate. Many illustrations of early Brooklyn, ordinarily inaccessible, have been placed at their disposal, and In the pages of the book will be found much that is old but unfamiliar. It is a cause of regret, however, that many ancient landmarks have been permitted to pass away without being perpetuated by the artist or the photo- grapher, and therefore it has been attempted, in illustrating the still existing features of the city, to pre- serve everything likely to be of permanent interest. For this purpose, hundreds of photographs have been taken of subjects not found among the store of negatives in possession of the landscape photographers. The editors have been kindly permitted to engrave many photographs, paintings and drawings, of which no duplicates exist. Acknowledgments for such courtesies are due to Mr. Charles C. Martin, for an interesting series of pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge ; to Police Captain John W. Eason, for several war pictures ; to Colonel Charles N. Swift, Recorder of the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, for permission to copy portraits of Brooklyn soldiers from the Loyal Legion collection ; and for sundry subjects to General John B. Woodward, General Edward B. Fowler, Elias Lewis, Jr., Curator of the Long Island Historical Society Museum, James H. Frothingham, George Wundrum, Van Brunt Bergen, William H. Bennett, A. V. B. Martense, Conrad Freitag, Mrs. Lewis T. Lazell, and Mrs. Hugh McLaughlin. The Brooklyn Academy of Photography has kindly given the use of a very valuable collection of nega- tives, taken many years ago by the late George B. Brainerd, who was one of the first of the amateur photo- graphers and the designer of the first magazine camera, preserving a most interesting series of views of Brooklyn and Long Island, such as cannot be obtained now. The selections made from this source are indicated in the list of illustrations by the letter (A). But by far the most considerable contribution to the illustrations has been made by Mr. Daniel M. Tredwell, who for thirty years has been collecting prints and photographs illustrative of Brooklyn. He has most generously placed his entire collection at the disposal of the editors, and it has been freely drawn upon, as may be seen from the frequent use of the designating letter (T) in the list of illustrations, which marks the subjects furnished by Mr. Tredwell. In addition to the titles thus indicated, there are many reproductions of prints from the series of illustrated Manuals of the Common Council of Brooklyn, in making which the early proofs preserved in Mr. Tredwell's collection have been used. Henry W. B. Howard. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY. Discovery of America by Columbus — Partition of the new continent — Early explorations and settle- ments — Establishment of the New Netherland colony — Primary objects of the Dutch rulers — New Amsterdam designed for a trading-post — Colonization on Long Island — Glacial origin of the island. .... 33 BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 1636-1664. Traditions of the first settlement of Brooklyn — The first land grant made in Flatlands — Gowanus the first actual settlement — Burning of the original house by Indians — Agriculture the business of the early settlers — Breuckelen, the Wallabout, the Ferry and other nuclei of the future city settled^ Etymological significance of the name of Brooklyn — Political beginnings — How the old-time villages were established — Long Island the grain-field of the New Netherland — A chain of farms along the East River shore — Character and habits of the Dutch settlers; their houses, furniture and industries — Village government established in 1646 — Opposition to taxation for the support of fortifications — War between Holland and England — Close of the Dutch rule marked by popu- lar unrest — Beginning of English domination — New Amsterdam becomes New York and Long Island and Staten Island named Yorkshire. ........ 37 BROOKLYN UNDER ENGLISH RULE. 1664-1774. Social habits of the time — Religious toleration — Industry, thrift and close calculation — Preaching and instruction demanded at low rates — Change in the form of village government — Brooklyn's Eng- ■ lish patent — First colonial legislature — Political birth of Kings County — Brooklyn becomes the most important of the Kings County towns — Courts established and public offices created — The " Negro Plot " terror — Slavery on Long Island — Cowpaths the original roads — Buccaneers on the Long Island shores — Tobacco and cotton among Kings County products. ... 47 BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. Conditions at the inception of the revolution — Apathy of the Brooklyn people — Construction of defenses — Fort Defiance, Fort Putnam, Fort Box and Ponkiesburg (or Cobble Hill) Fort — General Howe moves upon New York — Battle of Brooklyn — Pillage and rapine by the Hessians — Villagers renew allegiance to the English crown and are subjected to indignities — The village under martial law — -Vice, filth and sickness among soldiery and people — The prison-ship horrors — Loss of the town records — Obliteration of old fortifications. ..... .51 FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 1783-1841. Tribulations of Long Island patriots in revolutionary times — Curious experiences of female custodians of money collected to aid the cause — Changes wrought by the war for independence — Brooklyn recognized as a town by the state legislature — The seven districts of Brooklyn in 1800 — Found- ing of the first newspaper — Fire district established — Yellow fever scourge of 1809 — Defensive preparations for the war of 1812 — The first steam ferry-boat — Beginning of the public school system — Brooklyn incorporated as a village in 1816 — Celebrated foreigners as residents — The Long Island Bank established — Abolition of slavery — Notable characters of long ago — Rapid growth of a village — Incorporation of the city in 1834 — Political and religious changes — Old-time families, homesteads and landmarks. . . . . . . . , 61 xviii SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. Origin of the Eagle in 1841 — Brooklyn as it was at that time — Isaac Van Anden, founder of the paper — The early editors — Pioneer journalism — The Sunday Eagle — Incorporation of the publishing company — Later editors — Sturdy independence — Services rendered the community — Growth and improvement of methods and facilities — New home of the paper — Branch offices — Makers of the Eagle. ............ 87 DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 1841-1861. Brooklyn during its formative period — An era of public works — The Navy Yard and its early craft — Meriam, the weather prophet — A useful charity organized — Long Island Railroad tunnel opened — Consolidation of Williamsburgh and Bushwick — New city charter of 1847 — Act providing for a public park — Arrival of Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn — The great fire of 1848 — Belles of the first half of the century — Early talk of bridging the East River — Ferry communication between New York and Brooklyn, and the evolution from row-boats and horse-power vessels to the steam ferry-boat — Development of the Heights, South Brooklyn, the Hill, etc. — Atlantic and Erie basins and other water-front improvements — Business enterprises begun — Street cars and gas introduced — Insurance companies chartered — The " Know-Nothing " troubles — Origin of the Polytechnic and the Packer institute — Old-time public-houses — Yellow fever epidemic of 1856 — Opening of the waterworks. ......... 131 DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 1861-1865. Loyalty of Brooklynites and enthusiasm for the Union cause — Local militia organizations prompt in preparation for active service — -War spirit in the churches — Acts of self-sacrifice by corporations, societies and individuals — Generosity and patriotism of the physicians — Brooklyn women as workers at home and at the front — Navy Yard activities — Attempted theft of a vessel from the yard — Launch of the " Monitor " — Raising men and means — Draft riots in 1863 — Work of the Sanitary Commission and the War Fund Committee — The Sanitary Fair — Brooklyn's representation in the Union army — War veterans welcomed home after the return of peace and awarded medals by the grateful city. .......... 145 A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 1865-1892. Effect of the war upon business and social life — Development of the city during the war period — Stimulation of enterprise — Activity in providing the city with railway facilities — Beginning and completion of the first bridge over the East River — Burning of the Brooklyn Theatre with great loss of life — Destruction of dangerous reefs in Hell Gate — Population and business in 1880 — The Children's annual May parade — Important events, during a quarter of a century — Local chronology from 1886 to 1892, inclusive. . . . . . . . 161 BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY, Survey of the city in the present time — Summary of its notable features and salient characteristics — Boundaries, e.xtent of territory, population and importance — A great water-front and how it is utilized — The mammoth sugar refineries — Interior aspects of the city — Arrangement of the streets — Ward divisions of the city — The several social divisions or districts ; the Heights, the Hill, etc, — Sewerage system and water supply — How the city is governed — Political, financial, mercantile, educational, religious and social conditions — Facilities for local and suburban travel — Some architectural features of the city — Large enterprises — Brooklyn's newspapers, hotels, apart- ment houses, notable buildings and handsome residences — Men who have been foremost in making the city what it is. . . . . . . . . •. . igi PARKS AND CEMETERIES. Natural origin of the park idea — First attempt to establish a park in Brooklyn — Defeat of a project to create a public preserve on the Heights — Appointment, in 1835, of a commission "to lay out streets, avenues and squares " — City Park, the first public pleasure-ground — Fort Greene acquired for park purposes and named Washington Park — Legislation leading to the creation of Prospect Park — Work of the commissioners to the present time — New projects — A tour of Prospect Park — Natural beauties of the place supplemented by artistic embellishment — Facilities for enjoyment and recreation — Wealth of vegetable life — The home of many varieties of song birds — History of SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. xix the park— Washington Park and its historical associations — Descriptions of the other public pleasure-grounds of the city— The cemeteries— Greenwood and its history — The last resting- place of many noted men— Beauties of The Evergreens, Cypress Hills and other burial-places— The Fresh Pond Crematory. . . . . . . _ _ -,,j THE CITY AND, COUNTY GOVERNMENT. Town and village merged in the city— The several city charters— Evolution of the existing system of municipal government — Administrative and legislative officials of the city — Police, fire and other departments — Kings County and its government — County institutions — Brooklyn's mayors — Men who manage the affairs of city and county — United States interests in Brooklyn — The Federal Building — Post Office and courts — The Navy Yard" and Naval Hospital — Distinguished officers of the Navy. ••■■...... 365 POLITICAL LIFE. Relations of the great parties in Brooklyn and Kings County — Organization of political machinery — " Bosses " and their work and influence — Kings County an important factor in the politics of the state — Political clubs and associations — Sketches of local .leaders. .... 439 THE 'bench and BAR. Wouter Van Twiller's unique decision — Famous names connected with jurisprudence in Kings County — Formation of the Kings County Bar— The first court in Brooklyn— History of the courts— Old- time lawyers — Personnel of the judiciary — Prominent members of the bar in Brooklyn. . . 467 BANKING AND FINANCIAL. Development of monetary interests in Brooklyn — Establishment of fiduciary and insurance companies — Brooklyn securities — The national and other banks — Local capitalists and financiers — Institu- tions for savings — Trust and deposit companies — Insurance companies — Title guarantee com- panies 515 CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. Planting of the Dutch Reformed Church on Long Island and formation of the first church in Breuckelen — Advent of the Protestant Episcopal Church — Failure of the first attempt to plant Congrega- tionalism — Humble beginnings of the Methodists and their remarkable growth — Almost simul- taneous introduction of Catholicism, Calvinism and the Baptists — Liberal Christian denominations established in the city — Luther's disciples and their effective work in the religious field — Congre- gationalism firmly planted and developed into a controlling force — Religious organizations of the Hebrews — Multiplication of sects and churches — Sunday-schools and their influence — Sketches of individual churches arranged by denominations in the chronological order of their first appear- ance, with sketches of prominent clergymen — Religious organizations other than churches — Lay- men and retired clergymen who are identified with religious work. .... 537 CHARITABLE SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS. Care of the poor and needy — Organized charity — Brooklyn Bureau of Charities — Incorporated agencies for general and special relief — Societies for the care of the young — Orphans and destitute children provided for — Associations for the aid of women and girls — Relief of aged and infirm people — Prevention of cruelty to animals. ...... 647 HOSPITALS, DISPENSARIES AND PHYSICIANS. Paulus Van Der Beeck, the pioneer physician of Brooklyn — Surgeon and farmer — Doctors of the early times — Brooklyn's first hospital and its well-equipped successors — Long Island College Hospital — Training schools for nurses — Dispensaries — The medical profession and its local representatives — Dental surgery and its practitioners. ........' 661 XX SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. Origin and development of the school system in Brooklyn— The Board of Education— Public schools —Personnel of the Board of Education— Officials connected with the public educational system — Brooklyn's public school teachers — Academical, special and private institutions — Erasmus Hall, Polytechnic Institute, Packer Institute, Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Scien- ces, and others— Commercial colleges and private educational institutions— Prominent educators. 709 LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS. Brooklyn clergymen in the world of letters— Beecher, Lyman Abbott, John White Chadwick, Richard S. Storrs, Theodore L. Cuyler and T. De Witt Talmage— Magazine writers and journalists- Literary women of Brooklyn — Edward Eggleston and George Gary Eggleston— The Conants and other makers of books — Writers of historical works and papers— John G. Saxe — Walt Whitman — Brooklyn's libraries, public and private — Literary societies — Art education — Art clubs and artists — Amateur photography — Private art collections — Famous paintings owned by Brooklynites — Musical development — Singing societies and other organizations devoted to music — Prominent musicians — Conservatories of music. ..... ... 759 THE NATIONAL GUARD. Citizens as volunteer soldiers— History of the State's military arm— Brooklyn's representatives in the National Guard— Thirteenth Regiment — The " Fighting Fourteenth " — The Twenty-third, or "Ours"— Third Battery— Signal Corps— Veteran officers— Brooklyn City Guard. . . 817 SOCIAL CLUBS AND SOCIAL LIFE. Rapid evolution of club life— What it is in Brooklyn — The leading organizations and their personnel— Hamilton, Excelsior, Germania, Brooklyn, Union League, Lincoln, Hanover, Oxford, Montauk, Carleton, Laurence, Constitution, Midwood and other clubs and their homes — Social features of the city — Lines of demarcation — The Iphetonga. ....... 842 SECRET ORDERS AND SPECIAL SOCIETIES. Number and variety of secret societies, mutual benefit organizations, etc. — Freemasonry in its several branches — Other ritualistic bodies — Fraternal and memorial organizations — Grand Army of the Republic — Union Veteran Legion — Sons of the Revolution — Long Island Historical Soci- ety — Society of Old Brooklynites — New England Society — Professional and other associations. 945 THE STAGE— PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR. Local theatres a recent growth — Entertainments of the olden time — First efforts to establish the stage in Brooklyn — Tragic history of the Brooklyn Theatre' — Theatres of the present day — Prominence of the city as a " show town " — Enterprising managers — Amateur associations — Histrionic talent strong among Brooklynites — The Amaranth, Amateur Opera Association, Gilbert, Melpomene, Kendal, Florence, Booth and other organizations and their leading members. . . . 989 SPORTS, ATHLETICS AND PASTIMES. Popularity of out-door sports — Baseball and its growth in favor — Turf, track and road — Riding and Driving Club of Brooklyn — Parkway Driving Club^Baseball and cricket clubs — Football, lacrosse and polo — Lawn tennis and hand-ball — Cycling — Yachting, rowing and canoeing — Marine and Field Club — Atlantic and other yacht clubs — Athletic clubs — Crescent Athletic Club and its record — Trap shooting — Bowling — Chess, Checkers and other in-door games. . . . loio MEN OF THE TIME. Character of Brooklyn as seen in Vat personnel of the community — Variety of individuality and interests — A home city and its people. .... . 1046 REAL ESTATE AND SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT. Territorial expansion of Brooklyn — Extraordinary growth during a quarter of a century — Absorption of other communities — Importance of realty interests — Brooklyn Real Estate Exchange — Promoters of healthy development — Brooklyn's suburbs — Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, Coney Island, New Utrecht, Bensonhurst, Blythebourne, Jamaica, Holliswood, Garden City, etc. — Steam rail- roads and suburban traffic. .......... 1103 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. I 2 Page. BiRDSEYE View of the City of Brooklyn, Frontispiece. Brooklyn's First Homes — Indian HABnAxioNS in THE Sixteenth Century . . . -33 Initial " A " — The Indian's First View of the Stranger, ..... Hudson's " Half-Moon," West India Company's House, Amsterdam, . 6 The Brooklyn Shore in 1679, BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE, 1636-1664: 7 The Oldest House in Brooklyn — The Schermer HORN House, 8 Initial "T" — Ship " New NetherlanD; 9 The Wynant-Bennett House, 10 DeHart-Bergen House, n Kitchen of the DeHart House, , 12 CoRTELYou House, 13 Map of 1750, (T), 14 The Remsen Farm House — Front View, (T), 15 " " " " —Rear View, (T), 16 The Snedecor House, .... 17 Spinning Wheel, Flax Beater, Hand Reel, etc., 18 The Boerum Mansion, (T), 19 House of Nicholas De Sille, New Utrecht, 20 Household and Other Articles Used by our Ancestors, . 21 Sarah de Rapelje's Tankard, (T), BROOKLYN UNDER ENGLISH RULE, 1664-1776: 22 Bedford Corners in 1777, .... 23 Initial " I " — Peter Stuyvesant's Bottle, . 24 Fulton Avenue, between Bridge and Lawrence Streets, in 1776, ..... 25 View of Brooklyn in 1766, .... 26 Fulton Ferry in 1746, ..... 27 BENspN Homestead at New Utrecht, BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION : 28 Lord Stirling at the Battle of Brooklyn, (T), 29 Initial " W " — Minute Man, 30 De NYSE's Ferry — Now Fort Hamilton, 31 Brower's Mill on Gowanus Creek, . 32 Howard's Inn, East New York, in 1776; 33 Stirling's Retreat across Gowanus Creek, (T), 34 Suydam House, Bushwick Lane, 35 DeBevoise House, Bushwick, . 36 Battle Pass (Prospect Park) in 1866. 37 " " " " " 1776, 38 " " " " " 1892^ 39 PiERREPONT Mansion {The " Four Corners 40 Presbyterian Church, Jamaica, 41 " Old Jersey " Prison Ship, . 42 Tablet from Tomb of the Martyrs, 37 37 38 39 39 40 41 42 42 43 43 44 44 45 46 5' 5' S3 53 54 55 55 56 57 57 57 58 58 59 59 Page. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY, 1783-1841 : 43 The Old Bergen Homestead, . . , .61 44 Initial "T". . . . . . .61 45 Dutch Garden at the Bergen Homestead, . 62 46 Slave Kitchen " " " " . , 62 47 Interior of Slave Kitchen, . . . .62 48 Map of Brooklyn Village, (T), . . .63 49 Continental Hotel, East New York, . . 65 50 Brooklyn Heights in 1820, (T), . . -65 51 Early Type of Steam Ferryboat, (T), . . 67 52 Looking South from the Foot of Pierrepont Street, 1836, . . . ... .68 53 Fulton Ferry-Boat, 1827, . . . .68 54 " " " 1836, . . . .68 55 Guy's Brooklyn Snow Scene, 1820, From the Original Painting, . . . .69 56 Johnson, Rev. Evan M., (T), . . . .70 57 Brooklyn Heights in 1840, (T), . . .70 58 Bull's Head Tavern, . . . . .71 59 Patchen, Jacob, . . . . . .72 60 The Abbey, . . . . . -73 61 The Rem Lefferts House, ■ . . -75 62 Old Remsen House, . . . . -76 63 Leffert Lefferts Homestead, 1759-1877, . . 77 64 Lefferts-Brevoort Mansion, . . . -77 65 Brooklyn in 1840, (T), . . . . -78 66 The DeHart Bergen House, . . . -79 67 Entrance to Flatbush, 1877, (A), . . .81 68 Toll, House at Flatbush, (A), . . .82 69 Vandeveer's Mill, Flatbush, (A), . . .82 70 Some Old Flatbush Houses, (A), . . -83 71 John Hess House, Flatbush, 1877, (A),. . . 84 72 The Willink House, . . • . .84 73 Some Old Flatbush Houses, (A), . . -85 74 Old Grand Street Ferry, . . . .86 THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE: 75 The Eagle's Emblem. Drawn by J. Carter Beard, ...... 76 Initial " I." The President of the Eagle Cor- poration, ...... 77 Fulton Street in 1821 — Site of the Late Eagle Building. From Contemporary Sketch by Mr. Banvard, ..... 78 Van Anden, Isaac, ..... 79 The Eagle Staff in 1863 :— Isaac Van Anden, Joseph Howard, Jr., Thomas Kinsella, John Stanton, James McClosky, Alfred G. Herman, Richard McDermott, Francis A. Mallison. Henry Chadwick, 80 The Eagle's Home up to July, 1892, 87 87 87 89 90 92 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. 8i- 84 85 86 87 88 89- 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 lOI 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 no III 112 "3 114 i'5 116 "7 118 119 120 121- Page. 3 Offices in Old Eagle Building — President, Secretary and Treasurer ; General Business Office, . . . . . -93 St John's Episcopal Church, 1868 — Site of New Eagle Building, . . . . .94 Brooklyn Theatre, 1871 — Site of New Eagle Building, . . . . . -95 The New Eagle Building, 1892, . . .96 Corner Entrance to Counting-room, . . 97 Interior of Counting-room, . . . .98 91 Offices in New Eagle Building — President AND Secretary; Treasurer; Assistant Man- ager, . . . . . ■ -99 Main Entrance, Washington Street, . . 100 Main Hallway, . . . . . .102 Chandelier in Main Hallway, . . . 103 The Elevators, . . . . . -103 Stairway, Second Floor, .... 104 Editorial Offices, . . . . .105 A Corner of the Composing-room, . . . 106 Stereotyping-room, ..... 107 Newspaper Press-room, .... 108 The Great Engine, ..... 109 Delivery of Papers on Johnson Street Side, iio The Eagle's Restaurant, . . . .111 The Book and Job Department Press-room, . 112 Brooklyn, from the top of the Eagle Build- ing, . . . . . . -113 Eastern District Branch, . . . .114 Bedford 'Branch, . . . . -115 Fifth Avenue Branch, . . . .116 The Eagle Trophy for Homing Pigeons, . .116 Twenty-sixth Ward Branch, . . . 117 The Eagle First Rowing Trophy, . . .118 Greenpoint Branch, . . . . .118 New Utrecht Branch, . . . .119 Second Rowing Trophy, . . . .119 The Eagle Football Trophy, . . .120 The Washington Bureau, .... 120 Hester, William, . . . . .121 Van Anden, William M., Hester, William V. KiNGSLEY, Harry S., -33 Business Office Staff: J. G. Carpenter, G. H. Price, H. F. Gunnison, T. Dunne, M. Kilcommon, E. L. Burch, E. G. Martin, George C. Adams, H. W. Ormsbee, I. A. La Fumee, N. McEvoy, B. I. Schneider, G. W. Willis. 123 124 125 134-53 Heads of Literary Departments ; ciAL Correspondents: Spe- . 126-7 St. Clair McKelway, George D. Bayard, William Herries, Charles M. Skinner, Celia Kenney, Mary F. Walton, F. Dana Reed, Alfred C. Burton, George F. Dobson, Emma Bullett, 154-8 Heads of Departments: W. H. Sutton, Robert F. Clark, J. S. Boice, M. E. Page, Robert A. Burch, George W. Douglass, James F. LeBaron, Henry Chadwick, John B. Renauld, William F. Hamilton, William Walton, J. P. Carey, Alice H. Witherbee. P. J. Gelson, George Windram. No. 159 160 161 162 163 T64 165 166 167 168 170 171 172 '73 174 '75 176 177 178 179 180 183 185 186 187 1 88 189 190 191 192 '93 194 195 196 197 Page. Employees of the Composing-boom, . . 129 Employees of the Press-room, . . .13° DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY, 1841-1861 ; The Narrows, from Fort Hamilton, 1852, (T), . 131 "Initial " F," . . • • • • '3' Meriam, Eben (T), . . . . .132 The Atlantic Docks, (T), . . . .133 City Hall, as Planned in 1835, (T), . . . 134 The City Hall, from an Old Print, (T), . . 134 " ■ " " " " " '■ (T), . . 135 " " " " " " " (T), . . 135 Montague Street Hill, before the Heights were Built Up, (T), .... 137 L. I. Railroad Tunnkl under Atlantic Avenue (T,) 138 Old House on Atlantic Avenue, near Classon, (T) 138 Labon's Inn, in 1853, (T), . . . .139 The Old-time Navy Yard, (T), . . .140 The Navy Yard on a Peace Footing, (T), . . 140 Long Island College Hospital— The Perry Man- sion, (T), . . . . . .141 The Brooklyn Athenaeum, . . . .142 The Original East River Bridge — Crossing on THE Ice in 1852, . . . . • '43 Sleighing on the Jamaica Plank Road, (T), . 143 At Fulton Street and Grand Avenue — A Relic OF the Pump Days, ..... 144 DURING THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865: The Brooklyn Phalanx in Camp near Bladens- BURGH, Md., ...... 145 Initial "T" — Brooklyn to the Front, . . 145 The Sanitary Fair in 1864, .... 146 The New England Kitchen at the Sanitary Fair, ...... First Fruits of the Sanitary Fair — Check for $300,000, ..... Company "G," Brooklyn Fourteenth, in Camp BEFORE FrEDERICKSBURGH, 1864, Wood, Col. Alfred M., 14TH Regiment Fowler, Col. Edward B., 14TH Regiment, . Fourteenth Regiment Tablet, Gettysbburg Dedication of Fourteenth Regiment Monument, Gettysburg, ..... The Fourteenth Regiment at Gettysburg, The Brooklyn Thirteenth in Camp near risburgh. Pa., 1863, .... Pratt, Col. Calvin E., 31ST N. Y. Vols., Perry, Col. James H., 48TH N. Y. Vols., Adams, Col. Julius W., Brooklyn Phalanx, Gates, Col. T. B., 8oth N. Y. Vols., . JouRDAN, Col. James, 158TH N. Y. Vols, Tracy, Col. Benjamin F., 105TH N. Y. Vols. Everdell, Col. William, 230 Regiment, Har- A GENERATION OF PROGRESS, 1866- 149 'S' 151 152 152 '53 154 155 156 .56 '57 157 158 158 '59 199 Birdseye View from Top of Bridge Tower, 1880, 161 200 Initial "A" — Statue of Robert Fulton, . . 161 201 Central Hall, Flatbusi-i Avenue and Fulton Street, (T), ...... 164 202 The Long Island Club House, i868, (T), . . 164 203 Hooley's Opera House, ..... 165 204 Brooklyn Theatre, Old Post Office and Police Station, 1873, ••■... 165 205 The Brooklyn Shore in 1873 — The Bridge Tower Rising, (T), . . . . . . ,66 206 Stringing the Cable Wires, . . . .167 207 Cable-Saddle at Top of Bridge Tower, . . 167 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. Page. 208 Suspending the Floor Girders of the Bridge, . 168 2og Some of the Bridge-Makers on the Brooklyn Anchorage, 1878, . . . . . 169 210 Looking Down from Bridge Tower, Opening Day, May 24, 1883, . . . . .171 211 Early Morning at the Wallaeout Market, . 172 212 Fulton Street, before "L" Road or Trolley, . 173 213 The Blizzard of March 12, 1888, . . .173 214 Boat Houses near Bergen Homestead, Third Avenue, 1884, ...... 174 215 Blasting of Flood Rock, Hell Gate, 1886, . 175 216 City Hall, 1864, ...... 179 BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY: 217 The Gateway of Brooklyn, . . . . 218 Initial "A" — The Beecher Statue, 219 The Brooklyn Water Front — Looking North from the Bridge, . . . . . 220 The Brooklyn Water Front — Looking South, 221 King's County "L" Approach to Fulton Ferry, 222 On the Bridge Promenade, . . . . 223 The Roadways of the Bridge, 224 The Brooklyn Navy Yard, . . . . 225-6 The Great Ice-floe of January, 1893, 227 Montague Street Hill and Wall Street Ferry, 228 Pierrepont Place, Leading to Columbia Heights. ..... 229 Furman Street and Embankment under Col- umbia Heights, .... 230 Brooklyn Heights, Pierrepont Street, West from Henry, .... 231 Montague Street, from Fulton and Court, 232 In the Shopping District — Fulton Street, 233 Flatbush Avenue, above Junction with Ful- ton Street, ..... 234 Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Pros- pect Park Plaza, .... 235 Corner of Washington and Greene Avenues, 236 Clinton Avenue, Looking North from Lafay- ette Avenue, .... 237 The Great Sewer Tunnel under Greene Ave- nue, ...... 238 The Fire Boat, " Seth Low," 239 Gowanus Canal — The Drawbridge at Ninth Street, ..... 240 An Eastern Di.strict Centre— Corner of Bed- ford and Division Avenues, 241 Brooklyn City Railroad Company Building, 242 Lewis, Daniel F., . . . . 243 Broadway and the Ferries, 244 Power Station of Edison Electric Illuminat- ing Company, .... 245 Doty, Ethan Allen, .... 246 Peabody Royal C, . . . 247 Peters, Bernard, .... 248 Halstead, Murat, : . . . 249 RoEHR, Henry E., .... 250 McLean, Andrew, .... 251 The Mansion House, .... 252 Van Cleaf, John C, . 253 Tumbridge, William, .... 254 Hotel St. George, .... 255 The Montrose, Hoyt and State Streets, 256 Entrance to the Fougera, 257 The Fougera, Clinton and Atlantic Streets, 258 An Apartment in the Fougera, 259 The Alhambra, Nostrand Avenue, 260 HoLLiDAY Building, Bedford Avenue and Bre vooRT Place, .... 261 Morris, Montrose W., i8i 181 183 184 185 185 186 187 190 191 192 193 •94 '95 19s 196 196 197 198 199 201 203 204 205 206 207 208 208 209 211 212 214 215 217 218 219 220 221 223 No. Page. 262 Reception Hall, in Residence of Montrose W. Morris, ...... 224 263 Seitz, Louis F., . . . . . 225 264 Water Tower, Mount Prospect Reservoir, . 226 265 Burt Building, Fulton and Hoyt Streets, . 226 266 Liebmann Building, ..... 227 267 The Pouch Gallery, Clinton Avenue, . . 229 268 Pouch, Alfred J., . . . . . 230 269 HuLBERT, Henry C, . . . . . 231 270 Residence of Henry C. Hulbert, Ninth Ave- nue, ....... 232 271 Residence of J. Rogers Maxwell, . . .234 272 Maxwell, J. Rogers, ..... 235 273 Drawing-room, in Residence of J. Rogers Max- well, ...... 236 274 Parlor and Billiard-room in Residence of J. Rogers Maxwell, ..... 237 275 Hallway and Dining-Room, in Residence of J. Rogers Maxwell, ..... 238 276 Residence of Albert B. Chandler, Clinton Avenue, ...... 239 277 Postal Telegraph Building, . . . 239 278 Chandler, Albert B,, .... 240 279 Residence of William H. Lyon, New York Avenue, . . . . . ,241 280 Lincoln Road, Flatbush, .... 242 281 Lyon, William H., ..... 243 282 Lefkerts Homestead, Flatbush Avenue, . . 244 283 " " " " Front View, ....... 244 284 Cutter, Ralph Ladd, ..... 245 285 Residence of Ralph Ladd Cutter, Clinton and Amity Streets, ..... 246 286 Residence, John C. Kelley, Hancock Street, . 247 287 Kelley, John C, ..... 248 288 McMahon, James, ..... 250 289 Residence of James McMahon, McDonough St., 251 290 Residence of Herbert Booth King, South Oxford Street, ..... 252 291 King, Herbert Booth, . . ... . 253 292 Hallway in Residence of Harvey Murdock, . 254 293 Residence of Harvey Murdock, Montgomery Place, ...... 255 294 Residence of Thomas Adams, Jr., Eighth Ave- nue, . . . ■, . 295 Adams, Thomas, Jr., 296 Residence of Peter Wyckoff, 297 Wyckoff, Peter, hotchkiss 298 Residence of Philo P. Hotchkiss, Willow St., , 299 SuYDAM, Adrian M., 300 Woodford, Stewart L., 301 Stranahan, James S. T., 302 White, Stephen V., 303 James, Darwin R., 304 Low, William Gilman, 305 Barnes, Alfred C, 306 Ziegler, William, 307 EsTEs, Benjamin, 308 Mc Kelway, St. Clair, 309 Martin, Charles C, 310 Martin, John T., 311 Leonard, William B., 312 Litchfield, Edward H., 313 Residence of William Hester, Remsen Street, . 214 11 " " " " " 315 Maxwell, Henry W., . . . . . 316 Bacon, Alex. S., . . . . , 317 Beecher, Henry Ward, . . , , 318 BowNE, Samuel, ...... 319 Raymond, Eliakim, . . . . . 256 257 258 259 259 260 260 263 264 266 267 268 269 271 272 273 27s 276 277 278 279 281 282 285 288 £88 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. 320 Bergen, Teunis G., 321 Frothingham, Isaac H., 322 Low, Abiel Abbott, 323 Howard, John Tasker, 324 Chittenden, Simeon B., 325 Claflin, Horace B., 326 Budington, William Ives, 327 Raymond, John Howard, 32S Ropes, Ripley, 329 Barnes, Alfred S., 330 Prentice, John H., 331 KiNGSLEY, William C, 332 Pratt, Charles, 333 Spicer, Elihu, 334 Bush, Rufus T., 335 Lyall, David C, 336 Silliman, Augustus E. 337 Litchfield, Edwin C, 338 DuRVEA, Samuel B., 339 Beard, William H., 340 Seccomb, Edward A., 341 Betts, Charles C, 342 Walsh, Andrew, 343 fougera, e., 344 OsBORN, Albert H., 345 Amerman, John W., 346 Kerrigan, Maurice S., 347 Dingee, Peter M., 34S Brinkerhoff, Aaron, 349 Baldwin, Oran S , 350 Morris, Theodore, 351 Holliday, Edgar, 352 Platt, Joseph, 353 Sackett, Guernsey, 354 Monument to Alexander Lyman Holley, PARKS AND CEMETERIES: Page 289 291 293 294 295 297 298 299 301 302 304 305 307 309 3" 3'2 3'3 315 316 3'7 318 319 321 3^-3 32") 3^4 325 326 327 328 328 329 330 330 355 Prospect Park, Main Entrance, 356 Initial " I." Lincoln Statue, Prospect Park, 357 The Lake at Boat Landing, 358 Site of Main Entrance, 1863, 359 Main Entrance and Plaza, 1873, (A) 360 An Autumn Morning in Prospect Park, . 361 The Thatched Shelter, 362 The Stranahan Statue, 363 The Long Meadow, from the Thatched Shel^ ter, .... . . 364 The Coaching Parade in 1891, 365 Croquet Clue House, .... 366 The Litchfield Mansion— Park Offices, . 367 The Irving Statue, .... 368 Croquet Players on the Long Meadow . 369 " A Flock of Well-fed Sheep," 370 Tom Moore's Statue, .... 371 The Dairy, ..... 372 Shelter and Pavilion at the Flower Garden, 373 Tennis on the Long Meadow, 374 Out-door Life in the Park, . 375 " " " " " " . -jy^ << <' (' '< (( (( 377 " " " " " " . 378 The Farm Yard, Bear Garden, Slave Kitchen ETC., ...... 379 The Payne Statue, .... 380 LULLWOOD Bridge, .... 381 The Willink, or Flateush Entrance, 382 Cleft Ridge Span, approaching the Flower Garden, ..... 383 View from Lookout Hill, . 384 Nethermead Arches, 331 33' 331 332 332 333 335 334 334 335 335 336 336 337 337 338 338 339 339 340 340 340 340 341 342 342 343 343 344 345 No. Page. 385 Endale Arch, ...... 346 386 Well and Pumping Station, Prospect Park, . 347 387 View from the Ramparts, Fort Greene, . . 348 3S8 Tompkins Park, ..... 349 389 Carroll Park, ...... 350 390 City Hall Park, ..... 351 391 The Terrace, Fort Greene — Burial Place of Prison-ship Martyrs, .... 352 392 A View in Greenwood, .... 353 393 Old Entrance to Greenwood, . . . 354 394 Monument to Joseph A. Perry, . . . 355 395 The Lake, in Greenwood, .... 355 396 Entrance to Greenwood Cemetery, . . 356 397 The Prospect fro.m Greenwood, . . . 356 398 Office of "The Evergreens," . . . 357 399 Cemetery of the Evergreens, . . . 358 400 Cypress Hills Cemetery, .... 359 401 The Terrace, Prospect Park, . . . 361 402 Friends' Burying Ground, Prospect Park, . 362 403 On the Lake, Prospect Park, . . . 363 THE CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT: 404 Kings County Delegation to Democratic Na- tional Convention, Chicago, 1892, 405 The City Hall, ..... 406 Initial "B" County Court House, 407 Municipal Building, .... 408 Eighteenth Precinct Police Station House, Fourth Avenue and Forty-third Street, 409 Fire Department Headquarters, Jay Street, 410 RiDGEWooD Pumping Station, 411 Mount Prospect Pumping Station, Engineers House, ..... 412 Gate House, Mount Prospect Pumping Station, 413 Kings County Court House, . 414 Hall of Records, Fulton Street and Boerum Place, ...... 415 The County Jail, Raymond Street, 416 County Buildings at Flatbush, 417 On the County Farm at Kings Park, 418 Hall, George, First Mayor of Brooklyn, (T), 419 Johnson, General Jeremiah, 420 Smith, Cyrus Porter, . 421 Murphy, Henry C, 422 Smith, Samuel, . 423 Brush, Conklin, . 424 Booth, Samuel, . 425 Hunter, John W,, 426 schroeder, frederick a., 427 Howell, James, . 428 Low, Seth, 429 Chapin, Alfred C, 430 BooDY, David A., 431-40 Members of the Board of Aldermen: 354 365 365 367 369 371 372 372 373 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 381 382 384 385 386 387 388 389 389 390 391 393 Coffey, Michael ]., Fitzgibbon, Andrew, MacKellar, Robert F., McKee, WiUiam, Volckening, Charles J., President, Heaney, Arthur ]., Maurer, Theodore, Myers, Samuel, Thomas, Edward P., McGrath, Daniel. 441-49 Members of the Board of Aldermen : 395 Meier, Richard, Black, J. Jefferson, Beard, Thomas A., Jordan, William H., Wafer, Moses J., McGarry, James, Hess, Peter, Pickering, Richard, Price, E. W., Chief Clerk of Committees. 450 Baker, R. C, M. D., . 451 Jenks, Almet F., .... 399 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. AND Johnson . Hay- Page. 400 401 402 403 403 404 404 405 406 407 408 40S 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 4'7 418 4'9 420 421 422 423 423 424 424 425 426 427 429 No. 452 CuMMiNGs, Michael J., . 453 Adams, John P., . 454 Van Buren, Robert, 455 Weber, Anthony, 456 Cornell, William D., . 457 McGuire, John C, 458 Black, Robert, . 459 Rutan, Thomas B., 460 O'Flyn, Edward J., 461 Hayden, Henry I., 462 MacKellar, John, 463 McLaughlin, Patrick H., 464 Campbell, Patrick, 465 Jenkins, Frederick L., 466 Mason, Frank C, 467 Eason, John W., . 468 McKelvey, William J., 469 Ennis, John, 470 Moore, William D., 471 Nevins, Thomas F., 472 Cassin, Canice, . 473 Lewis, Benjamin, 474 Kinkel, George, 475 Cottier, John, 476 Kenna, Thomas J., 477 Ryan, Daniel, 478 Kene, Joseph A., M. D., 479 Creamer, Joseph M., M. D., 480 Keller, Frederick, 482 Nolan, Francis, 483 Murphy, George H., 484 Adams, Henry H., 485 Ridgway, James W., 486 Davenport, William B., 487 Federal Building, Washington Streets, 488 Collins, George J., 489 Walker, Alexander, 490 BiGGART, James, . 491 The Navy Hospital in 1863. Drawn by G, ward, (T), 492 Walke, Henry, Rear Admiral, 493 Bloodgood, Delavan, Medical Director, 494 Ayres, S. L. P., Chief Engineer, 495 Commandant's House, Navy Yard, POLITICAL LIFE ^ 496 The "Thomas Jefferson" Building, . . 438 497 Hugh McLaughlin's Original " White House," Jay and Concord Streets, . . . 439 498 'Initial "S." The Ballot Box, . . . 439 499 Bushwick Democratic Club, . . . 441 500 willoughby street, democratic headquarters, 442 501 The Original " Kerrigan's," . . . 443 502 Twenty-third Ward Invincible Club, (Republi- can,) 445 503 Harrison Association, Woodbine Street, . 445 504 McLaughlin, Hugh, ..... 447 505 Coffey, Michael J., .... . 449 506 McGarry, James, ..... 450 507 Nathan, Ernst, ...... 451 508 McKane, John Y., . . . . . 452 509 Willis, Theodore B., . . . . . 453 510 Dady, Michael ].,..... 455 511 Hendrix, Joseph C, . . , . . 456 512 Clancy, John M., ..... 457 513 Graham, John H., . , . . . 458 514 Wallace, William C, . . „ . . 458 515 McCarren, Patrick H., .... 459 431 432 433 434 435 436 436 437 437 No. 516 McCarty, John, .... 517 Taylor, Hubert G. . . . 518 Healy, a. Augustus, 519 Wagner, Arnold Harris, 520 Meyer, Henry A., . . . 521 Ranken, John M., . . . THE BENCH AND BAR : 522 Pratt, Calvin E., . . . 923 Initial "I." Kings County Court House, 524 CuLLEN, Edgar M., 525 Bartlett, Willard, 526 Moore, Henry A., 527 Abbott, George B., 528 Clement, Nathaniel H, 529 Van Wyck, Augustus, 530 Osborne, William ]., 531 Connelly, Robert E., 532 Haggerty, Henry F., 533 Neu, Jacob, 534 Murphy, Edward C, 535 Sillman, Benjamin D., 536 Tracy, Benjamin F., 537 Gilbert, Jasper W., 538 Shearman, Thomas G., 539 Tenney, Asa W., 540 Gaynor, William J., 541 Catlin, Isaac S., 542 Wilber, Mark D., 543 Pearsall, Thomas E., 544 Morris, Samuel D., 545 King, Horatio C, 546 Wernberg, Jerry A., 547 Hirsh, Hugo, 548 Towns, Mirabeau L., 549 Cronin, Timothy C, 550 Cameron, Alexander, 551 Elliott, George F., 552 Stafford, Charles M., 553 Barrett, Anthony, 554 DeWitt, William C, 555 Ward, Frederic A., 556 Beecher, William C, 557 Barnett, David, 558 Dykman, William N., 559 Devenny, John L., 560 FuRST, Michael, . 561 Putnam, Harrington, 562 Stapleton, I^uke D., 563 Carroll, Joseph W., 564 Schaffer, Edwin C, 565 Dailey, Abram H., 566 McKean, Henry, . 567 York, Bernard J., 568 Allen, John J., . 569 Griffith, John S., 570 Sullivan, William, 571 Ross, J. Stewart, BANKING AND FINANCIAL: 572 Dime Savings Bank, Court and Remsen Sts., 573 Initial " F." Germania Bank, 574 Brooklyn Bank, . 575 Hadden, Crowell, 576 Hutchinson, Henry E., 577 Powell, David B., 578 S PRAGUE, Nathan T., . 579 Denton, Oliver M., 580 Blackford, Eugene G., Page . 461 .462 • 463 • 464 • 465 . 466 467 467 470 471 471 472 472 473 473 475 475 476 477 478 479 481 482 483 485 486 487 489 490 491 492 493 494 495 497 498 499 501 502 502 5°3 504 505 506 506 507 508 508 509 509 510 510 512 513 514 515 515 516 517 517 518 52 1 522 522 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. 581 Twenty-sixth Ward Bank, Atlantic Avenue, 582 Jewell, Ditmas, . 583 Alexander, James K., . 584 KuRTH, Augustus, 585 Germania Savings Bank, 586 Williamsburgh Savings Bank, 587 Brooklyn Savings Bank, Pierrepont and Clin- ton Streets, . 588 Christensen, C. T., 589 Southard, George, 590 Franklin Trust Company, 591 Campbell, Felix, 592 Phenix Insurance Company, . Page. 526 527 528 528 529 530 531 532 535 CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS: 593 Old Dutch Church, P'ulton Avenue Near Law- rence Street, .... 594 Initial "T." Trinity Spire, . 595 First Reformed Church on Joralemon Street 596 Middagh House .and Barn, Henry and Fulton Streets, ..... 597 Second Church of St. Ann's, Washington Street, Near Sands, 598 St. Ann's Church, Washington Street, Near Sands, (T), ..... 599 Farley, Rev. Dr. Frederick A., 600 St. Luke's Church, Clinton Avenue, in iSSS, 601 Old Sands Street Methodist Church, Sands St 602 Beecher, Henry Ward, in 1847, 603 Loughlin, Bishop, .... 604 Carroll, Rev. Daniel L., . 605 Cox, Rev. Dr. Samuel Hanson, 606 First Baptist Church, Nassau and Liberty Streets, (T), . 607 Brooklyn's First Sunday-school, Adams Streei Between High and Sands, 608 Pierrepont Street Baptist Church, 609 Reformed Dutch Church, Flatbush, 610 First Reformed Church, Seventh Avenue and Carroll Streets, .... 611 Reformed Church on the Heights, 612 Old Bushwick Church (Reformed) 613 Littlejohn, the Right Rev. A. N., Bishop of Long Island, .... 614 St. Ann's Church, .... 615 Church of the Holy Trinity, 616 Hall, Rev. Charles H., D. D., 617 Church of the Messiah, 618 St. Luke's Church, .... 619 Christ Church, Clinton and Harrison Streets, 620 KiNSOLViNG, Rev. A. B., . . . 621 Grace Church, ..... 622 Darlington, Rev. James H., . 623 St. John's Church, .... 624 St. Peter's Episcopal Church, 625 Bacchus, Rev. John G., D. D., 626 Sands Street Memorial Church, 627 New York Avenue Methodist Church, 628 Chadwick, Rev. James S., D. D., 629 Frost, Rev. Timothy P., . . . 630 Hanson Place Methodist Church, 631 Buckley, Rev. James M., D. D., LL. D., 632 Kelley, Rev. William V., D. D., 633 St. John's Methodist Church, 634 Simpson Methodist Church, 635 McDonnell, the Right Rev. Charles E., Bishop of Brooklyn, .... 636 Mitchell, Rev. James H., 637 Church of Saints Peter and Paul, 537 537 538 539 539 540 541 541 542 543 543 543 543 544 546 547 549 55' 552 553 555 556 557 558 558 559 560 560 561 561 562 563 564 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 572 573 578 579 580 No. Page. 638 Malone, Rev. Sylvester, .... 581 639 St. Charles Borromeo Church, . . . 582 640 McCarthy, Rev. Edward W., . . . 582 641 Church of St. Augustine, .... 583 642 MoRAN, Rev. Michael J., . . . . 584 643-6 Church of the Nativity, Rectory, Institute, and School, ..... 647 St. Peter's Church, .... 648 Church of the Transfiguration, . 649 KiELEY, Rev. John M., .... 650 Hickey, Rev. David J., 651 Church of Our Lady of Victory, . 652 St. Paul's Church, .... 653 Hill, Rev. William J., ... 654 McDonald, Rev. P. V., ... 655 McCarthy, Rev. Francis A., 656 First Presbyterian Church, 657 Hall, Rev. Charles Cuthbert, D. D., 658 Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, 659 Talmage, Rev. T. DeWitt, D. D., . 660 Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 661 Cuyler, Rev. Theodore L., D. D., . 662 Gregg, Rev. David, D. D., . 663 Second Presbyterian Church, 664 South Third Street Church, 665 Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church, 666 Memorial Presbyterian Church, 667 Ross Street Presbyterian Church, 668 First Babtist Church in Pierrepont Street, 669 Marcy Avenue Baptist Church, 670 Braislin, Rev. Edward, D. D., 671 Washington Avenue Baptist Church, 672 Emmanuel Baptist Church, 673 Church of the Saviour, 674 Second Unitarian Church, . 675 St. Peter's Lutheran Church, 676 Heischmann, Rev. J. J., D. D., 677 Gunnison, Rev. Almon, D. D., 678 All Souls Universalist Church, 679 Adams, Rev. John Coleman, D. D., . 680 Church of the Pilgrims, 681 Storrs, Rev. Richard Salter, D. D., 682 Plymouth Church and Parish House, 683 Abbott, Rev. Lyman, D. D., . 684 Clinton Avenue Congregational Church, 685 Central Congregational Church, 686 Beecher Memorial Church, 687 Tompkins Avenue Church, 688 Lee Avenue Congregational Church, 689 Church of the New Jerusalem, 690 Hicksite Friends' Meeting House, . 691 Orthodox Friends' Meeting House, 692 Chalmers, Rev. Tho.mas, 692 Temple Beth Elohim, .... 693 Temple Israel, ...... 694 Young Men's Christian Association Building, . 695 Schenck, Frederick B., 696 Young Women's Christian Association Build- ing, 697 Adams, Rev. George, 698 Knapp, Rev. Halsey W, Mark, 699 Hoyt, 700 Branch, Edward H., 701 Morse, David R., • 585 . 586 ■ 587 • 587 ■ 589 ■ 589 ■ 590 ■ 591 ■ 591 • 591 • 592 • 593 • 594 ■ 595 • 596 ■ 597 ■ 599 . 600 . 601 . 601 ■ 603 . 604 . 605 . 607 . 608 . 609 . 611 . 612 • 613 . 614 .615 . 618 . 618 . 618 . 619 . 620 . 621 ■ 623 . 624 . 625 . 626 . 626 . 627 . 629 ■ 630 • 630 .631 .631 • 632 • 634 • 635 636 641 642 643 645 645 CHARITABLE SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS : 702 Union for Christian Work, . 703 Initial "A." Charity Symbolized, 704 St. Phebe's Mission, 647 647 650 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. Page. 705 Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, .... 652 706 Industrial School No. 2, Fourth Street, . 653 707 Home for Destitute Children, Sterling Place, 654 708 Hebrew Orphan Asylum, .... 655 709 Children's Aid Society, . . . .658 710 Seaside Home of the Children's Aid Society, AT Coney Island, ..... 660 HOSPITALS, DISPENSARIES AND PHYSICIANS: 711 Brooklyn Hospital, . . . . .661 712 Initial "A." Ambulance, .... 661 713 Long Island College Hospital, . . . 663 7 [4 St. Mary's Hospital, ..... 664 715 St. John's Hospital, . . . . .665 716 Methodist Episcopal (Popularly Called the "Seney") Hospital, . . . .666 717 St. Peter's Hospital, . . . . .667 718 Eastern District Hospital, .... 658 719 Homojopathic Hospital, .... 669 720 Kings County Hospital, .... 670 721 Inebriates' Home, Fort Hamilton, . . 673 722 Skene, Alex J. C, M. D., . . . . 675 723 Pilcher, Lewis S., M. D., . . . . 677 724 Fowler, George Ryerson, M. D., . . . 679 725 Johnson, John G., M. D., . . . . 680 726 Bell, A. N., M. D., . . . . .681 727 Byrne, John, M. D., ..... 682 728 Conkling, John T. M. D., . . . . 682 729 Barber, Isaac H., M. D., . . . . 683 730 GiLFiLLAN, William, M. D., . . . . 684 731 Zabriskie, John Lloyd, M. D., . . . 684 732 Searle, William S., M. D., . . . . 685 733 Bartleit, Homer L. M. I)., . . . . 686 734 Residence of Dr. Bartlett, Flatbush, . . 686 735 Wight, Jarvis S., M. D., .... 687 736 Willis, Harrison, M. D., . . . . 687 737 Wunderlich, Frederick V/., M. D., . . 688 738 Keep, J. Lester, M. D., . . . . 68g 739 Fiske, William M. L., M. D., . . . 689 740 Sherwell, Samuel, M. D., .... 690 741 Lewis, Edwin A., M. D., . . ... 691 742 Catlin, Arnold Welles, M. D., . . . 691 743 Spier, S. Fleet, M. D., .... 693 744 Jewett, Charles, M. D., . . . . 694 745 Maddren, William, M. D., . . . . 695 746 Richardson, John E., M. D., ... 695 747 Pratt, William H. B., M. D., ... 696 748 Rand, Henry W., M. D., . . . . 696 749 West, Frank E., M. D., . . , . 697 750 Shaw, John C, M. D., ..... 697 751 Bonnell, Charles L., M. D., ... 698 752 Lamadrid, Julio J., M. D., . . . . 6g8 753 Jackson, A. Wilbur, M. D., . . . . 699 754 McNaughton, George, M. D., . . . 700 755 Butler, William M., M. D., ... 700 756 McCorkle, John A., M. D., . . . .701 757 Bartley, Elias H., M. D., . . . . 701 758 Browning, William, M. D., .... 702 759 Bullwinkle, Henry, M. D., . . . . 702 760 Van Cott, Joshua M., Jr. M. D., . . . 703 761 Smith, George, M. D., ..... 703 762 Jeffery, Reuben, M. D., . . . . 704 763 Bellows, Charles M., M. D., ... 704 764 Residence of George Smith, M. D., Greene and Reid Avenues, ..... 705 765 Hill, Dr. Orville E., . . . . . 706 766 Race, Dr. James H., . . . . . 707 767 Mirick, Horatio G., M. D. S., . . . 707 768 Brockway, Albert H., M. D. S., . . . 708 No. 769 Jarvie, William, M. D. S., 770 Van Woert, Frank. T., M. D. S., Page. . 708 . 708 EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: 771 Board of Education Building, 1850 to 1888, (Un- DERHILL Mansion) .... 709 772 Initial " E." Polytechnic Institute, . . 709 773 Board of Education Headquarters, Livingston Street Front, . . , . -711 774 Boys' High School, . . . . .712 775 Girls' High School, ..... 713 776 Public School No. 12, .... 714 777 Public School No. 35, . . , • 7'5 778 Thompson, John R., . . . . . 716 779 Gates, Nelson J., . . . . .717 780 Culyer, John Y., . . . . . 718 781 SwANSTROM, J. Edward, . . . -719 782 SiMis, C^sar, . . . . . . 719 783 McLean, Henry C, M. D., . . . . 719 784 McNuLTY, Major Peter H., . . . 720 785 Halsey, Harlan P., . . . . . 721 786 Ferris, William, ..... 721 787 Guilfoyle, John, ..... 721 788 Goodstein, Samuel, ..... 722 789 Drummond, James L., . . . . . 722 790 Ward, Edward G.,. .... 725 791 Cunningham, William F., . . . . 726 792 Naughton, James W., ..... 726 793 Caswell, Albert S., . . . . . 726 794 Patterson, Calvin, ..... 727 795 Gunnison, Walter B , . . . . . 728 796 Brooklyn Collegiate Institute for Young La- dies, 1828 — Now Part of the Mansion House, (T), . .73° 797 Greenleaf Female Institute, (T), . . . 731 798 Erasmus Hall Academy, . .' . . 732 799 Cochran, David H., Ph. B., LL. D., . . . 733 800 Polytechnic Institute, .... 735 801 Backus, Truman J., LL. D., . . . . 737 802 Packer Institute, ..... 738 803 Adelphi Academy, ..... 740 804 Woodward, John B., . . . . . 742 805 Brooklyn Institute, Washington Street, . 743 806 Pratt Institute, ..... 746 807 LocKwooD Academy, ..... 748 808 LoCKWooD Academy — A Grade Room, . . 749 809 LocKwooD Academy — The New Scholar, . 749 810 LocKwooD, John, ..... 750 811 Bedford Academy, ..... 751 812 Rodeman, George, M. A., Ph. D., . . . 752 813 Claghorn, Charles, ..... 755 814 KissiCK, W. A., . . . . . . 756 815 Kissick's Business College, .... 757 816 Browne, Thomas R., . . . . . 758 817 Browne, Edmond C, . . . . . 758 LITERATURE AND THE FINE ARTS : 818 The Brooklyn Library, .... 759 819 Initial "B." Art, Literature and Music, . 759 820 Eggleston, Edward, ..... 760 821 Squier, Ephraim George, .... 761 822 Saxe, John G., . . . . . . 763 823 Gibson, William Hamilton, . . . 764 824 Chadwick, John W., ..... 765 825 Brevooet, James Carson, .... 766 826 Spooner, Alden J., .... . 767 827 Stiles, Henry R., . . . . . 768 828 Tredwell, Daniel M., .... 769 829 Whitman, Walt, . . . . .771 830 The Long Island Historical Society, . . 772 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. Page. 831 NoYES, Stephen B., . . . . • 773 832 Bardvvell, Willis A., .... 773 833 Long Island Historical Society Museuii, . 774 834 Ford, Gordon Leicester, .... 777 835 Ford, Paul Leicester, . . . -777 836 Ford, Worthington Chauncey, . . . 777 837 De La Harpe, Joseph A., . . . • 7^5 838 "The Christening," by Ludwig Knaus, . . 788 839 " Rosalind," by Stanley Middleton, . . 79' 840 "The Embarkation," by Louis E. G. Isabey, . 793 841 "The Girl with the Mousetrap," by Sir Joshua Reynolds— Dr.awn by Richard Creyfields, . 795 842 "The Approaching Storm," By Constantine Troyon, . . . . • -798 843 "Mantes," by J, B. C. Corot, . . -800 844 "The Mirror of Nature," by Leon Perrault, . 802 845 "The Surprise," by Hagborg, . - . 803 846 "Venice," by Martin Rico, . . . -805 847 "Cattle and Landscape," by Carleton Wiggins, 808 848 Thallon, Robert, . . . • .811 849 WisKE, C. Mortimer, ..... 813 850 Chandler, Frank PL, ..... 814 851 mollenhaur, louis, ..... 814 852 Spicker, Max, ...... 815 853 Stefani, R. Estava de, .... 816 THE NATIONAL GUARD: 854 Old Armory Building, Henry and Cranberry Streets, 855 Initial " M." The Bugler, 856 McLeer, Brigadier-General James, 857 Thirteenth Regiment Armory, Flatbush Avenue AND Hanson Place, 858 Austen, Colonel David E., . 859 Watson, Lieutenant Colonel William L, 860 Fourteenth Regiment Armory, North Port- land Avenue, 861 MiCHELL, Colonel Harry W., 862 Cloeridge, Lieutenant Colonel Selden C 863 Steen, Major Benjamin S., 864 Kline, Lieutenant A. L., Adjutant, 865 Shipman, Lieutenant Frederick E., Quarter- master, 866 Mitchell, Captain Edmund H., 867 Twenty-third Regiment Armory, Clermont Avenue, 868 Partridge, Colonel John N., 869 Candee, Captain Willard L., 870 Silkman, Captain Charles R., 871 Eddy, Colonel John G., 872 Forty-seventh Regiment Armory, Marcy Ave- nue, .... 873 Rasquin, Captain Henry S., . 874 MoLiNEux, Major-General Edward L., 875 Fowler, Brigadier-General Edward B., 876 Fackner, Colonel Edward, 877 Haskell, Benjamin, 878 SuYDAM, Bernard, SOCIAL CLUBS AND SOCIAL LIFE: 879 Initial " C." Hamilton Club, 880 The Hamilton .Club House, . 881 Oi.coTT, George M., 8S2 Hoyt, Charles A., 883 Benedict, Henry H,, 884 Rossiter, William W., 885 Candler, Flamen B., . 886 Bartlett, Edward B., . 887 Peet, William, . 888 Dike, Camden C, S17 S17 S19 320 82 1 S23 824 825 825 826 826 827 829 830 831 832 833 834 835 836 837 839 842 843 844 84s 846 847 847 848 849 No. 889 Bentley, Norman S., 8go Demond, George W., 891 Cawley, Samuel ]., 892 Behr, Herman, 893 Curie, Charles, . 894 GiBB, John, 895 Kellogg, Edward H., 896 Wilson, William K., 897 De Silver, Carll H., 89S IDE, George E., . 899 Ramsay, Dick S., 900 Germania Club House, 901 Brooklyn Club House, 902 Union League Club House, 903 Smith, Howard M., 904 Wilson, Francis H., 905 Seamans, Clarence W 906 Bedell, James O., 907 Nugent, John S., 908 Adams, William M., 909 Thompson, William H 910 Funston, Hugh M., 911 Harriman, Daniel G., 912 Romig, John F., . 913 Eroadnax, Amos, 914 Fischer, Israel F., 915 McKeon, John S., 916 HoBBS, Edward H., 917 Wyckoff, William O., 918 Scott, Walter, Jr., 920 Hallam, Albert C, M. D., 921 Perham, Aaron G., 922 Philip, James P., 923 Peck, Andrew, 924 KiRBY, Abram M., 925 KiRBY, Frank E., 926 Lawrence, Chester B, 927 Henry, John F., 928 Chap.man, Henry T., Jr 929 Lincoln Club House, 930 Dresser, Horace E., 931 Ireland, John H., 932 Henderson, Frank S., 933 Shaw, J. Austen, 934 Shimer, Robert B., 935 Parsons, Frederick H., 936 Westlake, William, 937 Hanover Club House, 938 WuRSTER, Frederick W- 939 Dick, John Henry, 940 Baird, Andrew D., 941 Baird, Andrew R., 942 Nlssen, Ludwig, 943 Lauritzen, Peter J., 944 Puig, Emilio, 945 Mollenhaur, John, 946 Mollenhaur, J. Adolph, 947 Driggs, Marshall S., 948 Havens, Edwin B., 949 Dean, Matthew, 950 Olcott, Cornelius M. D., 951 Taylor, James A., 952 Wadsworth, E. Clifford, D. 953 Davidson, Marshall T., 954 Scholes, Frederick, 955 Busby, Leonard J., 956 Lethbridge, Robert P., 957 Baker, George W., M. D., 958 Gulick, John G., D. D. S. 959 Piper, Elwin S., D. S., Page. 850 851 852 853 854 855 856 8S7 858 859 860 861 862 863 864 866 866 867 867 868 869 870 871 871 872 872 873 873 874 875 87s 876 877 877 878 878 879 879 880 882 884 884 885 885 886 8go 89. 892 893 893 894 895 895 896 896 898 899 900 900 901 901 go2 902 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. 960 961 962 963 964 965 966 967 968 969 970 971 972 973 974 975 976 977 978 979 983 984 985 990 991 992 993 994 995 996 997 99S 999 1000 lOOI 1002 1003 1004 1005 1006 1007 1008 1009 lOIO ion 1012 1013 Medicus, Charles H., . Howe, William N., Earth, Vincent, Murphy, John, . DoNOHUE, Peter J., Hasler, Henry, Perkins, James D., DeLong, Julius, Simmons, Daniel, M. D., Gunnison, Herbert F., Oxford Club House, . Berri, William, Britton, Eugene, Thrall, Edwin A., SiLLCocKS, Warren S., Topping, Abijah H., . MOMEYER, AlVY W., . Edgar, Frederick E., . Taylor, William S., . Cole, William M., Mackenzie, Augustus, Burn, Henry, . DeRiesthal, Alphonse, Hubbard, Harmanus B., Montauk Club House, Woodruff, Timothy L. HoRSMAN, Edward I., Morse, Charles W., . Griswold, Stephen M., White, J. M., . Keating, Edward F., . Fletcher, George H., Brown, William A., . Buckley, Charles K., . Dean, William G., Dobson, George F., Carleton Club House, Evans, H. C, . Fulcher, J. H., Burtis, Morse, . May, Moses, Levy, Aaron, . Isaacs, Gabriel, Abraham, Abraham, . Schellenberg, Bernard, Meyenborg, John B., . O'Rourke, John H., Flaherty, John W., . Hart, Charles, Whitehouse, S. Stewart, Olena, Theophilus, . Brown, William A. A., Assembly Rooms, Decorated for Ball, Music Stand Corner, Ihpetonga the Ihpetonga Ball, Page. 902 903 903 903 904 904 905 906 907 908 909 910 911 911 912 912 912 9^3 913 914 914 915 916 916 9'7 918 919 920 921 921 922 922 923 923 924 924 926 927 928 928 929 930 930 930 931 931 932 933 934 935 936 937 SECRET ORDERS AND SPECIAL SOCIETIES 1014 Initial " S." Emblematical, 1015 Trask, Wayland, 1016 Brymer, Alonzo, 1017 Matthews, William, 1018 Griggs, Rufus T., 1019 Potter, William E., 1020 Weidman, Paul, Sr., 1021 Morse, Jerome E., 1022 DuNWELL, Charles T., 1023 DuBEV, Edward A., 1024 Gallagher, Rev. Mason, 1025 Jacobs, Andrew, 943 944 945 947 948 949 95° 950 951 952 953 959 960 961 No, 1026 Price, George A., 1027 Shaw, Charles A., 1028 Johnson, Charles A., 1029 Hussey, George A., 1030 Heath, Henry R., 1031 Beavan, William W., 1032 Hill, Nicholas, 1033 Hill, John L., . 1034 Morton, Henry H., M. D., 1035 Sheldon, Henry, 1036 Barclay, George C, . 1037 Van Bokkelen, Spencer, D. 1038 Voorhees, Judah B., . 1039 Matthews, Azel D., . 1040 Matthews, James, 1041 Matthews, Gardiner D., 1042 Peed, Charles N., 1043 Pettit, Foster, 1044 Stillwell, George W., 1045 Burnett, Edwin H., . 1046 Harteau, Henry, 1047 James, John F., . 1048 Bergen, George W., . 1049 Ropes, Albert G., 1050 Carman, Nelson G., Jr., C, Page. 962 962 963 964 964 967 970 972 973 975 976 976 977 977 978 978 979 979 980 980 981 Q82 THE STAGE— PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR: 1051 Initial "M." Momus, 1052 Knowles, Edwin, 1053 Sinn, William E., 1054 McCuTCHEON, Wallace, 1055 Hyde, Richard, 1056 Behman, Louis C , 1057 Street, Charles G., . 1058 Macully, James W., . 1059 Jones, Charles T., 1060 Williams, Percy G., . 1061 Williams, Edward G., 1062 Garrett, Seymour D., 1063 Schauffele, William J., 1064 Willis, Henry A., 1065 Smith, Benjamin C, . 1066 Daley, William F., 1067 Van Dyk, James, 1068 Ledoux, Paul W., 1069 Bell, Thomas C, 1070 Teves, Frederick E., SPORTS, ATHLETICS AND PASTIMES : 1071 The Start, Atlantic Yacht Club Regatta, June, 1892, ' . . . 1072 Initial "O." Nearing the Goal, 1073 ^"H^ Riding and Driving Club Arena, 1074 James, John S., 1075 Barrie, Alexander, . 1076 Beard, Francis D., . 1077 Force, William H., . 1078 Fahys, Joseph, 1079 Fahys, George E., 1080 Bowman, Henry H., 1081 Praeger, John F., 1082 Sloan, Augustus K., 1083 Smith, J. Henry, 1084 Jahn, Gustav a., 1085 Remington, James H., J086 Smith, R. A. C, 1087 Hayward, William T., 1088 Parkway Driving Club, Gravesend Bay, 1089 Boody, Henry T., . 992 993 994 995 995 997 997 998 998 999 999 1 000 lOOI lOOI 1002 1005 1006 1007 1009 lOIO lOIO 1013 1014 1015 1016 1017 1017 1018 1018 1019 1019 1020 1020 1021 1022 1023 1023 1024 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. No. logo Stillwell, Van Mater, . . . . 1091 Creamer, Frank D., . . . . 1092 Wilson, Elbert C, . 1093 Bedford, Edward T., 1094 McKeever, Stephen W., . . . . 1095 Burrows, William, . . . . . 1096 Marine and Field Club Grounds, Bath Beach, ...... 1097 Deshon, Charles A., . . . . 1098 Logan, Walter S., . 1099 Hurst, Arthur, ..... 1 100 Jenkins, Raymond, . . . . . iioi LocKwooD, Edwin C, . . . ■ 1102 Coney Island Athletic Club House, West Brighton, ...... 1103 Country House of the Crescent Athletic Club, Bay Ridge, . . . . H04 Crescent Athletic Club Football Team, 1892 MEN OF THE TIME : 1105 Initial "E." The Ticker, 1 106 Schieren, Charles A., 1107 DiNGEE, Charles E., . 1 108 Kiernan, John J., 1 109 Ladd, John B., . mo Cromwell, Frederick, iiii Perry, Andrew J., II [2 Smith, W. Wickham, 1 1 13 Oakley, John K., 1 114 Talmage, Tunis V. P., H15 Greenwood, Richard B., Jr., 1 1 16 McGuiRE, Francis H., 1 117 Crandall, Jesse A., 1 1 18 Broome, George Cochran, 1119 Reynolds, William H., 1120 MuNROE, Frederick Mitchell, 1121 McKay, John Angus, . 1122 Forman, Allan, 1 123 Johnston, Henry M., 1124 Carter, Walter S., . 1125 McKeever, Edward J., 1126 Carlin, p. J., 1 127 Jenkins, Charles, 1 128 Robertson, Charles E., 1129 Fisher, George H., 1130 Studwell, George S., . 1 131 Forrester, George B., 1132 Farley, Charles B., . 1 133 Nichols, John A, 1134 McEvoy, George N., 1135 Moore, Harrison B., . 1 136 Leonard, Moses G., 1137 Brett, Gustavus A., 1138 Pendas Y Garcia, Ysidro, 1139 Cooper, Charles, 1 140 Wood, John, 1 141 Tucker, Harrison A., M. D., 1 142 Howe, James R, 1 143 Good, John, 1 144 Uptegrove, William E., 1145 RoBBiNS, Aaron S., 1146 Constantine, Andrew ]., 1147 BuRREi.L, William, 1149 Pearsall, Frank, 1150 Baker, William H., , 1151 Crosby, Samuel D., 1152 Snow, Ambrose, 1 1 53 Kneeland, Stillman F., Page. 1025 1025 1026 1027 1028 1028 1033 1034 1035 1036 1036 1037 1041 1042 1043 1046 1047 1048 1049 1050 1051 1052 1052 1053 1054 1054 1055 1056 1056 1057 1058 1058 1059 1060 1061 1061 1062 1063 1064 1064 1065 1066 1067 1068 1069 1069 1070 107 1 1072 1073 1074 1075 1076 1077 1078 1079 loSi 1081 1082 ■ 083 1083 1085 1086 No. 11 54 Cornell, George B., . 1155 Innes, Frederick N., 1 156 Burnham, Lyman S., . 1 157 Marston, William H., 1158 Post, Andrew J., 1159 Carpenter, James O., 1 160 McCoRD, William H., 1161 Peak, William N., . 1 162 Carey, James F., 1 163 WicKES, William W., 1164 Shepard, Charles H., M. D. 1165 Stearns, James S., 1 166 Zabriskie, Cornelius, 1167 Staples, Cyrus E., n68 Taylor, Thomas W., 1169 Jennings, Spencer A., 1170 Adams, George C, 1171 Birdsall, Daniel, H72 Monahan, Hugh V., . 1 173 Clark, Robert F., 1174 Brown, James N., Page. . 1086 , 1087 . 1087 , 1088 . 1089 , 1090 , I091 , 1092 , 1093 , 1094 , 1094 1095 1096 1096 1097 1097 1098 1098 1099 IIOO IIOI REAL ESTATE AND SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT; 1175 Hancock Street, between Nostrand and Marcy Avenues, 11 76 The Real Estate PZxchange, 11 77 Initial "I." Kus in Urbe, 1 1 78 Moody, Leonard, 1 179 Johnson, Jere, Jr., 1180 Grening, Paul C, 1181 Granger, E. J., 1182 Barnaby, Frank A., . 1 183 Haviland, C. Augustus, 1 184 Haviland, Charles A., 1 185 Haviland, Edward W., 1 186 Powell, Joshua W., . 1 187 Cook, Ralph L., 1188 Grace, William H., . 1 189 Stewart, Horatio S., 1 190 Davenport, Julius, 1 191 Clark, Francis E., 1 192 Rae, William P., 1193 PuELS, Joseph P., 1 194 Barnes, T. S., 1195 Edgerton, Francis M., 1196 Tyler, Frank H., 1197 SiMONSON, J. A. S., 1 198 Grace, P. J., . 1 199 Zender, Austin A., 1200 Stratton, E. Washington, 1201 Newkirk, Jacob, 1202 Cruikshank, Edwin A., 1203 Tate, William J., 1204 Kalley, J. N., . 1205 Rowland, Sidney L., 1206 Feltman, Henry, 1207 Ayers, George L., 1208 Smith, Clarence B., 1209 BuRTis, John H., 1210 Goodwin, Richard, 1211 Sturges, Benjamin, . 1212 Shumway, William W., 1213 Grant, William W., 1214 BuRTis, Abraham, 1215 Penner, Thomas A., . i2i6 Forman, Alexander A., 1217 Greenhouses of William Brown, Flatbush, 1218 Residence of John Y. McKane, Gravesend, 1219 Stillwell, Charles R., 1102 H03 1103 1108 H09 mo mi "13 II 14 1114 1115 "15 1116 1117 1117 iri8 1119 1 1 20 II2I II 22 II23 1124 II25 I 125 I 126 I I 26 II27 II27 II28 II28 1 1 29 1129 II30 1130 II3I "31 II32 II32 "33 "33 "34 "35 "37 "39 1140 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, No. 1220 Morris, Charles E., . 1221 VooRHiES, John L., 1222 Williams, Henry R., 1223 Stryker Coat of Arms, 1224 Strycker, Jacob, 1225 Stryker, Jaques, 1226 Sutherland, Kenneth F., 1227 Newton, Richard V. B., 1228 Williamson, Stephen S., 1229 Gladding, William ]., 1230 Van Kleek, R. L., M. D., 1231 Stillwell, Abraham E., 1232-4 Views of Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, 1235-6 Some Bensonhurst Residences, 1237 A Street in Blythebourne, 1238 Bliss, E. W., ..... 1239 A Corner in the Dining-Room, Residence of E. W. Bliss, Bay Ridge, 1240 Front View of House, from Lawn, — E. W, Bliss, . . . . . 1241 Observatory, — E. W. Bliss, 1242 General View of Grounds from Observatory. — E. W. Bliss, .... 1243 Entrance Hall and Staircase, — E. W. Bliss, Page. 140 141 141 142 142 143 144 145 146 147 147 148 149 IS' ■53 155 156 158 '59 160 161 No. Page. 1244 DiNiNG-RooM, — E. W. Bliss, . , . 1162 1245 Drawing-Room, Library, Billiard-Room, — E. W. Bliss, . . . . . -1163 1246 A Bedroom interior, — E. W. Bliss, . .1164 1247 Mr. Bliss' Office at 17 Adams Street, Brook- lyn, . . . .... . ■ "65 1248 Hall AND Stairway, Residence of John Cowen- hoven, ...... 1166 1249 Drawing-Room,— John Cowenhoven, . . 1166 1250 Residence of Niels Poulson, Bay Ridge (The "Copper House,") .... 1167 1251 Cowenhoven, John, ..... ii68 1252 Residence of John Cowenhoven, Lefferts Park, . . . . . . 116S 1253 Residence of J. Lott Nostrand, . . . 1169 1254 Dean, James, ...... 1170 1255 Town Hall, Jamaica, .... 1171 1256 Residence of Richard C. McCormick, Jamaica, 1172 1257 DuNTON, Frederick W., .... 1173 1258 Interior of Long Island Railroad Station, Flatbush Avenue, .... 1175 1259 Bay Ridge Ferry and Station of the New York and Sea Beach Railway, . .1179 The originals of the illustrations marked (T) in the above list are from the collection of Daniel M. Tredwell, Esq. Those marked (A) are taken from the Brainard collection of photographic negatives in the possession of the Brooklyn Academy of Photography. The origi- nal drawings are by J. Carter Beard, James H. Knickerbocker, Harry Ogden, Rich- ard Creyfields, J. D. Woodward, Albert D. Blashfield, G. Hay- ward, Geo. Spiel, Geo. A. Burr, Edgar Mayhew Bacon, William P. Brigden and oth- Brooklyn's First Homes. Indian Hahitations in the Sixteenth Centub INTRODUCTORY. FTER the discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492, the entire western hemi- sphere, or so much of it as was supposed to exist, was so liberally and largely bestowed by pope and potentates, in consideration of discovery or occupation, that a reasonably good claim to the possessions was made by no less than four nations ; and at one time and another pretensions more or less extensive were advanced by Spain, France, England and Holland. It happened that, gen- erally speaking, the significant settlements by Spanish-speaking people were diverted southwards, while the Hudson river region awaited the coming of Henry Hudson for its permanent occupation, and a Dutch colony was estab- lished in New Netherland, with English neighbors to the east and south. After a Dutch ascendency of half a century, the colony passed into Engflish hands ; and so we have an Anglo-Saxon civilization superimposed on the foundations laid by the Dutch, and count both Dutch and English ancestors among the founders of our community. Europeans had visited the harbor of New York before Hudson came to it in 1609, and the first men- tion of it in history is contained in the report made to Francis I. of France, by the Italian Verrazano, of his visit in 1524. But as no occupation followed this discovery, the claims of France were lightly considered after the Dutch who followed Hudson had settled here. The Dutch who peopled New Netherland represented the adventurous class of their country at the time of its greatest glory. It was the period of Holland's political prominence ; the century of her mon- umental greatness in war, in science, in literature, in commercial activity and all the arts of peace. Her advancement in agricultural methods rendered her colonists the most desirable for the settlement of a 34 THE EACxLE AND BROOKLYN. farming country, and their skill in commercial enterprise gave an impetus to the trading which was to form so large a part of the industry of the new colony. These were the ancestors of the oldest families of the New York and Brooklyn of to-day, and the commercial greatness of this vast metropolitan community is their fitting monument. ■ i, r ' When Hudson cast the anchor of the " Half-Moon " in the lower bay of New York, late in the after- noon of the sth of September, 1609, and looked upon that " very good land to fall in with and a pleasant land to see " which rose before him, he was seeking something greater than a suitable site for a colony. After pausing ten days he passed on between the Narrows and continued up the great river, not yet called the Hudson.^on his search for a northwest passage to the Indies. In this purpose his journey to the head of navigation brought him disappointment, and he re-crossed the ocean defeated of the object of his voy- age He never reached Amsterdam ; but the " Half-Moon " did, and so did also his report of the discov- eries he had made. This report, addressed to the Dutch East India Company, which had sent him out to find the new way to the Indies, stimulated the sending of other expeditions, no longer to seek the Indies in that direction, but to make the most of the opportunities for profitable trading in the new country de- scribed by Hudson. When the "Half-Moon" reached Holland, (Hudson's report, which had been for- warded from England, having preceded it by several months,) an expedition was ready, prepared by a company of associated merchants, for another voyage to the promising land. Hudson had found, and so did those who followed him, the Indians to be friendly and ready to barter their peltries for the trinkets of civilization, and the profit resulting from this expedition of 16 10 was so considerable that numerous others followed in rapid succession, during the next few years. Notable among these were the expeditions com- manded by Henry Christiaensen and Adri^en Block, one of their voyages being made in company ; for they added much to the early discoveries in the state of New York. The first white men's houses to be built on the Island of Manhattan were the rude huts erected for the trading-station they established there. In pursuance of his trading operations Christiaensen explored all the bays and inlets in the vicinity and then sailed his ship, the " Fortune," as far up the North river as he could go, and appreciating the importance of the present site of Albany as a trading-station, he there erected Fort Nassau, named in honor of the Dutch stadtholder, Maurice, Count of Nassau, whose name was still further commemorated by calling the North River the Mauritius. Fort Orange subsequently replaced Fort Nassau, on a site near by, and where it stood were made the beginnings of Albany, so-called after the English took possession. Block, in the meantime, had suffered the loss of his ship, the " Tiger," by fire in New York harbor ; and in spite of the disadvantages under which he labored, he replaced it, in 1614, with the first vessel ever built in these waters. This was of sixteen tons burden, forty-four feet long and eleven and a-half feet beam. The " Onrust " — or " Restless " — as he named her, took him on a memorable coastwise exploring expedition, on which he discovered and passed through Long Island Sound, entered the bay of New Haven and the mouth of the Connecticut river, gave his own name forever to Block Island, penetrated Narragansett Bay, doubled Cape Cod, and went as far as the harbor of Salem. This was truly a voyage full of interest in view of the present importance of the points he visited ; but its most significant consequence arose from his discovery of Long Island Sound, which entitled him and the voyagers associated with him to privileges which they shared with a company of merchants at home, and resulted in the formation of the New Neth- erland Company, the first organized undertaking to reap the advantages of trading in the new country. Early in 1614, the year in which Block returned to Holland, the States-General had issued a "general charter for those who discovered new passages, havens, countries or places." This had no special refer- ence to the New World, but the attention of adventurous spirits had for some years been turned in that direction, and voyages for discovery and commerce were now regularly established. The discoveries of Block clearly came under the specifications of the "general charter," and on October 11, 1614, a charter was granted to the New Netherland Company, permitting four voyages to be made within the term of three years from the ist of January, 1615. In this document the name of New Netherland was used for the first time in any record. By an interesting coincidence, in that same year the name of New England was first applied to the region which has ever since borne this original designation. The New Netherland Com- pany succeeded private enterprise in the development of the new trading opportunities, but no attempt was made to found a colony. The company's expeditions met with considerable success during the period of their charter, and they continued to send ships for some years after its expiration in 1618, but no longer with a monopoly of the privilege, which they shared with others. The desultory adventures that followed the termination of the New Netherland Company's charter were destined soon to give place to a more am- bitious undertaking in the way of development of the new country. This was the Dutch West India Com- pany, which, after some years of discussion and preparation, was chartered in 1621. The company had many enterprises in view besides the development of New Netherland ; this province indeed was one of the least productive of its ventures. By reason of the assistance anticipated from the company in the wars with Spain, now renewed after a twelve years' truce, the States-General granted it extensive powers, involv- INTRODUCTORY. 35 Hudson's " Hali'-Moon.' ing many of the functions of a sovereign state. The affairs of New Netherland were controlled by one of the five Chambers of the company, that of Amster- dam. Trading was still the object of its enterprise in the western hemisphere, and regular colonizing, such as characterized the English settlements, was a very inconsiderable element in their programme. Two lines in the company's charter covered all that was said about colonizing. Four Directors-General successively were sent out to take charge of the affairs of New Netherland, as soon as the West India Company had sufficiently perfected its organization. These were Peter Min- uit, Wouter Van Twiller, William Kieft and Peter Stuyvesant. Minuit inaugurated the custom of ob- taining Indian property rights by purchase, not by conquest ; and the most significant purchase he made was that of Manhattan Island, for twenty-four dollars — almost his first official act. Rebuilt Fort Amsterdam, made fiiendswith the English colonists of New England, and was the company's instrument for introducing the system of patroons, or feudal lords, into the new country. The favoritism and irregularity attending this brought about his recall in 1632. Wouter Van Twiller's five years' rule was characterized by debauchery and the enrichment of himself and his immediate followers. He left to his successor a legacy of troubles, both with his own people and with the Indians ; an impoverished company treas- ury, a partially dismantled fort and a demoralized people, with which to meet grave responsibilities. William Kieft, who reached the colony in 1638, regulated the disordered affairs of the province with sternness and ability ; but he almost ruined its prospects by his severity toward the Indians, on whom he levied tribute, visited rigorous punishment for their depredations, and massacred many who had fiown to him for protection against their dusky enemies. His crimes and arbitrary acts caused his recall in 1645, when he was succeeded by Peter Stuyvesant. Under this fine old martinet the city of New Amster- dam was incorporated, and some glory was secured to the Dutch name and standard ; but despotism and religious persecution marked his rule, which was terminated in 1664 by the surrender of New Netherland to the English, who now enforced with a fleet the claims they had more than once before asserted to the proprietorship by virtue of the English nationality of Henry Hudson. It was under Directors-General Van Twiller and Kieft that the early steps were taken for the establishment of the scattered communities across the East river which, during the two and a-half centuries that have since then elapsed, have grown into one and have become famous as the city of Brooklyn. Before opening the chapter of Brooklyn's long and significant history, it may not be uninteresting to explore with the geologist the ground upon which the Netherlander unwittingly laid the foundation of a great city. The recurrence of glacial epochs has been a potent factor in terrestrial map-making. The last of the ice periods, immediately preceding the era of (more or less) equable temperature that we enjoy, was the architect of Long Island. Thousands of years ago, on the spot that is now covered by busy streets and comfortable homes, a vast and ragged wall of ice was reared toward the sky. No limit could have been seen to these chill precincts on east and west, and nothing but ice to the north, for it was the edge of the great North American glacier, that terminated along this latitude, los- ing its great bergs into the Atlantic and piling its detritus along its foot. The terminal moraine can be traced from Montauk Point for hundreds of miles to the westward, with such occasional interruptions as are made by rivers and hills. Glaciers have a slow movement, varying from a few inches to three or four feet a day, according _ ■" —^^^ _ to the slant of their beds and their volume, and in the resistless progress of this continent of ice WKsr India Comi-anv's House, Amsti;rdam. to the southward, mountains were pared away 36 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. and some of them leveled. Mount Washington was buried to its top, and the Catskills carry the scars of this great plow to the present day. The debris thus worn from the heights was borne along in and under the glacier for hundreds of miles. Some of it, ground to sand and gravel, was strewn along the coast, forming part of the continental shelf, or slightly submerged land, that adapts itself to the contour of the land, and other larger masses were dropped at the ice foot, where we see them to-day in the form of worn and mossy boulders. This is the reason why Brooklyn, and the whole of Long Island, is a mineralogical compendium of the whole country to the north, for Long Island is merely a part of the dump of this monstrous mass of ice. A boulder of labradorite, for instance, was found on Myrtle avenue, that must have been brought down from the Adirondacks, because no labradorite exists south of those mountains. The green mica mixed with feldspar that is characteristic of the bluffs at the upper end of Manhattan Island, the jasper that extends under the Hudson at Weehawken, the serpentine of Castle Point, are found in the streets of Brooklyn, and glacial scratches have recently been discovered on the top of the Palisades, pointing to Prospect Park, where boulders of trap, such as the Palisades are made of, are not uncommon. Over two hundred varieties of minerals have been found in Brooklyn, and collections of local " finds " are found in the cabinets of the Brooklyn Institute, the Long Island Historical Society Museum, and the Girls' High School. A number of fossils, probably from the Helderbergs, have been found in South Brooklyn. There is no bed-rock anywhere at the surface, though the gneiss that so well illustrates glacial action in Central Park by its smoothed and rounded " sheep backs," extends under East river at Hell Gate, and crops up in ridges in Long Island City. It is this rock that has been blasted away, at vast expense, to clear the channel in East river. In spite of its fragmentary character, however, the ground that Brooklyn stands on is as firm as any part of the coast. The earthquake that shook it in 1884 left it none the worse — indeed, the existence of a hundred feet or more of segregated rock between the surface and the shaking framework of the earth may have softened the shock. It is said that Brooklyn shares in the subsidence that affects some miles of the Atlantic shores, and is sinking at the rate of a foot in a century. Real estate is not likely to suffer from this because a compensatory tilt may be applied to the settling ground before the Eagle office reaches the edge of the water, and a little judicious dumping will suffice in any event to keep the land at its present level. Barring war and politicians, no agency need be feared that will work injury to the city until about the year 92,000 a. d., when a recurrence of the ice age is prophesied, and our pleasant city will, for several years, lie buried. The Brooklyn Shore in 1679. J Thf Oldest House in' Brooklyn. The " Scliermerlwrn House!' ^till standing at Third avenue and Twenty-eighth sti-eet. Built about 1690, on the site of the first house built in Brooklyn, 1636. BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 1636-1664. HERE, has been a tradition that the first settlement in Brooklyn was effected about 1625, at the Wallabout. It was so stated by the early historians. And so great is the pertinacity of a romantic tradition, that notwithstanding it was demonstrated forty years ago that this date was at least eleven years earlier than the true one, the statement may still be found in new chronicles. It has recently appeared, without qualification, in the most recent contribution to the annals of New Amsterdam, the comprehensive " Memorial History of New York." The romantic element in this tradition, the element which has insured its vitality through repeated refutations, connects it with the birth of the first female white child born of European parents within the limits of . -- .„:=.-5«e_ ;,, - New Netherland. This was Sarah de Rapelje, from whom are descended '^ - "Tsi , —=^ lYiany of the principal families of Dutch origin in Kings County. She was Ship "New Netherland " ^j^^ daughter of Joris Jansen de Rapelje, a French Huguenot who came to this which brought the first Walloons. ^^^^^^^ j^ 1623. Sarah was born in 1625, and as she and her father both lived at the Wallabout in after years, it was assumed that the Wallabout was her birthplace, and consequently that it was settled during or before the year of her birth, 1625. The more scholarly writers of later histories have shown conclusively that Rapelje went at once to Fort Orange (Albany) in 1623 ; lived there three years, and then spent several years in New Amsterdam, before he came to live on the farm at Wallabout Bay, which he had purchased from the Indians in 1637. So Wallabout Bay was not settled in 1625, and it was not the first part of the present Brooklyn to be settled. 38 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. It is not quite certain which of the several villages out of which Brooklyn has grown was the first established. The first recorded ^i,'-/^//' ^/ /«;?(/ to an individual was in Flatlands. The original name of this place was New Amersfoort, so called from a town in Holland, a name which afterwards gave place to the more descriptive but also more prosaic "Flatlands." In 1636, Jacob Van Corlaer secured by purchase from the Indians an extensive tract here, described in the deed as at " Castateeuw, on Sewan-hackey, or Long Island, between the bay of the North River and the East River." Coincidently with this, an adjoining tract was purchased by Andries Hudden and Wolfort Gerritsen, and within a few weeks other lands near them were secured by the Director-General, the doughty Wouter Van Twiller himself. These men would appear to have been favored members of the " Van Twiller set," as it would be called in these days, which was the prototype of the modern "ring." They were the boon companions of the Director-General's hours of ease, which they beguiled in deep potations and with orgies so disgraceful and of such frequent occurrence as to create a scandal that was heard across the ocean in Holland. They all lived better than was common in those primitive days, and they all became exceptionally prosperous. In this they were helped by their unblushing use of their official positions for their personal profit. There were as yet no " corner-lots " for the insiders to secure in advance of public improvements ; but there were large and tempting tracts of farming lands, some held for sale by the West India Company, and some purchasable of the Indian proprietors, and it was not long before the choice of these lands on the Long Island water-front, as well as several islands in the East river, had fallen into their hands. But it was a bona fide settler in another place who built the first house ever erected in Brooklyn ; and it is here that we must locate the first step in the settlement of Brooklyn. This was at Gowanus, so-called probably, in the opinion of William Wallace Tooker, of Sag Harbor, L. I., who is a careful student of Indian names, from its having been the place where the Indian, Gauwane, planted his corn, and so, " Gauwane's " plantation. This property, at the head of Gowanus Bay, was purchased in 1636 by William Adriaense Bennett and Jacques Bentyn. Bennett, who soon became the sole owner of the property, immediately put it under cultivation and built on it the first house erected in Kings County. Both the record of the building and the implication in it that a community was early gathered together at this point, marks it as the beginning of Brooklyn. The house first erected here did not survive the ravages of the Indian wars in 1643, during Director-General Kieft's administration, but was burned. On its site, or near it, there was erected some time previous to 1696 a house which, though probably considerably changed, is still standing, the stone walls of the original house forming a part of the present structure. This house^the old Schermerhorn mansion — may be seen to-day, on Third avenue, just beyond Twenty-eighth street. Its roof is falling in with decay, and it has long been the humble abode of tenement-house families ; it is crowded back by smart brick buildings, and every surrounding circumstance indicates neglect of a venerable relic. Visiting it on the day of the recent Columbus celebration, one could not help regretting that in going back four centuries to honor a partly traditional hero as the discoverer of the Western hemisphere, the citizens of Brooklyn had entirely passed by this survivor of two centuries ; and while holiday bunting floated from almost every other available point in the city, the colors of Spain and Italy intertwined, this solitary historical monument of very early Brooklyn, peopled by the humblest modern countrymen of the Genoese who discovered America for the Spanish monarchs, bore no sign of celebration. Nothing fluttered from its roof but the clothes-line of the tenement-house Italians. When the Long Island farming-lands had once attracted the attention of the settlers, they were steadily taken up, until all the holdings on the shore line were occupied, and then those beyond them inland. Within a few years the shore of the East river, from Gowanus to Walla- bout Bay, was marked with a continuous chain of farms under actual cultivation. Probably the next settlement after those at Amersfoort and Gowanus was that at the Wallabout, where Joris Jansen de Rapelje purchased his farm in 1637. He did not go there to live until many years later ; but his purchase was followed by those of active settlers who did live there, and the year 1636 is not far from the date of the active oc- '^"'^ Wynant Bennett House, 23D St. and 3D Ave. CUpation of this district The earliest settlers ^ remnant of the original seftkme?ii at Gowanus. Removed when , - Third avenue was opened. The British column received here its here were from among the " \\ alloons," who came ^„, ,/„,^, /„ tj,e Battle of Brooklyn. ,776. BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 39 DeHart-Bergen House, in 1863, Third Avenue, near Thirty-eighth St. (Delaplaine House to the Right.) The Labadist travelers were entertained here in 1679. The house was removed when the Thirty-ninth St. Ferry House was built. to America in considerable numbers at about tiiis time. These were Huguenots who had sought refuge in Holland from religious persecution. The Dutch called them " Waalsche," or foreigners, perhaps from the name of their province, Gaulsche, where they spoke the language of the ancient Gauls, and their churches were called " Waale Kerken." Many of the Huguenots were not Walloons; but most of them were, and as the people of that day discriminated no better than we do now, they were all known as Walloons. It was the settlement of these people that gave to the little community they founded the name of Waal-Bogt, or the " Bay of the Foreigners." The next settlement was probably that of Gravesend, for which, in 1643, Director-General Kieft issued a patent to Lady Deborah Moody, an Englishwoman, and her associates, who had sought in the Dutch colony the religious freedom for which they had left their home in Old England, but had not found under the Puritans in New England, where they had made their first American stopping-place. This was the only English settlement effected in Kings county, though there were others on Long Island. After the departure of Lady Moody, some sixteen years later, the English Baxters, Hubbards and Stilwells intermarried with the Dutch, and the English strain was soon lost. The village was named by the Dutchmen, who called it 's Gravensande (the Count's Beach), after the town of that name on the river Maas, in Holland. Flatbush was settled in 1651, by farmers who found the best holdings near the coast-line already taken, and sought desirable lands in the " mid-wood," half-way to Amersfoort. And that was what they called it at first, Medwoud, or Midwood ; a name more in keeping with the taste of the present day, when even rail- road pioneers dot their lines through a new country with pretty names like it, than "Vlachte Bos" (wooded plain), or its angli- cised form of Flatbush. New Utrecht, settled a little later by some families from Holland, received another old-country name. Just before the settlement of Medwoud, that is, in 1645, the village from which our city took its name was established. This was situated between the Wallabout and Gowa- nus, where the Indians had their most fertile planting-grounds for their corn. Of these they had been despoiled during the Indian wars begun in 1643, and at the close of hostilities enterprising farmers secured patents from the Kitchen of the DeHart House, from Sketch in iE 40 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. K CoRTELYou House, 1699, 5TH Ave., near 4TH St. What remains of this house Is no-w the Club House in the \Vashingt07i Park Ball Grounds. West India Company to the most desirable portions of the land. Among these early settlers were Jan Evertse Bout, in 1645 ; Huyck Aertsen, Jacob Stoffelsen, Pieter Cornelissen and Joris Dircksen, in 1646 ; Gerrit Wolphertsen van Couwenhoven and others in 1647. The farms thus established were situated near what is now Fulton street, about where Hoyt and Smith streets intersect it. The Dutch settlers called their village Breuckelen, and in the beginning this name was applied only to this one small settlement on the present Fulton street, the others going by their own distinctive names. Whether the name was simply an old-country name repeated in affectionate memory of the home they had left, or was descriptive of the character of the soil, or both, is not clearly known. But there was a Breuckelen in Holland, about eighteen miles from Amsterdam, and it was sup- posed to have received its name from the marshy land on which it was situated. And it is said that dwellers in our own Brook- lyn of two generations ago remembered that the soil on Fulton street at the point described also was springy in its earlier state. So it may very well have occurred to the Dutch farmers to name the village they founded on this marsh-land, or brook-land, after its Holland prototype, combining both description and reminiscence. " Brookland " was one of the various spellings given to the name in the ancient documents of a day when most persons spelled according to fancy instead of by the spelling- book or the gazeteer ; and in Holland one of the recorded forms was " Brocklandia" — both suggestive of the descriptive name. Breuckelen was the most common form of if among the Dutchmen here in the early days, and it was so spelled until the close of the last century, when " Brooklyn " was definitely settled on by universal custom ; and the progress of correct orthography throughout the civilized world contributed to the permanency of the name in that form. It is an interesting coincidence that the first political authority was conferred on the citizens of this village of Brooklyn, which stood near what is now the political centre of this great municipality, and bore the name of the city of the future. The West India Company had instructed the provincial authorities to encourage the colonists to establish themselves in the most suitable places for the founding, of towns, villages and hamlets, as the English were in the habit of doing. And the first request for organization under these instructions was made by the men of Brooklyn, soon after they had acquired their land ( May 21, 1646), who notified the Director-General and Council of their intention to "found a town at their own expense." In response to this, in June, the Director-General appointed Jan Evertsen Bout and Huyck Aertsen from Rossum, the nominees of the petitioners, as Schepens, or magistrates, to whom soon after was added. Jan Teunissen as Schout, or constable. To the magistrates were referred all questions arising under the charter of the colony, and obedience to them was ordered on penalty of forfeiture of a share in the allotment of common lands. The Schout was appointed to assist the Schepens as their executive in minor matters. New Utrecht was settled in 1647 ; and in 1660 appeared the first traces of a settlement at Boswyck, or Bushwick, where Governor Stuyvesant permitted some Frenchmen to establish themselves ; and two months later a number of residents in the Wallabout petitioned to push out and form a village " on the margin of the river," so that they might "be in sight of the Manhattans, or Fort Amsterdam." This was on the " Keike," or Lookout. These two settlements last named became the town of Bushwick and the city of Williamsburgh, now the eastern district of Brooklyn. It must not be supposed that any of these villages were extensive settlements, or became such for a long time. AVhen Dominie Selyns, the first settled pastor of the Dutch church in Breuckelen, and the first whose ministrations were devoted to the Breuckelenites exclusively and not shared with their brethren of New Amsterdam, visited his new parish in 1660, he found it to consist of 134 persons in 34 families, including the residents of Breuckelen proper, the Wallabout, Gowanus and the " Ferry " — this last a small settlement which had grown up at the foot of the present Fulton street in connection with the transportation of goods and persons across the East river. The ferry was in operation as early as 1642. The name Breuckelen soon came to cover all the settlements above mentioned. Later on, the settlements on the Long Island side of the East river were known as the " Five Dutch towns," which indicated Breuckelen (including everything between Wallabout and Gowanus), Amersfoort, Midwout, Boswyck and New Utrecht. By the end of the seventeenth century the population of Brooklyn was about 450 whites and 100 slaves ; and by 1738 this had increased to only 547 whites and 158 slaves. The early settlements arose from the neighborhoods incidentally formed among the individuals who, BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 41 without any concerted action, established their farms in the same vicinity, and made common cause with one another as neighbors, in need of mutual assistance and defense. No regulations relative to their organization or the administration of justice among them were made, previous to the appointment of the Breuckelen Schepens ; and this provision was at that time confined to Breuckelen as the only settlement sufficiently numerous to require it. At a later date settlers united their interests in advance, and planned beforehand the establishment of a village. Daniel Denton, who in 1670 published "A Brief Description of New York, formerly called New Netherland," thus describes the way they went about it: "The usual way is for a Company of people to joyn together, either enough to make a Town, or a lesser number ; these go with the consent of the Governor, and view a Tract of Land, there being choice enough, and finding a place convenient for a Town, they return to the Governor, who upon their desire admits them into the Col- ony, and gives them a Grant or Patent for the said Land, for themselves and Associates." Within ten years from the appearance of the first settler, a chain of farms extended from Gowanus to Wallabout, and others occupied the region back from the shore line. The New Netherland Company had early appreciated the extent of the demand for homesteads near to New Amsterdam, and had secured much of the desirable land on the Brooklyn side ; and, partly by patent from the company, and partly by purchase directly from the Indian proprietors, duly confirmed by the authorities, the settlers secured their lands. It was the agricultural, not the commercial, possibilities that they sought to avail themselves of. Manufactures were prohibited by the authorities in Holland, and trading found its outlet at New Amster- dam. Long Island remained for many years the grain field of New Netherland. 42 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. purpose, '^^^l The Remsen Farmhouse — Front View. The Dutch people who settled these villages were of the class of their countrymen who desired to bet- ter their condition by establishing new homes in a new country. They were not of the zealous spirits who were attracted hither by their longing for adventure and discovery ; they followed after the soldiers and sailors who had found the way. They were not traders ; those who came for profit m exchangmg Euro- pean trifles for the red man's furs pushed farther inland, where the best bargains were to be had. They were not refugees from religious persecution, except perhaps the Walloon settlers in the Wallabout, and it is doubtful if they sought in New Netherland a larger freedom than they had found in old Holland, their like that of other settlers, being pecuniary advantage. They were farmers at home, and in the new country they looked about them for the most desirable lands for agricultural development. They came imbued with the hardy spirit which recent expe- riences had developed, from a land whose adventurous spirits were fresh from successful explorations of the unknown parts of the world and victorious wars with their enemies. Doubtless some of them had fought against the Spanish, and surely most of- them partook in some degree of the masterful spirit characteristic of the Hollander of that day. They were of the best material possible for the founding of a new colony. They came, not men alone, but in families, with their household effects and their native customs, to make new homes and live in them permanently. It was by such a people, so disposed, that in the course of twenty to thirty years were settled all these villages, the nuclei from which all Kings county was gradually built up and populated. To them the fair acres which they saw beyond the East river, when they surveyed the field from their landing-place at New Amsterdam, seemed the most attractive for the purposes they had in view — broad fields, with fertile soil, sufficiently retired from the commercial centre not to be too costly, yet near enough to it to have a ready market for their produce with easy transportation by water. The shore line was first occupied for this reason, and then the lands nearest to it were taken up and tilled. With the growth of New Amster- dam, which was rapid, the prosperity of the Long Island farmers increased. These Dutch farmers brought with them from Holland the skill in field culture which had been devel- oped by their countrymen to the highest point then attained anywhere in the world, and for two centuries they and their descendants devoted themselves to the production of the important agricultural staples. It was only when the canals and railroads of the present century brought the products of the great western fields into competition with them that they turned their atten- tion to market gardening, which the proximity of the great cities made more profitable. As they had done at home, so here, they built their barns broad and generous, with heavy roofs sloping to near the ground. Huge doors, wide and high enough to admit a loaded hay wagon, opened at the ends. They provided themselves as soon as their means permitted with farm animals, both horses and mules as well as oxen being used in the daily work. The raising of stock became an important feature of the farmer's industry. The harvesting of crops, previous to the invention of labor-saving machines and improved farm implements, was a very arduous operation, and it gave employment to all the idle laborers of the villages as well as those fro.-n the neighboring city. But white labor was too scarce to meet the necessity, and from the very beginning of the colony colored slaves were required and obtained to supplement the labor supply. These slaves were principally West Indian negroes ; some were from the Dutch stations in South America and some were even native Indians brought here from the South. The slaves soon learned to speak Dutch, and many of them spoke in several languages. They were well treated, being slaves hardly more than in name, and became a very useful as well as necessary element in the population. Besides the grain staples which they raised in abundance, the farmers also produced a great variety of fruit. When the Labadist travelers, who in 1679 inspected the new colony with a view to settling their sect within it, took their walk from the village of Breuckelen to Gowanus, where they enjoyed the hospi- tality of Simon Aertsen De Hart and supped on Gowanus oysters, wild game and watermelon, they passed through extensive orchards of peach-trees which "were so laden that one might doubt whether there were liiE REM.SEN Farmhouse— Rear View. BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 43 The Snedecor House — Built 1638, Destroyed 1886. The site is now in Cypress Hills Cemetery. more leaves or fruit on them." And they helped themselves freely as they went along. A century later peaches were still so abundant that they were fed as fodder to the cattle and many rotted under the trees that could not be gathered. Pears, cherries and plums were abundant, and from the time the apple- trees began to bear, there were plenty of ap- ples for eating, marketing and cider making. The life of the Dutch farmers of the early days was peaceful, removed from the turmoil of the world ; happy in the genuine domestic- ity peculiar to their race ; quiet and unosten- tatious, but contented and useful. While the character of their pursuits did not leave them much time for intellectual development, yet they had some pictures and some books brought with them or sent to them from Holland, and they were by no means cut off from opportunities for culture. The purity of their morals and the decorum of their manners were conspicuous. They were men who had brought their families, and with them came the family virtues of good morals, pure affections and neighborly tendencies. Thrifty by nature and forced to economy, they indulged in no extravagant luxuries ; but they lived as well as the country afforded, and spent their money freely in works of humanity, charity and public spirit. The houses they built were chiefly of wood, or of rough stone, though some were of brick, and usually with a stone foundation. After the establishment of a brickyard in New Amsterdam in 1660, brick was commonly used in house building. All were of the Dutch pattern familiar to them in their old-country home, of one-story, with a long, in-curved overshot roof extending beyond the house walls, making a piazza in front, and in some instances another in the rear. The ceilings were timbered and were built low for the purpose of getting sufficient heat from the wide, open, tiled fireplaces, which were the only protection they had against a rigorous climate. These fireplaces often extended across half the end of the room, and as the only artificial light came from small dipped candles, the open fireplace, heaped high with blazing wood with its warmth and added light was the family gathering-place, around which, on the long winter evenings, the household and visitors met to gossip, to tell of what was going on in the colony, and to talk of old times ill tiie Fatherland. Here the children learned both the hopes and fears of their fathers in their new home, and the history and legends of the Dutch home across the seas. And at bedtime came the nursery rhyines, some of which have been handed down to the present time, and have been preserved and translated by Mrs. Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt. One of them runs : " Trip a trop a tronjes, De varkens in de boonjes, De koejes in de klaver, De paarden in de haver, De eenjes in de waterplass, So groot myn kleine was.' which is freely translated thus, that the father's or mother's knee was for the child a little throne upon which he might be as happy as were the little pigs among the beans, the cows among the clover, the horses among the oats, and the ducks splashing in the water ; at the last line the child being tossed up high, his name falling into the verse, " So great my little was ! " This was a part of the " Mother Goose " of that early day. The walls of the principal room of the house were wainscotted often, but not universally, and in a later time were plastered above the wainscotting. From the family-room the other apartments of the house opened out on the same floor, the era of dear land and lofty dwellings not having come in, to induce the extension of the living-rooms upwards. There were bedrooms in the second story when there was a second story ; but these were encroached on by the low, slant- ing roof, which contracted the second-story rooms, SpiNNiN-f; Wheel, Flax Beater, Hand Reel, etc. although it made an attic of glorious proportions. As 44 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. time passed, and prosperity enabled the housekeeper to replenish her stock of furniture, the antique pieces were relegated to the attics, which became storehouses of all that was venerable and characteristic of the old life. This furniture of the primitive days included principally necessaries, such as old Dutch bedsteads, tables, chairs, cupboards and clocks — highly prized now, but then re- garded as only the best they could afford. Sometimes the domestic furniture was rough and home-made, a sleep- ing-bench, feather-bedded, doing duty for a bedstead. The large spinning-wheel was a leading and universal The Boerum Mansion. feature of the early interiors, and the women were as in- dustrious with these as in all housewifely pursuits, and often took their spinning with them when they went for an afternoon's chat with a neighbor. Most of the clothing worn in the colony was of homespun, and most of the mechanical work, for which in after days the farmers depended on others, was done by the men and youth of the neighborhood. Car- pentering, wheelwrighting, blacksmithing, tanning and often shoemaking, and other useful and necessary trades were taught to the boys as fast as they became old enough to do more than the farm and household " chores." Some idea as to what the colonists had to do for themselves at first, may be derived from the list of desiderata which Denton printed in his " Brief Description " as a guide to such Englishmen as in- tended emigrating to New Netherland in 1670 : " The best commodities for any to carry with them is Clothing, the Countrey being full of all sorts of Cattel, which they may furnish themselves withal at an easie rate, for any sorts of English Goods, as likewise Instruments for Husbandry and Building, with Nails, Hinges, Glass and the like ; For the manner how they get a livelihood, it is principally by Corn and Cattel, which will there fetch them any Commodities ; likewise they sowe store of flax, which they make every one Cloth of for their own wearing, as also woolen Cloth, and Linsey-woolsey, and had they more Tradesmen amongst them, they would in a little time live without the help of any other Countrey for their Clothing ; For Tradesmen there is none but live happily there, as Carpenters, Blacksmiths, Masons, Tailors, Wea- vers, Shoemakers, Tanners, Brickmakers, and so any other Trade ; them that have no Trade betake them- selves to Husbandry, get Land of their own, and live exceeding well. Here you need not trouble the Shambles for meat, nor Bakers and Brewers for Beer and Bread, nor run to a Linnen Draper for a supply, every one making their own Linnen, and a great part of their woolen Cloth for their ordinary wearing. .... I must needs say, that if there be any terres- trial Caanan, 'tis surely here, where the Land floweth with milk and honey. The inhabitants are blessed with Peace and plenty, blessed in their Countrey, blessed in the Fruit of their bodies, in the fruit of their grounds, in the increase of their Cattel, Horses and Sheep, blessed in their basket and in their store ; In a word, blessed in whatsoever they take in hand or go about, the Earth yielding plentiful increase to all their painful labors. A Wagon or Cart gives as good content as a Coach ; and a piece of their home- made Cloth, better than the finest Lawns or richest Silks : and though their low-roofed house may seem to shut their doors against pride and luxury, yet how do they stand wide open to let charity in and out, either to assist each other, or to relieve a stranger." From the time that Brooklyn set up a village government in 1646 her affairs became gradually more important and interesting, but the wildest flight of imagination could hardly have predicted "the city of to- day as the logical result of even two centuries of development. In 1647, after Stuyvesant arrived, we find the Brooklynites, in common with the people of Amersfoort, Manhattan, and Pavonia, designating the eighteen candidates from whom the Director and his Council selected the nine trustees of the commonalty. These trustees, true typical Dutchmen no doubt, thick in the brain and thick of head as well, must have given the peppery Governor many a mental twinge'. Their duties under the new code of instructions which Stuyvesant brought with him, were to sit in council in rotation to judge the civil cases and to confer with the Director on important matters touching the commonalty. This was a deep-dyed bit of back-stroking, in return for which the people were expected to House of Nicasius DeSille, .New Utrecht. BROOKLYN UNDER DUTCH RULE. 45 Household and Other Articles Used by our Ancestors. be perfectly quiescent when the demands for taxes were made upon them. But the project dearest to the Director s mihtary heart was the repairing of the fort. Almost the first thing the trustees were asked to do was to vote a tax for the purpose of raising funds for this object. They simply shook their wise Dutch heads and said that it was none of their business, but the West India Company's: which was very true, but doubtless very exasperating. Although the necessary taxes for church and school purposes were raised, yet the trouble between the Governor and the Nine increased ; after a good deal of wrangling the latter sent a letter of remonstrance to Holland, following it with other letters, while the whole colony grad- ually took sides with or against the Director. During all this time the life of Brooklyn was largely ab- sorbed in that of the little metro- politan city across the East river. The same manners and customs which prevailed in the one were present in a more or less modified form in the other. The people did not bother much about each other's consciences or worship ; they were satisfied to put a v/itch under bonds and then afterwards to cancel the bonds ; they drank a good deal and lived very comfortably and were generally at peace with their Indian neighbors ; but in one particular they proved their ancestral relations to the Brooklynites and Gothamites of this degenerate day, for the only vital point that the busy Director and Council could find was the plethoric purse that each honest burgher kept stowed away in the nethermost depths of his innermost linsey-woolsey trowsers pocket. In the early fifties war broke out between Holland and England. Stuyvesant had not been altogether popular and in Brooklyn as well as the other towns there was some dissatisfaction with Dutch rule, but this was mainly due to the English settlers, the Hollanders for the most part remaining true to their own nation. New England threatened New Amsterdam and finally Long Island proposed a convention of delegates from the different towns to consult for the welfare of the country. There were four Dutch and four English towns represented by ten Dutch and nine English representatives. Their principal act was a remonstrance directed against the Governor, criticising his arbitrary acts and eliciting from him a sarcas- tic and bitter reply. So, gradually, our fathers were getting ready to accept the inevitable change in the political complexion of the colony. The disaffection against Stuyvesant was more strongly felt on Long Island than in Manhattan. Several times the English people, secretly encouraged by their brethren in Connecticut, were on the point of revolution, and several of the towns sent a petition to Hartford, asking to be taken into the Connecticut government and suggesting the capture of Brooklyn and the other Dutch towns on Long Island. In this emergency the Director called a convention, composed of delegates from eight towns, and liberal plasters of paper and ink, the usual remedy for incipient political disorders, was pre- scribed by these wise doctors. But the malady had got beyond its incipient stage and the Director was soon forced into an agreement with the English by which both parties suspended jurisdiction over Long Island towns till the vexed question had been settled by the powers across the ocean. The distinct separation between the Dutch and English settlements on Long Island took place when the famous John Scott organized a combination of the English towns and tried to draw the Dutch ones into it, a proposition which they promptly refused to consider. Finally Stuyvesant and Scott arranged the terms of a com- promise by which the English towns were to be under English dominion and the Dutch under Dutch rule for a twelve-month, but providing that the latter should pay royalties to the English king. Matters were reaching a culmination. The English Governor Winthrop laughed at the Dutch claims and repudiated the arrangement which Stuyvesant and Scott had made. The fleet of the English Lord High Admiral the Duke of York was under way and would soon arrive before the little Dutch communities in the New World. One day all Brooklyn turned out to witness a sight which made every loyal heart throb. The silver-buttoned short coats of the men and the trim stomachers of the women alike heaved with anticipation, for there in the direction of Coney Island they could see beyond the higher points of land 46 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. to which they hurried, the masts of the EngUsh squadron. It must have been a moment of varied emotions, since on the one side was the invading force of the English Colonel Richard Nicholls and on the other " Hard Kopping Pete " Stuyvesant, who would tax them and lose his temper on all possible occasions. Poor, vain, brave, hotheaded old Director ! When the people of the different towns heard of the terms of toleration, Brooklyn and its neighbors joined with Manhattan in begging him to get out of the angle of the fort, where he stood swearing that he would hold the place all alone and shoot the first Englishman that landed. Every one knows how he was forced to agree to the capitulation that his soul hated. With the coming of the English, New Amsterdam was called New York, Long Island and Staten Island became Yorkshire, and the towns were districted into Ridings. The local governments were remodelled on English lines, the procedure in the Dutch towns being harmonized with that already common in the English towns ; but the private life of the people went on much as usual. The rule of Governor Nicholls at first pleased the people of Brooklyn, but before long the "Duke's Laws " came to be regarded with disfavor which was not entirely withdrawn when the wise and moderate measures of Governor Lovelace aimed to foster better feeling between the colonists of the different nationalities. Sarah de Rapelje's Tankard. Bedford Corners in 1777. BROOKLYN UNDER ENGLISH RULE. 1 664- 1 776. T has been said that the worthy settlers, Schepens, Schouts and Burgomasters alike, loved to indulge, perhaps a little too freely, in schnapps and other more potent liquors. That this was true of New Amsterdam or New York there can be little doubt. The metropolis has never been a hard place to get a drink in, it is said by those who are posted, but in Stuyvesant's day it must have been worse than at present or else the worthy governor was given to drawing the long-bow, for he says that fully one- third of the houses of New Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of ardent spirits. It might be supposed that Brooklyn, just over the ferry, would follow New York's example, yet we read that in 1668 one Robert Hollis was given the exclusive Stuyvesant's Bottle, right to sell Strong drink in Brooklyn. Such a privilege to-day would enable the (In L.r. His. So. Museum.) proprietor to give odds to Monte Cristo. At Robert Hollis's we can imagine the matter-of-fact burghers, with skull-caps, short-tailed jackets and ample frfeze breeches, crossing their fat legs under the pot-house tables very frequently and arguing ably on the relative merits of the West India Company and the Duke of York. One thing the dullest recognized (and in a community where money-getting was the most honorable pursuit it was not hard to understand), that the West India Company was a corporation of traders organized for the purposes of business simply, and making no high-flown pretensions. The colony could no more be expected to go into spasms of loyalty over such a bloodless master than a citizen of to-day to shed his blood for a tax-collector. But neither were they prepared to accept the divine right of the Duke of York to squeeze them under other pretenses. The social customs of the Breuckelenites underwent no decided change upon the advent of their English rulers. The policy of the latter was to foster the peculiar institutions of the Dutch in all of their towns, so that they might be, if possible, conciliated ; they being largely in the majority. They worshiped as before, toleration being then, as now, the order of the day in the City of Churches. 48 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. There were few drones in the hive ; the people rose early for work and went to bed at a reasonable hour. When a social tea-drinking or quilting party assembled together, the pretty girls and bashful swains of the town, the trim feet in high-heeled shoes twinkled merrily beneath the short, quilted skirts, and the richest belles wore the greatest number of chains and rings, and displayed as much of dainty linen as modesty permitted. Nine o'clock started the merrymakers homeward to repair the ravages of social dissipation in early slumbers. Between the scattered villages which have since been included in the city of Brooklyn, there was very much the same sort of social intercourse as obtained in the South at a later date. Visiting parties from Gowanus to Brooklyn, or from Amersfoort to Gravesend, made merry excursions, especially in winter time, when the sleighing was good. No political excitement could radically disturb or alter the calm current of Breuckelen life. It is difficult to strip away the added increments of a modern city and imagine the little village with its little ways and small interests and petty quarrels of the eighteenth century. At one time the miller, one Adam Brouwer, "on frivolous pretenses," refused to grind grain for the farmers. It was an old-fashioned way of stating that he was what modern newspaper English vi^ould describe tersely as a crank. The matter was brought before the governor, who grave- ly decided that Brou- wer " must grind for all persons without distinction or excep- tion according to cus- tom, the first to come to be first served." That the people of the town were wont to pay a good deal of attention to mat- ters of religion and education, was an un- doubted fact, but like many other more modern folks, they preferred as much religion for as little money as possible. More than once they got into difficulties with the authorities for trying to avoid payment of church taxes, on the ground that they did not receive full value in ecclesiastical ministrations. The post of schoolmaster must have been a somewhat difficult one to fill. The idea seemed to prevail that a pedagogue must be a universal genius if he could hope to earn his pay. He not only was expected to give instructions to the youth under his care, but also to act as sexton, lay reader and chorister in the church. Breuckelen, as well as Sleepy Hollow, had its Ichabod Cranes, whose quavers woke the echoes on still Sabbath afternoons, and whose birch woke other melodies on week days. The Dutch had founded a simple government for Breuckelen. A superintendent was appointed for the regulation of the town and subsequently Schepens or magistrates and a Schout to assist them in the executive details of justice. The English, when they came, changed the form of local government somewhat, while avoiding any change which might disturb the serenity of the townspeople, who dearly loved to adhere to their established forms and customs. Apropos of this and by way of parenthesis, there is told a story of a Dutch church whose officers, elected for two years at a time, had grown gray in "the service. Some one asked, " Don't you believe in rotation in office ? " " Rotation, yes, of course," was the reply. Have n't we been elected over and over for thirty or forty years ? What more rotation would you have ?" Under the new English rule Schepens and Schouts disappeared, to be re-established for a short time when the Dutch for a little while were again masters of their old domain, and then living only as embalmed in the pages of Knickerbocker. After the establishment of York and his regulations—" The Duke's Laws" as they were called— Brooklyn, Bushwick, Midwout, Amersfoort and New Utrecht were formed into a district and were known collectively as the five Dutch towns. A clerk and eight overseers constituted the local governmental machinery. The latter, who became commissioners after 1663, were required to look after vital statistics, education, fences and assessments. The new patent which Breuckelen obtained from the English Governor Nicholls was granted in 1667. The recapture of New York by the Dutch occurred in 1673, but this return was of very short duration. Fulton Avenue, between Bridge and Lawrence Streets, in 1776. BROOKLYN UNDER ENGLISH RULE. 49 View of Brookland in The following year saw the Duke's Laws re-established. When in 1683 the first Colo- nial Legislature was convened, Kings county came into polit- ical existence. The five Dutch towns comprised this division. "There was undoubtedly" says one authority, " a general pat- ent or charter of the town under the Dutch government which is now lost. The Nich- oUs charter was evidently confirmative of some such former part and the same is referred to by conveyances between in- dividuals. About the beginning of the eighteenth century the area of Brooklyn was fixed at 5,117 acres, which was about one-sixth of the present size of the city." A century before the war for independence Breuckelen had become the most important of the Kings county towns, its population and wealth both giving it a leading position. The accession of James II. (the Duke of York) to the throne of England, was the cause of great concern to the people here, since it was evident that former liberties would be abridged and an era of intolerance begin. The colonists dreaded the effort which would be made to compel compliance with Catholic rule. Fortunately for these fears William and Mary of Orange soon succeeded James' short-lived reign and greater instead of curtailed liberties was the result. Governor Sl-oughter, who followed the deposed Leisler, commenced his labors in 1691. That same year acts confirming former grants (the patent of Brooklyn among others) were passed ; the provincial government was reconstructed and assumed the form which it retained until the War for Independence. Courts of common and general pleas were instituted in the different counties; a new revision of the municipal government was effected and the justices superseded the commissioners' courts. The number of supervisors was reduced and the surveyors of highways became town officers. As illustrating the attention to social details which occupied the attention of local authori- ties, an order of the Court of Sessions in 1695 is not without interest. It provides that " ' Mad James ' bee kept by the Kings county in general and that the deacons of eache town within said county doe forthwith meete together and consider about their proporcions ffor maintenance of sayde James." From this it is evi- dent that there was no general provision made for the care of the insane and indeed we may infer that this unfortunate class of beings were not common in the community. That the " deacons " were directed to take the support of Mad James in hand is natural, since the common church to which the majority of the people belonged was the Dutch Reformed, or Collegiate, by the rules of which the deacons are entrusted with the care of all widows and orphans and the disbursement of funds for charitable purposes. Toward the latter part of the seventeenth century, Brooklyn shared with New York a fear of negro uprising, which in the larger town took the form of the famous " Negro Plot " terror, during which the notorious Mary Burton swore away the lives of about forty unfortunate blacks, who were burned at the stake at the place now known as Five Points. The charge against these people was that they conspired to rise and butcher the whites on the island. Precautionary measures were taken by the Brooklyn people to prevent negroes from crossing the ferry without passes, particularly upon the Sabbath, or to purchase liquors. Slavery was an institution which existed in its milder form among the people of this colony. It had been early established, and kindly relations existed, for the most part, between masters and servants. The decay of the institution was gradual and voluntary, resulting from natural con- ditions, the last slaves being freed within the present century. A hundred years before the war for independence, it was usual to present a newly married couple with a slave to start with, and upon the birth of a child a young slave of the same sex was given to attend it. The common value of one of these units of property was from $izo to $150. The slaves were for the FULTON FERRY IN ,746. '"'''^ P^''^ houschold scrvauts 5° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. rather than field or farm hands. The last public auction of these chattels of which we read took place in 1773, at which time the Widow Heltze Rappelyea sold four slaves belonging to her. Old papers are full of notices relating to slaves, with the usual proportion of notices of runaways, and the occasional account of a crime committed, but the abuse of the system never reached the pitch which afterwards was deplored in the South. The area of Brooklyn was fixed in the year 1703 at 5,177 acres. This, of course, did not mean, that the city was a compact mass of buildings, as at present. The groups and single houses that were included had wide intervals between them, as in any country place. Peach orchards flourished in the intervening lots, woodlands appeared in the distance, and market gardens showed the thrift of the people. Around the dwellings were prim gardens, with labyrinths bordered with box and old-fashioned flowers that our great-grandmothers used to love. The town was an outgrowth of farm settlements, developed and amplified, as has been already stated. As a natural sequence the roads, which had not yet risen to the dignity of streets, were crooked successors to farm lanes, of which the cows had been the original surveyors. Right of way through farm lands to public wood lots had connected lane with lane in winding roads and crooked byways. At length, in 1704, commissioners, appointed for the purpose laid out the " King's Highway," and they naturally followed existing roads along the lines of the original lanes. It was ordered that the highway should commence at the ferry, was to be " fTour rod wide " and its limits at the other end to be within the "new lots of Fflatbush." The commissioners failed to carry out the " ffour rod wide " plan throughout, and the people, who wanted an ample and convenient highway grumbled a good deal. This was especially the case with those landholders who had been obliged to remove fences and buildings which lay in the course of the road, and who thought they should receive a reasonable benefit. The importance to us of the layout of this old King's Highway is in the fact that Fulton street, its successor, persists in the old roundabout habit of the farm lane. There is stili an utter impartiality regarding the points of the compass, and the cow-bell followed a hardly more irregular route than that of the street car which succeeds it. The plan or record of the road gave its course from " lowe water marke at the fferry in Broockland," between the lands of John Aerson, John Coe and George Jacobs, " through the lane that now is," and thence " straight along a certain lane to the southward corner of John Couenhoven's land," etc. It touched the properties of Gerretse, Benjamin Vandewater, Dorant and Glaus Barnse, Volkertses, Gregs, Eldert Lucas and others, along fences and paths. After delays and bickerings innumerable the road was laid out as it remained until the widening of Fulton street in 1849. In some parts the original street, in spite of the four rods wide of the order, was so narrow as to be almost useless. Especially in the winter, when the snows banked up on the wall sides, the single sleighs found difficulty in passing each other, and blockades were not infrequent. In the latter part of the seven- teenth century the people who lived on the water-front were greatly cdfor the disturbed by the presence and prev- alence of pirates and buccaneers, who not only troubled those who went down to the sea m ships, but terrorized the more prosaic people who remained quiet at home The shores of Long Island made capital places for the rendezvous of the lawless freebooters. After awhile, it will be remembered, several prominent men obtained for Captain Kidd a commission to go m search of the pirates and wipe them out, so that the merchantmen could sail in safety ; and when Kidd finally yielded to the temptations of his calling and took to piracy in his turn, these merchants of Manhattan were hotly charged with being his superiors and backers. Tobacco raising for home use was earned on by the farmers in the neighborhood of Brooklyn at the time of the War for Independence, and cotton was also grown. This seems almost incredible, but it is stated on good authority, and we may Dehevethat this Southern staple was actually produced upon Long Island, though presumably in limited quantities. =>!&!/ .''.''' '^i^iff-iifgfi i ICJg^jf:-- - > £i ^^Knag^^ 0^ mSarsJ "^pK' .:^^ "•■■^ ^■IT- ' L -^^|.;jratfe^ llfflp' Pn m ^^^, ~ b'lSHiJ ^^■' 0-i.<-,i u; , ■■■» ^,.£ ~ R ; n~ w->Y ^ ^m^,'--" Benson Homestead at Xew Utrecht. The chain and ringbolt arc still in the cellar, supposed to have been i confinement of slaves. Lord Stirling at the Battle of Brooklyn. Ac the right, the Cortelyou House. — Used by Cortiwallis for a redoubt. BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. 'HEN the war for American independence commenced, Brooklyn was still a little town, slow to move, lacking somewhat in enthusiasm, apathetic in regard to the impending struggle. The character of the people here was like that of the inhabitants of the other Dutch towns which had sprung from New York. So long as their immediate trade, farm or home interests were untouched, they were difficult to rouse, and yet, when' finally awakened, kept going by simple inertia. This trait appeared when the transition was made from Dutch to English rule and back again. They were jeal- ous of their personal rights and privileges in all things touching local government, trade and religion, but with these things their interest stopped. So now, when the people of the colonies were eagerly taking sides for or against the American cause the fever ot enthusiasm did not prove infectious to the people of Brooklyn generally. Yet there were notable exceptions. An earnest minority of the inhabitants committed themselves to one side or the other without reservation or return. ^ , j, ^- ■ At the beginning of the war a number of house-groups, more or less separated, but hardly exceedmg m all fifty dwellings, within the boundaries of the present First, Second and Third Wards, constituted the town The first and principal one of these clusters was around the old tavern at the ferry, a place famous for good fare Phillip Livingston and others lived near the cedar-crowned " Heights." The central part of the present city site was not built upon, most of the dwellings reaching out along the East river shores and the Wallabout. j tj i i A number of delegates were sent from Long Island to the Provincial Congress of i775 and Brooklyn was represented. The congress adjourned on the day before the battle of Lexington, but in New York a representation was immediately called for again, and on the 24th of May deliberated upon the public safety but the lukewarm members from Long Island had to be spurred up to their duty from time to 52 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. time. Later an election of delegates was declared defective because the men chosen had not been instructed to frame a new government, and the new election which was called for never took place. In August Mr. Polhemus, a descendant of the minister of that name who figured so largely in early Brooklyn annals, appeared before the convention with the statement that Kings county had elected no delegates since May, and that he had been requested by the county committees to represent them till the next election. This he was permitted to do. When Washington was full of anxiety and the American cause needed all the bolstering it could get. General Charles Lee's successful effort to raise recruits in Connecticut gave great comfort to the leaders, and his arrival in New York in 1776 with twelve thousand men put a new face on affairs. It was after the loss of Boston by the British, and New York was evidently to become the principal centre of attack, so that nothing could have been more timely than Lee's arrival. His command included a number of Penn- sylvanians, and one of his first moves was to throw four hundred of these into Brooklyn, spreading the force over as much ground as possible, so that it formed a guard from Wallabout to Gowanus. The inhabitants, whether they liked their visitors or not, were obliged to submit to one of the inconveniences of war time and accept the martial guests who were billeted upon them, for whom they were allowed a compensation of seven shillings a week for officers and one shilling and fourpence each for common soldiers. Board in Brooklyn to-day is noticeably higher. Scarcely had Lee's labors for defence com- menced when Stirling took his place and carried on his plans. More than half a hundred men, with an auxiliary force consisting of one-half of the able-bodied citizens of Kings county, were soon engaged in throwing up earthworks and constructing defences. Not that the labors of the citizens were voluntary ; in some cases far from it, for the order to work came from Congress and was peremptory. Among the first batteries constructed was one mounting eight guns and was situated on Jacob Hicks' land on Brooklyn Heights. A regiment was placed on Red Hook, the furthermost point north of Gowanus, and here a redoubt called Fort Defiance was built. Its armament was one three-pounder and four eighteen-pounders ; the corner of Conover and VanDyke streets now marks the spot. At the same time a thousand Con- tinental troops were landed on Governor's Island. Meanwhile videttes, composed of Captain Waldron's troop of light-horse, were guarding the southern shore of the county. Following these came Colonel Hand's riflemen, stationed at New Utrecht. Guards were set to prevent communication between the people on shore and the enemy, and parties placed upon elevations near the city acted as lookouts. While this work of preparation was going forward and nothing but war and the chances of battle were occupying public attention, sickness began to make havoc among the soldiers. General Greene, who had succeeded Stirling, was laid low by a fever, and Sullivan was appointed in his place. At this time the force at Brooklyn consisted of 27,000 men. The defences were Fort Putnam, on a hill above the Wal- labout (now Washington Park); lines of entrenchment from this point northwesterly and westerly along the old Jamaica turnpike ; a redoubt where DeKalb avenue intersects Hudson street, another near the entrenchment line; Fort Box, mounting four guns, on Bergen's Hill, and another redoubt with five guns, on a hill between the Jamaica road (Fulton Place) and Brewer's mill-pond. Then there were the Ponkies- burg (or Cobble) Hill fort, with three guns, and various minor works. The immediate presence of the military and the pushing forward of the lines of defence on all sides gave a very different aspect to sleepy little Brooklyn, and the villagers at last awoke to the fact that some- thing was going on which might possibly be more important than even the cultivation of their grain fields, the preservation of their wood-lots or the doctrine of their clergy. The placing of the chevaux de frise, which had been set in the East river to impede the progress of the British frigates, seemed no doubt a stupendous undertaking to the people whose grandchildren were to see the piers of the East river bridge rise from the same strong current with more peaceful purpose. The billeting of soldiers upon the inhabitants was looked upon by some as a shameful infliction, but it perhaps accomplished as much as any other measure to suppress that Toryism which had appeared in some quarters, and which the Continental Congress was using every means to stamp out in Long Island and elsewhere. The rejection by the American commander of the treacherous Lord Drummond's flag of truce precipi- tated the British attack upon New York and the effort to secure the principal strategic points in the vicinity. In anticipation of this New York was emptied as far as possible of its Tory residents, the public archives were removed to Philadelphia, and in all points the little city was like a ship-of-war whose decks were cleared for action. This naturally put Brooklyn in a state of ferment, and in the midst of the excite- ment news came, upon the morning of the 2 2d of August, that Lord Howe had landed a large force of men at Gravesend Bay. Simultaneously with this news. General Livingston, then stationed at Elizabeth, N. J., was notified that a force of fifteen thousand men was moving on Elizabethport, Amboy and Bergen. With the landing of the troops from the British ships upon the shore of Gravesend Bay came the booming of cannon and the hurtling of shells that crashed into the woods to the great alarm of the inhabitants of that part of the neighborhood. The panic spread; farmers all along the shore gathered their stock and in BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. 53 Denyse's Ferry. — Now Fort Hamilton. Where the Hessians and British Landed, Angiist 22, 1776. many cases their other goods and effects, and started for the interior. Families loaded themselves with their little lares and penates and joined the general exodus. The lanes, by-paths and cross-roads were like little streams that debouched into the more central channels of travel, and from them poured an increasing throng of people in wagons and on foot, driving their herds, while all along this rustic line of march the lowing and bleating of the livestock rose unceasingly. People living near the main roads were awakened, as one observer stated, by the noise, and looked out to find the highways blocked with horses, sheep and cattle. The following day presented a startling and brilliant contrast to this scene of rural panic. Over the same roads the scarlet coats of the British Light-Horse flitted in groups and companies. Already the claws of the tiger were exposed. The force of the British, amounting to fifteen thousand men, instead of pro- ceeding to Bergen and Elizabethport as reported, landed at New Utrecht, under cover of the guns of the "Phoenix," "Rose" and "Grey- hound;" part of these came over in ''j' -, ' ■ flat-boats from Staten Island. There were in this detachment about four thousand light infantry, with forty cannon. A second division, of Hes- sian troops principally, arrived a little later at Denyse's ferry, where Fort Hamilton now is. The riflemen, under command of Colonel Hand, could do nothing to prevent this landing. From their lookout they sullenly ob- served the movement and then fired the hay and grain stacks in the neigh- borhood and withdrew, while the Brit- ish forces spread themselves over the immediate neighborhood of Graves- end Bay. The people of Utrecht and vicinity acted in accord with their predilections, either putting them- selves under British protection as Tories, or fleeing to the American lines for safety. Those who adopted the latter course were many of them very likely men whose political consciences were not so heavily handi- capped by the burdens of prosperity. Cornwallis moved with his Hessian reserves upon Flatbush, and the riflemen who were posted there, to the number of three hundred, retired at his approach. The instructions received by Cornwallis had been not to attack if the post was occupied, but that did not prevent his sending a few iron messengers after the retiring Americans. On the morning of the 23d, the Americans returned the compliment in a more effectual way. The dislodged company were not only sharpshooters in name but in fact, and the Hessians were no match in a skirmish with their agile foemen, who harassed the flanks of Cornwallis' command, till the men of the latter were forced to entrench themselves in the houses. Emboldened by their success and reinforced by fresh Continental soldiers, the riflemen brought up artillery and tried to dislodge the Hessians from the village, but found that in this sort of a duel they were outmatched by the Europeans. A renewed attack by the Americans on the 26th apparently accomplished the desired result, and the British withdrew to join the main force at Flatbush. In the meantime two more brigades of Hessians had landed at New Utrecht and marched toward Flatbush. The invading force now numbered over twenty thousand men, supported by a large fleet on the water, with an opposing body of Americans numbering only about eight thousand. There were numbers, equipment, experience and discipline — every ad- vantage, in fact, which a soldier values — opposed to the poor, half-armed, untrained handful of patriots. It needed not the eye of a military leader to see that the conclusion was a foregone one. On the 23d of August, General Howe, the commander of the British forces, had issued a proclamation offering protection and indemnity to those citizens who would deliver themselves up at headquarters as faithful subjects of the Crown, etc. The result of this measure was that a few people took advantage of the offer, while the majority even of those who favored the Tory side preferred to wait and see how the military manoeu- BRowER's MILL ON GowANus Creek. vres would rcsult. General Putnam took command of the Long Scene o/SHr/mg'sre/reaf. "Yeiiou. Mills- beyond. Island forces two days after the proclamation was issued. In >, 54 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the interval General Washington had visited the lines here and found little to encourage him in the situation. Six regiments were sent over to reinforce the defenders, and the Commander-in-Chief addressed the soldiers in such a way as to rouse their loyalty and enthusiasm. The relief of Gen- eral Sullivan, who was a brave officer, by General Putnam, who added to this quality greater experience and superior generalship, was the immediate result of the commander's personal inspection. The command of the forces on Long Island, outside of Brooklyn, was entrusted to General Sullivan, who occupied the high wooded land now known as Prospect place. To the southward of this position, on the 26th, General Howe's force was assembled in the irregular triangle that lies between New Utrecht (the general's headquarters), Flatbush and Flatlands. General Sullivan was between the position of the British and the American works, which extended from Wallabout to Gowanus in an irregular line. But there were numerous points at which the ridge upon which the American outpost sat could be crossed ; roads and passes which all led to the little Rome where General Putnam was entrenched. Very quietly the forces of Howe and Cornwallis were got in readiness for the final and decisive move. We cannot refuse to acknowledge the generalship which guided the movements of the British during the night of the 26th and the morning of the 27th of August. At nine o'clock in the evening of the 26th the fires were burning, and all the indications of an occupied camp preserved upon the plain where the red- coats had been massed. But at that hour the invading force began their silent advance upon the Continen- tal position. The main column, taking Flatlands as a point of departure, moved without beat of drum in the direction of the Bushwick Hills. Late in the afternoon of the 26th Lord Cornwallis had withdrawn from Flatbush to Flatlands, leaving the 42nd Regiment at the former place. Sir Henry Clinton, command- ing the vanguard of the right and followed by Lord Percy, took the road to New Lotts. The left was com- manded by General Grant, who according to the plan of attack was to take the coast road toward Gowanus. De Heister, with his Hessians, occupied the centre, while the important right wing was to turn the Ameri- can left. In advance of the noiseless column of the right the light troopers swept the country, taking in everybody on the way and thus gaining all the information possible as well as preventing betrayal of their movements. A short time before the much-criticised Connecticut light troopers had been withdrawn from the American force on Long Island, and their absence at this juncture probably contributed largely to the completeness of the surprise. Mount Prospect Ridge was crossed by three passes, and each of these was guarded by about eight hundred men. On the evening of the 26th Colonel Hand's regiment was posted on the west road ; Colonel Johnson of New Jersey, v/ith Lieutenant-Colonel Henshaw, was next to him, and Colonel Miles of Pennsylvania was stationed at the east. The advance of the British right was somewhat circuitous, by way of lanes, by-paths and fields, to insure greater security, and it is said that at a distance of ten rods the sound of the marching troops could not be heard. Considerable care was taken to avoid Schoonmaker's Bridge, which was afterwards found not to have been guarded. At two o'clock in the morning of August 27th the van- guard had reached Howard's half-way house, where Howe entered in dis- guise and called for drinks. He asked Howard whether he had joined "the association." Receiving an affirmative reply, he responded : " Very well; stick to your integrity, but you are my pris- oner and must guide me across these hills out of reach of the enemy, the nearest way to Gowanus." At the point of the sword Howard complied, and with his son, who was also pressed into the service, conducted his captors over the hills and through the woods to the cleared land on the north side. Several Americans were taken on the way, and at least one of these subsequently died in a prison ship. Upon reaching the vicinity of the Jamaica pass, where it was naturally expected that a force of Americans would be posted, the invaders did not attempt to use it, but effected a flanking move- ment by climbing the hills, a manoeuvre which tested the discipline of the troops. Again the English general was astonished to find that the movement had been unnecessary, as the pass was unguarded. In the meantime General Grant, advancing along the coast road on the west, was met by Colonel Atlee and his regiment of Pennsylvanians, who fell back. Lord Stirling, who had been stationed at Gowanus, was personally informed by General Putnam of General Grant's advance and ordered to go to Atlee's aid. He Howard's Inn, East New York, in 1776. BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. 55 met the latter in the gray of morning on the ridge, and ordering him to place his men in ambush in an orchard near by, formed the Delaware and Maryland regiments who accompanied him along the ridge. Special notice should be given to these brave fellows, who were known by the nickname of " Maccaronis " m the army. In equipment, discipline and courage they were unexcelled in the Continental army, and in the conflict which had begun they gave a good account of themselves. The exact location of the place where General Stirling met Atlee's retreat has been determined as being at the cemetery, at 28th and 29th streets, between Second and Third avenues. General Grant, not long before, had stated in Parliament that with 5,000 men he would engage to march from one end of the American continent to the other. Stirling's Retreat across Gowanus Creek. Stirling, in a brief but stirring speech to his " Maccaronis," referred to this boast, adding : " Perhaps Grant has his 5,000 men with him now ; we are not so many, but I think we are enough to prevent his advancing further on his march than that mill-pond." By daylight of the 27th the opposing forces at this point were engaged in a skirmish which lasted for several hours, neither party attempting to dislodge the other, since Stirling's main object was to keep the enemy in check, and that of Grant was to engage the attention of the Americans till signal-guns should announce that Clinton had completed his flanking movement and gained the position he sought in the rear of the Continental outposts. About the time the skirmishing at this' point commenced, De Heister, commanding the Hessians at Flatbush, opened fire upon the American redoubt opposite. This engaged Hand, whose post Clinton was engaged in passing. Sullivan, taking four hundred men who could ill be spared, advanced to reconnoitre just at the time when the British had succeeded in gaining his rear. On receiving word from Howe that the Jamaica pass was unoccupied, Clinton secured it by placing there a detachment of light infantry and at daybreak pushed forward with his own command, and Lord Percy's bringing up the rear, they breakfasted on the Bushwick Hills, thence hastening toward Bedford. Twelve hours after the start from Flatlands, on the evening of August 26th, the British line occupied the distance between Bedford and the junction of the Jamaica and Flatbush roads, not more than half a mile from the American line, that was giving its whole at- tention to De Heister's guns on the other side. When Clinton's guns were heard, the effect on all of the players in this pitiless game was instantaneous and powerful. But with what different feelings the British, who had been waiting for the signal, and the sur- prised Americans listened to the detonations! Count Dunop's jagers, under De Heister's command, pressed forward to attack the redoubt they had been amusing for hours with their fire. Washington Irving says that " Sullivan did not remain to defend the SuYDAM House, Bushwick Lane. Built by Leffert Lefferts, 1700., Occupied by Hessian troops. 56 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. redoubt Sir Henry's cannon had apprised him that his flank w^^s turned and he m danger of being sur- rounded He ordered a retreat, but it was already too late." The impetuous jagers, chargmg the already disheartened Americans, carried their redoubt and pressed the defenders back upon the grenadiers who were waiting to receive them. The commingling of different parties of the Continentals, who seem very earlv to have lost all harmony of action, added greatly to the confusion and made the havoc which ensued more sure Caught in a trap, enclosed fatally between the Hessians on one side and the grenadiers on the other the doomed but courageous Continentals threw themselves into the fight with the ardor of despair. It was afterwards stated that an impression prevailed among them that the foe would grant no quarter. However this may have been, the heroic though frantic defence they made against the bayonets of their overwhelming foe entitled them to the respect as well as the pity of their countrymen. Back and forth, from tree to rock, from coppice to ravine, over rough ground and through by-lanes, in little knots and -roups they were driven, fighting till they were overpowered by sheer force of numbers and made prisoners. DeBevoise House, Bushwick. Occupied by Hessians after the battle. Now owned by Isaac C. DeBevoise. At last human nature could stand no more, and the fight became a flight in which the fugitives were shot down like cattle. The attempt to reach the works at Brooklyn was futile for the great majority of those in retreat. At a point near the present Flatbush avenue on Atlantic street the butchery was greatest. From his eminence the Commander-in-Chief watched the extermination without the ability to succor his soldiers. Sullivan was taken prisoner while fighting in a cornfield, and few of his men who survived the carnage made by Hessian bayonets escaped the same fate. " While these things were happening on the American left, Lord Stirling was giving a splendid account of himself at the right. His Delaware and Maryland soldiers stood for four hours and more, with a firm and determined countenance in close array, their colors flying, the enemy's artillery playing upon them all the while, not daring to attack them, though six times their number." The italics are Washington Irving's. Lieutenant Haslett wrote the account after the battle, and fell into a natural error. We can see more clearly than could one of the actors in that affair that it was not fear but the pursuance of a well-matured plan which kept Grant from advancing at first. He was waiting for the signal. When the first guns from Sullivan's rear announced the success of Clinton's plan, Stirling at once saw the necessity for a with- drawal to avoid being surrounded, and attempted to retreat by a circuitous route. The sudden advance of (irant upon the same alarm had the effect of overwhelming Atlee, who was fkken prisoner. Stirling's BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. 57 efforts to reach the American Hnes were checked at a place known as the Yellow Mills on Gowanus creek, where there was a mill dam and bridge, by the sudden appearance of Cornwallis and his grenadieis Washington, sick at heart from watching the rout of Sullnan's men, expected to see the instant surren- der of Stirling to the vastly superior foice of the Bntish, but to his utter amazement the pluck} leader turned to gi\e battle Washington wiung his hands in his agony of mind, '^^4^ Battle Pass in 1776. exclaiming 'Great God' What bra\e fellows I must this da\ lose ' It was amemoiable fight — despeiatc and heroic Stirling held his ground like a hero, while the bra\e " Maccaronis ' co\ered tnemsehes with glory Cornwallis being rem forced, the general of the Amen cans reluctantl} ordered a retreat toward the camp, directing that the way be forced. The Marylanders fell into an ambuscade, from which only a few escaped. So at last even the semblance of a formation was broken, and the retreat became a chase — a rout from which the pursued would turn now and again in small groups to make a momentary stand against their pursuers. Lord Stirling sought De Heister, who had appeared upon the scene of carnage, and surrendered himself as a prisoner of war, perhaps thinking that at such a time his English compatriots would give him less just treatment. One of the strongest proofs that could possibly be given of the bravery and enterprise of the young men who had just given battle to Cornwallis lay in the fact that the few who managed to escape the slaughter brought with them into the lines twenty-three prisoners. General Washing- ton naturally expected an immediate at- tack upon the inner works. The garrison was not only weakened by losses, but could not but have been despondent in the anticipation of a vigorous attack. But the attack was not made, for the reason, it has been stated, that Howe wished to show forbearance and save un- necessary bloodshed. That night Glover's regiment of Gloucester fishermen — "am- phibians " as somebody called them — arrived from across the water to man the boats in case it should be found necessary Battle Pass in 1892. to Order a retreat to New York. With S8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. PiERREPONT Mansiok. ( The Foul Chimne>s. ) Stood near Montague Street and Plerrepont Place. Washington s Head- quarters during the battle of Brooklyn. t.hem came two regiments of Pennsylvanians. The effect of these arrivals was almost incalcu- lable in cheering the men who had just witnessed the defeat of their companions. The British commander commenced throwing up earthworks at a short distance from the Amer- ican lines, and it became evident that he intended to carry them by regular approaches. While this work was progressing, a heavy fog fell, which prevented the anxious Continentals from seeing what was going on. Taking advantage of its continuance, General Mifflin and several others rode out to Red Hook to reconnoitre; as they reached the point the fog lifted and they saw with consternation that there was unusual activity on board of the English war vessels which lay at anchor near by. The truth instantly flashed across each mind that the same tactics which had crushed Sullivan between the Hessians and the grenadiers might be employed to entrap and obliterate the Amer- ican garrison by bringing up the war ships so as to cut off the retreat to New York. Hastening back to Washington with the news and their conjectures regarding it, the officers took part in the council of war which was immediately held, at which it was decided that a retreat should if possible be effected. Fortu- nately the fog held. Boats were immediately called in from all available points, and Glover's " amphib- ians " put in charge of the embarkation. Then the work of removing the garrison and arms to New York commenced. As one division after another silently left their places in the works those who remained spread out to fill the places which had been left vacant. Only one mistake was made, General Mifflin's regiment, which was to have remained to the very last, being marched to the boats at an inopportune time. This was owing to an error in the transmission of an order, and was remedied at once without the enemy having discovered the absence of the garrison. The remarkable feature was in the fact that the men went back in an orderly way without showing panic or insubordination, waiting patiently till their turn should come. The retreat was a complete success and was conducted, in the opinion of military critics, in a masterly manner. It was a difficult affair for the officers to manage, for the eagerness of the troops gath- ered at the beach led them to tumble into the boats as fast as they could. It is related that Washington, who " swore terribly at Monmouth," also displayed an effective power of indignation at Brooklyn. To end the disorder he seized a huge stone, and, holding it high above the boat, ordered the men out of it, threat- ening with an impassioned oath to "sink it to hell." The boat was promptly vacated and embarkation proceeded thereafter in an orderly way. All of the troops and the armament of the forts, with the exception of a few heavy guns, were removed to New York, and the occupancy of Brooklyn by the Conti- nental forces was at an end. The quartering of the American troops upon the villagers of Brook- lyn had been irksome, and just before the transfer of the American command to General Putnam the destruction of property and dis- regard of property rights became more than annoying. Demoralization is always cruel and unlovely. The disposition of the American troops was therefore a matter of complaint from the householders and people of property, but it was nothing to the inconvenience, discomfort and wrong which the townspeople suffered at the hands of the English victors after the last American soldier had been driven from his de- fences. The wide difference between even the poorest and meanest American in his methods of thought and life and that of the profes- sional soldier of England or, worse, of the Continent, needs no remark. Although after the battle of Brooklyn, or of Long Island, as it is generally called (the " Battle of Flatbush," by the chronicler of that section), the majority of the inhabitants hastened to reply to the proclamation of Lord Howe by submitting their allegiance to the crown of England ; although the members of committees and official representatives to Colonial assemblies followed the example of the rank and file and protested their loyalty in a document in which all „ „ , ,^. ■' ^ Presbyterian Church, Jamaica. fealty to congresses and committees is denied, and pleasure is cravenly Used as a prison by the British. ' BROOKLYN IN THE REVOLUTION. 59 'Old Jersey" Prison Ship, expressed at the prospect of returning once more to English rule ; yet these acts of concession and submission did not save the people from the most unpleasant results of the proximity of a camp. The worst of the Hessian mercenary soldiers came in contact with an almost defenceless community. That tells its own story. There was insecurity in the farm, the street and the home. The victors appropriated the spoils. Of livestock and farm produce there was not, perhaps, much left to take, because the Americans had attended to them, driv- ing off the cattle and burning the stores of hay and grain, to prevent its falling into British hands. The few horses, cattle and sheep that were left upon the arrival of the British rapidly disappeared. There was little inducement to work on the farms when the animals were taken from the ploughs and carts, and farm utensils broken for firewood. Women, as usual, were the greatest sufferers, not only in the entailed inconvenience of having their homes turned into lodging-houses for a profligate class of men, but in the graver offences which naturally attended the condition of affairs. The submission of the Kings county militia, who had taken a very small part in the defence of Brooklyn against the invaders, was to be expected. Even during the time of active hostilities they had hidden themselves in some cases, and in others deserted to the enemy. The American prisoners were in many cases paroled, and upon a promise of Congress to pay two dollars a week for their board they were billeted upon the inhabitants. That both they and the British soldiers were unwelcome guests is certain. There was little enough of provisions for the impoverished inhabitants themselves, and the necessity of providing for their compulsory guests at a price which even at that day was extremely low did not add to their satisfaction or comfort. After the submission of the citizens, compulsory registration followed, and then, to attest their loyalty, men, women and children were decorated with red badges. As the material for these decorations became scarce, it is said that the women sacrificed certain garments, presumably needed for winter warmth. It was a decided case of " kissing the rod." Brooklyn was virtually under martial law, which in that case meant no protection for property, no regard for individual rights. Silverware, to be safe at all, was buried or otherwise hidden, and various methods and stratagems used to avoid theft and imposition. It is apparent that while the majority of the men offered allegiance, and the women wore at least the outward signs of fervent loyalty, yet many of the latter sympa- thized with the Colonial party secretly. Perhaps this feeling grew with the continuance of inconvenience and suffering to which they were subjected. Perhaps, too, the supercilious attitude of the British had much to do with conversions. The average red-coat officer did not consider the slow Dutch farmer his equal, and was at no pains to conceal his contempt for one whom he regarded as a simple yokel. Although instances have been quoted where a Brooklynite was obliged to submit to a caning for forgetting to salute one of his military masters, yet the latter were seldom at the trouble of noticing or return- ing the customary observance. In property, in rights, in comfort and in pride the people were despoiled, and learned too late how fictitious was the glamour that surrounded the British " protectors." Not the least of the harm done by the presence of the soldiery was in the introduction of camp vices and unthrifty habits among the young, of depression, of sports and amusements, but almost invariably such as gave opportunity for gambling or the indulgence of brutal tastes. The battle of Brooklyn resulted in the exposure of many unburied bodies in the woods and ravines over which the slaughter of Sullivan's and Stirling's men had occurred. These and the filth of the camp produced sickness, to which a damp autumn which followed the hot summer added, and many deaths were occasioned. It is not necessary to give a full account of the prison ships in which so many of the people of Long Island, as well as the soldiers from other parts of the country taken in battle languished. There were various prisons whose horrors have been told by the historian and the sickening details brought to light from old records and letters yellow with age. But the misery of the " Sugar House," and other prisons, did not compare with the sad condition of those who formed a living grave in the floating " hells," as they were aptly named, which, anchored in the waters of Long Island, were a constant reminder of the Tablet from the Tomb of the Martyrs. We read, even during the period 6o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. tender mercy of the gracious English. Fully five thousand people are said to have been immured toward the end of 1776 in the "Jersey" and other prison ships. Many of these unfortunates were soldiers taken in the battle of Brooklyn, while others were civilians who had adhered to the Continental cause and faith, and were not admitted to parole for various reasons. The ships were old, dismantled hulls, from which all the exterior fittings, even to the figure-heads and rudders, were removed. The port-holes were closed, and smaller windows, crossed with iron bars, cut in the place of them. These gave little hght and less air, the supply being entirely insufficient for the unhappy beings that thronged the spaces between decks. Food, insufficient in quantity and vile in quality, was portioned in much the same manner that a careless servant would feed a kennel of dogs. Men got their food, slept, lived and died in a common pen, where the constant effluvia from the pent, unclean crowd must have been unbearable. Sickness such as prisoned men are subject to, sickness from foul air, uncooked food and discouraged hearts, was only to be exceeded in fatality by the ravages of epidemics. The small-pox broke out and slew its hundreds. From all sources, military and civil, the recruits to this army of the despairing kept pouring constantly in. Prisoners arrived day after day, by tens and twenties and hundreds, yet though none were ever released, the ships contained all in their over-crowded holds. Death made room for the newcomers. The poor wretches prayed for it, welcomed it when it came. No tongue or pen can describe the anguish of those to whom it was for a season denied. On one occasion a number of the prisoners succeeded in setting fire to their jail, and though the majority were rescued, to be crowded upon an already overful ship near by, yet some perished in the purifying flames. Of all the grewsome tales that wars have contributed to the world's chamber of horrors, there is none more terrible than that of the prison ships. The loss of Brooklyn's town records was one misfortune, the effect of which is felt to this day. During the Revolution John Rappelyea was clerk to the Town Clerk, Leffert Lefferts. He adhered to the Tory cause, and his wife succeeded in making herself obnoxious, it is said, as an offensive partisan. Between them, prompted either by pique or some other motive, they made away with the town records, taking them to England. It is stated that Mrs. Rappelyea was the guilty party, and that she so angered her patriotic neighbors by persistence in the tea habit after all the rest of the American community had sworn off, that her house and candle were made a target by hot-headed militiamen. In revenge, she sent a negro servant to impart information of importance to General Howe, at the time of the American evacuation of Brooklyn ; but the messenger fell, fortunately, into the hands of the Hessians, who could not understand him. Brooklyn became too warm for the lady, who was accompanied in her emigration by the records. In the year 1810, a granddaughter of the Town Clerk's clerk returned to America and offered the city of Brooklyn the stolen records for the sum of $10,000. Through a spirit of economy or prudence or stupidity, the authorities allowed the papers to slip through their fingers, neither acceding to the demand for purchase money nor taking legal measures to secure them. The loss was a total and irreparable one, unless some future discoverer should come across the missing records in some forgotten English hiding-place. One blessing the army of the Tories left — only one which has been noticed — that was the discovery of turf for fuel. The absence of wood, where before it had been so plentiful, made this a great boon. The presence of a vast supply of turf on Long Island had been known previously, but to the British soldiers was due the knowledge that this unappreciated material was a splendid fuel which could be used in place of the devastated woods upon which they had before relied. It is a matter of more than passing interest to locate the forts which were situated in and near Brook- lyn during the war for independence. .\t a point near Pierrepont and Henry streets was Fort Sterling. Fort Putnam was on a wooded hill near the Wallabout and is now called Fort Greene. On the lands of Van Brunt and DeBevoise at the intersection of Nevins and Dean streets stood the original Fort Greene. There was a small redoubt near the Jamaica road somewhat to the east of Fort Putnam, and another on Bergen's (or Boerum's) Hill was called Fort Box ; this mounted four guns and its site was near the termina- tion of Hoyt and Carroll streets, not far from Smith street. Corkscrew Fort was on Ponkiesberg, or Cobble Hill and was also called the Cobble Hill Fort; it occupied the space which Atlantic, Pacific, Court and Clinton streets now bound. The land is described as a high conical hill, but it is certain that no such hill exists in that locality to-day. Fort Defiance was at Red Hook. The Corkscrew Fort in 1812 was named Fort Swift, after General Swift. Fort Putnam became Fort Greene, the oblong redoubt between Putnam and Greene was named for Cummings, Fort Greene was called Fort Masonic and Fort Box was called Fireman. The fact that most of the hills upon which the old redoubts and lines of defence stood have been obliterated and the works themselves replaced by piles of brick and masonry of a more pacific character, makes it hard to identify the sites and difficult to realize that actual war ever raged in what are now peaceful Brooklyn streets. The Old Bergen Homestead. Formerly at Third Avenue m\d Thirty-third Street. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 1783— 1841. \ HE general meagreness of the records of personal experiences in a period so full of interest as that of the British occupancy of Long Island, makes the little that has been transmitted to us of double value. While the records of the movements of armies and the game of war are valuable to the student of history, that which ap- peals to us most strongly is the narrative of the homely lives, the sufferings, shifts and social ways of the class whom Abraham Lincoln called " the plain people." During the war, amid a great deal of apathy and some Toryism, there had been much sturdy patriotism and loyalty to the continental cause. A large sum of money was contributed by the inhabitants hereabouts to the American party. This money was secretly collected, the sugar-house or the prison ship being the penalty of exposure for the collector and the contributor alike. To give, as some people did, hundreds of dollars out of their poverty and distress, when the giving was attended with such personal danger, was a kind of heroism which goes far to offset the somewhat sluggish patriotism of the people as a whole. One incident is full of entertainment. It is related that a certain major in the American army was in the house of a Dutch matron who was counting into his hands her carefully saved con- tributions to the cause — not a little of which had been earned by selling milk and butter to the English officers — when one of the latter appeared at the gate. Consternation was expressed in the faces of the lady and her daughters, while the visitor looked anxiously for some way of escape from the uncomfortable trap in which he found himself. Never losing her presence of mind, the good mother commanded one of her daughters to hurry out to meet the visitor and engage him in conversation, and on no account to let him enter the house. Then occurred a lively scene ; the Dutch maiden at the porch calling all her vivacity into 62 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. play to charm and detain the unsuspecting Eng-lishman, talking- as only a lively girl can talk, making the visitor forget the object of his visit and also perhaps reconsider some of the national prej- udices against the Dutch, while the major and his hostess within the house hurried from room to room in search of a safe hiding- place. It is a pleasure to add that virtue, embodied in the comely maiden and her patriotic mother, was triumphant, and the villain (continental f(;r English- man) went away satisfied that if he had forgotten the errand on which he had come, he had at least gained new light on the conversational ability of Dutch girls. A party of Clinton's young officers captured the carefully hidden money of another good lady, and after having it for a time in their possession, returned it without a suspicion of its existence. The place where this little treasure was concealed was one of the fat pincushions which Brooklyn housewives of the olden time were wont to wear attached by ribbons to their girdles. Some one of the officers who were billeted upon the family drew his sword in rough pleasantry and cut the ribbons which held the pincushion in question, so that it fell heavily to the floor. Not n(.)ticing the unusual weight, the unmannerly crowd began to play ball with the improvised bank, and the dame, not daring to betray any trepidation or interest, was obliged to sit calmly knitting while her store of Jacobusses and Josephusses and silver pieces was tossed and struck from hand to hand. It is possible that she dropped some stitches, but her face remained impassive while the pincushion was fished from under the table or rescued from the ashes of the hearth, in imminent danger of bursting or burning, and thus revealing the hidden store of gold. We value the humorous storv of the girl who rushetl nut with a broomstick to Dutch G.-\rdek at the Bergen Homilste.ad. the conversational ability of Dutch girls. I.NTERIOK OF SLAVE KITCHEN. frighten the horses attached to a gun- carriage, and succeeded in making them overturn the piece. What fright and glee must have been hers as she ran from the pursuit of the enraged gunners. Verily the Brooklyn girl has always been equal to even her own high reputation for at- tractiveness, quick wit and charming reso- lution. A readjustment of social relations FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 63 and settling down to something like former habits gradually took place. New boundaries did not do away with old customs entirely, though the old order had changed in part. The last thing to give way was the use of the Dutch tongue and the folk-lore and folk-habits that it carried with it. The children still had the rhymes of Holland to comfort them. " St. Nicholaas, goed heilig man," was still the patron of the Christmas holidays ; quaint superstitions threw a glamour of poetry about the prosaic details of farm and household, and the simplicity of thought that the world was fast losing retained for a little while its last stronghold here. Next to the readjustment of farm boundaries came the reorganization of local government, but not for several years was this completed. The first town meeting subsequent to 1776 was held in 1784. Then it was discovered for the first time that the town records, already alluded to, had been stolen. The realization of the importance of this loss did not come for many years, so that the opportunity to recover the documents, which occurred but once, was not embraced. The state government recognized Brooklyn as a town m 1788. From this time its growth was grad- ual, but some advance was apparent. The beginning of a new spirit of enterprise was to be seen, though to us doubtless the life of the townspeople would seem only less than absolute stagnation. Before the end of the eighteenth century the population had reached 1,603, of whom 224 were electors. A writer of that day (the Rev. Jedediah Morse, in his " American Gazetteer ") says that Brooklyn contained " A Presbyte- rian Church, a Dutch Reformed Church, a powder magazine and some elegant houses, which lie chiefly on one street." Probably the placing the churches and the powder magazine together in this manner was purely accidental. While the State census of 1796 gives the population of Brooklyn at the figures stated above, the total number of inhabitants in Kings county, according to General Jeremiah Johnson's scrap-book, was 4,495, including 621 electors — " 930 of these are free white males of ten and upwards; 700 free white males under that age; 1,449 fi^^e white females; 1,432 slaves and a number of free persons not enumerated. The inhabitants are chiefly of Dutch extraction. Some are attached to their old prejudices, but, within a few years past, liberality and a taste for the fine arts have made considerable progress. The slaves are treated well, but the opinion relative to their freedom is yet too much influenced by pecuniary motives. It would certainly redound to the honor of humanity could that blessing be effected here." At the beginning of the century the town of Brooklyn was divided into seven districts, known as The Ferry, Red Hook, Brooklyn, Bedford, Gowanus, Cripplebush and Wallabout. The Ferry included all the land lying between the Wallabout mill-pond and Joralemon street, and was afterwards enlarged so that it corresponded with the first five of the city wards of a later date. The Red Hook district, including the Red Hook, was bounded on the eastward by District street and extended to a line from the head of Brewer's Mill-pond to the corner of the Red f Hook road. Brooklyn included the land lying south of the Ferry to Flatbush, between the post road and the old estate of N. R. Couen- hoven. Bedford lay to the east of Brooklyn and along the line of lot No. i to Bushwick. The Gowanus district lay west of Brooklyn, Bedford and Red Hook, with Flatbush on the south and New Utrecht on the west boundaries. Cripple- bush ran south to Bedford, east to Bushwick and north to the AVallabout creek. Wallabout lay between Brooklyn, Bedford, Bushwick and Wal- labout Bay and the Ferry. The Catherine Street Ferry, or " New Ferry " as it was called, was es- tablished in 179s, and close by was a rope-walk owned by Judge Furman, one of the ferry propri- etors. A few years later one John Harmer ad- vertised his patent floor cloth manufactory. This John Harmer was the friend and admirer of Tom Paine, who spent some time at his house on Fulton street. Other small manufactories sprang up from time to time, and business enterprises were undertaken. In 1785 the first attempt was made to organize a fire department. In the last year of the last century — the century that had brought so much of change to the town — the first real newspaper was started by Thomas Kirk. Map of Brooklvn Village. 64 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. It was called the Courier and New York and Long Island Advertiser. Li the copies still preserved there is little of startling interest and their pages would hardly impress one familiar with the journals of the present day, but they possess an interest in common with all pioneer efforts toward development. The more advanced thinkers were beginning to realize the probable future of Brooklyn, to a limited extent perhaps, but still sufficiently to prepare for future development. The land lying in the direction of Wallabout Bay, it was foreseen, would be the choice of a growing population rather than the territory lying beyond the heights. Town lots, on the tract to the east of the ferry and bounded by the Wallabout, were surveyed and laid out as the site of a future city. It was called Olympia, and occupied the estate which had belonged to the Tory Rapelje, which had been condemned by the committee of forfeiture, after the war. The proprietors, in their advertisement, showed a knowledge of methods which we usually attribute to the modern " promoter" of new towns. Among other things they affirm that: " The land is better situated than any near New York for a counterpart of that city. . . . It is certain that on the southern side of Brook- lyn Ferry the hills are so high and such astonishing exertion is necessary to remove them that Brooklyn Ferry can never extend to any great distance in that quarter and all improvements must necessarily be made in Olympia. . . . The principal streets in this village are sixty feet, but the cross streets are not so wide. They are not yet paved, though a vast number of pebbles may be had here," etc. About this time there were eight grist-mills in the different sections of the town, and other improvements, called for by the exi- gencies of a farming community, were made. It is interesting to note that at so early a date two of the measures which have occupied the attention of later generations were advocated. The first of these, the building of a bridge between Brooklyn and New York, was spoken of as a perfectly feasible scheme and one citizen of repute offered to construct such a bridge, which should be sufficient for all requirements, in two years. It is hardly to be supposed that the contemplated structure was to rival the one which now spans the East river, but to have conceived the possibility of bridging a mile-wide stream at all was a big advance for Brooklyn. The other plan which was suggested was the establishment of a navy-yard at Wallabout. In the year 1800 Mr. John Jackson sold a tract of his land in the Wallabout, to the United States government for $40,000. At the time that was a large fortune and the sale was considered a very lucky stroke of busi- ness. The suppression of the rebellion in Ireland brought a considerable number of emigrants to America during this year and not a few of the exiles settled in Brooklyn; the enterprising Mr. Jackson prepared for the arrival of these people and secured the tenancy of numbers of them by calling a certain hill situated on his property " Vinegar Hill " after the last battle of the Irish Rebellion. With the increased population and prosperity of Brooklyn came also an increase in crime and vice, or perhaps it would be correct to say the appearance of crime and vice, since the recommendation made at a town meeting in 1802 for the erection of a " cage or guard-house," seems to warrant the supposition that previous to that time there had been no such place. People lived in great security, not anxious for the safety of their goods and chattels, though the streets were unlighted at night and the watchmen few and imperfectly equipped. The householders, in view of the first of these conditions, were recommended to put candles in their front windows on dark nights as a convenience to those having to be upon the streets ; that was the genesis of street lighting in Brooklyn. The city was made a fire district in 1801 ; : the following year .saw the incorporation of the Wallabout and Brooklyn Toll Bridge Company, by which the roads were straightened so that the distance saved in travel was about seven miles, while part of the way was paved, either then or shortly afterwards. The Flushing Bridge Company was a rival concern which also accompHshed good results in effecting a shorter cut to the ferry. The inconvenience of crossmg the ferry for banking purposes, especially in inclement weather, was felt by the business men on this side of the river to be unnecessary, and as another mark of progress a bank was incorporated, which proved of great advantage. The growth of a city is like that of a snowball, if there is any reason for it to grow at all ; it increases slowly at first, and then more rapidly and noticeably, and, like a boy, outgrows its jacket and bursts its buttons continually. A scourge visited the city in 1809, and for a time broke off all intercourse with the twin city across the East river. This was the yellow fever. In the controversy which arose regarding its origin and spread, the maintenance of quarantine and such questions, we detect a very familiar note and find a precedent for a great deal of discussion which has interested the people hereabouts eighty-three years later. During the prevalence of the yellow fever there were about thirty deaths, all the victims being under twenty-eight years of age. It was finally decided that the cause of the epidemic was purely local, which seems to be a confession that Brooklyn at that day was not immaculately clean. Among the landmarks of the town, and one which was for years the scene of out-of-door festivities, was one known as the tulip-tree. It was "the tulip" par excellence, though in reality it is said to have been a giant magnolia, under whose spreading branches the tryst of the lovers or the revels of the more gregarious townsmen were held. It stood on the lower slope of what were known as " the hills," eminences sloping to the East river, which have since been removed to fill in wharves, etc. Parties from New York, as well FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 6S Continental Hotel, East New York. as picnickers from Brooklyn, were in the habit of enjoying the magno- lia's shade, but at last one day it was discovered that some party had ig- nited the trunk by building a fire in it. However, it survived and put forth leaves for several years after that, till finally the march of improvement obliterated the site, and one of the last sylvan landmarks of ancient Brueckelen was only a memory. During the interval between the Revolutionary struggle and the war of 1812, no part of the country showed a greater advance without suffering a loss of identity than did the neighborhood of Brooklyn. After the indifference with which most of the people had observed the approach of the first war, there had been a steady education in patriotism — in that love of country which is a higher and broader sentiment than love of home, because more unselfish — so that when the rumors of another war with England crystalized, and the inevitable result of English insults and abuses was imminent, a generation whose fathers had held back and objected to war prepared with alacrity for its share in the new conflict. In the thirty-six years which had intervened, Brooklyn had become thoroughly American in sentiment. But fortunately the preparations were unnecessary so far as local participation in the war was concerned ; though Long Island men were to be found in the army and navy of the country. However, the lasting effect of the preparation and enthusiasm was felt in the still greater increase in loyalty and the develop- ment of public spirit. The military companies formed in Brooklyn and neighborhood consisted of four principal bodies. The first of these was a small command called the Fusiliers, under the leadership of Captain Herbert. Their uniform, which was not indeed uniform with anything else in the United States, consisted of short green coatees and Roman leather caps. They were carefully drilled and are mentioned as being a " respectable " body of men. Next came the Flying Artillery, commanded by Captain John Wilson. The Artillerists, which were offered to and accepted by the government, were led by Captain Barbarin, The Rifles, whose captain was Stryker, numbered fiity or sixty members and were arrayed in green frocks trimmed with a broad yellow fringe, the effect of this somewhat gorgeous raiment being suggestive of the katydid ; so the nickname of the " Katydids " was applied to the company and accepted as proudly as their ancestors in the old world adopted that of " Beggars " in a former century. Although they did not participate in the actual warfare of that period, yet the military recruits of Brooklyn found The Brooklyn Shore in 1820. From Red Hook Point. 66 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. employment toward the close of the war. Not only the military, indeed, but all the civilians who were able to work embraced the one opportunity that came to them to show their well-developed loyalty to the flag. It was in 1814 that the news of the intended expedition to some American port roused the whole country to anxiety and alarm. What the objective point was to be no one knew, but could only conjecture that New York might be the one. The secret report of the committee of defence showed how great the apprehension was, and also that the probable approaches to the city were carefully canvassed. Of these it seemed most likely that the way once taken, by the landing on Gravesend Bay, might again be used in order to get in behind the defences at Brooklyn. General J. G. Swift was appointed to plan and engineer the defences on Long Island. These began at Wallabout and extended to Bergen's Hill and to Fort Lawrence, being overlooked by Fort Greene and Fort Lawrence. They included several redoubts. The working-parties who engaged in building this line of defences were largely volunteers, and included every class of the community. Young and old, white and black, rich and poor, natives and foreigners, all bore a hand, and those who were not able to work cheerfully paid for substitutes. While all the military, not only in Brooklyn, but in the neighboring towns, worked with a will, theirs was but a fraction of the labor. Bushwick, Flatbush, Flatlands, and each of the towns in turn, sent its quota of men, and a chronicle of the affair is still preserved, showing the dates upon which each place or party took its turn. The people of Bushwick, led by their venerable pastor, the Rev. Mr. Bassett, marched to the works as though going to a dance, and while they wielded the picks and spades, the clergyman aided by prayer, exhortation, and more solid comfort in the way of refreshments. From New York, among others, came a party of Columbia College students, eager to take their turn. Even from New Jersey whole villages marched over with music and flags, to participate in what was felt to be a service of national importance. When ground was broken on Cobble Hill, the scene of former conflict, a salute was fired by the military present at the time. One old man came to Fort Greene from a distance, with his four sons, and remarking that he had worked there nearly forty years before in the old war, he seized a spade and labored all day within the trenches. There has never been, before or since, greater enthusiasm shown in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, and it is doubtful if any military work ever numbered among those actually engaged in its construction so many classes of men ; certainly none ever excelled this record. From a distance ladies came in a large company to encourage the workers ; bands of music and flags accompanied those who made a holiday parade of their labor ; the local poets composed songs and verses on the occasion ; from the pen of the well-known author of ■' The Old Oaken Bucket," Samuel Woodworth, came a long poem which began as follows : "Johnny Bull, beware, Keep at proper distance, Else we'll make you stare, With our firm resistance." The " firm resistance '' was not needed. Almost immediately following this patriotic outburst the welcome news of peace was proclaimed and the necessity for guarding New York had passed for a time at least. But the patriotic spirit and the increased interest of the people in affairs of national moment made the fortification of this part of Long Island by its people and their neighbors more important perhaps than a great victory would have been. In 181 2 Brooklyn experienced her first large fire, in the course of which a number of buildings were consumed and much property damaged The volunteer firemen of the place were aided in the work by their brethren from across the river, and one of the incidents of the day was the bringing over a " machine" from New York on a fishing-smack, which was loaned by its captain for the occasion. The people threw open their houses for the entertainment of the firemen and resolutions of thanks were afterwards passed to all those who had aided in fighting the conflagration. The fact that Brooklyn possessed at this time only a couple of small and inefficient engines and depended mainly upon New York and especially on the " float- ing engine," so called, from the latter place, made a fire among the frame buildings a very dangerous matter and the better facilities which shortly followed this affair and perhaps were partly due to the cor- respondence and suggestions it caused, made the town more secure in this respect than it had ever been before. The " floating engine " was a large and powerful crank machine worked by thirty or forty men. It was mounted on a scow and propelled by oars or sweeps and was the great dependence of the Brooklyn- ites. The regular ferry-boats were not sufficiently large to transport an engine and complaint was made on this score. Shortly after this the horse or team boats, invented and built by Mr. John Garrison Murphy, began to ply on the New or Catherine Street Ferry, and in 1814, before the close of the war, the first steam ferry-boat was used. She was named the " Nassau " and made her initial trip on the loth of May. The carrying capacity of this pioneer boat was five hundred people and the extent to which she was patronized showed how greatly such superior facility for travel between Brooklyn and the metropolis FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 67 Early Type ok Steam Ferry-Boat. had been needed. Elsewhere are mentioned the efforts of those to whom the early growth of our educa- tional institutions are mainly due. In passing we can only refer at this point to the establishment of the Loisian Seminary, which was the mother of our public schools. It was the work of a society or association of ladies, formed in 1813. The object was the education of poor children, and the school was named after Lois, the grandmother of Timothy. The subject which more than any other occupied the attention of Brooklynites after the close of the war was the incorporation of this place as a village. In 1815 the matter was agitated and with the public school question became one of the two important issues of the day. We find the names of Andrew Mercien, Robert Snow, John Doughty and others who were prominent at that time, interested in both movements. That of. the public school organization was decided upon at a meeting held in January of 18 16. Messrs. Mercien, Snow and Seaman were elected trustees, and having investigated the cost of a site and other mat- ters necessary to the establishment of a school, reported to the meeting subsequently that the requisite lots, property owned by Mr. Noah Waterbury, on Concord street, had been decided upon. Two thousand dollars was thereupon voted, the sum to be raised by a tax upon the people of the district ; and it was fur- ther decided that the Loisian School should be the common school of the district. The public meeting to decide upon the incorporation of the village of Brooklyn was held a month earlier and was presided over by Mr. Mercien, Mr. Spooner being secretary. As an outcome of the action then taken application was made at the next session of the Legislature for a village charter, the boundaries proposed being those of the already existing fire district. At Lawrence Brower's public-house a second meeting of the freeholders and inhabitants of the town, held on the 8th of January, 1816, appointed Thomas Everit, Alden Spooner, Joshua Sands, Rev. John Ireland and John Doughty a committee to draft an application for the proper incorporation of the district. These gentlemen met the next day at Hezekiah B. Pierrepont's house and prepared the papers, which were immediately forwarded to Albany. Shortly afterward the bill passed the senate and was referred to a committee of the house. Alden Spooner, just referred to, was the editor of the Lo)ig Island Star and was an earnest advocate of the bill. Dr. B. F. Thompson, chairman of the house committee having the application in consideration, afterwards became a historian of Long Island. The act of incorporation passed the Legislature on the 12th of April. It provided for five trustees and three assessors, who were to be chosen on the first Monday of May of each year by the freeholders and other qualified voters of the village. By this board the president, clerk and other village officers were to be chosen. The ordinary declaration of the rights and powers of the freeholders and the framing of by-laws, etc., by the trustees, was next in order. Andrew Mercien, John Garrison, John Doughty, John Dean and John Seaman were the first trustees of the village. Its boundaries were described as " beginning at the public landing south of Pierrepont's distillery, formerly the property of Philip Living- 68 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Looking South from the Foot of Pierrepont'St. 1836. From a painting I'v Mary L. Sncden, in the L. I. Hist. Soc. Museum. Tlie TACindmill was at the foot of Joralemon Street. -that is the Fulton or " old " ferry — was the Catherine ston, deceased, on the East river; thence running along the public road leading from the said landing to its intersection with Red Hook Jane; thence along said Red Hoolc lane to where it intersects the Jamaica Turnpike Road, thence a northeast course to the head of Wallabout Millpond; thence through the centre of the mill-pond to the East river; and thence down the East river to the place of beginning." At that time there was a growing cluster of houses, taverns, stables and other buildings near the old ferry, the older ones of stone, built in the Dutch fashion, and the later structures frame, flimsy and not too beautiful. The King's Highway was still a straggling road at the hither end, though after a little it^tretched away upon business intent, till it reached even to Mon- tauk, being; a highway indeed for all the peopli| of Long Island. On this highway was the old Dutch church. A quarter of a mile to the left of the ferry Street Ferry, which had become quite m^^-^^^MjOL important within ,a few years. The thickly settled localities were grouped along McKenzie's' and Vinegar Hills and northwardly towards John Jackson's shipyard. On the Wallabout was the United States Navy Yard, then in its infancy, having been established in 1801 on the land bought from Mr. Jackson by the government. The heights to the east of the ferry were still covered with groves of locust and cedar. This part of the town was then known as Clover Hill. After the incorporation of Brooklyn as a village the new spirit of enterprise which had been for some time apparent, showed itself more decidedly than ever. The awakened energy which seemed to follow the latest war period received an added impulse with the formal organization of the village in 1816. By 1820 the population of the village had grown to over five thousand souls, and the opening of new streets, the building of new houses, and the advocacy of new measures showed that Brooklyn was fairly awake. The widening of Fulton street was decided upon at this time and a new market was projected; a street "to ascend the heights" was surveyed and numerous improvements in the village projected; but among the most significant signs of progress was the lighting of the streets with lamps, "as far as the fork of the Ferry street," and the numbering of the houses. There were at the beginning of the third decade of this century a number of celebrated Europeans who made their residence in Brooklyn. The English artist, Guy, was one of these; his memory is kept alive by a snow picture, which he painted and which was at one time a famous and famil- iar work of art. It is known as the Brooklyn snow scene, and represents the village as it was at that time. Our engraving of it, from a photograph of the original, is a valuable record of the life and aspects of the vil- lage of the day. Talleyrand, the great Frenchman with his rickety body, magnificent mind and interesting conscience, was temporarily a Brooklynite. We cannot ,, but wonder how he and the village agreed and whether he interested himself in its politics or intrigued with its public men. His house was on Fulton street, opposite Hicks, which about that time was opened for carriages as far as Samuel Jackson's house, between Clark and Pierre- pont streets. Tom Paine at Sands and Fulton streets I with John Har- [ mer. The first settled physi- cian of Brooklyn was Doctor Bar- barin, who was a well-known resi- dent for many years. In 1822 as many as fifty too, lived for some years Fulton Ferrv-Boat, 7836. Fulton Ferry-Boat, 1S27. new dwelling houses were erected, which is ameasure of advancement when compared with the fact that at the close of the Revolutionary war there were only fifty-six standing within the village limits. In the same year the First Pres- byterian, First Baptist and York o 'a 3 c^ a o 00 ^ 5 5 flW bo ^ o tS 4-> ^ -Tl . ^ -d (i> Hoc +J l^J .« to -Q ^ C pH « " g -I bo O ^ t3 O CIh -5 S 5 •a £ o c Is I » a a .3 ^ 70 THE EA(;LE AXD BROOKLYN. Street Methodist churches were dedi- cated; the first Brooklyn directory was published by Alden Spooner; the Kings County Medical Society was founded; the corner-stone of the first Roman Catholic Church was laid. In April, 1823, was dedicated the brick church of the First Presbyterian So- ciety, famous later for the preach- ing of Rev. Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, and afterwards as being the original home of Plymouth Church, when Henry Ward Beecher came to Brooklyn in 1847. By 1823 the population amounted to about 9,000 for the town and 7,000 for the village, the directory containing the names of 190 families. Brouklvn Heights in 1840. «»■■■ In this year much was done to imi^rove Showing Colonnade Koiv, Cohtmbia and Middagh Sts. Burned 1853. the town; streets were straightened, graded and paved, the hills were scraped down, and ordinances were passed requiring sidewalks to be laid in front of the houses on certain streets. Brick and stone came into more general use for building, and the first three-story brick house in town was erected, at Fulton and Main streets, by Dr. Charles Ball. Improvements were pushed rapidly during the following year also — the thoroughfares were gotten into good condition, a new market was opened, a municipal court was established and large additions made to the fire department force. The Long Island Bank was organized with the following directors: Leffert Lefferts, Jehiel Jagger, John C. Freecke, John C. Vanderveer, Jordan Coles, Silas Butler, Fanning C, Tucker, Jacob Hicks, Henry Waring, Nehemiah Denton, Elkanah Doolittle, Thomas Everitt, Jr., and George Little. Leffert Lefferts became president, and the capital stock of $300,000, was subscribed for several times over. The establishment of this bank was not only an indica- tion of the prosperity of the town, but a cause of its further improvement as well. Among other important public and corporate institutions of the year established or projected were: The Board of Health, Brooklyn Fire Insurance Company, Long Island Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, Brooklyn Gas Light Company, and Nassau Bank. Several churches were organized and Orange street was opened. During the same year the Long Island Star was published twice a week — another index of the growing needs of the town. A notable event of the year 1825 was the laying of the corner-stone of the Apprentices' Library, by the great Gen- eral Lafayette, on the Fourth of July. This event was made the occasion of fine civic and military display, and an ovation to the French patriot who had so generously come to the aid of the struggling colonies. A lady is still living in Brooklyn who witnessed this scene from the steps of her father's house, which stood next to the library building. This became later an armory, and it was from here that the Fourteenth Regiment went to the war in 1861. The pur- chase of twenty-five acres of the farming land in Williams- burgh, in 1825, was the first step toward the building up of that afterwards prosperous town. There were at the time no buildings there, and the transaction was made solely with a view to speculation. The tract was bought by Garret and Grover C. Furman, who believed that as South Brooklyn had proved a valuable annex to lower New York, so Williams- burgh would be to the upper portion of that metropolis. The fact that many of their neighbors and acquaintances scouted at a scheme which was believed by them to be Uto- pian, did not deter the speculators. They surveyed and divided the tract into city lots, laying out Grand and South, First, Second and Third streets. A stroke of business which proves how wide-awake the projectors were, was the presen- tation of a lot one hundred feet square to the Dutch Re- Kev. Evan M. Johnson. Rector of St. John's Episcopal Chit ■ch. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 71 formed Church. The congregation erected a church edifice then, and thus gave the initial impetus to the movement, which in a few years resulted in the development of the thriving village of Williamsburgh. The final abolition of slavery was completed about 1825, with so little fuss that few people in Brooklyn observed it. The mild and modified character of the institution had not provoked any very violent opposition, though there were always to be found men who considered the matter of principle rather than the question of abuse. A slave auction was almost unknown ; cruelty was a thing practically unheard of ; the ordinary relations of master and slave were hardly more distressing to the latter than those of servant and master to-day. One of the later features of slavery in New York state, showing how little disposition there was to tolerate any exhibition of tyranny on the part of the slave owner, was the establishment of the public slave whipper to administer punishment to those who deserved it. This office was held by men of substance and standing, whose influence was naturally on the side of mercy. In one case, at least, the slave whipper in a Dutch town was a kindly old Quaker farmer, whose admonitions to an angry master sometimes saved the lash. The office, with the institution, finally fell into disuse— that seems to be the fit term, rather than abolition. John Doughty, in 1797, formally manumitted the first slave thus freed in Brooklyn ; others followed his example in the course of the next few years, and the gradual removal of a system that did not prove congenial to the character or vital to the needs of the people was accomplished with hardly any opposition. Who the apostle of freedom was in Brooklyn we do iimiiisii imimmiiifni -vfc; Bull's Head Tavern, Flatbush .\venve. not know. He may have had the will, but he certainly missed the opportunity, for martyrdom. The act for the judicial abolition of slavery was passed in March, 1799, after which time all the children born of slaves were free, and the adults became so after a certain number of years had passed. John Doughty was for years town clerk, and it is said that he recorded during his term of office the manumission of more slaves than any man who ever lived here. He and his friend, John Garrison, were among the first trustees of the village upon its incorporation, in 1816. At one time he served as chief of the fire department and was identified with the early life of the town in many ways. His house was a yellow frame dwelling with a wide stoop, furnished on each side with seats. It was situated just above Diana Rapalje's dwelling where lived one of the most singular characters that ever afforded gossip material for a neighborhood. She had been in her youth a society woman, and had been a favorite at Washington, but in later years her individuality became eccentricity, and although she was possessed of considerable property, parsimony seemed to be her ruling characteristic. On one occasion she laid the stones for a walk in front of her house with her own hands, explaining that as she turned her back to the street no one would recognize her. She used to go to the market dressed in the most old-fashioned attire, and return to her home carrying her purchases in the pocket of her dress or the bosom of her coat. As a fish or a rooster sometimes made an unexpected appearance from these receptacles, or even a live eel, as once occurred on the ferry-boat, her comings and goings were apt to occasion considerable remark — which troubled Diana 72 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. not a whit. She was always engaged in Htigation with somebody, generally her kinsfolk, and not a few of the exciting episodes which enlivened the neighborhood were due to her unhappy relations with her last husband. The Brooklyn boys swore that Diana's house was haunted, and they never tired of pointing out a white, shadowy figure that appeared upon the housetop on summer evenings. Nor could the youthful ghost-seers be expected to believe that what they saw was the lady of the house herself. The house was on Fulton street, directly opposite Hicks. The early annals of the city present the name of Burdett Stryker, butcher, fire chief, Methodist, Christian, endeared to his fellow-townsmen by many acts of charity, but worthy of a place in the catalogue of heroes for his noble efforts to aid and comfort the small-pox victims during the several occasions on which Brooklyn was visited by that epidemic. He took risks which others would not take, visiting the dying, nursing the sick, burying the dead with his own hands. Not knowing fear, and alive to the demands of humanity in its suffering and pain, the butcher of the Fly market showed a gentleness which would have become a Father Damien. Burdett Stryker's father was Hendrick Stryker, who came of good Dutch stock, and one of his sons became a respected mayor of Brooklyn. Of the Furmans, father and son, there is something to be said in an historical account of the city. William Furman, more frequently known as Judge Furman, was one of the founders of the Catherine Street Ferry. His house was a large, double frame one, with a long, high piazza in front ; it stood on Fulton street, near the water. The City Railroad Company's building afterwards occupied the site. Judge Furman (he was a county judge from 1808 to 1823) was a member of the State Legislature and a warm friend of Governor Clinton, supporting the latter in his canal policy. As president of the Brooklyn Fire Insurance Company he was identified with many financial interests. Gabriel Furman, his son, began a career full of promise by studying law with Elisha W. King of New York. His early life was one of legal success and political preferment, a seat in the senate of the state giving him opportunity to exhibit the statesmanlike qualities of his mind. But the cloud of a habit which has interfered with the best achievement of many men of ability, from De Quincey down, rested upon his after life. He became a recluse, giving himself up to study, especially of history, and gathering material which is now preserved under the title of Furman's " Notes," which the student of local affairs finds precious in spite of their unedited and ill-arranged condition. Mr. Furman was'the originator of a debating society in Brooklyn, and' his lectures on historical dwellers on this continent were received with marked approval by archasologists. "During the ten years preceding the obtaining of the city charter, the growth of Brooklyn was extremely rapid. Streets were built, a foundry established, newspapers enlarged, churches dedicated factories erected, societies organized — in fact, the institution of those things which go to the making of a city had fairly begun. The growth of financial institutions alone during that time would indicate the nascent prosperity of Brooklyn. The house where old Jacob Patchen lived in 1834, at that time 64 Fulton street, was of uncertain age. Charles Doughty, who was born about 17 15, remembered it as an old house when he was a boy. It was supposed to have been built by the first of the Remsens, who came from Holland in the early colonial days. In order to make way for a newer and more pretentious structure, it was afterwards removed to Jackson street. Jacob Patchen was a character in his way, and it was a unique way. His stoutly built house bore a sort of resemblance to its stolid, well-fed owner, whose obsti- nacy and lack of cultivation were combined with considerable force and native wit. He was for years a small butcher. Or rather a butcher of small meats, in the Fly market, and around his dwelling yard poultry, calves, and other stock kept up a hubbub, to the annoyance of his neighbors. One of the old man's peculiarities was his attire, and earned him the nickname of "the last of the leather breeches." His sidewalk was the worst paved in the town, and his quarrels with citizen and cor- poration so frequent that from the very circumstance of his opposition to other peoples' interests he became one of the best-known men in the town. Another old house, which in the march of progress was demol- ished in 1832, was a brick building that was often pointed out as the place where General Putnam had made his headquarters. If some Rip Van Winkle could have wandered away from Brooklyn and got asleep about the time that it was incorporated as a village, and then had returned, awake and thoughtful, with an inquiring mind, about the time that the census was taken in 1840, he would probably have found little left except the name of the place and the East river and jacob p.^tchen. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 73 J- HE Abbey. a few old people who each claimed the honor of being the " oldest inhabitant." The census of '40 showed a population of 36,233 people, living in nine wards. Bushwick, which had just been sliced off from Williamsburgh, contained 1,295 i'"'- habitants, and the latter place 5,090. Williamsburgh's separate existence lasted only from 1840 to 1855, at which date it was absorbed into Brooklyn. Flatbush had 2,099 population. New Lots, now a part of the Twenty-sixth ward of Brook- lyn, was at that time part of Flatbush. At that time Brooklyn possessed nine public schools, a number large enough, it would seem, for the needs of the city. The jDcople did not receive as much mail, apparently, as twenty-six thousand people nowadays would con- sider themselves entitled to, for the postmaster and his one clerk had a very easy time except when the mails came in. Two carriers were all that the city delivery required, and for every letter delivered the carrier received two cents, no credit being allowed under any circumstances. The postoffice was situated on Fulton street, opposite Hicks. The churches of Brooklyn were fewer in number than to-day, though by no means scarce. There were five Methodist Episcopal, six Protestant Episcopal, two Roman Catholic, seven Presbyterian, two Baptist and one Friends'. There were two bands, two insurance companies and two newspapers then running. At the corner of Henry and Cranberry streets was the Apprentices' Library. Fifty years ago all the public business was transacted there for the city, and the building, with a smaller auxiliary structure, constituted what were known as the city buildings. It had been purchased by the corporation for $11,000. The County Clerk's office was located in a one-story brick, fire-proof building, opposite the library building. Both of these structures were removed several years later to make room for others o£ more modern style and larger proportions. Another building, which stood on the corner of Fulton and Cranberry, was rented by the city for court and other purposes, until the completion of the City Hall in 1848. It was known as Hall's Exchange, after George Hall, the first mayor of Brooklyn, whose store for the sale of oils and paints occupied the first floor of the building. \Vhen the city rooms were not in use the owner rented them for entertainment purposes. The great panic of 1836-37 of course prostrated Brooklyn as it did New York, for a time, but after awhile the natural buoyancy of the city asserted itself, and hf careful financial management it was placed upon a solid foundation once more. For a time it had been insolvent ; attachments covered the schools and fire-engines, and even the portraits of the great men ; but at length the debt was provided for and the property redeemed. On April 28th, 1836, the corner-stone of a new city hall, to occupy the entire square between Court, Joralemon and Fulton streets, was laid with appropriate ceremonies, Mayor Jonathan Trotter holding the trowel. When the financial crash came and the affairs of the city became involved, the walls of the new building had progressed but a few courses. The interruption proved effectual for ten years, at the end of which time the expensive and somewhat ornate plans were exchanged for more modest ones, and the present City Hall was completed. It was in the year the corner-stone of the City Hall was laid that the city fathers gave notice of their intention of applying to the Legislature for an act empowering the people to elect their mayor. The act was obtained, and four years later the first election held under it resulted in the election of Cyrus P. Smith for the office in question. Brooklyn was already showing, fifty years ago, what a physicist would call her potentiality. Numerous churches were springing up and being dedicated ; the lines of the water-front were surveyed and reported upon by General Swift, whose report afterwards became the basis of a law ; the Atlantic Dock Company was organized, with a capital of $1,000,000, and numerous buildings and the establishment of business houses attested the vitality of the city. Brooklyn then covered twelve square miles, more or less closely built upon, and most of her new structures were of brick or other durable material. One of the most important purchases by the city in 1840 was that of the property upon which Greenwood Cemetery stands ; the necessity for such a purchase had long been felt. The same year saw the establishment of the Atlantic and Brooklyn Banks. Half a century ago the social events of the city were of a simple character, though the line between the democratic and patrician elements was quite as closely drawn as to-day. An amusing fact, attested by eye-witnesses, was the division of Fulton street into plebeian and aristocratic factions, the line of demarcation being drawn down the middle of the street. 74 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. This was no imaginary line; the " best " people— best at least in the sense of being more prominent or wealthier than their vis-a-vis— viOvAA not think of promenading on the eastern, which was the sixpenny side of the street, any more than they would consent to dwell there. The discrimination against the eastern side was in itself a measure of growth; for until a few years previously, the district east of Fulton street was the "court end" of the town, and before the development of the Heights into a residential quarter, the dwellings of the notables were to be found on Sands, Washington, and other east-side streets. Every military company or fire company gave its annual ball or picnic and excursion, and upon these occasions the great majority of the young men would attend with their sweethearts. There is many an old man and many a dignified matron living in affluence in Brooklyn who would be horrified to have their grand-daughters attend a general ball or go on an " excursion," who have hidden away in some mellow corner of their memories a pleasant recollection of the dances and merrymakings that the city used to enjoy when it was younger. In 1841, Remsen street only extended as far as Henry, and even there it was almost unused, only two houses standing in isolated fashion near its terminus. Beyond Henry street, from the end of Remsen, there was no street nor buildings, nor anything, in fact, but cultivated fields as far as Washington street. Brooklyn's fire department then was primitive, but the volunteers who manned the engines made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in equipment. The chief engineer, a position which was filled for a number of years by Burdett Stryker, was appointed by the common council. The force consisted of eleven engine companies, two hook and ladders and one hose company. There were twenty-nine cisterns in different parts of the city, and these were kept filled at the expense of the corporation, forming a supply for the engines whenever a fire broke out. The wild rush of the volunteer companies, the rivalry with which each strove to be the first on the ground, and the -quarrels which sometimes resulted, have been often retold. No one would go back to those days, and yet the mere mention of the fire laddies of a day that is dead brings up to the minds of the older men visions of romantic daring and a chivalry which shall be forever dear to the people of Brooklyn. Among the men to whom Brooklyn owed much in the first half of the present century was Robert Snow, a native of Ireland, who began and ended his life in poverty, but whose active years were blessed with moderate fortune, and whose blameless life, unceasing charity and lovely disposition made him a power for good in the community. He was a marked figure, rememberable not less for the courtesy of his manner and kindly aspect than for his adherence to the fashion of his youth, to which in his costume he always adhered. His knee-breeches, stock, broad brim and queue were a survival of an earlier day. During all the vicissitudes of party strife, Mr. Snow held public offices from which he was not removed, but his most congenial labors were in connection with the educators, and especially the moral instruction of youth. Having had seven children of his own, all of whom had died young, he became the adopted parent of others, so that his house and heart were always full. He began life as a shoemaker, and then for a little while kept a grocery store, but in a few weeks abandoned a business in which he found the sale of spirits unavoidable. He then succeeded in obtaining a clerkship with John Pintard, in New York. Afterward, taking John Brower as a partner, he again launched into business on his own account, and in spite of his abundant charities, began to amass property. He was an enthusiastic Sunday- school worker when such were rare ; he took a personal interest in the work of reclaiming drunkards, when the habit of drink was almost universal ; and showed the breadth of his charity by laboring for the negro children, when few would join him in the work. Through years of misfortune, failing health and domestic troubles, this philanthropist kept his sweet courage unbroken and his faith in human nature unshaken, though those whom he had aided were sometimes the first to show ingratitude and dishonesty in their dealings with him. The name by which he was known, " Poppy Snow," was not given in derision, but was a term of affection. To him was due in a large measure the establishment of the Apprentices' Library, of which he became the first president, and it is indeed very difficult to find any worthy charity or public movement in which " Poppy " Snow was not interested. The Pierrepont mansion, which stood near the present Pierrepont place, was a landmark of especial interest. On the Heights its gardens and orchards were the pride and wonder of the place. There the choicest fruits and the rarest flowers were grown and there too the best society in the state were enter- tained. When the village was incorporated, the big house had few neighbors. The favorite walk, of a summer evening during the twenties, for the young people of the village, was up Fulton street to Love lane, and down that romantic path to the Heights, where, turning to the left, they came to the grove of cypresses near the Pierrepont mansion, where there was for those who desired it a degree of seclusion, which could be still further enhanced by a descent along the winding path that led from there to the beach below. Mr. Pierrepont laid out Clinton, Joralemon and Remsen streets and at a later date Constable, which was after- wards called Montague street. The Pierrepont property up to 1832 included the street to which its name had been given. In this year it was yielded to the city and became a public thoroughfare. At the old FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 75 Pierrepont mansion Washington made his headquarters at the time that he was present on Long Island during the battle of Brooklyn and until the evacuation of the works by the Americans. When in 1824 the corner-stone of the Apprentices' Library was laid by Lafayette the distinguished visitor called at the Pierre- pont mansion with Colonel Fish, who had been on Washington's staff. The latter then showed him the room in which the council was held which decided to abandon the town to the British. Fort Greene was bought in 1826 by Joseph Sprague and Alden Spooner and presented to the town for the site of a poorhouse, the purpose being carried out by the erection of a building to serve for that pur- pose. The banks which had been established in Brooklyn previous to 1823 had not survived and in that year Mr. Sprague interested himself very energetically in effort to obtain a charter for the Long Island Bank, spending nearly the entire winter of that year in Albany for the purpose of putting the plans through, not only the bill authorizing the bank but also one for the incorporation of the Brooklyn Fire Insurance Company, which also was in- debted to him for his labor and influence. During a sub- sequent period of loss and danger as well as in the in- fancy of the bank Mr. Sprague showed his willingness and abihty to lift the institution out of its financial troubles. Mr. Sprague was almost as closely connected with the growth and prosperity of Brooklyn during the most significant period of her growth, — the transition from village to city, — as Ben Franklin was with that of Philadelphia, a city which some of his admirers always claimed he invented. The Brooklyn benefactor, like his prototype, interested himself in every public movement, and when there was no pub- lic movement at hand he started one. He was the first The Rem Lefferts House, Macon and Fulton Streets. Built i8 president of the Long Island Insurance Company and carried that institution safely through a financial crisis. The city charter which was obtained in 1833 was due very largely to Mr. Sprague's efforts. Among the old records there are references to ancient families and properties, other than those already spoken of, to which it is impossible to assign a definite date. Their beginnings antedated many of the events already recorded in these pages, and their end, in many instances, is not yet; so there seems no more appropriate place to chronicle them than at the end of the last century, when the old order was changing and new revolutions of growth were being made in quiet little Brooklyn town. Among the land- marks of that day we find mention of Smith's tavern. In its hall meetings of all sorts were held, and at Christmas school exhibitions took place there. Such an one was advertised in the Long Island Star in 1810. The original tavern appeared to have been built in 1764, and in iSii Alden Spooner published in the Star an account of a fire which occurred in old Ferry street and destroyed among other buildings Ben- jamin Smith's public-house. On the same site Benjamin Smith erected the old stone house and contin- ued business there for a few years until he died. In 1826 the building was purchased by Stephen Wood and Valentine Smith, and it was subsequently known as Smith & Wood's tavern. It was not far from the ferry. A century earlier it was a stipulation of the ferry leases, according to an enactment of 1699, that in the ferry-house there should be a tavern. Van Borsum's ferry-house dated from the early eighteenth century, and it is probable that when that ceased to be a public-house the tavern afterwards known as Smith's was established. William Furman's oyster-house, near the ferry, where for a York shilling one could have all the bivalves he could eat at a sitting; Lawrence Brewer's Mount Pleasant Garden, on Ful- ton street between Pierrepont and the present Montague; Mrs. Wells' "Bee Hive," where the Mechanics' Bank now stands; and Du Flon's Military Garden, on the site of the County Court House, where a recep- tion was given to Lafayette in 1824; were among the resorts familiar to the village Brooklynite. 76 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Bull's Head tavern on Flatbush ave., just above Music Hall, was some distance out of town in those days, and it was patronized mostly by farmers who came to make use of the hay scales in front. It was torn down about the middle of this century and houses erected on its site. Two other inns stood near by — the Black Horse and the White Horse taverns. Of all the buildings in that neighborhood, which in * those days was the aristocratic quarter, only one remains standing. It has now become what its neigh- bors were then, a tavern, the " Abbey." The quaint frame-house on Joraleraon street, now numbered 25 and 27 and used as a tenement, is an interesting relic of the early eighteenth century and played a part in the Revolution. It is a broad two- storied building, shingled, with two small doors where once the spacious entrance was. This house was built soon after 1706 by James Remsen, who in that year received his share of the family estate. It was erected on the site now occupied by Grace church, under whose baptismal font the old well still exists. The house was moved from its original foundation to its present location near the old St. George ferry- house in the street that then was a wild ravine. It is said to have been used by the British as a hospital. Up to fifty years ago the slope was still beautifully rural, and old Ihpetonga or Clover Hill, as the Heights were then called, was crowned with evergreens and locusts; and all the streets that like Joralemon led to the shore were still rugged ravines. Among its present lofty brick surroundings the ancient landmark seems sadly out of place. The land east of Clermont avenue and extending as far as Waverly, with a frontage on the water, was granted in 1641 to Peter Montfoort; to his brother was given the adjoining tract reaching to Grand avenue. East of this lay the estate of the Rapeljes, bought of the Indians in 1637. Wallabout creek formed the northern boundary of this property and beyond lay the land of Hans Hansen Bergen, a native of Bergen in Norway, an immigrant of 1633, who married his neighbor's daughter, Sarah de Rapelje, the first female Christian child born in New Netherland. The date of her birth was June 9, 1625. Bergen died some time prior to 1655, and his widow married Theunis Gysbert Bogart, who after the English occupation took out a new patent for the land, to the detriment, it is believed, of Bergen's heirs. It gave rise subse- quently to some litigation, but it is certain that the property descended to Bogart's heirs, who sold a part of it to Rem Jansen Vanderbeeck, ancestor of the Remsens. This land was in 1704 the property of Jere- miah Remsen, son of the purchaser, and his son dying without issue bequeathed it to Barent Johnson; it became the homestead farm of General Jeremiah Johnson, Barent's son. The remainder of the Bogart grant has passed through many changes of ownership. Other members of the Remsen family had houses upon it, facing Wallabout creek. Jacob Bloom occupied a portion of it, too, from whom it was pur- chased by Abraham Boerum in 1816 and became known as the Boerum Farm. A tract of the old Bogart grant, lying between the Johnson homestead and the Remsen estate was in the possession of Jeremiah Remsen in 1795, from whom it passed in 1831 to James Scholes. Of the life of the original Bogart little is known; we find him at the age of thirty-five taking the oath of allegiance, and his name occurs among the signatures of the town deputies appended to an instrument of 1686, in accordance with which they pledged themselves and their townspeople to pay a yearly tribute to his „ „ TT T majesty, then represented by Thomas Don- Old Remsen House, Joralemon and Furman Streets i- gan, lieutenant-governor of New York; this was to serve as a quit rent for the possession of the lands of Breuckelen. Peter Lott, who came to this country in 1652, according to the account given by a descendant, was the founder of the family of that name in America. In 1682 his son, Engelbert, came to Flatbush and spent the remainder of his life there. In 1698 he was made sheriff of Kings county, and was esteemed as an intellectual, energetic and enterprising citizen. His descendants have all added lustre to the family name. Among them Johannis E. Lott should receive special mention; he was the first surrogate of the county, and took office m 1787, and in 1793 he became county judge. At the outbreak of the Revolution he represented Kings county as deputy in the Provincial Congress. Earlier in the century there was another Johannis Lott who was a representative in the Continental Assembly in 1727; this Johannis and his brother FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 77 Leffert Lefferts Homestead. 1759-1877. At Fitlion Street and Bedford Avenue. From drawing by H. A. Ogden. Abraham represented the county jointly for many years; the former continued in the Colonial Assembly until 1761. Still another Johannis Lott was sole representative of Kings county in the twenty- second session of the Legis- lature in 1798. The name appears frequently in connec- tion with the shrievalty. James Lott was sheriff in 1717, Maurice Lott in 1754, Engelbert Lott in 1852. The son of the first mentioned Johannis Lott, who was first surrogate of the county, subsequently held the same office in 1814. In the same year another direct descendant of the original Lott, the well-known Jeremiah Lott, was chosen to represent Kings county in the Legislature, and again in 1820 and 1822. John A. Lott, the distinguished jurist and prominent politician, was born in Flatbush in 1805; his father was the Abraham Lott of the Col- onial Assembly. John A. Lott was a partner in the influential law firm of Lott, Murphy & Vanderbilt, which wielded such immense power in politics. He was made first judge of the Court of Common Pleas and member of the Assembly in 1842; in 1858 he became justice of the Supreme Court and subsequently asso- ciate justice of the Court of Appeals* and chief commissioner of appeals. He died in Flatbush in 1878. His son Abraham, who was born in 1831 and studied at Erasmus Hall, graduated from the University of the City of New York in 1849. He practiced law and in 1885 was appointed by Governor Hill to succeed Jacob Bergen as surrogate of Kings county; he thus succeeded to the office which his ancestor was the first to fill. Abraham Lott died in January, 1889. In 1836 Thomas Cornell came to America from Essex, England, and settled on Long Island with his wife and children. He was the ancestor of the Cornell family of Brooklyn. In the eighteenth century we find the family flourishing in Hempstead, Rockaway and Huntington, and about 1752 two brothers. White- head and John Cornell, came to Brooklyn. The former married a daughter of Isaac Sebring and thus eventually inherited a large estate of three hundred acres, on which stood the old Cornell mill. This tract had a river frontage one mile' in extent, from Harrison street to Hamilton avenue. It had been purchased of the Dutch West India Company in 1640. John Cornell's name became associated with the famous old house, " The Four Chimneys," afterwards known as the Pierrepont mansion, which he built. It is not quite clear how he acquired the property on which this old house stood. He married Elizabeth Whitehead of Jamaica in 1760 and conveyed the estate to George Powers about 1786. It passed through several hands until, in 1802, Hezekiah B. Pierrepont, by whose name the property was afterwards known, purchased it. The Alsop house on Newtown creek was built in 1665. This his- toric landmark was destroyed in 1880, to make room for additions to Calvary cemetery. Richard Alsop married a Hollander and conducted his courtship through a male interpreter. He was prom- inent in the public affairs of the little settlement and rook a part in the violent disputes between Newtown and Bushwick concern- ing boundaries. He died in 1718, leaving several children ; his son Richard inherited the estate, and his son, a third Richard, was jus- tice of the peace during the British occupation. Mary Alsop, a de- scendant of Richard, married Rufus King and became the mother of John Alsop King, who Lefi'ekts-Brevoort Mansion. Built 18 78 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Brooklyn in iS in 1857-59 was governor of New York state. A word of preface is necessary in speaking of the Bergen houses, some confu- sion naturally arising from the fact that the family has been a large one and its several dwellings numerous enough to make a village if they had been collected in one place. Cornelius Bergen, who was born in 1761 and died in 1824, lived in Flatbush, Simon Bergen married in 1767 a daughter of Simon De Hart of Gowanus, and gave his name to the DeHart-Bergen house on the farm which extended from Thirty-seventh to Forty- second streets. This house, which for many years was one of the three oldest houses remaining in Brooklyn-, was removed within a few years to make room for the Thirty-ninth street ferry-house of the South Brooklyn Terminal Company. It was here that the Labadist travellers stopped in 1679, when Simon DeHart owned it, of whom they said he "entertained us exceedingly well," and here that they had their share of the "pailful of Gouanes oysters" which were roasted for their supper, and which they pronounced "fully as o-ood as those of England." They tried some of them raw, and as the oysters were "some of them not less than afoot long" — this being before the genuine saddle-rock was to be had — they probably felt after eating them much as Thackery did under similar circumstances, " profoundly grateful and much as though I had swallowed a small baby." John Bergen's house, occupied by him in 1791, had belonged to Peter Stoothof, who was dispossessed by John Bergen's father in September of that year. The house was added to by John and his son Cornelius. It was on what is known as Bergen's Island. Near it, in the salt marshes, was a small house now owned by Philip S. Crooke. The Adrian Bergen house was between Gravesend and New Utrecht. The Garrett Bergen house, that of his son, Teunis G. Bergen, at Bay Ridge, and the John G. Bergen house on the Gowanus farm, are some of the multitudinous homes of this family. The "Bergen homestead," on the east side of Third avenue near Thirty-third street, was torn down a few years ago, fortunately not before the art of photography had preserved the views which are herewith pre- sented. The old house was erected on the site of a still more ancient edifice, which Mary Thomas, the widow of William Arisense Bennett built in 1662. This house was remodelled in 1795 by Teunis Bergen, much of the solid old hewn timber being used in the reconstruction. A farm of one hundred and forty- four acres was inherited with the homestead by Garrett Bergen, whose four sons, Teunis G., Peter G., John G., and Garrett G., were born in the homestead in the early part of this century. The pediments and col- onnade were added by Garrett Bergen, the son, whose children continued to occupy it. At the rear of the house was a small building, erected as a summer kitchen, which was used by the slaves of the family, and eventually came to be called the slave kitchen. With its open fireplace, wide enough for cord-wood sticks, its pots, hooks, crane and fire-dogs, the interior was very picturesque. This building was saved, when the house was demolished, and is now in Prospect Park. Close to the slave kitchen was a Dutch garden, with its beds enclosed in box. This garden, allowed to grow wild, resembling more the tropical growth of Florida than what our Northern climate generally produces, is shown in the engraving. The name of the famous old Howard tavern, at East New York, is familiar to all Brooklynites. The original structure dates from about the year 1700, but it was afterwards greatly enlarged and altered. It was located in Howard's woods, at the junction of the Jamaica plank road and the present Broadway. It was built by William Howard, the eldest son of one of seven Howard brothers who came from England about the middle of the seventeenth century. The incident that gave the old tavern its historic fame was the enforced guidance by Howard and his son of the British during the battle of Brooklyn, which has already been referred to. Soon after this occurrence old William Howard died, and in 1779, his sons, who inherited the estate, built an addition to the tavern. A key was left hanging outside the door for belated farmers, who might enter and help themselves, settling their scores at some more convenient season. With such honest and considerate simplicity the inn was then conducted. In the Howard house, on winter evenings merry sleighing-parties gathered, and here politics and weighty state affairs were discussed. It was a resort for the farmers from far and near, and Major Joseph Howard is a name still held in honorable memory by old Long Islanders. In 1852 the property passed into the hands of Catherine Howard, the mother of Philip H. Reid, who was the proprietor of the venerable hostelry when, in 1880, it was proposed to remove it. The plan was not carried out, and the old building is now a tenement house for Italians. The house which formerly belonged to Jeronimus Remsen, and afterwards to Barent, was located on V, FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 79 the Jamaica turnpike, near the corner now formed by Fulton street and Arlington place, on land known as Lefferts Park. A post in one of the old barns, torn down some years ago, bore the date 17 16. The front part of the building was erected by Remsen Lefferts in 1838, but the rear portion is known to have been standing as early as 1766. It is located at the point where the old Jamaica road crossed Fulton street, and is familiar to all Brooklynites to-day, with its handsome though dilapidated portico supported by four massive Corinthian columns. It was occupied in winter by Miss Payne's kindergarten. In the rear is a long disused family burying ground. An extensive tract of land in and about Bedford was purchased of the Canarsie Indians in 1670. Five sachems joined in a deed conveying this property to certain white men, and received in payment " one hundred guilders seawant, half a tun of strong beer, two half-tuns of good beer, three guns, long barrels, with each a pound of powder and lead proportionate — two bars to a gun — four match coates." That por- tion of this property, which was known until quite recently as the "north farm," was bought by Leffert Lefferts in 1759 for ;^i,282. The quaint gambrelled roofed house which stood there, near the corner of Bedford avenue and Fulton street, was torn down in 1877. Some of the old locusts which surrounded it are still flourishing. Here Leffert Lefferts, who held the then distinguished position of town clerk and was a stout loyalist, entertained many of the British officers during the Revolution — notably General Gray. In this house Major Andre received the message from General Clinton which resulted in his ignominious mission to West Point, and out of this house four days prior to the disastrous battle of Brooklyn the American patriots drove the King's officers. Leffert Lefferts, Jr., remembered these exciting times well, and recalled how Hessian soldiers received the military punishment of castigation in the yard of his father's house ; he had a vivid recollection, too, of his frolics with the red-coats, and used to relate an incident which occurred when Major Andre was his father's guest. The ladies, it seems, were in the habit of conversing in the language of their Dutch forefathers. They were exchanging comments, complimentary and critical, upon Major Andre, when the latter, after listening with an amused smile, caused confusion by remarking in excellent Dutch that "young ladies ought not to talk gossip about their guests." Young Lefferts parted unwillingly v/ith his father's British friends, and was much disgusted when, in answer to his query why they were packing up their luggage, he received the reply : "Because the Yankees have beaten us." Judge Lefferts, as the son afterwards became, naturally clung to the old place, and at his death left it to his daughter, the wife of Brooklyn's distinguished citizen, James Carson Brevoort, under embarrassing condi- tions, which resulted finally in the sale at different times of the old farm. In 1836 Judge Lefferts, who had graduated from Columbia College in 1794, was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court and became the first judge of Kings county in 1823, erected a new and more spacious mansion near the old homestead. This gave place a few years ago to the still more stately residence of his grandson, Henry Brevoort, and the old Lefferts house, as has been said, succumbed to the march of city improvement in 1877. Among the highly honored names that make the chronicles of Brooklyn delightful, that of James Carson Brevoort has a distinguished place. Elsewhere in these pages reference is made to his literary labors and achievements upon which alone his reputation might rest. A descendant of Elias Brevoort, one of the landed proprietors of Manhattan- Island, and a son of Henry Brevoort, who took an active part in political affairs in New York nearly a century ago, he added by his personal ability and character to the heritage of his family. Born in Bloomingdale, N. Y., in 1818, Mr. Brevoort enjoyed the advantages of the best education which that time could furnish, and then, by extensive travel and study abroad, fitted himself for the position which he afterwards occupied. At Paris he obtained his diploma as civil engineer, and gave his atten- tion especially to the problems of railway construction, an art then in its infancy. Mr. Brevoort's marriage with Miss Lefferts, after his return from Spain, where he had acted as private secretary for Washington Irving, led him to make his residence in Brooklyn. Here he became identified with the interests of the place, was a member of the charter convention of 1847, served upon the board The DeHart-Bergen House. gf education, was made a member of the water board, and became a trustee of Greenwood cemetary. His eminence as a student and scholar won him the recognition of Williams College, which conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. in 1873. He was also a regent of the University of the State of New York, was a member of the American Association for the Advance of Sci- ence and of the Lyceum of Natural History, and a corresponding member of the Archaeological Society of Madrid, and a long list of other societies. Mr. Brevoort left but one child, Henry Lefferts Brevoort. The village of Bensonhurst, in the territory to which the original grantee gave the name of New Utrecht, in memory of his early Hollandish home, marks the grant of a very large tract to the first of the name of Benson who came to these shores. Among those who found a home in the wilderness was Dirck So THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Benson, whose patronymic has been variously recorded in Dutch and English documents as Benson, Bensing, Benswick, Bensick and Bensich. He rose to opulence and importance in the colony, and in 1653 is known to have purchased land on the line of what is now Broadway, in New York city. He had five children, of whom Samson, his second son, was born in 1652. Samson's second son was named Robert, and the eldest son of the latter received his father's given name. His children were Robert, Henry, Egbert, Anthon)?, Mary and Cornelia. Of these, Egbert, born in New York on January 27, 1746, was destined to play an important part in the events that gave to the American colonies an independent place among the nations of the world. With all the public movements that preceded the declaration of hostilities between England and her western possessions, Egbert Benson was an active sympathizer. After the deliberations of the constitutional convention called in 1777, to perfect the government of New York, and until an election for state officers could be held, the authority of a provincial government was vested in a committee of fifteen, known as the Council of Safety. For the immediate enforcement of the laws, Robert R. Livingston was elected chancellor ; John Jay, chief justice ; John Sloss Hobart and Robert Yates, judges of the Supreme Court ; and Egbert Benson, attorney-general. After the revolution, some twelve thousand loyalists left New York perforce, and sailed for England, the West Indies and Nova Scotia. In June, 1783, Egbert Benson was appointed by Congress as one of the commissioners, acting in conjunction with others named by Sir Guy Carleton, to superintend the embarkation of the refugees. After the restoration of peace, Benson practiced law in New York. He was associated at the bar with Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Melancthon Smith ; while James Kent, afterwards chancellor, was a student in his office. He was one of the five commissioners appointed by New York state to attend the convention that met at Annapolis in September, 1786, for the purpose of considering a uniform system of commercial relations between the thirteen independent governments. Mr. Benson was active, in both a private and an official capacity, in the measures leading to the adoption by New York of the terms of union among the states. Mr. Benson was a member of the House of Repre- sentatives for twelve years. He was one of the committee appointed by that body to receive General Washington in New York, when the President-elect came from his Virginia home to take the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall, on Wall street. His associates on this committee were Charles Carroll and the celebrated Fisher Ames of Massachusetts. The address from the national Legislature, in reply to the inaugural speech of the President, was the joint production of Benson, Madison, Clymer and Sherman. From 1794 until 1801, Judge Benson occupied the Supreme Court bench in the state of New York ; and on March 3, of the latter year, President John Adams appointed him a circuit judge of the United States. Judge Benson was the principal organizer and the first president of the New York Historical Society. He never married, but lived with his brother Robert, whose house was situated on the corner of Pine and Nassau streets. His portrait, painted by Gilbert Stuart, is one of the best creations from the brush of an American artist. He was a thorough English and classical scholar, and had familiarized himself with Indian legends and Dutch history to such an extent that his opinion on all such matters was considered invaluable. Judge Benson died in 1833. Until within two or three years there stood on the corner of Jay and Concord streets the so-called "White House," a two-story garret-gable frame house with a history. More than sixty years ago Hugh Mc- Laughlin removed from the corner of Clark and Furman streets, and took up his residence in the " White House." His son of the same name has since attained great prominence in municipal affairs and in this old home of his were situated the political headquarters of Brooklyn leaders, after the law offices of Lott, Murphy & Vanderbilt on Front street had been abandoned. Here many a prominent politician has been nurtured into public life who has since attained eminence in national as well as municipal history. The house was kept in the old war days by " Bill " Leach of the controller's office. Its site is now occupied by towering brick flats. A photograph of this historic " White House " is reproduced in a later chapter. The residence of General Jeremiah Johnson was situated at Wallabout, at what is now the comer of Hewes street and Kent avenue. General Johnson donated land for the first school in Wallabout shortly after the war for independence. It was situated close to the Wallabout creek. In 1805 it was removed to where at present Flushing and Bedford avenues intersect, and stood there until Flushing avenue was graded, when it was again removed by Garrett Nostrand to Flushing to be converted into a chicken-house, for which purpose it was used as late as 1834. Flatbush people and their homes, though now virtually a part of the city, were once a distinct group, and for that reason should be treated separately. When the road between Brooklyn and Flatbush was a turnpike, the old toll-gate stood as late as 1842 not far from the junction of Hanson place with Flatbush avenue. It was then removed to the corner of what is now called Atlantic avenue. It was withdrawn still further toward Flatbush not long after and erected south of the Valley Grove Hotel on the old road close by Battle Pass. Another removal brought it opposite the Willink estate and finally it was established within the village limits, and in 18S0 stood on the main avenue between Winthrop and Fennimore streets. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY. 8i The Cortelyou farm lies north of Winthrop street; it belonged originally to the Hegeman family. Peter Lefferts purctiasea it in 1794 as a wedding present to his daughter, who was married in that year to John Cortelyou of New Utrecht. Their only son spent his life here. After the death of Mrs. Cortelyou, her eldest daughter, Mrs. William K. Williamson, of Flatlands, purchased the place. John Cortelyou was a direct descendant of the Huguenot settler, Jacques Cortelyou, who came to New Utrecht in 1657. The ancestors of the Flatbush Schoonmakers lived in Kingston, N. Y., where in 1737 the Rev. Martinus Schoonmaker was born. He married Mary Bassett in 1761 and came to Flatbush in 1785, where he was placed over the united congregations of Kings county. He lived in a fine old Dutch building, which stood with its gable end to the street, on the west side of the main road. It is said to have been built of timbers taken from the old court-house which was torn down in 1792. In 1875 the house was moved a little to the south to make way for a street. This was the first of the Schoonmaker houses, though there were other and later houses owned by that family. Just above the intersection of Vernon avenue with Flatbush stood a very old house, much out of repair, which belonged at one time to the Van Beuren family and so passed into the possession of John Hess, who married a Miss Van Beuren. On Dr. Strong's map of 1842 it is marked " R. Crommelin." It is known to have been standing prior to 17 11 when it was bought as a parsonage, and for many years it was the property of Dominie Lowe. It was built on the old Vandeventer Farm. This old structure was demolished in 1891. The residence of Mr. Cornelius Duryea about the middle of the century was said to have been occupied by Lord Stirling, and some portions of it are certainly very old, but few traces of its ancient Dutch char- acter remain. It stands on the east side of the road at the corner of Canarsie lane. Next to it toward the north, at the corner of Vernon avenue, lived Mr. Jacob Duryea, a brother of the former. His house was the old homestead of the Van Beuren family; it was subsequently sold to the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, and close by this very ancient and decaying house was erected the Flatbush avenue stables. At the extreme southern end of Flatbush on the west side of the main road, was erected some time during the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Allgeo house. Mr. AUgeo was born in Halifax of English parents in 1776. He married a daughter of Mr. Antonidas of Flatbush and established himself in that town opposite the residence of his father-in-law. He was a cabinet-maker by trade and according to the custom of the time he also made coffins, and one destined for himself he kept in the loft of his work- Entrance to Flatbush, 1877. shop. The house was occupied by his son and son's son. The property passed into the possession of the heirs of the Hon. John A, Lott. It was situated on the tract known as the " Little Flat." On the west side of the road below Erasmus Hall still stands one of the oldest houses in Flatbush. It was built probably about 1735 by Dominie Freeman, whose only daughter married her cousin, David Clarkson. In this way the house became the homestead of the Clarkson family, and here it was that costly wines concealed by the family were found by British soldiers, who drank too much of it. Had the Ameri- can officers known about the effects of the " find " they might have utilized the knowledge and changed the . fortunes of the day. Few houses have preserved with so little alteration the interesting characteristics of the early Dutch period, and the heirs of the Bergen family, into whose hands it passed, have wisely adopted the same conservative plan for maintaining this venerable landmark in its old state. It is known as the John C. Bergen house. The Clarkson name is now associated with the old Vanderbilt estate north of the church and with the street which intersects Flatbush avenue. The house of Mr. Matthew Clarkson was built in 1836, and with its superb lawns, handsome trees and spaciousness both of building and grounds, constitutes one of the finest residences in Flatbush. 82 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Toll House at Flatbush, 1877. The Willink family were not among the old settlers of Flatbush. Their home was built in 1835, with wide sloping lawns about it, on property which extended in an un- broken line to what is now called the Willink entrance of the Park; it was situated at the extreme northern end of Flatbush. The elevation on which it stood has since been dug away and its site is occupied by the depot of the Brighton Beach Railroad. The Willink place had a history of much sombre romance; it was surrounded with a high fence and seciired by firmly bolted gates; here for many solitary years lived two old ladies— Mrs. Willink and her sister, Miss Ludlow— after the death of Mr. Willink, who had been thrown from his carriage and killed. From some unfathomable motive these two ladies undertook the building of a hotel, the Willink House, at the south end of the village at the corner of Vernon avenue, upon some prop- erty which had long lain idle; their constant interference, however, prevented the landlord from succeeding, so the hotel was locked up and Miss Ludlow kept the key. Mrs. Willink died soon after and perhaps the deserted gloom of the boarded-up and padlocked house on the hill fell too darkly upon Miss Ludlow's lone- liness; for she moved into her hotel and occupied a handsome suite of apartments there until she died. She was regular in her attendance at Trinity church, New York, and when at last she passed away — alone, as she had lived — her remains were placed beside those of her family, long gone before, in the church-yard on Broadway. There was no one to mourn for this wealthy and intellectual but eccentric and solitary woman The old jealously-guarded home was remodeled and moved to the junction where Ocean avenue merges in Flatbush, and thousands of pleasure-seekers on their way to Coney Island trample over the spot where once it stood secluded. The Ditmas family immigrated to this country from Holstein some time before the middle of the seventeenth century. The farm in the southern part of the old town of Flatbush belonged to Douwe Ditmas. The original homestead was of stone. A little north of the spot where it stood another Ditmas house was erected about 1800, the residence of Mr. Henry S. Ditmas. Subsequent alterations have de- stroyed most of the evidences of its Dutch origin, but the long sloping roof was left. On the farm adjoin- ing on the north is another long, low house, with a heavy roof and front windows only on the ground floor, the home of Mr. John Ditmas, whose wife was the daughter of Mr. Andrew Suydam, of whose family this was originally the homestead. In the vicinity Mr. John Ditmas erected two more houses, one for each of his sons. On the southwest corner of Flatbush avenue and Little lane — now Avenue C — stood the house of Jeremiah Lott, the son of Judge John A. Lott. It was at one time occupied by the Zabriskie family. The contract has now been given to tear this old building down. The Hegeman house, on East Broadway, opposite to the Allgeo house, and now owned by the Caton family, was built about 1800. It is a very old- fashioned, shingle-sided structure, with the deep slant of roof which betokens its continental origin. The Lefferts homestead, owned by John Lefferts, who inherited it from his mother, Mrs. Maria Lefferts, is a low heavy-roofed colo- nial house, with double roof slant and old-fashioned gables. It was burned in part at the battle of Flatbush and afterwards rebuilt and restored. It is on the east side of Flatbush avenue, opposite the home of J. Lott Vanderbilt. Vanderveer's mill was the first windmill erected on Long Island. To it the farmers brought their grist from far and near. It was begun by John C. Vanderveer in 1801 and was three years in building; it was constructed with great solidity; the main timbers were hewn out of trees which grew on the Vanderveer farm and were two and a half feet in thickness. On a three-foot stone foundation it rose to the height of four stories. The arms and sails, which were twenty-six feet long, were blown off in the famous gale of September, 182 1. Ten years later a similar accident occurred and it was not repaired. From that time it was used as a storehouse for hay. It stood between Car- narsie lane and Pardaegat pond, and during the draft riots of 1863 the colored people fled to the old mill for safety. It was destroyed by fire in 1879; 'ts stout old timbers defying the flames for hours. Vandekveer's Mill, Flatbush. SOME OLD FLATBUSH HOUSES, IN 1877. Captain Story's House. CoRTELYOU House, Flatbush Ave. and Fenimore St. Allgeo House, Cow Lane (now East Broadway). Jeremiah Vanderbilt House, Flatbush Avenue. J. V. B. Martense House, Flatbush Avenue. Schoonmakek House, Flatbush Ave., Corner Ave. B. Hegeman House, East Broadway. Murphy House, Flatbush Avenue. 84 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Jacob V. B. Martense, another of the descendants of Martin Adriense and of Adrian Martense — for so the Dutch set- tlers inverted their names, to the puzzle- ment of antiquarians — inherited from his mother, Mrs. Helen Martense, a house once owned by old Mr. Garrett Stryker. It is situated next to the Stryker cottage on Flatbush avenue, near East Broadway. Mrs. Martense was a daughter of Adrian Vandeveer. Near to the house of J. V. B. Mar- . J°"" "-^^^ «°"='=' flatbush, .877. tense is the Story house, formerly the property of the Clarkson family. It was occupied by the late Captain Story, and by his widow after his death. About 1835, it was moved from the opposite side of the street to where it now stands. The Martense farm and homestead was originally the home of Lefferts Martense. It was situated opposite Winthrop street. The house was damaged during the battle of Flatbush, as it stood on the edge of the conflict, and after the war Judge Martense pulled it down. Another house, much handsomer, was built on the site, and subsequently passed into the hands of Mrs. Ferris and Mrs. Wilbur, descendants of Lefferts Martense. In the northern part of Flatbush, on the corner of Winthrop street, on the east side of the road, lived, in the middle of the century, Dr. John Robinson, practising physician, a graduate of Dublin University, who came here in 1844. The mansion was built in 1749, by an Englishman named Lane. It afterwards became the property of Colonel Axtell, a Tory of revolutionary times, who was a good liver and made the place a rendezvous for his Tory friends. From his occupancy date certain ghost stories that have survived his generation. The house, known as Melrose Hall, was occupied by Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt from 1836 to 1841. It was bought by Dr. Homer L. Bartlett, who moved it back. It is now occupied by Rev. Dr. D. Stafford Drowne. A long, old-fashioned house, built about the year 1800, on a farm which originally belonged to the Nagle family, was the home of John Lott. The ground is near Diamond and Clarkson streets. The farm was sold for a division of the property about 1865, and was afterwards cut up into building lots. The house known formerly as the Clarkson house, between Flatbush and Ocean avenues, was purchased some time ago by a few prominent gentlemen of Flatbush and rented by them to the Midwood club, of which they are members. It is a massive building of Corinthian architecture, with heavy gran- ite foundations and marble floors. The, rooms are palatial in dimensions and have lofty ceilings. The mantels are fine specimens of marble carving. The house is surrounded by handsome trees, and is one of the best examples we have of that type of country mansion which was fashionable in the United States in the early part of this century. The old homestead of the Vanderbilt family, which stood on the west side of the Flatbush road, near the northern boundary of the town, was burned down during the battle of Long Island. The new house on the same site was finished about 1800, and was known as the residence of Mr. John Vanderbilt, the builder, who died in 1842. The deed conveying this property to ,^^ " ^ Jan van de Bilt still exists, signed by Governor Stuyve- sant, and dated 1661. Some of the most beautiful portions of Prospect Park were on this farm. The ancestor of the family came, probably, from the shores of the Baltic some- time before the middle of 1650. Not far from the site of the old homestead, and south of it, was erected, some- thing more than a century The WiLLiNK House, " Bloemen Heuvel." Drawn from an Old Print. ago, the house which is des- SOME OLD FLATBUSH HOUSES, IN 1877. Jacob Duryea House, Flatbush Ave. Now used for Car Stables. John Lott House, Flatbush Ave., near Clakkson St. Melrose Hall. Jeremiah Lott House, Little Lane (now Ave. C). Clarkson House (now The Midwood Club). Lefferts Homestead, Flatbush Ave. John C. Bergen House. 86 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ignated on Dr. Strong's map of 1842 as the residence of Mr. Jeremiah Vanderbilt. After his death the house was sold and allowed to fall into decay. If the selections made in this chapter, of what was typical in Brooklyn during its village and early city days — typical of the then recent past and of the beginnings of the new future — have conveyed a general idea of the surroundings and characteristics of the generation that was influential in transforming the village into the city, they will have accomplished their purpose. The landmarks which-now are only relics of a time that is already venerable were then part and parcel of the every-day life of the people, and doubt- less appeared to them rather hum-drum in comparison with what was newer and bigger. But, overgrown now with the mosses of time and memory, and suggestive of a life that disappeared with growth and facility of communication with the outer world, some reverential mention is due to these reminders of the customs, personality and abiding-places of those who laid the foundations of Brooklyn city, before We pass on to the story of its larger growth. Old Grand Street Ferry, THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. T was a political crisis that gave birth to the Eagle, and beyond meeting that crisis its founders had no immediate purpose in its establishment. After the death of the first President Harrison, a few weeks after his inauguration, in 1841, the Democrats reorganized and pushed their party fortunes with renewed vigor. The Democrats of Kings County found them- selves well equipped for the fall campaign in all respects save one — they had no party newspaper to disseminate their views and teachings. Up to that time the Whigs had dominated the county, and their having among their number a preponderance of the wealthy residents of the county gave them many advantages, among which was the existence at that time of two party organs, while the Democrats had none. Appreciating the disadvan- tage at which this placed them, and not discouraged by that fact that several former attempts to establish a Democratic paper had failed, a few leading Democrats got together and subscribed their names to a fund for the starting of a paper which, first of all, was to support the policy and the nominees of the party during the approaching election. Should it prove successful, it was to be continued as a newspaper ; but the cam- paign and the victory furnished the controlling motives for its establishment. In -this movement, Henry C. Murphy was the leading spirit, and he and Richard Adams Locke (afterwards celebrated as the author of the " Moon Hoax '') were the first editors of the paper, the first number of which was issued on October 26, 1841. The paper thus founded was the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, at first called The Brooklyn Eagle and Kings County Democrat. The campaign in which its establishment was an element was so well fought by the party with the support of the paper, that the Democrats were triumphantly successful, and Pulton street in 1821, site of the late Eagle Building. 88 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. thus at the very threshold of its career the Eagle was identified with a movement full of significance to the future of the city. This has been characteristic of its entire history. One of the results of the Democratic victory of 1841 was the permanent establishment of the Eagle as a daily paper, now no longer regarded as an experiment or as a temporary campaign sheet. It took its place among the regular institutions of the city. Among its compeers was the New York Tribune, which was established by Horace Greeley only a few months before the Eagle, and like it was an out- growth from a campaign paper — the Log Cabin, which was started to support the Whigs in the Harrison campaign, having resulted in the establishment of the Tribune. BROOKLYN IN 1841. When the career of the Eagle began, it was the day of small things in the city in comparison with what we see about 14s to-day. Fifty years of well-directed effort have transformed the little com- munity, which then had just outgrown its village days, into a vast metropolis, teeming with all the activities of modern life. Brooklyn was but seven years old as a city. Its population was only thirty-five thousand five hundred. Fulton street was the single business thoroughfare. Court street was unknown. Sands street was the residence of the aristocrats; the Heights were a bluff merely; Fulton street, beyond the City Hall, was a country road, and Myrtle avenue an adventurous highway of travel to Fort Greene. Williamsburgh was a thriving rival, looked upon by Brooklyn with jealous eyes. Bedford had hopes of its own and a future in which its immediate inhabitants believed. Pumps supplied the city with water, and Ridgewood was not thought of. The City Hall was at the corner of Cranberry and Henry streets, and only the corner-stone of the new City Hall had been laid. Beecher was winning in the far West that fame which brought him to Brooklyn and built Plymouth Church, and Storrs was still studying at a theological seminary in the East. Murphy was elected Mayor the next year, and the city was trying to recover from the effects of the panic of 1837. Greenwood Cemetery had been just projected, and capital for the enterprise was being solicited. Railroads were in their formative condition; the New York and Erie was under construction, and there were but two thousand miles of rail laid in the whole country. Three years before, the first steamer from England had arrived at the port of New York. Albany was "as far away from New York, in point of time, as Chicago is now, and twenty-one days was the average passage from Europe. In the following year, Morse laid the first tel- egraph line from Washington to Baltimore, and wise men were calling him a crazy fool. Fish oil had taken the place of candles, and gas was the coming light. Envelopes had just displaced sealing wax and goosequills were being supplanted by steel pens. A "lunatic" was talking about building iron vessels to float on the water. Horse railroads in cities had not yet demonstrated that they would pay. Cali- fornia was a terra incognita, and gold was not discovered there till seven years later. John Tyler was President, elected as a ^Vhig, and, going over to the Democrats, had given a new word to the language — "Tylerize." Slavery was beginning to be a potent factor in politics. John C. Calhoun was advocating secession or nullification. Henry Clay was the political comet of the day, with a magnificent following as a tail. Wendell Phillips was studying that rhetoric and elocution with which in after years he set the country aflame. Isolated, having interests not dependent on other countries, three times having dem- onstrated their invincibility in war, the States looked forward to a peaceful, happy and prosperous future, undisturbed by dreams of a devastating war which should array section against section. Under such conditions, the new-born Eagle started side by side with the new-born city, and ever since the growth of one has been commensurate with the growth of the other. Among those who had contributed to the capital for starting the Eagle enterprise was the Hon. John Greenwood, long a judge of the City Court, and for many years the only survivor of the little band of devoted Democrats who set the paper on its feet. It was he who suggested its name, the Eagle. Fifty years ago the American people were nothing if not demonstratively and aggressively patriotic. They had beaten the British twice, had cleaned out the " Greasers " in Mexico, and kept themselves in good fighting condition by occasional scrimmages with the Indians. They felt their ability to " eternally wallop the whole cre-ation," and were not restrained by any sense of delicacy in expressing their belief in such ability. They knew their own strength, and clearly perceived their future greatness. Irritated because the rest of the world did not yield to belief in their present and future, they endeavored to force the fact down the throats of all foreigners by their aggressive and demonstrative patriotism. The truth is, that before the war of the Rebellion — which taught them many things, and among others, self- confidence so profound as to require no discussion or assertion — ^our fathers were not quite sure in the bottom of their souls of all the qualities they boasted, and this doubt only made them the more boast- ful. The same spirit which induced the Hon. Elijah Pogram to describe Mr. Chollup to Martin Chuzzlewit as " a child of natur' and a child of Freedom ; and his boastful answer to the Despot and the Tyrant is that his bright home is in the settin' sun," gave the Eagle its name. Named as it was, it proved an 9° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. unexpected success, and more than paid its expenses during the campaign. After the Eagle had become permanently established, the editorship was given to Mr. William B. Marsh. ISAAC VAN ANDEN. A few years previous to this there had come from Poughkeepsie to establish himself in business in Brooklyn a young printer. He brought with him tact, pluck, energy, industry, application, a clear head, and very little else. These qualities in the course of time made him a man of influence and consideration in Brooklyn. This was Isaac Van Anden, who was practically and actually the founder of the Eagle and its establishment. What inducements caused him to desire to possess the Eagle are not known. Perhaps be had a sharp eye to the possibilities of the future ; perhaps the proprietors, not being news- paper men, and being assured of the continuance of a Democratic paper, were glad to be relieved from the responsibility of the conduct thereof and sought a purchaser ; and perhaps Mr. Van Anden himself had a vagrant tendency toward journalism. Perhaps it was solely the latter. At all events, whatever be the cause, early in the year 1842 Mr. Van Anden, who had from the start been the forceful spirit and practical man of the enterprise, came into sole possession of the paper. It was not his first venture in journalism. On March 2, 1840, with S. G. Arnold, he had established the "Brooklyn Daily News," of which Dr. W. R. Northall was the editor. In the ensuing September Dr. Northall retired to take charge of a Whig paper. This venture did not succeed, and shortly after was sold to the proprietors of a new Democratic paper called the Times. Mr. "Van," as he was called in the office until the day of his death, put the industry and the energy of his later young manhood and middle age into the struggling Eagle. The Eagle and its establishment are his monument. Until 1870 he was the sole proprietor, and he had no interests for many years apart from the Eagle, and there never was a time in his life, from 1842 onward, when he would not willingly have sacrificed all his other interests to the paper. From small beginnings and a problematical existence he saw it grow and develop to a power in the city and an influence in the land. This condition was not secured without hard personal labor on his part. For several years it THE eagle staff IN 1863. Francis a. Mallison John Stanton. James McCloskey. Henry Chad wick. Alfredo Herman Jos. Howard. Jr. Isaac Van Anden. Richard McDermott. Thomas Kinsella THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. pi was a desperate struggle to maintain the paper ; in the beginning, indeed, in more years than one. it depended for support and for existence on the profits of its job printing office. Yet, during these years of struggle, "Van" never failed to meet his obligations promptly, and he grew with the years into the respect and esteem of all with whom he came into contact. When he purchased the Eagle he gave his notes for it, and as each of them fell due he met it on the very day and asked no extension of time. It would be interesting to know what the amount of that purchase money was and com- pare it with the value which the present proprietors place on their property. Whatever it was, it was promptly met and fully paid. In the early times "Van" worked at the case during part of the day, and when the form came to the press he worked that — a hand-press of the early pattern. An idea as to how recently Brooklyn had grown large enough to support daily newspapers when the Eagle began its career, may be derived from the illustration here given, as it appeared in 1821, of the site of the building just vacated by the Eagle, and occupied by it during nearly all the fifty years of its existence, though with occasional enlargements. The following account of the making of the sketch from which the illustration was drawn was published in the Eagle of March 18, 1883. It is now over seventy years since the sketch of the original site was made. "BROOKLYN SIXTY YEARS AGO. "We have recently come into possession of a sketch of the present site of the Eagle office, taken about the year 1 821 — over sixty years ago— and by an artist who afterward attained world-wide celebrity, Mr. Banvard, whose name is associated in the minds of the boys of twenty-five or thirty years ago with the great ' Father of Waters.' Mr. Ban- vard, the designer of 'The Panorama of the Mississippi River'— and who is, by the way, now a resident of Brooklyn- made the sketch which is appended, under the following circumstances: Mr. Banvard, who resided with his parents in New York City, was in the habit, when a boy, of visiting the open fields on which the stately City of Brooklyn now stands, to shoot birds. On one occasion he came over with his brother, and under the guidance of the milkman, who supplied the family from his farm on this side of the river. After the day's sport was over, the two boys made their way, not to the foot of Fulton street— for there was no street then— but to 'The Ferry,' to take the boat— a stout row boat, if we mistake not, at that time making very infrequent and irregular trips. The artist boy made the sketch which is reproduced below. His brother amused himself by other methods, and, while doing so, he looked over into the cask depicted in the sketch, and into which the rain water from the roof of the Dutch-shaped house fell. While thus engaged, the sixpence he had to pay the joint ferriage, and which he had put in his mouth for safe keeping, fell into the water barrel, and the two lads were in dismay until they succeeded in recovering the coin. The incident made such an impression on the boyhood memory of Mr. Banvard that he has retained ever since the little sketch which commemorates it. If Mr. Banvard's memory serves, the Eagle establishment occupies the site on which the plain but comfortable-looking Dutch house then stood, as seen on the right of the sketch. A column enumerating the contrasts between 'The Ferry" of the past and the foot of the busy thoroughfare known to us as Fulton street, would not pre- sent to the mind as vivid a conception of the changes which have taken place as is conveyed by the little sketch which is here reproduced." It is a long step — longer in advancement than in mere years — from the Eagle office of the early days and the site to which it soon removed, to the Eagle Buildj.ig of to-day, and the towering evidences of growth and prosperity which surround its present site, a contrast so eloquent that words cannot inten- sify it. THE FIRST " EAGLE." There is a similar contrast to the eye between the first copy of the Eagle, issued on October 26, 1841, and the jubilee number — "Vol. 50, No. 328" — issued on November 26, 1890, in commemoration of the laying of the corner-stone of the new building which it now occupies. The first copy of the paper was then reproduced on the lower inside corners of four of the eight pages which made up the jubilee number, falling short of the measurements of the latter by one-quarter of the height of the page and bv three columns of the width of the page, each of its four pages containing only about one-half as much matter as the page of the full-grown Eagle, and its four pages altogether containing only one-quarter as much as the eight pages of the jubilee Eagle. The advertisements include only two Brooklyn insur- ance companies; the time table of the Long Island Railroad between Brooklyn and Hicksville; very few business cards, mostly of remedies, dry goods and stationery; and sundry Corporation notices. Some of the latter are interesting. Four columns of property advertised for sale for non-payment of taxes show that the property holders of to-day are only following the example of their ancestors; some extracts from the Regulations established for the Firemen of Brooklyn are signed, among others of the Alder- manic Committee of the Fire Department, by Seth Low, the grandfather of Brooklyn's late Mayor; pro- posals are advertised for lamp oil for lighting the city streets, and a petition for the building of a public cistern at Myrtle and Bridge streets. In the report of the proceedings in the Common Council there are noted a petition to change the name of Orange street to West Nassau street, and an ordinance for the assessment of the cost of a pump and well in Schermerhorn street. Among the news items is an account of the war in China, brought down to the 20th of June ("news" six months old!), furnished by " Mr. Low, son of Alderman Low " (A. A. Low, probably), who arrived home on the ship bringing the 92 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. news. The news matter in this number relates principally to the political campaign then under way, as do also tne editorials ; though room is found for an account of the reception into the New York Typo- graphical Society of William Cullen Bryant, of the Evening Post. The Eagle continued under the editorship of William B. Marsh from 1842 until his death, which occurred on the 26th of February, 1846. Then Walt Whitman took the editorial chair, and held it for a year, when he resigned. Then came IMr. S. G. Arnold, Mr. Van Anden's old associate in the News enterprise, and he infused new life into the paper. In 1850 the name was abbreviated to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1851-2 the Eagle employed the first reporter ever engaged for work upon a Brooklyn paper exclusively, and that was the vigorous and versatile Henry McCIoskey. When, in 1853, Mr. Arnold left the paper to edit the Syracuse Chronicle, McCIoskey was chosen as his successor. The policy of the paper underwent a change, and energy in the gathering of news became a feature in the paper. Its ^.: '^ [III THE BROOKI-YN DAILY EAGLE The Eagle's Home up to July, 1892. editorials were vigorous and often brilliant, and fresh telegraphic news was published daily. McCIoskey continued until the 7th of September, 1861, in charge, when, having a difference with the United States Government, he resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Kinsella. To the local reporter of to-day who gathers without difficulty information as to the amount of insur- ance upon a building consumed by fire, it will seem strange that the first occurrence which gave the people of Brooklyn an idea that the Eagle was a live paper, was when a fire occurred in Fulton street, and Mr. Van Anden rushed out and obtaining the list of insurance published it on the same day. This was enterprise, and it never had been done before by the evening press. It requires more energy and enterprise to make the first track through the unexplored forest than it does to follow the blazed path afterwards. It is easy to do a thing when you have been shown how. The journalist of to-day may look with condescension upon the efforts of that time, but he should not forget that those efforts were THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 93 often first and original tlioughts. Would he measure his own achievements by theirs ? — let him stop and ask whether he is contrib- uting- as many new ideas to his professional brethren of the future as his professional brethren of past days contributed to him. Li its own field the Eagle bore its part in the pioneer work of journalism. Li the meantime newspaper rivalries had become so e.xpensive and were conducted with such varying success, that finally an agreement was made as to news from abroad, and the New York Associated Press came into existence. The telegraph, by this time growing into general use, largely contributed to this end. The breaking out of the war in 1861 gave American journalism a impulse, notwithstanding Hen Raymond's fear that it wou ruin the business. Most of the journals of the country date the period of their assured success from that time. Such was the case with the Eagle. Revolutions never go backward. The people, once educated to seek the journals, rarely forego the pleasure and instruction there obtained. The Eagle has never seen a year pass since 1861 when its circula- tion was not larger than the preceding year. It has not seen ^. a year m which some im- provement has not been made. From 1842 to 1 86 1 the paper continued of the same size as that in which it was first published. At the begin- ning of the war it was enlarged. Again, in 1867 seven columns of space were ad- ded ; and supple- mental sheets were for a long time added to the usual sheet, as occasion required; while the pressure on the space for news and advertising became so great and so continuous, that the e.\tra sheet was for years a regular and no longer an occa- sional feature of the paper. Not in- frequently it was necessary to add a double extra sheet, making altogether whenever occurrences of great moment were to be an eight-page paper, to accommodate the matter, chronicled, or room was to be made at special seasons for a flood of advertising. 94 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. THE SUNDAY "EAGLE." On January ist, 1877, the Eagle made another venture, and that was the publication of an issue on Sunday morning. The " Sunday papers," as cer- tain publications were then called, had been in existence for many years, and were dis- tinct in journalism. These papers represented a phase of journalism that no one was proud of, and public sentiment at that time was opposed to all Sunday publications. Defying one moral sentiment seemed to be taken by these journals as license to defy all moral senti- ment, and they were, as a whole, unclean sheets. When ,, _ ^ sai,a!ss<.«>pr- the dailies began the publica- , • r o 1 • it, St. John's Episcopal Church, 1868 — Site of New Eagle Ruildinfir. tion of Sunday issues they were •= i v v s s condemned by a portion of the public, but that opposition finally passed entirely away. It was soon manifest that the already existing unclean sheets could not stand before their new and clean rivals, throbbing with news from every point. The Sunday Eagle took its place with the continuous publications of the week, and its discontinuance would make a break, seriously inconveniencing a great number of people. It is not likely to be discontinued, for it has grown into the prosperity it deserved. Apart from the news it publishes and the discussion of it, it contains a large amount of original literary matter, for which formerly the reader must needs seek the magazines. It is each year waxing in strength, and each year widening the circle of its friends. With the upgrowth of the Sunday issues of the daily press there was a subsidence of the distinctive "Sunday paper." The publication of the Sunday Eagle sent the "Sunday press " of Brooklyn into obscurity, and purified the journalistic atmosphere. The Sunday Eagle was based on an already existing publication, which had its origin, curiously enough, on the very spot to which the Eagle has now removed. And in a sense this paper — the Sunday Sun, which was absorbed by the Eagle and became its Sunday edition — had its birth in the Eagle office; for it was an outside enterprise of the then chief editor, Mr. Thomas Kinsella. The marked success of the Conways in their Park Theatre led them to desire a larger one. The new theatre — the original Brooklyn Theatre — was built for them by W. C. Kingsley and others, who purchased for the purpose the St. John's Church property at Washington and Johnson streets, where they opened in 187 1 the unprofitable venture of their closing days, both Mr. and Mrs. Conway dying within three or four years after this time. The theatre passed into the hands of Shook and Palmer, and became the scene of the dreadful theatre fire of 1876 ; and after being followed by a second Brooklyn theatre, a restaurant, and a hotel, in succession, it gave place to the new Eagle building. It was on this property, during the days of the Conway theatre, that Mr. Kinsella established in 1874 the office of his new paper, the Sunday Sun, with the business backing of Mr. Kingsley, the paper occupying quarters over the stores in front of the theatre proper. Duiring the second year of this paper it became the policy of the Eagle to absorb it, and the Sunday Eagle took its place. THE "EAGLE" INCORPORATED. In 1870 there occurred a change of more importance to persons concerned in the management of the Eagle and those earning their daily bread therefrom than to anybody else. Mr. Van Anden, who had been in sole control and ownersTnip of the Eagle for twenty-eight years, who had seen it grow under his hands until it yielded him a most handsome income and had made him one of the rich men of the city, was induced by a number of capitalists, who fully appreciated the value of the establishment as an invest- ment, to dispose of it to them as an Association. The sale made somewhat of a stir in the city at the time, but in the conduct of the Eagle no change was made, save, perhaps, in respect of increased vigor of management, and neither those earning salaries from it nor those reading it could perceive any other change. It was conducted upon the same line as during the previous years, and it has been conducted on the same line since. The change was a change of ownership only. At first, indeed, Mr. Van Anden THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 95 severed his connection with the paper entirely ; but a few months after, finding a life of freedom from responsibility not so pleasant in the actuality as it had been in the dreams of his years of struggle, he purchased the stock of a member of the Association, and again took the head of the business manage- ment of the paper, at which he continued until the day of his death, which occurred August 6, 1875 Mr. Van Anden was a small, active and energetic man, with so kindly a heart that he had assumed a brusqueness of manner to conceal what he almost considered his weakness. Much respected in his office among his employees he always maintained a lively interest in their well being. He never wrote for the Eagle, but he possessed a rare faculty for selecting his assistants — a faculty which largely helped the growth of his paper. He never married, and in after years, when fortune and prosperity smiled upon him, he became much interested in his horses, of which he had a large number; and, in fact, this was all his life long the only expensive luxury he permitted himself. "Van" will long be remembered in the office by those who were connected with the establishment during his life, and these are not a few. " Mr. Van was one of the salt of the earth," said an old employee, in speaking of him. To take every advantage that presented itself, closely to watch the signs of the times and profit thereby, has always been the characteristic of the Eagle management, and that spirit pervades the establishment in all its parts. The man who in the early days of the paper shaped its destinies has long since been gathered to his fathers, but his spirit still lives in the spirit of the Eagle. "EAGLE" EDITORS. The editors of the early days were not subject to the heavier responsibilities that were laid on their successors ; and perhaps it would be a correct stater..ent that, judged by the present standards, the first real editor was Henry McCloskey — although he had been preceded by Locke, Marsh, Walt Whitman and Arnold, as titular editors. Of Whitman, whose picturesque career has so lately come to an end, it is remembered that he occupied the editorial chair principally on stormy days; for nothing could keep him out of the sunshine, and in pleasant weather his editorial duties received scant attention. In an inter- view published recently, Walt Whitman referred to his position on the Eagle: "I went to edit the Brook- lyn Eagle, where for two years I had one of the pleasantest sits of my life — a good owner, good pay, . and easy work and hours." McCloskey just fell short of being a man of genius. As a writer he was vigorous, strong, pictur- esque and original. He was an implacable opponent, and he neither gave nor asked quarter. He was at his best in controversy, and he courted it. His talents were of the destructive rather than of the con- structive order. But he seemed to lack the steady head and hand required in the editor of an influ- ential public journal, and he may be classed among the victims of the wild and turbulent war period, during which many reputations were lost as well as many achieved. In his calling he was incorruptible, and it may be said of him that he never wrote a line he did not firmly believe to be right and just when he penned it. McCloskey was succeeded in the editorship by Thomas Kinsella, a man of stronger character and with a better grasp of the new and trying conditions under which jour- nalism was conducted after the war had revolutionized jour- nalistic methods and increaseci the responsibilities. His con- duct of the paper was charac- terized by sincerity, earnest- ness and conscientious indus- try, qualities with which he inspired his associates. It was his fortune to guide the paper „ , T, -ij- successfully through the Brooklyn Theatre, 1871, site of New Eagle Building. = / & THt Nt.w Eagle Building, 1892. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 97 stormy days of the war and reconstruction, and into the era of peace and development, in which he made the Eagle an important factor. He died in the harness, in 1884, after more than twenty years of faithfui and useful service. His successor was St. Clair McKelway, the present incumbent, one of the best news- paper men in the country. An interesting reminiscence of old times on the Eagle is preserved in the group of the Eagle Staff in 1863, which is reproduced in this volume. Several of the group are referred to elsewhere. Alfred G. Herman was in 1850 the only reporter on the Eagle, and he also furnished to the New York papers all the Brooklyn news in a condensed form. It may be said that at that time he was the only reporter in this city. James McCloskey was a brother of editor Henry McCloskey, referred to above. Richard McDermott did general reporting, and was well known about town and very popular. John Stanton was for a few years prior to 1863 employed in a fireworks factory in Williamsburgh, now the Eastern District of Brooklyn. The works exploding, Stanton found himself in the street, and he at once started for the Eagle office and wrote an account of the affair, which was published that afternoon. This stroke of enterprise secured him a situation on the paper. A feature of his work was a series of humorous articles signed " Corry O'Lanus," which attracted attention and increased the number of the Eagle's readers. He was afterwards City Editor. Of all the persons in the group, only two are living — Joseph Howard, Jr., and Henry Chadwick. The latter still writes for the Eagle, and his signature of "Old Chalk" marks whatever he writes on. baseball, of which he is one of the early fathers, as com- ing from the pen of the best authority on the subject. Joseph Howard, Jr., shortly before this picture was taken, had narrowly escaped with his life from the hands of the mob during the "Draft Riots" of 1863, an experience which he wrote up the same day, his head in a bandage, for his paper, while he was known as "Howard of the Times." He was City Editor ^ - of the Eagle, and he introduced into it several special features of interest and ,-<-^ 1 value. In 1864 he and Mallison — who was the Albany correspondent and sub- i sequently was elected to the Assembly — indulged in a rather serious practical joke, in issuing a bogus presidential proclamation, which led to their imprison- ment in Fort Lafayette. On his release, after a few weeks, Howard was appointed by General John A. Dix (on whose order he had been arrested) official recorder to the military court sitting in New York. He sub- sequently returned to the Times, and since then has been a prominent writer on various New York and out-of-town papers. THE "EAGLE'S" INDEPENDENCE. The editorial chair of the Eagle has always been an agreeable post for men of strong individuality and inde- ' ^ pendent habit of mind, because of its essential independ- ence of party control, which was asserted at an early day by Mr. Van Anden, and increased with time and the growth of the paper. It has indignantly repelled the idea of " organship," and while it has steadfastly upheld the '''' principles of Jefferson, it never has followed the party when the party diverged from its proper course. It has been the sternest critic of the managemicnt of its own party, it has plied the lash when the leaders deserved it, and has not hesitated in its choice of words. It more than ' once has advised its Democratic readers to abandon party nominations, when those nominations were of unfit men. It has earnestly striven for an improvement % in political methods, and it will continue to do so. / It considers the interests of the public first and // — the politicians last. It has confined its politics to the editorial columns, and has insisted that its writers for the news columns should manifest neither bias nor partisanship. And it has stood almost alone among the journals of America, in giving the same space to one party as it has given to another. This fairness has brought its own reward, for the conductors have the satis- faction of seeing the adherents of all parties coming to the Z''^~' — columns of the Eagle with confident assurance that they will find there the events of their own party faithfully and corner Entrance to Counting Room 98 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. truthfully reported. Violation of this rule is the greatest offence that can be committed by an Eagle man. The E.^GLE always manifested restiveness under anything like political dictation, and it is related that early in the fifties Mr. Henry C. Murphy, then the real leader of the Democracy of Kings, went into the Eagle office with a copy of a speech which had just then been delivered by Mr. Thomas W. Cum- mins, the Representative in Congress from the I!rooklyn district, which he desired to have published in full. Mr. Van Anden bluntly refused to print it, on the ground that it was neither news nor inter- esting,' and that he could not lumber up his paper with such stuff. It is said that Murphy went off in a huff[ and afterwards asked how Van Anden expected to get along if he intended to cut himself loose from party ties and obligations. For years after, whenever any Democratic leader felt the sting of the Eagles 1 ish— and its applic ition his n it been infrequent — ^^henc^el the pait\ wis displc iscd with the course of the E\( it alw i\ s mdcpend ent, the leaders began to piate ib )ut whit the Eacle owed the piit\ Some one hid st ited that the Democi itic put^ hid gncn the Em le to Ml ^ an \nden and this was repeated so often that the leaders actualh began to believe their ^'^ own asseition This anno\ed Mi A an Anden greatl}, foi he knew what struggles he had made Interior of Counting Room. to pay the notes he had given in e-\change for the Eagle — notes which he met, every one as it fell due, nor once asked an extension of time, for the payment of which he hail .no other '• assistance than that of his own liands. Mr. Van was always very vigorous in his denial on this point, and forceful in his statement of the case. Finally, a former editor of the Eagle laid the assertion at rest by an energetic denial of it in the columns of the paper, to which he appended the stinging remark that the only thing the Democratic party ever gave to the Eagle was its police items. The Eagle gave the Democratic party far more than it ever received from it, and in later years it has given the local party its best ideas. The times when parties were masters of newspapers have gone liy, and self-respecting journals do not follow the actions and utterances of party conventions as they did forty or fifty years ago. A defender of the people. Ranking equal in importance with political independence on the part of a newspaper — perhaps sur- passing it — is another kind of independence which is an essential virtue in a great journal: an inde THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 99 pendence of consequences in the discharge of a duty to the public this is an independence in the exercise of which it is incumbent on discrimination ; and it is a very different thing from reck- lessness. Reclvlessness in bringing charges of wrong-doing incurs its own liability, and a wise newspaper wi: it ; but it is more to the point that such recklessness a cruel use of " a giant's strength," and a just news paper seeks to avoid it. So the duty is laid on every journal which is a conservator of public morals and of the integrity of public institutions, of ex- posing wrong with such discretion as to do no wrong to the innocent, while not letting the guilty escape. There now and then falls to the lot of a cour- ageous newspaper the opportunity of justifying its conduct and its methods before the public. Such an opportunity came to the Eagle in a recently tried libel suit, brought against it by Mrs. Dr. in exposing wrongs. To be sure, the managers of a newspaper to use AssisiANT Manager. Mary A. Dixon Jones, familiar to the public and having all the force of a contemporary illustration. It is probable that the incidental ex- position, during the trial of this case, of the methods of a respon- sible newspaper in the careful in- vestigation of facts before making a serious i)ublication, was a reve- lation to most of the community. Such an array of proof as was presented on behalf of the Eagle, President an'd Secretary. notwithstanding the lapse of time since the event and the death and removal of witnesses, was a complete justification of the judicial temper in which it undertook the discharge of a serious and painful duty to the pub- lic, with the fullest consideration for the rights of all concerned. The suit was based on the publi- cation in the Eagle, on twenty-one days in April and May, 1 889, of a series of articles about the Woman's Hospi- tal and Dr. Mary A. Dixon Jones and treasurer s okhce. her son. Dr. Charles N. Dixon Jones, who ran that institution. The power of that arraignment is shown by the fact that after it appeared the Woman's Hospital was emptied of its patients and Dr. Mary A. Dixon Jones lost her practice, and was indicted and tried for manslaughter on one of the many charges contained in the articles. For all these misfortunes she asked a jury of her fellow citizens to award her $150,000 damages, a claim which in itself would arrest the attention of the community. She came into court sup- ported by a formidable array of counsel, and by her sons and a group of women friends who had stuck to her through evil report and good report since her difficulties with hospitals began in this town, some TOO THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. six or eight years ago. The case as tried was one of the most remarkable libel suits ever tried in the United States and one of the most voluminous and complicated cases of any sort ever tried in Kings County. It occupied the court for six weeks, exceeding in length any case ever tried in the county, with one exception. There were 258 witnesses examined, many of them more than once, and the transcript of the stenographer's notes of the testimony, speeches of counsel, and the judge's charge, filled 5,000 type-written pages. The result of the trial was so complete a justification of the Eagle's charges that, while it was expected by some that the omission to prove here and there an unimportant item might lead to a technical verdict for the plaintiff, the jury thought otherwise and brought in an unqualified verdict for the Eagle. The case for the Eagle was succinctly summarized in the concluding portion of the address of the counsel for the Eagle, who said : " I ask a verdict for this defendant because it has rendered a great and glorious service to the poor of this city ; because it has closed the doors of that bastard hospital and stayed the uplifted knife of this aged plaintiff ; because it has suppressed the craze which, impelled by private greed and an unscrupulous ambition, was disregarding marital rights and destroying the cherished hopes of offspring ; a craze, gentlemen, which was sacrificing on the altar of a hasty diagno- sis, in the name of science, every timid, trusting woman who came within the baleful influence of this smiling priestess. It is within your power to punish this defendant. You can select from these many statements some few lines here and there which have not been proven ; you can cull an occasional grain of chaff from all this wheat. But remember, in doing so you would simply perpetuate and encourage the existence of institutions of this character. You would simply throttle a bold press, which is the only channel through which such investigations can be made and through which such wrongs can be righted and redressed. There have been times, gentlemen, during the trial of this case, when I forgot the Eagle was my client. The living victims, with their sad, despairing faces, and the shades of the sheeted dead, seemed to stand around me and urge me to avenge their wrongs. I ask a verdict for this defendant in their name. And for humanity, to whom we dedicate our lives, for whom this hospital was erected, which we so heedlessly and so negligently supported and maintained, I ask the only apology we now can make — a verdict for this defendant." THE PEOPLE'S VERDICT. No wonder the verdict profoundly impressed the people. It was the ratification of their own ver- dict ; the fulfillment of their own desire ; the realization of their own hope. Nor was it the vindication of the Eagle alone. It afforded new reason for confidence in the soundness of the jury system, that it would prove itself a bulwark of right and a sure defense against evil. It revealed a free and fear- less press as the best force and the best friend of a free people. There was a touching side to the case in its demonstration of the necessity of such a press as the champion of the lured, the credulous, the illiterate and the self-defenseless for protection and preservation. Never was pseudo-science so signally exposed. Never was illiterate and assuming conceit more effectively stripped and overthrown. The trial was a vindication of learning as well as of law. The verdict was the best thing justice has done for life, home, truth, the suffering and the unwary. The Eagle, as the organ of the people and of the people alone, and as their organ for their own best and highest interests alone, was deeply grate- ful for their support of it and their sympathy with its labors and their congratulations upon the vin- dication which the evidence, the jury, the court, and all right-minded men and women united in ren- dering to the duty which it began and completed in this case. THE "EAGLE" AND ATHLETIC SPORTS. The Eagle represents the public in all its interests, and its amusements as well as the more serious concerns of life and death are looked after. The abnormal growth of sports in public favor of late years is largely, if not entirely, due to the aid and countenance given them by the newspapers. When the Eagle helped to develop the interest in baseball which began in this city — almost the home of the game — in i86o, it constructed the lever which lifted up into popular favor athletic games and sports in general. At that early period of baseball history athletic sports among our people were compara- tively unknown. Not an athletic club was in existence in the entire country, and we had no lacrosse, football, tennis or general athletics, and the only sport in vogue was horse-racing. People at that period were too devoted to the rush for the "almighty dollar "to think of " wasting precious time," as they regarded it, in games and field sports for health or manly recreation. In common parlance, the sports of the present period were "not in it" at that time. But baseball did the business, and the growth of the national game soon led to the encouragement of kindred sports; and in due time athletic games of all kinds began to flourish. Besides our games "native and to the manner born," we brought into play the imported sports of cricket, lacrosse, football, tennis, etc., until we had at command the whole catalogue THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. known to the civilized world of sports. Li addition to the support given to the best class of games in the way of extended reports in the columns of the Eagle under the supervision of Mr. Chadwick, who has been the sporting writer of the paper for a quarter of a century, the proprietors went a point further and established a series of valuable special prizes for championship honors in various sports. Some of these trophies are illustrated in these pages. A result of this special attention on the part of the press is seen in the corresponding and responsive enthusiasm on the part of the public, by virtue of which our city stands second to none in the country in the pursuit of all manly and invigorating outdoor sports and recreative exercises; while it e.xcels all others in the facilities given to the practical exemplars of the games and sports in vogue for the full enjoyment of their favorite pastimes. The city authorities have caught the contagion and have provided a grand field in Prospect Park for the use of the public, with special baseball, cricket, football and lacrosse grounds at the forty-acre parade, and fields for tennis, croquet, archery and other field games on its extensive commons, all free to the public. EVOLUTION OF MECHANICAL FACILITIES. For fifty years, until its removal to its present building on Washington street, the Eagle's home was on lower Fulton street, near the Fulton Ferry. AVhen the paper was started its business was car- ried on in a small building on Fulton street, nearly opposite its late quarters. The office was soon after- wards moved across the street to a larger building, which was one of those that were from time to time thrown together to form the enlarged quarters which the Eagle has just vacated. The new offices were small, even for that time, compared with their later extent. Eighteen by fifty feet was a space sufficient to accommodate the Eagle of that date, while the growth of the paper required all of the one hundred and fifteen by one hundred and twenty-eight feet space it afterwards occupied. The business office and the press-rooms were on the lower floor, and on the upper floor was the editorial and composing rooms. The hand press was still the ma- chine on which the paper was printed, and continued to be up to [847 About that year a rotary or cylinder press was purchased, but human power was still the motor. During the year 1851 a boiler, upon which rested the engine it was to move, was intro- duced It was a somewhat primitive affair, and anybody who would acted as engineer. This was the first engine ever intro- duced into a printing office in Brooklyn. By 1S53 the single cylinder press had been discarded and one of Hoe's two-cylinder presses was put into the building, with the result of largely increasing the circulation, and a new engine and boiler were a necessary consequence. So fast did the business of the Eagle grow, that by 1858 the necessity of greater facilities had become very evident. In this year Mr. Van Anden, tired of simply meeting demands as they arose, determined on a step from which even warm friends and earnest well-wishers endeavored to dissuade him. But he was farther-sighted than they were, and he ordered a four-cylinder press from R. Hoe & Co., so largely increasing the facilities that the Eagle might take years to grow up to them — perhaps never. Towards the close of the year it was put into operation and then the Eagle press had a capacity of ten thousand copies an hour. This enterprise involved an out- lay of |;2o,ooo. Wiseacres condemned this as a foolish and extravagant expenditure, and contemporaries declared that such invest- ments could not be made to pay outside of New York city. This act, however, was not only wise, shrewd, sagacious and enterprising, but exceedingly fortunate. Thouo-h no one then dreamed of war, yet Main ENTRANrK, Washington Street. lO? THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the events of three years later made such demands upon the resources and capacities of newspapers, and that so suddenly, that not a few were utterly unable to meet them. By the fortunate investment of 1858 the Eagle was among the few papers that were quite ready for the emergency, and could, with entire contentment, " spread its sails to the favoring gale." i860 was a year in which the Eagle gave practical evidence of its prosperity. In that year the building to the east of the office it had occupied so long — No. 34 Fulton street — was purchased, and an extension to it was erected, running back to Doughty street, giving a depth of one hundred and ten feet. The next year, with increased press capacity, increased steam power, and more room for all depart- ments of the business, the Eagle was fully prepared for the extraordinary demands made upon its estab- lishment under the impulse of the war. The paper grew in strength and increased in prosperity. In this year it enlarged its sheet — its first enlargement since the beginning. Up to this time it had been sold at one cent. But now, in common with the other papers of the country, it was compelled to increase its price, at first to two cents and subsequently to three cents, because of the extraordinary rise in the price of printing paper. All this time the four-cylinder press had been equal to the demands made upon it, and it was thought, when the war was over, that it would be adequate for all needs for many years to come. Yet, within two years from the end of the war the Eagle had not only overtaken the capacity of this press, but had exceeded it. THE EIGHT-CYLINDER PRESS. Next followed the most stately of all the printing-machines up to that time invented — the Hoe Eight-Cylinder Press. How inextricably the name of Hoe is interwoven with the development of the printing art and of journalism! The eight-cylinder press is the most imposing of all the printing machines invented, and indeed, is nearly as large as the office the Eagle originally occupied when it began its career. This new improvement necessitated another annexation, and again a building was added to the Eagle property. No. 36 Fulton street, to accommodate the monster press. It certainly was time to enlarge again ; for the other departments of the paper had kept pace with the general development and needed more room. When all this was done — involving an expenditure of eighty thousand dollars — the conduct- ors of the Eagle felt assured that it would be many years before the Eagle's business would again outgrow the facilities with which it had been provided. At this time the paper was enlarged by the addition of one column to the width of the page and lengthening all the columns, increasing the size of the paper by several columns. This was on April 22, 1867. Yet barely four years had elapsed when it was found that the business had increased so much that it was necessary to add another eight-cylinder press, which was done in October, 1872, doubling the capacity and bringing it up to 40,000 copies an hour. In the train of the new press followed the stereo- typing room, the type forms having been formerly placed directly on the presses without stereotyping. These additions to the machinery necessitated increased power, and two new boilers and engines were put in — an outlay for these improvements of one hundred and fifty thousand dol- lars. These were the first improve- ments introduced by the newly-formed Eagle Corporation, which shortly after came under the presidency of Colonel William Hester. The changes made under this management from that time to the present have been almost revolutionary in character and extent. A NEW ESTABLISHMENT. Ten years only were these presses able to meet the demands. By that time other additions had to be made. These were so extensive that it was virtually a new establishment with which the Eagle was equipped in 1882-3. To begin with, what was practically a new building was erected on property already owned by the Eagle, con- siderably increased by further pur- chases. The property adjoining it on Main Hallway. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 103 Chandelier in Main Hallway. the west, which time out of mind had been known as the American Hotel property, was purchased. This gave to the Eagle a ground space measuring one hundred and fifteen feet on Fulton street, one hundred and six on Doughty street, and one hundred and twenty-eight on Elizabeth street ; making a superficial area of twelve thousand, one hundred and fifty-five square feet. This embraced a larger area of land than was held under any other one manage- ment on Fulton street. The annexed property had been used for a time " beyond which the memory of man run- neth not to the contrary," for hotel purposes, and was celebrated in its day. The stages which ran to all parts of Long Island, before they were supplanted by the railroads, made this hotel their point of departure and arrival, and there are many still living who can remember the bustling activity of those days, when stage after stage arrived and deposited its load brought in from the Island — passengers whose destination often was the greater city across the river. Within the memory of those who still consider them- selves young, there was a rusty, rickety and entirely disrepu- table stage — the last of its class — which used to rumble up to the hotel door promptly at noon with one or more passengers from the country lying between the city line and the sea. But even this venerable link betwen the travel of to-day and that of yesterday gave up the ghost when confronted with the competition of the new railroads to Coney Island. The sheds and stables where the horses were baited and where the farmer bringing his produce to market, housed his team, were still standing when the property came into posses- sion of the Eagle. The new building erected on this site covered a space measuring sixty-five feet eight inches by forty- six feet. It was of brick, three stories high. Beauty of design arid architectural effect were sacrificed to the more important considerations of light, air, convenience and security. The accommodations were per- fectly adapted to the purposes of the structure, and the building was made absolutely fire-proof. The brick walls from the foundation were made thick and massive, and so strong as to admit of the erection on them of additional stories, in case the future needs of the establishment should require additional room. What seemed to some an extravagantly costly pre- caution against fire was taken in the construction of this building throughout. But it was considered worth all it cost to be relieved from the alarm and anxiety of hearing the clangor of the fire bells and to insure to the public the uninterrupted publication of their favorite paper. The upper floor, with plenty of light and air, so necessary for the printer's work, were devoted to the newspaper composing room and the stereotyping rooms. In this floor, as well as through- out the building, only iron and stone were used in the construction, and no wood was used, even in the frames to hold the cases of type. On the floor below the job printing office was accommodated, and on the ground floor were placed the press rooms and delivery rooms. In the basement were the engine room, the store room for paper, and the massive foundations of the presses. THE PERFECTING PRESSES. At this time, also, the press facilities of the paper were increased by the addition of two Hoe perfecting presses, with folding attachment. Each of these had a capacity of 24,000 copies an hour, and printed the paper on both sides, delivering the copies folded. The work of the perfecting presses was so distinctly different from the former methods, that a description The Elevators, vj.iiv..iv. I04 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. of their operation is appropriate here. The paper was manufactured in rolls, or continuous webs, one of them turning out a strip of paper four and a half miles long and of suitable width. This was delivered wound on a wooden roller, and was wet (a necessary step in the printing of a newspaper) by being passed under a spray as it was passed from one roller to another. Then it was placed on the press, and was drawn between two cylinders, on one of which were the plates uf the newspaper pages, at the rate of about ten miles an hour. This impressed the pages of one side of the newspaper on the paper roll; and a second pair of cylinders, set just beyond the first, gave the impression of the pages of the other side of the newspaper, completing the operation of printing both sides of the sheet in one passing through the press. It was this "perfecting" of the copies that gave to the press its name. (The former method had been to print one side of the sheet, and then by another printing to finish the other side.) After passing the cylinders, the web was carried between a pair of cylinders which perforated the paper without dividing it, and continued its journey over endless tapes until it reached a set of rollers which divided it. By combining with the press a folding machine, the papeis were folded ready for delivery to the news boys, to be taken out for sale These presses were twenty-four feet long, and were capable of prmting each 24,000 copies an hour. Of course, with all this increase in machinery, another ease of power was necessary, and there naturally followed ew engine and a new boiler, capable of moving all the machinery, of which the several buildings which now housed the various branches of the Eagle's business con- tained a great quantity. The expenditure involved in this ecjuipment of the establishment was about $150,000, and it was supposed at the time that this enlargement, both of room and facilities, would satisfy all the requirements that were likely to arise in all the future history of the paper. But it was not long before a third perfecting press was needed, pur- chased, and put into operation to its full capacity. These presses represen- ted up to that date the summit of the press-builders' skill. They embraced in detail every appliance that ingenuity could devise or liberal expenditure obtain. No difficulty was experienced with their work until the Sunday Eagle Stairway, Second Flight, ^yas changed in form from a folio to a quarto. The Sunday edition, established January, 1877, had met with an instant success. It soon rivaled, in the excellence and variety of its matter and in the large circle of readers to which it was cheerfully admitted, its metro- politan competitors. To its improvement the energies of the entire establishment were successfully directed. A striking change was the adoption of the eight-page quarto form. Upon this innovation the only drawback was the vexatious double fold across several pages, inseparable from the original con- struction of the machinery, adapted as it was to a different page. The management was not insensible to the complaints that were freely made regarding this fold, and there being no other way to effect its removal, in order to supply the readers with the very latest form of paper and at the same time meet the demand of a constantly and rapidly growing circulation, the Eagle contracted with Messrs. Hoe & Co. for three presses of the most improved type, and their construction was immediately begun. Orig- inally it was the intention to have them placed in the new Eagle building — the necessity for which had already been demonstrated, even at so short a remove from the last complete fitting out! — but it was found desirable to have two of them erected in the cjuarters the Eagle was then occupying on Fulton street, and an addition to the fire proof building was necessary to make room for them. These latest additions were mechanical wonders. ^Vhat the Stradivarius violin is among musical instruments these remarkable machines are among printing presses. Great as was the capacity of the machines they displaced, they more than doubled it. They print and deliver, cut and folded in the same manner as the morning papers, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12-page newspapers at the rate of 24,000 an hour and 24-page papers at the rate of 12,000 an hour. They print 72,000 single leaf supplements an hour, and will insert and paste all the sheets, so that they will have a solid back and be arranged like the leaves of a pamphlet. The margins can be largely increased by speeding these presses above their rated capacity. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. i°S Editorial Offices. It is doubtful if a more wonderful combination of ingenuity and mechanical science was ever produced than these presses. Like all perfecting presses they print from stereotype plates, but they are double and will take a double equipment of such plates. There is room on their cylinders for twenty-four plates, thus placing the capacity at six 4-page, three 8-page, two 12-page or one 24-page papers, with their corresponding sub- divisions, at each revolution of the presses. On the perfecting presses which preceded these, the stereotype plates were made to run with the columns of the newspaper page longitudinally across the cylinders. In the new presses the plates are made with the columns wrapped about the side of the cylinder, or at right angles with the axis of the cylinder, making it possible to increase or diminish the number of columns at will. The old papers were printed from end to end ; now they are printed from head to foot. The folder, which occupies the side of the press, is a compact piece of mechanism. It takes up and cares for all the mass of printed papers which are poured on it, and folds and counts them in lots for the newsdealers, the newsboys or the mailing clerks. Nothing could be more wonderful than the process of printing on these mammoth machines. On the wetting machines the contents of two spools of paper of the size that come from the mills are rolled on one shaft to be used on the presses, thereby avoiding the delay in putting fresh rolls in position. The main roll on each of the three presses contains from eight to ten miles of paper. On the side are rolls one-half the width for a 12-page paper, or one-fourth the width for a lo-page paper, which sheet is an inset to the 8-page. A full sheet of 16 pages can be printed and insets up to 20 and 24 pages, if desired. After leaving the wetting machines the rolls, instead of being hoisted in a crane to the top of the press, as was done in the former perfecting machines, are placed in bearings at the base, the heavy rolls being handled easily by one man, so perfect is the mechanism and its adjustment to its work. Before the signal to start is given the pressman regulates the width of the margin with a small hand screw wheel. There is also an automatic safety brake, though it is seldom used, as the press is supplied with an automatic feed and a paper regulator, which permits the delivery to run only at the exact speed required. The impression on the paper is made as in the other perfecting presses, with some important modifications of adjustment, of great value but technical in their character. The new presses have many improvements in their working parts which only machinists and pressmen would appreciate, but which add enormously to their value. In the new building all the shafting and belting for running the presses are ingeniously laid under the floor, where they are out of the way and out of sight ; but when it is necessary to oil, repair or change them they are more easily accessible than if they were overhead. Considering their capacity, and compared with the other presses used by the Eagle, the new presses are remarkably compact, and much the simpler of the two. In the old presses there are over a hundred tapes, while the new ones have only twenty-three. This reduces decidedly the possibilities of trouble in working, for the breaking of a tape means the stoppage of the machine. Every part of the new machines is lighted with electric lights. Equipped with these newest triumphs of the press builder's genius, the Eagle's printing facilities are not surpassed in any press-rooms in the world. Coincidently with the occupation of the new building and the utilization of the varied possibilities of the new presses, the Eagle makes its final change of form ; and henceforth appears daily in the convenient quarto form which has hitherto been familiar and popular with the public in the Sunday edition. io6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. THE NEW "EAGLE" BUILDING. It has been necessary, in describing the presses which were ordered for the new Eagle building to anticipate the chronological order a little — just as the presses themselves were called into requisition before the former quarters were vacated. That the Eagle should need a new building only ten years after the erection of one that was adapted to its requirements, present and prospective, or could be made so by enlargements which were provided for in its construction, might seem strange. And strictly speak- ing it did not require a new building. To be sure, the effect of the Bridge on lower Fulton street had been such as to raise the question whether an office into which thousands of people must go every week for the transaction of business might not better be located nearer the line of travel ; but the business of a well-established newspaper depends less on the location of its office than on other considerations and the customers of the Eagle would come to its office wherever it might be. The establishment of branch offices in different sections of the city for the convenience of the public also made the location of the main office of less importance than it otherwise would have been. In the improvement of Fulton street in the vicinity of the City Hall consequent on the approach of the bridge entrance to that point the Eagle was willing to do its share. It had prospered with the city's growth and its owners felt that they ought to do something to add to the beauty of the city The management, therefore, decided to erect for the accommodation of the Eagle a building which should be second to none in architectural beauty and in appointments, and selected for that purpose property on Washington street, at the corner of Johnson, opposite the new Post Office. The site selected is an historic one. For fifty years previous to 1868, it was occupied by St. John's Episcopal Church, the first rector of which, the Rev. Evan M. Johnson, was an active and public spirited citizen of Brooklyn, interested in all its public improvements its City Hall, its parks, its ferries, its streets. It was owing to his unaided exertions, against heavy opposition, that Myrtle avenue was opened, giving access to the growing Eastern District. The prop- erty was sold in 1868 for $60,000, and in 1871 the Brooklyn Theatre was opened on this spot. The location of this site adapted it admirably to the purposes of a newspaper office. It is within a stone's throw of the City Hall, the Municipal Building, the Court House, and all the public city buildings, and therefore near to all the official headquarters ; it is across the way from the new Post Office which brings many thousands daily to its very doors ; and it is at the opening of what will be the great thorough- fare to the bridge. All the street car lines approaching the bridge and the ferry pass its doors, and the ele- vated railroad passengers can easily transact their business with the paper and reach the bridge by a very short walk. On this convenient and accessible site the Eagle has erected a building in the designing and construc- tion of which a carte blanche has been given to make it as perfect for newspaper and office purposes as possible. No expenditure has been spared to secure this result, and nothing tending to the result has been sacrificed to any other consideration. The build- ing is nine stories high, exclusive of the basement. It rises 129 feet from the ground on Washington street, and more than that on Johnson. It has a frontage of 68 feet on Washington street and 106 feet on Johnson. The extension of the basement under the sidewalks adds to the dimensions of this floor 15 feet by 174, affording with the rest sufficient accommoda- tions for four Hoe quadruple perfecting presses, with the boilers, engines, hydraulic pumps, electric-light plant, etc. The architecture of the building is in the renais- sance style, and the material is a tasteful combination of Jonesborough granite, Longmeadow freestone —a most durable material, far superior to the ordinary brown stone— Perth Amboy front brick, and trimmings of terra cotta. The main entrance on Washington street is properly made a commanding feature of the building, and it is treated with effective boldness. Over the semi-circular entrance arch, nine feet in width, is an entablature supported by heavy cantilevers. Above that rises a composite order surmounted by an entablature supported by columns and topped with two pillars, each bearing a large bronze eagle. The entrance front rises past the second story to a height of 45 feet, and has a total a Coknkr of the composing Room THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 107 width of 2 1 feet, contributing by its size as well as its design to the importance and boldness of the effect. This entrance gives access to the upper stories. The entrance to the Eagle business office at the corner is a feature of the architecture. On the face of a truncated corner, it takes a circular form, embracing the first two stories, above which the front is cut squarely across tlie corner. This entrance is flanked by columns supporting an entablature with an open pediment on which rests a sphere repre- senting the earth, inscribed with the dates, and a huge bronze eagle, measuring ten feet from tip to tip. In designing the general exterior the first two stories are treated as one section, and the third story as another, with a heavy projecting cornice over each. The stories from the fourth to the seventh are treated together, embraced between long, heavy pilasters. The eighth story is treated like an attic story, between heavy cornices, and the whole design is surmounted by a heavy ornamental balustrading of copper. Consistently with the commercial purposes of the building, semi-circular openings and various other decorative ornamental features are purposely discarded. Within, the building is in style and finish of offices, halls, corridors, stairways and lavatories sur- passed by no modern building in the world. The halls and corridors are wainscoted with rich-colored marble, and are tiled with rich mosaics of foreign marbles, promiscuous in coloring and very rich in effect. The lavatories are paved with colored champagne marble, a very beautiful and durable material. No common white and perishable marble is used anywhere in the building. The stairways are of iron, with marble treads, and are protected by heavy handrails of bronzed iron. All the halls and corridors are pleasingly decorated in attractive tints. This building is more thoroughly fire-proof than it has been STEREOTYPING ROOM. possible to make such structures until recently. Improved methods of thoroughly insulating structural iron have resulted in the retention of its supporting strength unaffected by the hottest fire. The offi- ces throughout the rented portion of the building are commodious, well-lighted, and are finished with steam heat, gas and electric lights. The publication office of the Eagle, on the ground floor, reached by the corner entrance, is per- fectly adapted to the purpose, and is very richly ornamented. The floor is of marble mosaic. The ceiling is heavily coffered and richly paneled and decorated. The supporting columns and capitals are of iron treated with metallic effect— plated with aluminum and finished in old brass. The office has a high wainscoting of Numidian marble, and the counter is made of the same material. The counter is partly surmounted by an ornamental framework of bronze and polished brass, enclosing plate glass panels in front of the book-keeper's desk— an open counter of fourteen feet on a half circle facing the door, giving io8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the public access to the force of advertising clerks. The Eagle occupies, besides the ground floor for its publication office, the basement for the mechanical work, the fifth and sixth stories for its job print- ing department, the seventh, with its handsomely fitted editorial rooms, and the eighth and ninth for the newspaper composing rooms. The second, third and fourth stories are available for rented offices. "EAGLE" BRANCH OFFICES. In a great city like Brooklyn and under the exigencies of the newspaper publishing business of to- day no single office, however advantageously situated and amply appointed, can fully answer all the purposes of a great daily journal. The Eagle discovered this fact some time ago, and in 1885 it estab- lished its first branch office at 44 Broadway. This covers the territory known as the Eastern District. The office is located on the great business thoroughfare of that section of the city, within a block of the Eastern District ferries. Mr. George Wood has been in charge of the office since it started. Scarcely less useful and essential is the office at 1248 Bedford avenue, supplying the needs of the densely settled newer town. This office was established in 1887, at 1227 Bedford avenue, where it remained until May i, 1892. But by that tmie the business of the branch in this busy quarter had increased tu such an evtent that a per- : ^ r"^*-i ' ^- ^"^ manent Newspaper Press Room. and adequate location became necessary, and the present larger quarters were purchased by the Eagle. The building has been practically rebuilt for newspaper office purposes, and is complete in every par- ticular. Edward J. Henesey is the manager. The branch at 435 Fifth avenue serves the convenience of the constituency of South Brooklyn, and was established in May, 1887. It is located near Ninth street, the centre of an active business community. Mr. W. G. Eggleton is in charge of it. The Twenty-sixth Ward Branch is located on Atlantic, near East New York avenue. It was started in March, 1889, and supplies the growing section which was formerly the town of New Lots. It is a handsome office. William McGann is in charge. An office was opened March i, 1892, at No. 150 Greenpoint avenue, and is known as the Greenpoint Branch. It is in the centre of a large population, and is so far from the main office that the Eagle's patrons readily appreciate the convenience offered. It is in charge of Mr. Charles New- man. The New Utrecht Branch is located at Bath Beach, directly opposite the railway station, and is intended to meet the needs of the Eagle patrons in the rapidly growing suburban district along the South Shore. Edgar Mels is in charge of the news and John Emerich of the business department. A headquarters for Long Island business was recently established at Jamaica. The Eagle Branch is near the railway station, and can be seen from all the trains. Mr. Quincy B. Street has charge of the office and is at the head of the Eagle's Long Island News Bureau. From this point bundles of papers are sent out daily to all the news agents on the Island. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 109 The Great Engine. At No. 610 Fourteenth street, Washington, D. C, the Eagle has its Washington Bureau, which is kept open for the convenience of Brooklynites at the National Capital, and is the headquarters of the Eagle correspondents. Files of the Eagle and the other Brooklyn and New York papers are kept on hand, and a registry book where Eagle friends can sign their names. This Bureau has been of great service to Brooklyn people, especially those desiring information concerning the city, its public buildings, etc. Mr. A. B. Atkins looks after the Eagle's interests in Washington. It has been the purpose of the Eagle in establishing these branches to make them serve in all particulars the requirements of the main office. Papers are sold, back copies always on hand; files of the Eagle running back for several years are kept; advertisements are taken, and orders for job print- ing are received. News items left at the branch offices are promptly transmitted to the Eagle editorial rooms, and there is telephonic communication with all the offices. The branches in every case are managed by the Eagle employees, and no other business is conducted in connection with them. The Branch Offices facilitate the home delivery of papers. To reach out-of-town points the Eagle has its own special methods of delivery. Swift horses carry the Eagle wagons to central points of delivery in New York and Brooklyn, and bundles of papers are expressed on all railroads leaving the two cities. On the Long Island and Coney Island trains special messengers are sent to supply papers to the dealers along the routes. The Eagle has always made it a point to follow Brooklyn people wherever they went. In the principal cities in Europe the paper is on file in the leading hotels and banking houses. In this country it can be found in the reading rooms of all the leading summer and winter hotels, and in many of them it can be purchased at the news stands. The delivery system is in charge of a competent corps of men whose work is directed by Patrick Dobbins, for more than twenty years an employee of the Eagle. THE JOB PRINTING DEPARTMENT. The Job Printing Department of the Eagle is an extensive adjunct to the paper. It is one of the best offices, in point of facilities, for the execution of work in the highest style of the printer's art, to be found in the United States. For all kinds of book, job and poster printing, lithographing, engraving and electrotyping and the manufacture of blank books, this department has long merited and received a generous share of public patronage. All the machinery and implements of every description are of the newest pattern and design, and the work done is of the highest order. The Eagle Almanac is itself a fair specimen of the printing executed by this department. It is the largest job printing office in the city, and prides itself that there is no establishment, either local or remote, which can turn out better work. It has ample quarters in the new building, of which it occupies the fifth and sixth floors. Already well equipped in its former quarters, on the removal of this department to the new building all the machinery, presses, etc., which were in the least degree behind the latest improvements, were discarded and replaced by the most recent improved machinery in the market. Fifteen presses are kept constantly busy with the output of the office. The theatrical printing for the Brooklyn theatres is done here, THE EAGLE AiND BROOKLYN. and the theatrical printing of the office goes to every part of the United States and even to foreign countries. Before the new ballot law went into effect, this office printed all the local ballots, which were delivered already folded and bunched, to the extent, for some elections, of twenty-five millions in ten days. The Job Printing Department is under the superintendency of ATr Robert F. Clark, who has been connected with the office for twenty-four years, and during the past fifteen years has been its Superintend- ent. Mr. Clark learned the printing trade in Hudson, N. Y., where he was born, and was an apprentice in the office of the Daily Star of that place. He came to New York in 1S65, and entered the office of Baker & Godwin, a well-known printing house of that day, established in the old Tribune huWd'mg, and after three years of service there he came to the Eagle as a job compositor. He soon reached the position of foreman of the composing room, and was thereafter promoted successively to be assistant superintend- ent and superinte'ndent of the whole job printing department. The assistant superintendent, George Windram, has been with the Eagle twenty-one years. John H. King, foreman in the job, book and poster departments, has served si.xteen years ; Thomas J. Culshaw, proof-reader, twenty years ; Bernard Kerrigan, twenty years, and A. Redmayne, sixteen years. THE "EAGLE ALMANAC." The Eagle has just issued the seventh volume of its annual almanac. This publication was started in 1S86, in response to a demand for a compilation of the kind which should give in detail Brooklyn statis- tics and general information, such as was obtainable nowhere else. The demand was so great and it was met so fully, that the EA(iLE Almanac is now an established institution, and its annual publication sup- plies a want never supplied before. hi the seven volumes now issued the promises made in the beginning have been more than ful- filled. It has been welcomed by a public that had no compendium of correct and detailed information about Brooklyn and its many hundred social, religious, charitable and financial institutions ; its public schools, hospitals, societies, clubs, and all the varied interests of a great city. This field the Eagle Almanac has covered in a manner to win praise from all. As a local reference book it is without a com- petitor. The fullness of its information has not only kept pace with the increase of statistical informa- tion, but new features of value have been added, until it has grown from an almanac of 242 pages in i886 to 352 pages m 1892 \\ hde the \earsrecoid of the w 01 Id is included m its pa^cs, the hist position of impoitmce is ,,M\en to local and p irticulai mitteis These ha\c been ingeniousK summarized and classified, so r^ Delivery of Papers on Johnson Street side THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. that for actual use in reference it is believed that the Eagle Almanac has no superior, and, indeed, no imitator. To do this for a city that has grown from a population of 20,000 in 1834 to 955,000 in 1892; which has added and is still adding to its wealth, its trade, its social, religious, charitable, and other activities in even greater ratio, and which, thus liberally endowed, and reinforced, is about to absorb the rest of the County and is marching down Long Island — to do this, and at the same time summarize the many and far-reaching details of the life, only less stirring than that of the city's, of the insular end of the State — is a formidable undertaking. How it has been accomplished is a matter of satisfactory history. The pages of the Almanac contain many features which are, in themselves, valuable contributions to statistical history. For example, the importance of an accurate knowledge of the system of govern- ment in Brooklyn — an importance which has been recognized in a law providing for instruction on this subject in the public schools — has led to the insertion in the Almanac of a compendium of the City and County government. This is compiled from material not generally accessible without considerable trouble and is presented in a form so condensed and yet so clear that a very little study will give the reader a thorough understanding of the local government under which he lives. In view of the import- ance and variety of the matter included in it it has been embodied in a surprisingly small space. After careful preparation it was revised and approved by the Corporation Counsel, so that its fullness and accuracy may be confidently accepted. Succeeding this compendium, and pertinent to it, is informa- tion as to the organization of parties, the holding of primary and nominating conventions, the mak- ing of tickets, and other matters political. The Almanac provided this department in the first instance mainly for the use of its constituents and the public. At the same time it is doubtful if a better or more useful text-book for the civil government course in schools could be furnished. What has thus been said of a single new feature goes far to tell the story and test the quality of the contents of the Eagle Almanac. Its compendious exhibit of the results of the recent census — not available except by-and-by in prolix and bulky Federal reports ; its political statistics ; its Long Island statistics — more complete and voluminous than, a few years ago, could be found in many libraries ; these and many other topics are covered with all the skill and care that would be expended on the preparation of a cyclopaedia — and that is what the Eagle Almanac is, a cyclopaedia of information useful and necessary to every citizen of Brooklyn. The annual summary of local events alone gives it the value of a per- manent library reference book. THE MAKERS OF THE "EAGLE." The individuality of a newspaper is something distinct from the personality of the men that make it day by day, and in a sense is independent of it. A newspaper has its traditions, its customs, its inherent qualities, which do not disappear with time and change ; and under the fostering care of managers in sympathy with its traditions a journal with a history becomes fixed in its peculiar char- acteristics. But the personality of those who direct the course of such a paper and manage its depart- ments derives an interest from that very fact. The personnel of the Eagle staff may be said to be the outcome of the application of the prin- ciple of ''the survival of the fittest." Promotion from the lower ranks has been the rule, and as the promoted have stood the test of advancement, they have either been re- tained in their positions or advanced to higher ones. Capriciousness has had no place in the Eagle office. Slow the authorities may have been to take men on, but it was because when once on the staff they were there for life, unless they discharged them- selves. Colonel Wm. Hes- ter, the president of the Eagle Corporation, and THE EAGLE'S RESTAURANT. Isaac Vau Audcu before 112 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. him, both have been fortunate in the selection of writers so able and of assistants so competent and faithful that gray-haired men now manage the departments they entered as boys. The hundreds on the pay-rolls of the paper are members of one great family of willing workers. This security of position is one of the peculiarities of the paper, and it is very doubtful whether any other journal in this country has so large a proportion of long-service employees. The sentiment that the "gray hair of the servant is the honor of the master " finds full expression here. He who has served any length of The Book and Job Department Press Room. time on the Eagle rarely is induced to leave, even by proffers of greater remuneration. Why, only those on the paper can understand. Hence it is that in the Eagle establishment men who have worked only ten years are considered quite youthful in their periods of service. It is customary to associate with the success of a great newspaper a few of the names that always appear on the surface, but, as a matter of fact, some of the hidden forces which are constantly at work are essential to prosperity. Newspaper history is generally furnished by writers who have no knowl- edge of the subject beyond the editorial rooms. The business department with all its details; the massive machinery and its management, are unknown to them, and that which is most necessary to suc- cess is ignored. Those who have hitherto written of the Eagle have emphasized especially the services of those who merely prepare the written contents of the paper, and have credited exclusively to them the building up of an establishment that had been made a success long before their time, and would have remained so had they never been added to its force. WILLIAM HESTER, President of ike Eagle Corporaiion, The career of Colonel William Hester on the Eagle has been a typical illustration of Eagle methods and traditions. Colonel Hester has been for many years the President of the Eagle Association and its chief business manager. He came to the paper as the nephew and proteg6 of its publisher and proprie- tor. And yet his present position has been the result, not of favoritism, but of steady promotion under the system established by Isaac Van Anden, which placed every man on his merits and awarded pre- ferment to those who earned it, without reference to other considerations. Colonel Hester was born in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. His father was Samuel Wood Hester and his mother a sister of the late Isaac Van Anden. After an education in the Poughkeepsie schools and the Rhine- beck Academy, at the age of seventeen he came to Brooklyn and placed himself for business training under the charge of his uncle, Mr. Van Anden. Partly that he might learn the business in all its details, and largely that, like his uncle before him, he might work his way up from the bottom of the ladder, Mr. Hester was set to work among the apprentices, where he remained until he had qualified himself to set type, and then he took his " case " beside others who, like him, afterwards worked their way up in the estab- lishment. Colonel Hester still has the time-books in which his weekly account was kept in these days, which he values not only for its associations but for its excellent showing of his industry, for his weekly output of "ems" shows up very near the head of the list. Col. Hester did not inherit his stock in the THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. Ea(,lc b\ his uncle's will as IS geneially supposed Isaac Yan Anden sold his pi opnetorship m 1870 to si\ gentlemen w ho toi med a coiporation, and Lol Hester bought half of the stock held by one of these gentlemen, and part of the stock of another later Isaac Van Anden shortl} after bought the holdings of another member and became the Presi dent of the corporation. When Mr. Van Anden died he left all his property, including his Eaglf, stock, to his brothers and sisters. INIr. Hester was installed as a clerk in the Brooklyn from the Top of the Eagle Building. counting-room, from which he passed to the keeping of the books and by various stages to the head of the business department. Here he represented Mr. Van Anden in all the details of the business management, and continued in virtual charge of all executive matters during the entire period of Mr. Van Anden's control of the paper, well eciuipped by experience to render his uncle valuable assist- ance in the conduct of the business and the building up of the paper. When Mr. Van Anden sold his property to the newly-formed Eagle Association in 1S70, and became President of the new corporation, it was in the natural order of things that the experience and knowledge of Colonel Hester as to all the intricate business affairs of the paper should be retained, and he was made Publisher. On the death of Mr. Van Anden, in 1875, Mr. Hester succeeded to the Presidency of the corporation, in which he was a large stockholder. Thus it was that a member of Isaac Van Anden's immediate family took place in the ranks, in the lowest position, and worked his way through merit to the head of the establishment. The larger growth of the paper during the bast seventeen years and the vast improve- ments in its mechanical facilities — including the erection of two complete newspaper buildings, one lately vacated on Fulton street and the new one now occupied on \Vashington street — as well as the extensive system for the distribution of the paper, and the establishment of many branch offices, have all taken place under the management of Colonel Hester. The management of the paper during this period has involved the frequent successive adaptation of the printing facilities to the rapid growth of the paper, all involving foresight, enterprise, and the careful introduction of new facilities without disturbing the regular operation meanwhile of the existing establishment for the production of the daily paper. Colonel Hester has the satisfaction of knowing that the periods of his administration as President of the Association has coincided with the years of the paper's most marked commercial and journalistic success. In his inter- course with his employees every man and every department finds in him one whose counsel and suggestions are always on the side of the general interest, which the journal always considers as the only one to be regarded at all. Colonel Hester has identified himself with many activities in the city of Brooklyn, outside of his busi- ness. He was a member of the old A'olunteer Fire Department, and as early as 1854 took a hand at the brakes in the period of the old "piano-box" hand engines, and tugged at the rope when Brooklyn's fire- extinguishmg apparatus was pulled over cobble stones and through the mud. He entered the National Guard in 1857, as a member of Company " A," Fourteenth regiment, and served five years as Quartermaster on the staff of Major-Generals Thomas S. Dakin and James Jourdan, commanding the Second Division. While "4 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. he has not taken an active part in general politics, he has served his party in more ways than merely by publishing a Democratic newspaper. In 1882 he was selected as the most available candidate to contest the election for Member of Congress with the Hon, Darwin R. James in the Third Congressional District. The object aimed at was to make a Democratic mark on the district by reducing the Republican majority, which up to this time had been 7,000 — a preponderance too considerable to hope to overcome with victory, but requiring a candidate who would attract votes to make a creditable contest. Chosen as the candidate on this basis. Colonel Hester justified his selection by reducing the Republican majority to 2,400, thus discharging his duty to his party in a manner entirely satisfactory to the managers and highly gratifying to himself. A tribute paid to him in the columns of the Eagle during this canvass, from the pen of the Hon. Thomas Kinsella, who had worked side by side with him on the paper for thirty years, until both had reached the limit of promotion and stood at the head, each of his respective department, may be cited here as the expression of a comrade of many years : " The writer of this article began life with him at 'the case,' and from an acquaintance of thirty years bears testimony to the fact that he is a considerate employer, a eastern district branch. helpful and genial friend, and as honest a man as lives. If he should be elected to Congress, he will represent the Third District intelligently and in a conservative spirit. This much may be relied on: wealth has no attraction and power no blandishment adequate to turn him from supporting what he believes to be right. Of course he did not seek this nomination; it sought him. He is not desirous even of political honors. He has been well content with the faithful performance of all the duties devolv- ing on him as a private citizen. If the voters in the Third District desire to be represented in Con- gress by an intelligent, upright business man who has no sinister ends to subserve, and who will make a personal sacrifice by accepting a public trust, they might assiduously seek through a long summer day and fail to find a better man than William Hester ! " In 1886, while Colonel Hester was in Europe, Mayor Whitney appointed him a Commissioner of Public Parks, but the necessity of a closer application to business after the vacation of three months, compelled him to decline the honor. He is a member of the Hamilton, Brooklyn, Crescent Athletic, and Riding and Driving Clubs of this city, the Manhattan Club of New York, and the Larchmont and Shelter Island Yacht Clubs, and several minor organizations. WILLIAM M. VAN ANDEN. Until June, 1891, the Secretary and Treasurer of the Eagle Corporation was Mr. William M. Van Anden, a younger nephew of the founder of the Eagle, who was in its service for more than twenty- five years. Mr. Van Anden is the son of the late William Van Anden (a brother of Isaac Van Anden), a pioneer among American inventors, who lived to see his mechanical principles in general use for rail- road and other appliances, and whose death in May, 1892, was generally noticed by the press of the country. Mr. Van Anden was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and received his education in the Dutchess County Academy of Poughkeepsie, under Principal McGeorge, where he had for schoolmates Cornelius Vanderbilt, Samuel Barton, Judge Gildersleeve and other well-known New Yorkers. After further schooling at Stamford, Conn., he turned up at his uncle Isaac's office at the Eagle, with blood in his eye, determined to go to the front as a soldier. " What are you doing here ? " asked his uncle. " I am going to help put down the rebellion," said he. But, as he was under age, his uncle put him down on a stool behind the counter instead, and there he remained, helping his uncle and his cousin to make the Eagle the success that to-day astonishes the newspaper world, until, after more than a quarter of a century of close application, his failing health induced him to relinquish his active duties to younger hands. When Mr. Van Anden first came to the Eagle, it was in the transition stage between the local sheet of the town and the great metropolitan daily of the present. Three or four clerks, including himself and his cousin, William Hester, managed the affairs of the counting-room. His first duties were in the THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. "5 advertising department, the transactions of which brought him into daily contact with the patrons of the paper. He afterwards had in his care the charged advertising, covering the dealings with the regular users of the Eagle's columns. When Isaac Van Anden disposed of the paper to the members of the Eagle Corporation, in 1870, and for a time relinquished all his interest in the property, Mr. Wm. M. Van Anden and Mr.- Hester purchased for themselves a part of the stock held by members of the new corporation, and when Mr. Van Anden, Senior, bought back into the paper, his nephews were already stockholders. In a short time Mr. William M. Van Anden was made Treasurer and, after the death of Mr. Kinsella, Secretary of the Corporation. During the war, a feature of all newspapers were the daily bulletins, announcing the latest news from the front, and skill in selecting from the editorial proofs the salient points, and rapidity of putting them out on the bulletin board, were particulars in which there was considerable rivalry between the papers. The Eagle's bulletins fell within Mr. Van Anden's line of work, and he recalls the exciting moments of their preparation with much retrospective in- terest. During his active newspaper life, Mr. Van Anden was a hard worker and was at his office early and late. Yet he was able to identify himself with the life of the city in various ways. As a clubman he is a member of the Brooklyn, Crescent Athletic and Riding and Driving Clubs, of Brooklyn ; the Great South Bay Yacht Club, the Short Beach Club and the South Side Field Club of Bay Shore. He is a member also of the Brooklyn Art Association and a Life Member of the Y. M. C. A. Among his outside interests are the Long Island Safe Deposit Co. and the American District Telegraph Co., in both of which he is a director. Although not a politician, as the word is used, he has taken an active interest in politics, and represented his ward in 1876 at the Democratic State Convention at Utica, and was a member of the Democratic General Com- mittee. The only public office he ever held was the position of cashier of the Police Department, during the period, in 1870, when Isaac Van Anden was Commissioner (one of the first appointed) and Treas- urer. In 1875 he was offered a position on the staff of the Second Division, National Guard, by General Thomas S. Dakin, and in 1880 was invited to accept the position of Commissary of Subsistence on the staff of the 13th Regiment, both of which for per- sonal reasons he declined. The leisure which, al- though in a measure enforced by the state of his health, is well earned, Mr. Van Anden employs in travel and in the indulgence of his favorite pastime, the riding and driving of good horses. He has been all his life a lover of horses and a familiar figure on the road, where he has exhibited the qualities of more than one fine animal with a record and a reputation. He has disposed of all his interest in the Eagle. IJEUKOKU Branch. WILLIAM VAN ANDEN HESTER. The name of the virtual founder of the Eagle still appears on the list of the present staff of the paper, in the name of the Secretary of the Eagle Association, Mr. William Van Anden Hester, grand nephew of the late Isaac Van Anden and son of Colonel William Hester. Mr. Hester is a Brooklynite, born and bred. A resident of Remsen street, identified with the social and club life of the Heights, he is a representative of the younger element of the city and a product of its institutions, educational and social. Mr. Hester received his education in two representative Brooklyn educational establishments— ii6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Fifth Avenue Branch. at the Juvenile High School and the Polytechnic Institute, supplemented by a course of special study at a business college. His business experience covers a period of twelve years. For two years he was engaged with the coffee house of Thomas T. Barr & Co., in New York, and was then offered a position in the business department of the Eagle, with which he has been identified for the past ten years, becoming familiar with the various requirements of the business department. He has been for several years a stock- holder. In 1891 he became a director and Secretary of the Eagle Association. Outside of his business interests Mr. Hester has interested himself in club matters and out- door sports. He is a member of the Hamilton, Crescent Athletic, and Riding and Driving Clubs, and was a member of the Nereid Boat Club before its incorporation with the Crescent. He is especially active as a member of the Riding and Driving Club, the pursuits of which afford its members the most attractive form of rational recreation, and his gray saddle horse is well known in the ring and on the road. Mr. Hester's knowledge of the world is not confined to his native city, for he has traveled extensively in Europe, and knows by comparison the advantages of life in Brooklyn. harry s. kingsley. The Treasurer of the Eagle Association is Mr. Harry S. Kingsley, who came into this position in June, 1891. Mr. Kingsley is the son of the late William C. Kingsley, to whom Brooklyn is indebted for many important public im- provements. A number of the public works of the city were constructed by him, especially the water works, the sewer system and the Wallabout improvement. But his great work was the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the practical knowledge he brought to this work as its general superintendent was of inestimable value in the solution of engineering problems novel in character and of unusual difficulty. Mr. Kingsley's services in connection with the Bridge antedated its actual construction ; for it was under his direction that the problem of an East River suspension bridge was put into tangible form, by eminent engineers. Of such a parentage Mr. Harry S. Kingsley was born in Brooklyn in 1863. He was a student at the Polytechnic Institute until 1881, when he left the Institute to complete his education under a private tutor. This was followed by a four years' residence in Europe, during which Mr. Kingsley saw all that is commonly seen by tourists and followed many untrodden paths besides. During the next few years he returned frequently to Europe, spending on an average about half his time abroad, until he joined the Eagle staff as Treasurer of the Association in 1891. Since 1884 he has been a trustee of the Association, represent- ing the large interest still held by the estate of his father, who was one of the original members of the corporation formed in 1870 to take the Eagle property. In 1884 Mr. Kingsley was appointed Aide-de- Camp with the rank of Major on the staff of Major-General E. L. Molineux, commanding the Second Division, N. G. S. N. Y. Mr. Kingsley is a member of the Brooklyn, Hamilton and Crescent Athletic Clubs of Brooklyn, and of the Manhattan and New York Athletic Clubs of New York. THE EDITORIAL STAFF. The chief editor of the Eagle is St. Clair McKelway, A.M., LL.D. Notwith- standing he has seen journalistic service on other papers, Mr. McKelway's first serious newspaper work was done for the Eagle, and he has spent the greater portion of his professional life in writing for its columns; and when engaged in another field he responded to the call of the Eagle to return to its service. His father, the late Alexander Jeffrey McKelway, A. M., M. D., came to this country from his native Glasgow, Scotland, in 1817. His mother was the daughter of the late Patrick Ryan, a china importer of Philadelphia, to which city he came from Dublin. Born in Columbia, 'Missouri, whither his parents had moved, St. Clair McKelway came East when they returned in 1853. He was educated in private For Homing Pigeons, schools and at the New Jersey State Normal School, and at the desire of his parents THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 117 .^ studied law, at first in Trenton and later in New York under Samuel Blatchford, now Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and Clarence A. Seward, and was admitted to the bar in 1866, with the highest honors in a class of fifty-seven members. But his early preference for the career of a journalist had not been modified by his legal studies, and immediately on his admission to the bar he entered regularly on newspaper work, at which he had tried his hand incidentally during his period of study in local writ- ing and correspondence, both as a school-boy, on the Trenton Gazette, the Trenton Monitor and the New York Tribune, and as a law student, on the Eagle. His studies finished, he became corres- pondent of the New York World and the Brooklyn Eagle, and in that capacity soon went to Wash- ington, where he served as correspondent of both papers until 1870, when he was called to Brooklyn to write editorial leaders for the Eagle, exclusively. In 1878 he became the editor of the Albany Argus, and filled that position until 1884, when the death of the late Thomas Kinsella caused a vacancy in the editorship of the Eagle, which Mr. McKelway was subsequently invited to fill. To the duties of this important position, as will be seen from this brief resumd of his newspaper work, he brought the training of a varied and comprehensive experience. To a basis of legal study he had added practical service as a local reporter, as a correspondent from a State capital, and later as a correspondent from the National Capital with its vast opportunities for becoming informed on National questions and on the inner working of National political affairs, while his years of service on the Eagle had given him an exceptionally full understanding of Brooklyn local interests, personal, political and general. He came to the editorial chair of the Eagle, therefore, with just the kind of training that would have been chosen had one set out to prepare himself for this particular post of duty ; and in selecting him for the position, the managers of the Eagle were able to command the services of one familiar with the traditions of the paper and in sympathy with them. The managing editor of the Eagle is Mr. Robert A. Burch, and it is from the pen of this experi- enced journalist, whose newspaper life followed an education for the law, that much of the clear, strong editorial writing of the paper proceeds. Mr. Burch was born in Albany, N. Y,, but nearly all his life has been passed in Brooklyn. His father, the Rev. Thomas Burch, was a clergyman who was for some years a Methodist Episcopal pastor in this city. He was born in Ireland, but came in early life to Canada, whence he removed while still a young man to this coun- try, where he was a preacher in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and other states of the Union, until failing health compelled his retirement. In Brooklyn he was . associated with the first church on Sands street. Mr. Burch studied for the law and was admitted to the bar, at which he practiced for a while ; but his leaning towards literary pursuits led him so strongly to the use of his pen that he abandoned his profes- sion for a calling more in conformity with his tastes, which turned him towards newspaper work. At differ- ent times during the past thirty years he has been con- nected with several leading papers of New York and Brooklyn. After doing some writing for the Brook- lyn Star and the Brooklyn (Weekly) Standard, he took a position on the Eagle in 1867, and became its man- aging editor in 1872, a position which he resigned to accept that of editor-in-chief of the Union. In 1874 he transferred his services to the New York Evening Post, of which he was the leading editorial writer for several years, and in 1881 he became the managing editor, holding this position until the paper changed hands in 1883. The following year he became man- aging editor of the Eagle, and has remained at that post ever since. William Herries, the assistant managing editor, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, June 9, 1832, and there received a liberal education. In 1852 he turned up in New York, and after about two years travel, mostly in the Southern States, settled down to journalism as the business of his life. An opportunity to his liking was offered by the Tribune, for which he labored in 3esr'- TWENTY-SlXTH WARD BRANCH. ri8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the capacity of a reporter faithfully and successfully until July, 1863. From then until 1864, he had editorial charge of the Brooklyn Times. Invited to be associ- ate editor with Mr. C. D. Brigham of the Pittsburg Commercial, Mr. Herries accepted and removed to that city. He retired from the Commercial, and with Mr. John W. Pittock established the Pittsburg Leader, now one of the influential papers of West- ern Pennsylvania. The attractions of metropolitan journalism, however, were mag- netic, and notwithstanding brightening prospects, Mr. Herries Teturned to New York and at once found a sphere for his usefulness in connection with the New York Titnes. While caring for Brooklyn affairs and interests for the Times he decided to make this city his home. After his severance from the Times he became in 1872 attached to the Eagle, and with but slight intervals has sustained that rela- tionship ever since. He was city editor for several years. For over twelve years „, „ the " Questions Answered " department of the Sunday edition has been conducted First Rowing Trophy, by him. This has been one of the most widely read and generally interesting department of the paper. It has elicited both questions and answers from men and women of note, especi- ally well informed on particular subjects. Among those who have cheerfully given solicited information have been General Lew Wallace, Wilkie Collins, Dr. John Eric Ericksen, physician to Queen Victoria, and many prominent citizens of Brooklyn, including mayors and ex-mayors. Personal sources of informa- tion and the vast material to be found in libraries are freely drawn on to answer the questions of the curious. The work of compiling the first Eagle Almanac and giving it form was intrusted to Mr. Herries. The necessity of making it peculiarly local and useful to the people of Brooklyn and Long Island, com- bined with giving it a character such as to make it interesting to much wider constituency, seemed to be intelligently apprehended by the editor, and the result was most cord'al commendation at the hands of leading citizens and newspapers. The associate editors of the Eagle are Major E. Page, George D. Bayard and, until his death on May 26th last, Thomas McGrath. Mr. Page has been connected with the paper since 1874, and since 1884 he has occupied the editorial desk in his present position, with the exception of one year's absence, during which he was editor of the Brooklyn Union. He was born August 12, 1856, at Sharon, N. Y., but has spent most of his life here. He was educated in the public schools of Brooklyn and New York City, and at the Union Academy in Green- wich, N. Y. His first newspaper connection was during his youth, with the New York Era, a weekly journal published by his father. Colonel H. C. Page. In 1873 he became a reporter on the Brooklyn Argus, and he subsequently worked in a similar capacity for the New York Herald and the Associ- ated Press. In 1874 he joined the Eagle staff and served as a reporter and correspondent until his promotion in 1884 to the position he now occupies. In the course of his work he has reported the National Conventions of 1880, '84 and '86, and many State Conventions. He takes satisfaction in having written one of the most widely circulated articles ever printed in the Eagle. It was the account of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884, and of the paper issued that day 428,000 copies were sold. So many copies were sent to friends of subscribers, to all parts of the world, that the postmaster said the operations of the Post Office were embarrassed for two weeks because of the demand on its facilities for the distribution of the Eagle's Bridge number. George D. Bayard has been a member of the editorial staff of the Eagle since 1877. He was born at Seneca Falls, N. Y., and received his degree from the College of the City of New York. After gradua- tion he studied law and was for three years in the law office of Schell, Slosson & Hutchins, of New York City. During the official terms of Augustus . Schell and Hiram Barney as Collectors of the Port of New York, Mr. Bayard was private secretary to GREiiNPoiNv branch. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 119 these gentlemen, and his newspaper work began during his term of service at the Custom House, consisting of contributions to the New York, Brooklyn and Boston papers. He has been con- nected with the New York Commercial Advertiser and the New York Sun, for which he wrote editorial paragraphs and society verse. In 1877 he came to the Eagle and has been a member of its editorial staff since that time. Thomas F. McGrath was a journalist of the " all-around " variety of experience, such as were common in the newspaper work of a generation ago, but of which the journalism of to-day produces few representatives. He was trained as a pressman, com- positor and job printer ; he edited several county papers and was correspondent for metropolitan dailies ; and in his service on the Eagle he passed through the several grades from reporter to associate editor. Mr. McGrath was born in Ireland in 1855. Coming to this country in 1866, he began his newspaper life as apprentice in the office of the Poughkeepsie Eagle, where he learned the mechanical branches of newspaper work. He subse- quently began his work as a writer for the press in Amenia, N. Y., where he was local editor of the Times. During this period he also acted as correspondent of two Poughkeepsie dailies, wrote for New York publications, and furnished matter to the county representative of the Associated Press. Then for a while he was associate editor of the Dover, N. J., Mail, and from there he was summoned to Rhinebeck, N. Y., by ex-.\ssemblyman W. W. Hege- man, to take charge of his paper there, the Gazette. With the exception of a brief interval of service on the Philadelphia Sentry, he remained with the Gazette until he finally controlled it. Ten '" "^^^'■vtb.-e.cyit branch. years ago he came from Rhinebeck to Brooklyn and joined the Eagle as a reporter, becoming after- wards its Assistant City Editor and member of the editorial staff. The dramatic and musical editor is Mr. Charles M. Skinner. Mr. Skinner was born in 1852, in Vic- tor, N. Y., the son and grandson of Universalist clergymen and the grandson of two veterans of the war of 1812. Through both his parents he is the descendant of Puritans, who came to this country from Eng- land early in the seventeenth century. His early boyhood was passed in Cambridge, Mass., whither his father removed in 1853, and after the age of sixteen his home was in Hartford, Conn., where he was educated at the celebrated Hartford High School, the principal of which, Mr. Capen, had the reputation of sending Yale College her best prepared undergraduates. Coming to Brooklyn after some experience of the sea and of various clerkly callings, Mr. Skinner in 1885 joined the staff of the Eagle, with which he has since been connected uninterruptedly, serving as reporter, art editor, music editor and dramatic editor. The Eagle's book reviews are from the pen of James F. Le Baron, who has occupied the post of liter- ary editor for some years. Mr. Le Baron is a descendant, through his mother, of Roger Williams, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, and on his father's side of Dr. Francis Le Baron, a French Catholic surgeon, who, being shipwrecked and a prisoner in the old French and English war, settled among the Puri- tans of the Plymouth Colony in 1696. Mr. Le Baron was born in Scituate, R. I., and was educated for the Episcopal Church at Dr. Muhlenberg's school at College Point, L. I., and at Brown University. But, his views changing, he engaged in the Fourierite movement at the North American Phalanx, Monmouth County, N. J., at the time Horace Greeley and Charles A. Dana were interested in it. His connection with the press began on the New York Tribune, and was continued on the Brooklyn Star and Union, the Phila- delphia Times and the New York Evening Post. From there he came to the Eagle to fill the position he now occupies. James P. Carey, the financial editor, was born in 1831, in New Haven, Conn. He there received a common school education and in 1846 removed to Brooklyn, where he has since resided. In 185s he began, as a reporter, his work in journalism, which up to the present time has been continuous, in the following positions : t^l^^^^^^^^^^^^F^ city editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, 1857 to 1868, ^^^^^^^^^^^ inclusive, with the exception of an interval of a few months in 1864 ■^^Si^^^ on the World ; on city staff of the World, 1868 ; city editor and SECOND ROWING trcphv. financial editor of the Republic, 1869 ; after a few months on the I20 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Eagle Foot Ball Trophy. city staff of the Times, he became, in 1870, financial editor of the Eagle. Mr. Carey's long experience as a financial writer, and his reputation as a reliable compiler of reports of stocks and markets, makes his contributions to the Eagle of great value to those of its readers who are interested in that department of the paper. It is the City Editor that sees to it that the readers of the Eagle miss nothing worthy of note that has happened in Brooklyn or its suburbs. The busy and omnipresent staff of reporters are his representatives, and the respon- sibility of seeing that they "cover" every important event makes his duties very exacting, of watchful care, of discrimination and of discretion. His knowl- edge of men, events, places, and the inter-relations of all the busy activities of the city has to be very extensive and very exact. The important duties of this position are laid on Mr. Alfred C. Burton, whose entire career is com- prised in the period of his connection with the Eagle ; and although he is only thirty years of age, he has been continuously in the Eagle's service for sixteen years. He was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and was educated at the Mechanics' Insti- tute at Leeds and at Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire. Coming to this country during his boyhood, he became a reporter on the Eagle at fourteen, and received his first appointment as City Editor in 1883, when he was twenty-one years of age. He has been also its Albany correspondent, Washington cor- respondent, and editorial writer. F. Dana Reed, the telegraph editor, began life on a farm in Amenia, N. Y., where he was born. At the age of fifteen he entered the printing office of the Amenia Times, and learned the printing trade under John W. Dutcher, one of the best known of the old-school printers in Eastern New York. Then he entered Cornell University, but the attractions of active newspaper work proving too strong for the student he came to Brooklyn before completing the course, and in 187 1 became a member of the city staff of the Brooklyn Union. During the next two years he worked on the New York Times and Tribune and was for a time city editor of the Commercial Advertiser. In August, 1873, he came to the Eagle, and after a round of general work was assigned to the law department. He held the position of law reporter until 1883, when he accepted the position of managing editor of the Daily Telegram, New London, Conn. In 1885 he returned to law reporting on the Eagle and continued at that until his appointment, in 1889, as telegraph editor, a position he still holds. Mr. Reed has a degree of professional pride in his record as a court reporter, and during his many years of service in that capacity he has reported many im.portant cases. John Butler Renauld, first assistant city editor, was born in 1843, in Quebec, Canada, where he attended the English branch of the Catholic College. His first newspaper work was done in 1869 on the Richmond (Va.) State Journal. In 1870 he was city editor of the Richmond Daily Neivs. He joined the staff of the Brooklyn Union in 1882, and was its dramatic editor for over five years. In 1887 he became a reporter for the Eagle, but later in the same year returned to the Union as city editor. In 1889 he again joined the Eagle staff, and in 1891 was made assistant city editor. Associate city editor William F. Hammond has lived in Brooklyn most of his life, though born in New York city. He was educated here at the private schools of Rev. Levi Wells Hart and Prof. John C. Overhiser. His first newspaper work was done on the New York Tribune, during the Grant-Greeley campaign in 1872. From there he went to the World, and con- tributed special articles to the Times and Sun, and then came into Brooklyn journalism as assistant city editor of the Argus. He was city editor of the New York Republican, and when that journal went out of existence he engaged again on the Brooklyn Union. He was city editor of the Standard up to its incor- poration with the Union. He has been either a mem- ber of the city staff of the Eagle or a contributor to it since 1871. The Eagle is represented at the City Hall by William Walton, who is one of the seniors in the service of the Eagle and one of the oldest newspaper writers in Brooklyn. He was born a Brooklynite, and has lived so during the forty-four years of his life, the Washington bureau. Wm. M. Van Anden. excepting a short absence for schooling in New York and at the Leicester Academy in Massachusetts, "after a course in the Brooklyn public schools. While yet in his teens he became a reporter on the Eagle, in 1865, and was assigned to cover the Williamsburgh district. From that he was recalled to do police and law work, and in the latter line of work he reported verbatim many important trials requir- ing many columns of the Eagle. Among them was the prolonged Beecher case in 1876. His shorthand work has included the reporting of nearly every public speaker in America, and he regularly reports the sermons of Dr. Talmage. His connection with the Eagle since 1865 has been broken only by a brief period during which he served several New York papers with Brooklyn news, and in 1873 he resumed his work on the Eagle as City Hall man, his present position. He is a member of the Crescent Athletic Club, and was one of the organizers of the Hampton Park Association. Addison B. Atkins, the Washington correspondent of the Eagle, was born in Germantown, Pa., Sep- tember 7th, 1856, received an academic education at the Episcopal High School, Fairfax County, Va., and at the &cole Girard, Nice, France ; went through the freshman and sophomore classes at Columbian University, Washington, D. C, and then entered the Columbia College Law School of New York city from which he graduated in 1878. After practicing law for two years he entered upon active newspaper work, serving in a reportorial capacity upon the Philadelphia Times, the New York World and the Brook- lyn Union. He resigned from the Union upon its consolidation with the Standard, and went upon the staff of the Eagle as a local political reporter. While in that capacity Mr. Atkins had the satisfaction of furnishing his paper with the exclusive announcement from Washington of the selection by President Harrison of Benjamin F. Tracy as Secretary of the Navy. The Eagle was the only evening paper in the United States that secured the news ; the morning papers of the country publishing it the following day. Mr. Atkins took charge of the Washington Bureau of the Eagle on the first day of August, 1891. George W. Douglas, exchange editor, began newspaper work in 1872, at the early age of nine, when he and his brother started a small paper, which they conducted successfully for four years at their home in Liberty, N. Y., learning much of the details of printing. Then their father, a Baptist clergyman, started a local paper in Schenevus, N. Y., the Monitor, for the better training of the young men in journalism, under his own supervision. In 1882 Mr. Douglas entered the composing room of the Utica Herald, and a year later took, at the Colgate Academy in Hamilton, a course preparatory to Col- gate University, from which he was graduated in 1888. In June, 1891, he received an appointment on the Eagle to take charge of its court news, and in the following January was sent to Albany as legislative correspondent. Miss Celia Kenney has for many years been connected with the Eagle. For a long time at the head of the proof room, her work there was of a character which necessarily kept her in touch with the topics of the hour. This training, supplemented by extensive reading and a most retentive memory, gives more than ordinary value to her services to the Sunday Eagle, of the literary department of which she has for three years had charge. Little that is worthy of attention escapes her observation. She is rarely at Wm. V. Hester. a loss when either notable sayings or doings are to be traced to their sources, is decided in her convic- tions, and supplements them with tact and judgment. Miss Kenney is a member of the New York Women's Press Club. Mrs. Alice Hanson Witherbee writes of the fashions for the Eagle, and she does it with such timely suggestions as to sensible styles, touching on matters of more importance than the mere fads of the day, that she is read by men as well, as by women. Her treatment of the opening and holiday notices, which are a feature of her department, has won her a reputation for impartiality and good judgment. Mrs. With- erbee was born in Danvers, Mass. Graduating from school at seventeen, she fitted herself for college without a tutor, and was one of the first to take a university course at the Harvard Annex. She taught school until her marriage, in 1884. She is a member of the Brooklyn Women's Club, the New York Women's Press Club, and the Brooklyn Free Kindergarten Association. Miss Emma Bullet, the Paris correspondent, was born of French parents, in France. She came to America when about ten years of age, and the greater part of her life was spent in Cincinnati, Ohio. After her graduation from the " Ohio Female College," at that time a flourishing young ladies' school in the suburbs of Cincinnati, she went to Paris to perfect herself in the French language, her ambition being to become a teacher of French in the United States. While she was engaged in her studies the Franco- Prussian war broke out, and Miss Bullet, declining to avail herself of the opportunities which were afforded to her to leave the country, joined an ambulance corps of nurses. Her career as a newspaper corres- pondent began with a series of letters written for the Cincinnati Commercial. Later she added the San Francisco Call and the Brooklyn Eagle to her list, and for the last five years she has written exclu- sively for the latter journal. Miss Bullet's French sympathies and intimate knowledge of the language, the customs, the habits, and the predilections of the French people have opened to her many avenues of information, particularly social and artistic, which are ordinarily closed to the foreign correspondent. For more than twenty years Miss Mary F. Walton has been in the service of the Eagle. She is now at the head of the Proof Room, with which department she has been identified since the beginning of her work upon the paper. No memory is too good for the proof room ; no knowledge of affairs, including names and dates, too accurate, exhaustive or specific. Miss Walton is fortunate in the posses- sion of faculties which abundantly equip her for what she is called upon to do, her duties, which are necessarily exacting, requiring concentration, a memory which instantly responds to any and all demands and the exercise of sound judgment. George F. Dobson has for many years been connected with the Eagle. He was long identified with the reportorial staff, and now holds the position of Albany correspondent. He has represented the Eagle at Washington, and his service as city editor extended over a period of five years. His relation to various public movements of a political character have been neither remote nor without influence. During a munic- ipal crisis he officiated as city clerk; and he has been also connected, in an official capacity, with the county Hakkv S. Kingsley. legislature. On the occasion of his departure for Europe, in 1886, he was presented with a gold watch — a suitably inscribed gift from the members of the city staff. As a writer, Mr. Dobson takes high rank among local journalists. His descriptions of great political conventions and, notably, of the fight for the world's championship, at New Orleans, have given him more than local eminence. He is a stockholder in several of Brooklyn's most prominent financial institutions, and is a member of the Montauk and Germania clubs and other organizations of a kindred character. THE BUSINESS OFFICE. Mr. George C. Adams, the cashier, has been connected with the Eagle for nearly twenty years, and has held his present position for twelve years. Mr. Adams comes from old New England stock in both branches of his family, five generations on the paternal side having been born under the same roof in the historic town of Andover, Mass. James Adams, his father, a well known manufacturing chemist, was one of the charter residents of Winchester, Mass., where the son was born about thirty-nine years ago. He received his early education at the Winchester Academy and the Brimmer School of Boston, finishing with a business course in Brooklyn, where he has resided for twenty-six years. He entered the publishing office of the Eagle in 1874, and attained his present position of cashier in 1879. The functions of the cashier of such an establishment are such as are common to all large establishments, but besides this, he handles and disburses many thousands of dollars in the shape of various funds organized in furtherance of numerous philanthropic and charitable enterprises, such as the Johnstown Flood Fund, the Beecher Monument Fund, etc. Day after day the financial features of news- paper enterprises in new directions are discussed and added to the duties of the business department. Such an amount of detail requires a very perfect system, and such a system does underlie all the com- plex workings of this important department. The system of accounts is so nicely adjusted to the work to be done as to provide the means of tracing the sale of a single copy of the Eagle as well as the facts of the largest transaction. An important desk in the business office is filled by Herbert F. Gunnison, who looks after the cir- culation, the Branch Offices, and outside matters generally. Mr. Gunnison was born in 1858 in Halifax, N. S., where his father, the late Rev. Nathaniel Gunni- son, was pastor of the First Universalist Church and served as American Vice-Consul during the war, Removing afterwards to Northern New York, Mr. Gunnison received a college education at St. Lawrence University, Canton, N. Y., graduating in 1880. He then came to Brooklyn and spent the next eighteen months reporting for the Brooklyn Times, and was then offered a position on the Eagle, and for a year " covered " the Williamsburgh District, and the Charities, Supervisors and Board of Education, In 1883 he contributed a series of letters to the Eagle, descriptive of his travels in the Yellowstone Park. California Business Office Staff. HEADS OF LITERARY DEPARTMENTS AND Special Correspondents. Heads of Departments. Colorado and Mexico. Then, after a year in Europe, he succeeded William Hudson as Albany cor- respondent of the Eagle in 1884. Two years later his duties were radically changed by a transferral to the business department in the position he now holds. Besides the circulation and Branch Offices, he has edited the Eagle Almanac, now in its seventh year and a standard work of reference for all city matters. An early experience as an amateur printer, during which he ran a rather extensive amateur job printing office, has been very useful to him in his varied newspaper work. During his life in Brooklyn Mr. Gunnison has taken a prominent part in many social and charitable enterprises. He was one of the incorporators of the Hanover Club and its first Secretary. He is a mem- ber of the Amphion Society ; President of the Northern Industrial Wood Yard, a branch of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities ; a director of the Brooklyn Throat Hospital ; a director of the Twenty-sixth Ward Bank, and President of the Free Reading Room connected with All Souls Church, of which he is a trus- tee, and of which his brother, the Rev. Almon Gunnison, was pastor for nearly twenty years. Another brother is Walter B. Gunnison, Principal of Public School No. 19. The chief clerk in the advertising department is Mr. J. G. Carpenter, who brings to the important duties of his position an experience of nineteen years spent in the service of the Eagle, his connection with the paper having begun in 1873. Mr. Carpenter came to the Eagle shortly after he entered busi- ness life permanently, a step which was deferred for some years by his service in the army and navy during the war. Being a member of the Twenty-second Regiment of New York, he left his desk in a business office in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where he was born and educated, to accompany his regiment on a three months' tour of duty in the Shenandoah Valley and at Harper's Ferry. In the spring of 1864 he entered the navy and was attached to the U. S. steamer Grand Gulf, serving in various squadrons and blockading stations until the close of the war, and was honorably discharged in September, 1865. Hermann W. Ormsbee represents the Eagle in its outside advertising. He comes into daily contact with many of the paper's large advertisers, which gives him necessarily a wide acquaintance among the business houses of Brooklyn and New York. Born in Portland, Me., in 1850, Mr. Ormsbee has been connected with the press of Brooklyn for the past twenty-three years, of which he has spent the last seven in the service of the Eagle. He was for several years connected with the New York press. THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE. 129 The chief accountant is Mr. George H. Price, who has been connected with the Eagle for the past twenty-three years. Born in New York City in 1842, he was educated at the Tarrytown, N. Y., Institute. On the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, he enlisted in the Eighth Regiment, N. Y. State National Guard, and served three months, from April, 1861, and three months in 1862. His membership in the G. A. R. in Brooklyn, where he has resided since 1865, included several years' service as senior Vice- Commander of Rankin Post, No. 10. He has also served his time as a member of the Thirteenth Regi- ment. He came into the employ of the Eagle in 1869, and has served it continuously since that time. Employees of the Composing Room. Associated with the advertising department of the Eagle is Mr. Edwin L. Burch, who has been a resident of Brooklyn most of his life, though he was born in Bergen Point, N. J., in 1853. For the past five years he has been connected with the business office of the Eagle. For sixteen years Barth I. Schneider has been in the employ of the Eagle. Born in Brooklyn in 1866, and educated at Public School No. 5 and at St. Anne's parochial school, he entered the office in 1876 as a messenger boy, and worked successively in the business office, the composing room and the proof room, until his appointment as advertising clerk. the mechanical departments. The presses and engines which fill the basement of the Eagle building — the American counterpart of that great enginery of which Thackeray wrote : " There she is . . . she never sleeps ; she has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world; her couriers upon every road; her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets" — are under the charge of Patrick J. Gelson, who for nearly forty years has controlled the machinery of the establishment. He has seen and super- intended the erection of all the great presses and most of the smaller ones, only nine years of the paper's existence having been passed with any other press-room foreman. Mr. Gelson is a native of Ireland, where he was born in 1835. During his early boyhood he came to America with his parents and at once settled in Brooklyn, in whose public schools he received his education. His training as a printer was gained in the office of George F. Nesbitt & Co., in New York, and from there he came to the ' Eagle in 1853. He knows the mechanical facilities of the Eagle establishment as does no one else. Every piece, from the foundation of the presses to the last rivet in them; every piece of shafting and the belts that drive them— all have been placed in position under his eye; and as the presses reel off the paper from the endless rolls, turning out the perfect copies as the final result of all the prepara- tory work that has been done to make a number x)f the Eagle, the wheels turn, the ink flows, and the folders and pasters do their work, under his supervision. Mr. William H. Sutton is now entering on his twenty-fifth year as foreman of the newspaper composing rooms, and his forty-fourth year of service on the paper. He was born in Liverpool, England, in 1830, and came to New York ten years later, where, after getting an education in the public schools, he became a printer in the Sun ]oh printing office. Moving to Brooklyn, he engaged on the Demo- cratic Advocate in WiUiamsburgh, after which he came to the Eagle. He was connected with the paper 13° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. so early in its history as to have assisted in its removal from its first quarters to the building on Fulton street from which it has just moved again into its permanent home, and he has had a hand in every enlargement and advancement from the beginning to the present time. He was a member of Captain William M. Burnett's company of City Grenadiers, the right flank artillery company of the old 14th Regiment of Militia, and assisted in quelling the riots of the " Wide-Awakes." He is a prominent Mason, in connection with which he has been District Deputy Grand Master, High Priest in a chapter of the Royal Arch Masons and a member of the Commandery, and has attained the 33d degree in Scottish Rite Masonry. The groups of employees in the mechanical departments of the Eagle which are pictured, illustrate what has been said concerning the unusual proportion of long-service attaches in the ranks of those who make the Eagle. Among the group of pressmen, stereotypers, engineers and counters there are many who have literally grown gray in the service of this journal. Mr. Gelson, whose 39 years of service make him the ranking officer, as well as his being in command of this department, has been mentioned else- where. The long terms of service among the others are : B. McGinnis and M. T. Fagan, 36 years ; E. W. Castell, 26 ; M. Gelson, 30 ; E. A. Cooper, 25 ; J. A. Boice and E. Whiteside, 22 ; George Finley, P. McSherry and P. Dobbins, 20 ; A. Keenan, J. Gelson, C. Carlin, 18 ; C. Gelson and F. V. Mauer, 15 years. Among the group of newspaper compositors and proof-readers, the senior in years as well as in rank is W. H. Sutton, the foreman, of whom we have already spoken. Of the others, J. P. Lemmon, ]. R. White, Henry Marshall, Frederick Creighton, M. Walton and E. Higbee have served over 24 years ; J. T. Cassidy, E. Lord, F. Clark and A. Farrell, 18 to 20 years. Most of the others in the group have seen from five to fifteen years of service on the Eagle. Employees of the Press Room. The removal of the Eagle to its present establishment, in celebration of which this book is issued^ is an event as interesting, we are sure, to its readers, as it is important to the Eagle's history. The Eagle's growth, from the founding of it by Isaac Van Anden, whose kinsmen are still in trust of it, until to-day, covers a time of great changes in journalism. The changes are on evolutionary, not revolu- tionary, lines. The early tendency was simply to house the newspaper. The present tendency is sump- tuously to house it. Progress from_ the extreme of simplicity to the extreme of splendor has been uni- form. The splendid building which has just received its baptism unto work is more the Eagle's con- tribution to the public than the Eagle's provision for itself. Brooklyn has been and has done so much for the Eagle that it was fitting the Eagle should do something for Brooklyn. The Eagle of to-day in the fullness of its freedom and fame owes an inestimable debt to its founder. He designed and diverted to public service what others meant only for party service. So he made the public his friends, he cared not if he made the politicians his enemies. One who succeeded him would write no other line than "to the public service" over the door of every room in the palace of industry. "The Eagle for Brooklyn" sums and tells the story. It has always been so. So may it always be! The Narrows, from Fort Hamilton, 1852. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 1841-1861. IROM the time when Lieutenant Jonathan Thorne first took charge of the infant navy-yard at Wallabout Bay, to the first attempt, made in 1827, to enclose the property, it was largely a waste of mud flats and creeks. In 1841, the construction of the stone dry dock was begun, its completion being accomplished in ten years. The main chamber of this dock is two hundred and eighty-six feet long by thirty-five feet wide at the bottom, and three hundred and seventy feet by ninety-eight feet wide at the top. The granite walls are thirty-six feet deep and the masonry of the foundation rests upon piles driven forty feet into the earth, while the space within is filled with concrete to a depth of two feet. Several courses of timber and concrete, surmounted by flagging and cut granite, form the floor surmounting the piles. It took about a year to drive into place the 9,000 piles used. This dock, which at the time of its construction was considered one of the most remarkable works in the country, could be pumped out by the old appliances in a little over four hours and a half. Between the time of its .completion and the year 1858, seven vessels were launched from the dry dock. One of these was the old " Niagara," whose work in laying the first Atlantic cable made her famous. There, too, the " Somers " first floated. It will be remembered by men of middle age that Midshipman Spencer, charged with attempting to incite mutiny on board, swung from her yard-arm with two of her crew. The justice of this act was much questioned, and the excitement it caused was intense. Another of the vessels launched during this period was the " Albany." All of the seven were vessels of the old type, which in our modern navy would not be worth a second glance except as curiosities, survivals of a simpler 'past, but when they were launched they were visited by thousands who would not have broached a suggestion that anything superior could be set afloat. 132 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The incidents and interests of that day were fewer, and it was far easier to excite indignation than would be the case now. What we might consider minor events were to a former generation often affairs of the first magnitude. The destruction of the residence of Mr. Tunis Joralemon by fire was one of the events of 1842 which gave Brooklynites cause for alarm, as there seemed to be no doubt of the incendiary origin of the disaster. The house was well known as the Joralemon mansion, and was in its day one of the handsomest private homes in the city. As exciting a disturbance, the result of race feelino- between the native American and Irish residents of a certain portion of the city, occurred on the 4th of April of that year. The riot, preceded by mutterings of a decidedly threatening character, gathered to a head upon the corners of Court, Dean and Wyckoff streets, and for a time serious results were feared; but the timely arrival of two companies of militia upon the scene soon quelled the fracas, and those of the combatants who had not already received broken heads, retired a little way to wait for a more convenient season to recommence hostilities. But the fact that the militia remained on the ground all night gave time for the hot blood to cool off, and a trouble which had promised to be very serious was for the time averted. In 1842 the land was purchased for Greenwood cemetery, that stately city of the dead, the fame of whose beauty was for many years one of Brooklyn's chief sources of celebrity. The Mansion House, which for a generation was one of the only two hostelries that welcomed the casual stranger to the City of Churches, was established in the Hicks street home of the Female Institute. A memorable contest arose in 1843, over an attempt by the common council of New York to tax the personal property of Brooklyn citizens doing business in that city. The Legislature was appealed to and the effort failed. The early forties seem still so near to many who are to-day active in the affairs of the city, that it marks the rapidity with which events and monuments to them succeed one another in the history of a progressive community, to record that in 1843 the corner-stone of the Pierrepont Street Baptist church was laid, an edifice which has since then been replaced by a more im- posing structure, also dedicated to the worship of the same congregation, while this in turn has been razed to the ground, and as this record is written, the new building of the Brooklyn Savings Bank is rising in its place. An interesting figure, familiar to all Brooklynites of the last generation, was " Meriam, the weather prophet." Many who were unfamiliar with his serious claims to eminence were impressed mainly by his eccentric habits and appearance, and regarded him as a sort of genial crank, whose title to local fame was based on his occasional contributions to meteorological science, appearing in the Eagle under his well-known signature, " E. M." But Eben Meriam was a prophet who was honored all over the world for his knowledge. He had made money in manufacturing in the South, and made more after he came to New York, in 1838, in manufacturing soap and candles ; but he never would receive payment for his writings. He devoted his fortune so liberally to the relief of distress among the worthy and unworthy alike, that he left no provision for his family when he died in 1864. From youth he was a student of meteorology, and originated the theory of cycles in atmospheric phenomena, which attracted attention throughout the scientific world. His published papers and pamphlets were numerous and creditable, his statistical almanac full of curious information, and his " Municipal Gazeteer," a compendium of the accu- mulated knowledge of a life-time. There was no "Old Probabilities" in those days, and Mr. Meriam was the constant recourse of the newspaper reporters for information regarding the weather. His hourly records of the weather dated from 1834 to the time of his death. To the genera- tion that knew him there is the memory of his venerable figure on the streets of the city, conspicuous for his wealth of snow-white hair. He was famous for his peculiar charities, not only those which brought to his door swarms of alms-seekers, who were seldom disappointed by him, but also to dumb beasts. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found in him its practical prototype. He rescued a cageful of partridges from the market and nourished them so long as they lived. A horse left to die in the street received from his hand the oats which were all it needed to rise and walk. Stray dogs were fed and caressed by this same kind hand, and one was even taken into the bed of its benefactor that it might not perish with the cold. All his treasures were thus " laid up in heaven," and he died penniless but universally respected. One of the most useful of Brooklyn charities was founded in 1844, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. This was a memorable year-in the churches of the city; during it the Unitarian Church of the Saviour was consecrated and the Rev. Dr. Frederick A, Farley installed as its pastor; the Ebex Meriam. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 133 corner-stone of the Church of the Pilgrims was laid, where the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs was soon to begin his brilliant career; and the Church of the Holy Trinity was founded, known to this generation of Brooklynites for its noble work, and throughout the country identified with the fame of its second and third rectors. Bishop A. N. Littlejohn and the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Hall. In this year also there was opened the Long Island railroad tunnel, which during the boyhood of every grown man of to-day brought the trains with loco- motives to the South ' ^ Ferry under Atlantic street. In 1843, May- or Joseph Sprague had succeeded May- or Murphy, and in 1844 he was again chosen by a slightly increased majority. The candidacy of George Hall was a feature of this elec- tion. The Brooklyn City Hospital began its splendid work in 1845, 3-S did also the Brooklyn Benevolent Society, a Catholic institution founded by Cornelius Heeney. The Atlantic Docks. The Long Island Bank and the Atlantic White Lead Company were the noteworthy additions of the year to the commercial establishments of the city. But the most significant event of the year, in the light of subsequent events, was the meeting of citizens held on October 24th, to consider the union of the cities of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh, a project the consummation of which a decade later made an epoch in the history of Brooklyn. Thomas G. Talmadge became mayor in 1845, ^^id in 1846 he gave place to Mayor Francis B. Stryker. The year '46 saw the Church of the Pilgrims dedicated, the corner-stone laid of the new edifice for the First Presbyterian Church, which then moved from Cranberry street and afterwards disposed of its vacated building to the newly formed Plymouth Church. The New England Society of Brooklyn came into being on December 29th of this year. In 1847 two bills of moment were passed by the Legislature. The first was an important one, provid- ing as it did for a new charter for the city of Brooklyn; but there was little opposition, a fact which gave the second bill a place of greater prominence in the attention of the public for a time. This enactment authorized the opening of Fort Greene as a public park, a plan against which considerable feeling was shown by those whose property or other interests would suffer, or whose prejudices were disturbed by the change. In every city there are a certain number of people whose whole duty to the community, as they read it, is to act as obstructionists. Perhaps such have their uses in preserving a balance of conserv- atism. Another happening of this year, one destined perhaps to have a greater effect than either of those mentioned or indeed any measurable public event, was the founding of Plymouth Church and the com- mencement of the labors of Henry Ward Beecher in Brooklyn. The man whose character, intellect and personality swayed the thought of a continent from a Brooklyn pulpit could not but mark an epoch when he first came among us. The following year was in some respects a memorable one. It was marked by the first introduction of gas in the city of Brooklyn, and also by the first discussion of the advisability of uniting the cities of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh and the town of Bushwick under one municipal gov- ernment, a plan which a few years later was carried into effect to the great advantage of the city. The rapid growth of the southern part of Brooklyn which was directly due to the proximity of the Atlantic Docks and to the energy and enterprise of Charles Hoyt, began to be felt. The enterprising Daniel Richards, the projector of the Atlantic Dock, petitioned the common council for permission to open thirty-five streets m immediate neighborhood of the dock. He also, about this time, devised a plan for the construction of the Gowanus Canal, which was to be five feet deep below low water mark and four feet above high water mark, one hundred feet in width and about a mile in length. The purpose of this was to drain some seven- teen acres of land in the southern portion of the city. These improvements exerted an influence upon the development of the city hardly to be appreciated now. During the years 1848 and 1849 no less than 2,100 buildings were erected, of which 700 alone were in the Sixth ward. Brooklyn's first fire of any magnitude occurred in 1848. It broke out on the morning of Saturday, 134 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. City Hall as Planned in 1835- Corner-stone laid by Mayor Trotter, 1836. Intended to coverentire triangle now occupied by City Hall and Park. Only the foundations were laid, when the panic of 1837 suspended operations. Founda- tions removed for the present City Hall in 1846. September 9th, and was not controlled till daylight on Sunday morning. During the intervening time two hundred houses, three churches, the postoffice and the Evening Star office were entirely consumed by the flames. The money value of the property destroyed was estimated at fully $1,250,000 and four hundred people were rendered homeless. Several of the prom- inent insurance companies were seriously embar- rassed. The furniture store of George Drew on Fulton street, opposite Sands street, was the point at which the conflagration started. Drew's was a frame building, surrounded by others of a like inflammable charac- ter, constituting a perfect fire trap, through which the flames swept unobstructed. There was a strong wind from the northwest blowing at the time and this soon swept the fire across Fulton steet, enveloping Wm. Bailey's drugstore and other buildings, and these the firemen succeeded in saving. From this point, how- ever, the flames spread to a group of wooden buildings further up the street and thence advanced rapidly along Fulton street and eastwardly, taking Sands street and on the opposite side of Fulton street as far as Lawrence, from which they extended to Henry. Soon the firemen were at a loss for water, the supply from the cisterns in the neighborhood being rapidly exhausted. These receptacles were the only source of supply, and in the building of them no pro- vision adequate to the demands of such a fire had been made. To add to the confusion incident upon a disaster of this order the streets were soon choked with goods and property which had hastily been removed from the houses, and crowded with people escaping from their burning homes, all seeking places of safety, panic-stricken, without order or control. Among the crowd firemen were hurrying, doing all that was possible under the circumstances, but seriously handicapped by the scarcity of water. Nothing could more fitly illustrate man's utter helplessness in the presence of any unforeseen calamity. With Ful- ton street as a centre, the fire reached Henry street from Orange to Poplar on one side, and on the other, by way of Sands street, through High and Nassau for several blocks, devouring churches, dwellings and stores. A Methodist church and one belonging to the Baptists were utterly destroyed. A Universalist church also fell a victim. So fervent was the heat engendered that even had the water supply been suffi- cient at this point the firemen would have been driven back before they could have got near enough to be of service. Then the idea of fighting fire with fire was conceived. Gunpowder was brought into play and after some hot work the spread of the disastrous element was checked by the demolition of the buildings which stood in its track. The supply of powder was furnished by Captain Sands of the navy-yard, who was present with an efficient com- pany of men. In addition to these auxiliaries the City Guard, City Blues and Colum- bian Rifles were present and afforded valuable aid in guard- ing property. The appearance of the burnt district on the day following a great fire is one which can only be imagined by those who have witnessed a similar scene. The blocks of smoking ruins, the mass of sad humanity, the curiosity of the sight-seers and the weari- ness of the workers is but the The City Hall, from an Old Print. repetition of an old story, re- Montague Hall at the right. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 135 The City Hall, from an Old Print. told whenever the area and population of a city has out- grown the means prepared for its defence and safety. While we give to facts, dates and events of a more or less public character their proper value in the story of the city, let us not forget that Brooklyn has always been, as it is to-day, a city of homes and home life, perhaps to a larger extent than is true of most places of importance. Side by side with the ma- terial narrative are sugges- tions of a social chronicle which the historian can only touch lightly. A long line of famous and fair women were the leaders of Brooklyn's social life during the first half of the century and worthily preceded those who have given the city a national reputation for the beauty of its belles. When the century opened Mrs. H. B. Pierrepont, then Miss Anna Maria Constable, was perhaps the most distinguished of the young women of Brooklyn. Her father was a wealthy French merchant of New York, who had given to his daughter all the advantages possible at that time in the way of education, so that she was considered an unusually cultivated woman, even in the set to which belonged the Van Rensselaers, Roose- velts, Schuylers and others. Her husband, with whom she came to Brooklyn, was Hezekiah B. Pierrepont. Mrs. Pierrepont was married in 1802, and when she first took up her residence on the " Heights " her brill- iant brunette beauty set the little community agog. She became the mother of ten children, yet in the responsibilities of her home life never lost her position as a leader in society, and the mansion over which she presided became the visiting-place for many distinguished and brilliant people. At the same time, just growing out of girlhood as Mrs. Pierrepont took her position as a matron, there was a native Brooklyn belle at the old Bergen homestead, which stood at what is now the corner of Third avenue and Thirty- third street. She was the daughter of Garret (Squire) Bergen, who was a justice of the peace. The beauty was neither a decided blonde nor a brunette. She is described as having a brilliant complexion, dark hair and vivacious manner. Her beauty was that of perfect health and her charm perhaps largely due to that fact. Would that all girls could learn the secret. Miss Bergen married (the maidens all got mar- ried then, they say,) Tunis S. Barkeloo, whose father's property adjoined that of her family. A daughter of George Powers, who lived near the toll-gate on the Brooklyn and Flatbush road, was one of Miss Ber- gen's immediate successors. She was married at an early age to Stephen Hendrickson. Her temperament may best be illustrated by a story that has come down of a little tiff she once had with the village peda- gogue, who had presumed to decorate one of her children with a foolscap. When the mother saw it she tore it into shreds in the street and then visited the schoolhouse. What she said to the schoolmas- ter is not recorded, but it is stated that there was a radical change in his methods of instruction from that day. After a generation of beauties had passed and Brooklyn town had become Brooklyn city, Mrs. Harmer, whose portrait appears in Guy's " snow picture,' was watching the triumph of hei eldest daughter, who was one of the handsomest women of the day John Harmer, her father, will be remembered as the floor cloth manufacturer who was for so long the friend and host of Tom Paine. But before Miss Harmer's day, while her mother was only a " slip of a girl," Miss Middagh was The City Hall, from an Oi.n Print. 136 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. enrapturing the town with her blonde curls and her bright cheeks. Miss Middagh was that rara avis, a vivacious blonde. Her tongue was as quick as her eyes were bright, it is said, and all Brooklyn was at her dainty feet. Ah! the old-time belles; their names now are only a memory, their beauty merely a tradition, which we who have eyes for the beauties of the present may not doubt. A contemporary queen of Miss Harmer's was Mrs. Thomas Coin Talmadge, who had been Miss Van Brunt. She was of the set to which belonged the Polhemusses, Schoonmakers and others of the old Dutch stock. Miss Van Brunt was fair and with her regular features, graceful carriage and intellectual brilliancy, heightened by her really fine education, had few equals during the youth of a generation aow grown old. Following the names already given, but trenching too closely upon the present day to be followed far, came a line of more or less famous beauties. Their faces have not all faded as the decades have rolled by, and in the sweet stateliness of old age, the crown of silver and the atmosphere of dignity, still linger the royalty of the belles of long ago. Among the interesting and amusing things which the student of Brooklyn history discovers hidden in some library alcove, is a sort of elite directory of diminutive size, which was printed by John Loomis and Alfred S. Peace in 1847. This little pamphlet has upon its paper cover this inscription, " The Wealthy Men and Women of Brooklyn," and as an indication of how wealth was measured at that time the sub-title states that the work " embraces a full list of all whose estimated possessions, real or personal, amount to the sum of ten thousand dollars." It would not be delicate to intimate, by publishing this list, how many eminent Brooklynites of that day were what we would now call people of very mod- erate circumstances. Toward the end of the decade which had witnessed so remarkable a growth and development in the city, the papers discussed prominently a plan for the erection of a bridge between Brooklyn and New York. This was not by any means the first time that this subject had been broached, as we have seen before. One of the first advocates of such a structure was Robert Pope, a friend and contemporary of Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat. He was an architect, residing in New York, and though sanguine of success, should his plan be adopted, yet he met nothing but ridicule from his fellow- townsmen. On one occasion, it is told he was crossing the river with his friend Fulton, when they saw a beautiful rainbow spanning the river. At once the inventor exclaimed, " Look ! Pope, even the heavens favor you with good omens." It was, as we know, an omen which waited long for its fulfillment. The plan offered in 1849 was for a floating bridge with a draw. Foremost among its supporters was the New York Tribune. Two years after the "great fire," as it used to be called, another broke out in Brooklyn. Early on the morning of Sunday, July 8, 1850, the city was visited by an extensive conflagration, which destroyed half a million dollars' worth of property. At half past three o'clock, on the morning of the day mentioned, flames burst from the fourth story of R. V. W. Thome's storehouse on Furman street. The firemen were soon on hand, but before they had been long at work the roof, upper story and a portion of the wall fell in with a tremendous crash, forcing the firemen to flee for their lives. They had barely returned to the conflict when a terrific explosion caused by the ignition of a large quantity of saltpetre which was stored in the building, threw huge masses of brickwork and bales high in the air. Falling with great force, they crashed through everything beneath them. The roofs of many of the adjoining buildings caught fire, and explosion followed explosion. The firemen were compelled to retreat for a time, allowing the flames to have full sway. With the final explosion, the walls tottered for a moment and then crumbled into dust, leaving nothing but a heap of ruins where but a short time previously had stood lofty and substantial structures. Engine No. 17 was on the pier near the warehouse, and by the force of the final explosion was lifted up bodily and blown into the river, along with four firemen. The engine, of course, sank, but the men were rescued by their comrades. The flames by this time had seized upon Thompson's sheds, upon the south side of which were stored large quantities of logwood, saltpetre, etc. On the north side the flames had taken hold of the guano storehouse belonging to Mr, Thorne, as well as the naval store sheds of Messrs. Tapscott, in which were large quantities of tar, pitch, turpentine, etc., the burning of which lasted until late in the afternoon. In all, eighteen buildings were destroyed. During the same year the city was visited by a cholera epidemic, that resulted in the appalling record of six hundred and forty-two deaths, which in a population of 100,000 people presented a ratio of one to every one hundred and fifty-five people, the mortality being, as usual in such epidemics, greatest among children. At a meeting of the Brooklyn bar, in 1849, the organization of the law library was decided upon. Public interest has always been aroused by the subject of Brooklyn ferries, perhaps, as much as by any other subject, since for many years they were the main means of communication with the world outside of Long Island. The discussion of a ferry franchise, therefore, has always been one in which every one has had an opinion to express. In 1850, Messrs, Pierrepont and Leroy obtained a new DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 137 franchise, or rather a renewal of their lease of the Fulton, South and Hamilton Ferries for ten years. These ferries were paying at a one-cent fare, while the opposition lines from Wall, Catherine and Roosevelt streets were losing money at a two-cent fare. The failure of the independent companies last named to force the Union Company, as it was called, to raise its rates, resulted finally in an arrange- ment by which a general consolidation took place on the loth day of November, 1854, under the corporate name of the Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn. Nine years before this, a bill had passed the Legislature which regulated the granting of ferry privileges. It provided for the appointment of three commissioners, non-residents of the interested counties, who should grant licenses for as many ferries as in their judgment the needs of the public demanded. In 1848, these commissioners granted a lease to Alfred G. Benson and others to keep the four ferries at Fulton, South, Hamilton and Wall streets. After the consolidation of 1854, there was trouble about the rates again, the company expressing dissatisfaction with the one-cent fare, and the rate was raised to two cents, as it was claimed, for the sake of uniformity. At the expiration of the lease, or just before it, in 1859, new trouble arose over the same old cause, and an injunction was gotten out to prevent New York from selling the ferry privilege, but the company triumphed, the injunction was dissolved, and on the 20th of May, i860, the ferries were again bid off to the Union Company, which in a decade gradually absorbed about everything and controlled trans- river travel. The lease was for ten years, and the annual rental was fixed at $103,000, with an additional rental of $20,000, which the company had to pay to the Brooklyn side. When this lease ran out, Tweed and the ring held the power in New York city, and for the nominal rental of $1.00, the "Boss" renewed the lease for another ten years. But the price of ferriage, during the hours of the greatest travel, was restricted, by the terms ^ _ of the lease, to one cent. ,''^ "'""■--.., At first the company stood off, expressing a willingness to accept the lease on the old terms, but, learning that Tweed himself, or some one near him, stood ready to take it at the offered terms, it closed. After Tweed had gone out of power, the New York authorities ventured to question the legality of the lease, a thing they did not dare to do while the iron finger of the " Boss " was upon their lips. Action was brought against the Union Ferry Company, and a decision adverse to that body was granted by Judge Van Vorst. The claim for $1,500,000 back rent was compromised for $300,000, and a new five-year lease obtained at 1 2\ per cent, of the gross earnings of the ferries. The control of all the ferries therefore contin- ued in the hands of the Union Company. A brief account of the ferries and their operations, the acquisition of their franchises, etc., since Robert Fulton's time, may not be out of place here. The first of all was the " Old Ferry," now known as Fulton Ferry, which was first established before 1642, and over which, at a later date, Robert Fulton was granted the privilege of running a steamboat— the first steam ferry-boat of which the world has any record Catherine street ferry was the next, established somewhere between 1815 and 1818, Rodman Bowne being the parent of the scheme. The horse-power, or " team boats," as they were called, continued in operation on this line till it was forced by competition to adopt steam, some time in the thirties. One of these competing companies was the South Ferry, originated by Lyman Betts, Conklin Brush, and others, in 183s after ten years of discussion and endeavor. Their lease obtained from New York called for an annual paynient to the city of $1,000. Several lines commenced operations in 1852, the most important being the the Wall street ferry of which Jacob Sharp, afterward of Broadway railroad fame, was the principal owner. He obtained a ten years' lease at $20,000 a year. John Martine started the Roosevelt street line, but Montague Street Hill, before the Heights were built up. From an old print. 138 THE P:AGLE and BROOKLYN. soon transferred it to Le Roy and Pierrepont. Its subsequent history was one of changes ; once its. course and destination was altered, and at another time its lease was declared null and void, and for a time it was abandoned. But in 1867 a new lease was secured for ten years, and the boats ran as before, from Peck Slip to South Seventh street. A. J. Berry and John Hicks secured a lease in 1852 for a ferry to run between New York, Brooklyn and Williamsburgh, afterwards called the Hunter's Point ferry, and for this they paid $3,000 per annum for a fifteen years' lease. Oliver Charlick obtained the lease of this line in 1868, at which time its New York terminus was at James Slip, and the Long Island one at Hunter's Point. The Grand street ferry, which made the streets of the same name in New York and Brooklyn continuous, was established in 1830, two years before the Houston street line and four years prior to the commencement of that known as the Hamilton avenue, a lease for which was obtained by Messrs. Le Roy and Pierrepont, acting for the Union Company, at a nominal rental of $1.00 per annum. The trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral are responsible for the Twenty-third street ferry, its establishment being due to a desire to connect Penny bridge, near Calvary cemetery, with a point which was then (1852) up town. A ten-years lease, at $100 a year, was obtained, but during the next year after the opening of the line, a transfer of the lease was made to G. L. Knapp, who changed the Long Island terminus to Greenpoint, and in 1864 secured a new lease at a somewhat higher figure than the preceding. The ^ , „ ^ Thirty-fourth street ferry was five Vears later in starting, its pro- L. I. Railroad Tunnel -' ^ ■' at 1- Under Atlantic avenue. moter being A. D. Winans, and that from Tenth street a year earlier, leaving the New York side at first, however, from Fourteenth street. Alexander Shults was the first lessee, but G. L. Knapp afterwards secured the property, changing the course to that now fol- lowed. Although all of these lines agreed to pay to the city of New York, and in some cases to the city of Brooklyn, sums which in the aggregate would amount to many thousands of dollars, yet in point of fact, many of them for long terms of years managed, on one ground or another, to elude payment of these dues. The growth of South Brooklyn, which had already begun to be noticeable, assumed even a more pronounced character in 1851. Red Hook was rapidly built up, and many miles of new streets were laid out. To the warehouses already built at Atlantic Docks, twelve new ones were added, each thirty-eight by one hundred and eighty feet in area and five stories high. A brick mill building, covering a lot fifty by two hundred feet in size, was erected for the manufacture of cotton wadding, and consumed about three thousand pounds a day of the raw material. Other improvements were made in that neighborhood, which showed how confident the people were of the permanency of the prosperity which had visited South Brooklyn. At the end of the Hook a new dock and pier were built ; Van Brunt street was opened and graded from Hamilton avenue to this pier. Besides the cotton wadding manufactory mentioned, there were other manufacturing establishments built and thousands of dollars were invested in distilling and brewing plants. These distilleries, of which there were six, covered many acres, employed seven hun- dred people, consumed annually $993,300 v.'orth of grain, and produced more than a half a million gallons of whiskey. During this period, plans for the enlarge- ment of the Atlantic Basin were carried into effect, with most beneficial results. The manufacture of white lead in Brooklyn at this time outgrew that of any other city in the Union, the output for the year reach- ing from six to twelve thousand tons, which repre- sented an invested capital of over $1,000,000. Following these business enterprises and the evi- dence of material prosperity, came the organization of charities, institutions and societies, the aim of which was especially development and improvement of the young. Prominent in this latter class was the Brooklyn Athenaeum and Reading-room, opened on the corner of Atlantic and Clinton- streets as a gathering-place for the young men of South Brooklyn. One of the much-needed improvements which was realized forty years ago, was the incorporation of the Myrtle avenue railroad, with a capital of $25,000. During the same year the Brooklyn City Railroad Company was incorporated under a general state law, Old House on Atlantic, near Classon. Formerly L. I. railroad station. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 139 and began at once to lay its track. Two insurance companies, the Long Island and the Phenix, obtained their charters and began business in 1853, their capital amounting to $2,000,000. The Brooklyn Y. M. C A., which has proved itself in so many ways a benefit to the city, and whose influence still continues to expand, was also organized during this year. Probably no better idea of the development of this city can be given in a condensed form than is contamed m Mayor Lambert's message to the common council in 1852. He said in effect that the population of Brooklyn was 120,000, making it the seventh city in the Union, with an increase during the year of $12,000,000 taxable property. Its fifteen schools contained eighteen thousand three hundred and seven scholars, with an additional eight hundred attending night schools. About fifty miles of gas mains were laid in the city, of which twenty-two miles had been put down during that year by the Brooklyn Gas Company. In the same year one thousand two hundred gas lamps had been placed'in position. The list of new buildings erected during the same period numbered two thousand five hundred. This was certainly a brave showing for the young city. It is little wonder that all means used for public safety and protec- tion, and many facilities which we deem indispensable in urban life, did not at once appear ; that the city was a little overgrown and slightly out of joint with itself. Labon's Inn, in 1853. On Flaibush avenue^ where Journeay ^ Burnham s store jiow stands. A time when many of the cities of the United States were feeling the result of the earnest but some- what too rampant Americanism of a class whose political war-cry was " No quarter to foreigners," Brooklyn was not excepted. The " Know-nothings," who at their best were patriotic in purpose, at the worst became riotous in their measures, being led by men who made the blind enthusiasm of the masses their opportunity for acquiring political influence or satisfying personal animosities. The creed that we some- times hear repeated to-day, "America for the Americans," was not only the expression of a political senti- ment, it soon came to mean the assumption of an intolerant attitude toward every foreign-born inhabitant; it meant that men who had chanced unfortunately to be born on the other side of the ocean should be subjected on this side to such persecution as an excited prejudice might suggest. The feeling which had been for a long time growing in intensity, culminated in open violence in 1854. At the time, it was the practice of certain evangelists to hold open-air meetings for religious exercises at the corners of some of the city streets. While one of these meetings was in progress at Smith and Atlantic streets, a body of New York Know-nothings, to the number of two hundred and fifty, crossed the river and marched and countermarched past the place of meeting, amid a chorus of hootings and yells from those on the outskirts of the crowd. The New Yorkers were met by the mayor of Brooklyn, who assured them of the ability of the Brooklyn police to preserve order in the city without assistance, and ordered them to cease their marching, which they did ; but later, when the services were concluded and the visitors were again on the march, en route for the ferry, they were met by a large crowd eager to avenge a fracas provoked by a similar body of men about a week previous. In spite of the utmost efforts of the police, whose numbers were inadequate to cope with the disturbance, active hostilities commenced, and before long the report 140 THE EAGLE ANIJ BROOKLYN. The Old-time N'avv Yard. From a woodcut. of fire-arms was added to the outcries of infuriated combatants, wliile missiles of all sorts flew thickly. The riot jiroceeded during the attempted embarkation of the Know-nothings, to the alarm of those on the ferry-boats and the destruction of some property, but finally the military, under General Duryea, arrived on the ground, the riot act was read, and at last order was restored. While a number of persons were wounded in this affair, only one was fatally hurt, and the recurrence of the disturbance was prevented by the prompt action of the authorities. Before the summer of 1854 had fairly begun, there were threatenings of a disaster which the people had learned to dread, and in June the cholera was again upon us, but proved to be less violent than upon a former occasion. The life of the city was not paralyzed nor her growth checked. The long looked-for consolidation of Williamsburgh and Brooklyn, which was consummated during the following year, was provided for by legislative enact- ment in 1854. One of tiic beneficent works begun that year was the Brooklyn Collegiate and Poly- technic Institute, for boys ; and another, which marked a decided advance in educational affairs, was the establishment of the Packer Oollegiate Institute, for girls, which took the place of the older Brook- lyn Female Academy. The consolidated city of 1855 comprised 16,000 acres, or twenty-five square miles, with an exterior line measuring about twenty-two miles in length. Its water-line was about eight and one-half miles long, of which only a portion was docked for wharfage. Stress was laid on its desirability for residence, due to its elevation above the water and the fact that its population was not too dense for comfort ; while morally, as a writer of the time said, it was " free from many of the prominent inniioralities which are apt to charac- terize a metropolitan city, and that offend and repel a right-thinking and religious people," It had already earned — and had not then outgrown — the title of the " City of Churches." Its educational facilities were of a high order ; its literary and ilebating societies numerous, r)ne hospital and two dispensaries afforded relief for the sick, and many benevolent associations now in the maturity of their philanthropic work were beo-inning to commend themselves to the public, while the Bible societies, the Tract Society, and the Sun- day-School Union and Eastern District Ihble and City Mission;u-y Societies were fairly established. Ferry development had already proceeded so far that there were thirteen boats communicating with the opposite shores of the river. Of street railroads there were only four lines in actual operation, though four more were under construction ; while communication with remote parts of the city and with adjacent villages was still maintained by stage lines. John S. F\:)lk was chief of police, and controlled seven police districts with two hundred and forty-seven men — the FTghth, Ninth and Eighteenth wards being dependent on their own special police. Thirty hand-engine companies, seventeen hose companies and seven truck companies requiring two thousand and seven hundred men to handle them, sufficed to |3ut out the fires in both the Eastern and Western districts. There were only five hundred and si-xteen streets opened, though seven hundred more were on the commissioners' map, 'Fhe only completed park was the " City Park," near the navy yard. Washington Park, at Fort Cireene, which, when first proposed had met with considerable opposi- tion, had only just been enclosed, while Prospect Park was not even suggested. Public sentiment regarding parks was undergoing a change, and expression was already being given to the regret of the citizens that " the grounds for a public park were not early set apart on the brow of the Heights, from which there is a magnificent panoramic view of the city and harbor of New 'S'ork and the circumjacent islands and shores. It would have been," said its advo- cates, " a place of attractiye resort, and won fame for the city and honor to its pro- ject(;rs." Yet this same im- provement could have been put through in 1855 at an ex- pense which seems triyial now, as did tlicn the earlier estimates of i8j6, which scared the village trustees T„e Xavy Y.\rd on a Peace Footing. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY, 141 from incurring so large an outlay at that time. Nearly all the great cemeteries had been opened, the Atlan- tic dock had been completed, and the City Hall was the chief architectural adornment of the city. Brooklyn did not possess a satisfactory supply of good water, that for household purposes being obtained from neigh- boring pumps ; but the plans for bringing in the Ridgewood water at a cost of $4,500,000, were already under discussion, and the consummation of them was not far distant. The total valuation of real estate was 164,665,117, and of personal property $8,184,881. These were small figures measured by those of to-day ; but they showed how the city had grown in the twenty-one years since its incorporation, when the total real and personal valuation was only $15,642,290, though that was in itself a seven-fold increase over the figures of 1824. The population in 1834 was 24,310, and in 1854 it was 155,000. The number of buildings in the consolidated city was 19,570, of which 13,582 were new dwellings. In those days there were fewer stores than Brooklyn boasts to-day, and those were perhaps better known. Public-houses, too, were of a different character from those of to-day, the restaurant then not having superseded the chop-house in which the last generation delighted. Old road-houses, too, were unlike their successors of the present day. Perhaps people expected less ; certainly they paid less for many of their pleasures than we do. One of the best-known stores in Brooklyn in the middle of the century was the drugstore of Blagrove, on Atlantic avenue, near Fulton street. It was a popular place in its day, though the sign which hung over the door had become dingy, and the counters lacked many of the attractive features which a first-class druggist . - would possess to-day. Near Hicks street, also on Atlantic avenue, was Bennet's circulat- ing library and bookstore, where the students and bookworms of the town congregated. A figure well known to all Brooklyn used to make his daily journey from this point to the ferry. That was the invalid Dominick McLaughlin, whose wheel chair was the centre for those who bought their papers at the ferry. One of " Mac's " sons was afterward head of the mailing department of the New York Herald. Sweetzer & Company ran one of the largest dry goods stores of the day, at 155 Atlantic avenue, and on Fulton street, at No. 289, was the " Emporium," so-called, of Thos. W. Woods, where " notions," small furnishings and bric-a-brac were procured. Then there were the Great Republic toy store, whose doggerel advertisements are still remembered ; and Gaston's hat store (whose proprietor announced to his patrons that peace was declared in Europe because Napoleon wore one of Gaston's hats), and Walter Lbckwood's dry goods store on Fulton street, which ran back to Washington street. Joseph Mumby kept the fashionable bakery at 159 Fulton street, where the weddings and gala dinners of that simpler day were supplied with the cakes, pastry, confections and more substantial fare that were required. For creature comfort there was no place superior to Dent's — Dent, the Englishman who came from New York to settle here, and selected an old, substantial house on Main street, where he gradually accumulated works of art, pictures and bric-a-brac, and gathered a clientelle of men who knew how to appreciate the good things he knew how to furnish. Dent's peculiarity was his rampant faith in everything English, which he even carried to such an extent that his game, mutton and other edibles, ever so long before the day of rapid steamers and refrigerating conveniences, were brought from the old country. As for buying ales, beer or liquor in any other country but England, the worthy Boniface would have gone mad at the mere suggestion of such a thing. One of the features of Dent's was the never omitted Saturday night dinner, at which mine host spread his most prized liquids. After the dinner, it was usual for every man to light his pipe, short stem or church-warden, and discuss the affairs of the week from under a fragrant cloud. It is certain that the conversations over Dent's hospitable board were strongly flavored with salt. Those were the days when many of the world-famous clipper ships had their piers on the Brooklyn side of the East river, and the Brooklyn people took as much pride in each one as though every citizen was a part owner. There were the " Red Jacket," " Dreadnaught," " Sovereign of the Seas," " Challenge," and other famous vessels, every one of which had made a record and was adding to it with every trip. This one had made the fastest time to London or Liverpool, that to San Francisco in the old roundabout way, and the next had brought rich freight home from the China seas in an incredibly short time. If one had wanted to offer a Brooklynite a mortal affront, it would have been enough to suggest that his be-canvassed deity was not worthy of the praise he bestowed upon her. Even men who never Long Island College Hospital, Perry Mansion. 142 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. smelt salt water in their lives were full of enthusiasm about the clipper ships. Captain McKay, who used to command the " Sovereign of the Seas," knew Dent's— so did Captain Allen, who once had the " Con- stellation," and Captain Spencer, who sailed the " Grinnell." They were men who could hold their own even with the naval officers whom they met over the chop-house board. Their trips were achievements, and they themselves were seasoned by many a year of adventure and peril. The sailing ships then ran on regular lines between this country and the old ; that was before the modern steam vessel had superseded the fleet wooden flyers that carried the American flag into every sea and trained a race of sailors who afterwards supplied our navy. The wayfarer who strayed into the place unintroduced would have found scant welcome, for besides the usual embarrassment which attends the proverbial " cat in a strange garret," Dent had arrived at a point where he could choose his patrons, and this virtually, though indirectly, ruled those whom he served. Harry Russell was another of the chop-house proprietors. His place was at the corner of Poplar place and Fulton street. He was also a Britisher and his place was much patronized by a solid though unpretentious class of citizens. But drinking rather than eating was the order of the day at Russell's, and the vessels in which his ales were served I - 1 each bore the English stamp, while the = ■'. ' ' tables stood upon a floor that was covered each day with fresh clean sawdust, after the fashion of the old country. " Johnny " Force had a place on High street, near Fulton. He took an old private mansion there and fitted it up with a bar in the wide hallway and two parlors where his guests could be served. The walls at Force's were hung with valuable paintings, though of course among them were many of a sporting character. Humphrey Hartshorn, who was on Adams and Willoughby streets, was no exception to the general fashion and thought with the rest that there could be nothing good unless it was English. Indeed all the chop-houses of that day were modelled on the English plan and the era of American restaurants The Brooklyn Athen.€um. jj^^l not arrived. When it did come the chop-houses modestly sank out of sight and in their disappearance and the survival of that which seems better adapted to our needs is to be found the best answer to the remark so often made that the ways of the last generation were superior to ours. In speaking of the old chop-houses the subject of well-known road-houses in the neighborhood of the city naturally presents itself, though, regretfully, we must deny them more than a passing mention here. Perhaps the best known of these was Mort Tunison's on the Long Island road. Poor Mort, who years afterwards, when trouble came and the world was not quite so fair to him, took his own life. His place was famous for good suppers and especially for good juleps, then a very fashionable drink for the class of men who love a half-way house. Then there was the old Baker Tavern, where James Bennett kept his hostelry and provided comfort for man and beast. It stood where the Flatbush depot of the Long Island Railroad is now and was a place where a good dinner could be got at a small price. Susan Terries kept the Pros- pect House, the first inn after the Baker House was passed. Constable Funk afterwards bought her out and the place became a centre for those who loved the excitement of fox-hunting, which at that time the open country in the neighborhood afforded. It was a common thing to see the yard full of horses, hounds in leash dozing or quarrelling in the care of the attendants, doughty fox-hunters in their top-boots and riding apparel gathered from far and near either to discuss the possibilities of the hunt to be ridden or the incidents of the one just finished. McNamee had the old tavern at the toll-gate near the Park in '67. Its proximity to the fair-grounds of the Park Association of course helped its business greatly, and there were many men well known by name to every Brooklynite of the older generation, whose business or pleas- ure led them out on the road and to whom McNamee's was a delightfully convenient stopping-place. Among such were Snediker, Dakin, Polhemus, the Hoaglands, Marshall, and many more. In 1856 Brooklyn was approached by a genuine epidemic of yellow fever. The extensive wharfage and the miles of shore line exposed to the southerly summer breeze, render this city peculiarly liable to the introduction of communicable diseases from infected vessels anchored near shore. The alluvial soil near Fort Hamilton became water-logged after a heavy rain on July 9, 1856, and this was succeeded by other DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY. 143 heavy rainfalls and high temperature. At the same time many vessels infected with yellow fever were anchored in the Narrows, between Long Island and Staten Island, all the way from Gravesend Bay to Owl's _ ^^L*^^ ^.^^^ ^^""'^ °^ y^l'°^ ^^^"' occurred on shore July 24, and soon thereafter panic and a general exodus from the city resulted. It has been sup- posed that the infection came from foul bedding thrown overboard from in- fected vessels and picked up along shore by the poor peo- ple living at Bay Ridge. But Dr. A. N. Bell, our first au- thority on epidemic diseases and quarantine, has shown that the first cases were among the well-to-do owners _ „ ^ „ of the villas on elevated T„H OKic^.-vL EAST RivHR Bk.ooh. c.oss.no o. thh icH I. ,85.. ground, exposed to the wind passing over the infected vessels ; that the poor people on the shore were the last to contract it— after the soil had become infected. The disease was practically limited to the unpaved Bay Ridge shore, the water- shedding paved streets of the city protecting that district. There were only ten cases in the city, all traced to infected places or things. Dr. Bell, who was active in instituting remedial and preventive agencies at this time, demonstrated clearly the superiority of practical sanitation— the separation of the patient from infected places— over the then method of quarantjne. And he further demonstrated the non-contagiousness of this disease, by personal contact with the patients. The total number of cases in the infected district was 175 ; in Brooklyn, 10 ; and in New York city, 34— these, as in Brooklyn, were all traced to infected material! The Fort Hamilton Relief Society, under the presidency of Paul A. Oliver, through its hospital, of which Drs. Ehsha Harris and A. N. Bell were attending physicians, and Dr. C. G. Rothe resident physician, and through Its organization for the charitable care of the afflicted poor, did a noble and efficent work during the epidemic. What Brooklyn was before the introduction of water from a public and adequate source is hard to realize. The gathering of various streams and small bodies of water into one general system, to be a Sleighing on the J.\maica Plank Road. — Returning from Snediker's. treasury upon which all the drafts of a thirsty city should be honored, did not come at once with the need of it. On the contrary, Brooklyn suffered for years from an inadequacy in this respect, and tried to make the private wells and municipal tanks of her infancy answer the needs of maturity. It was folly of the kind that most cities that grow rapidly must plead guilty to; a folly that cost Brooklyn hundreds of thousands of dollars from great fires and unnecessary sickness from polluted springs. Among the early 144 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. plans suggested for remedying the evil was one which showed how the gravity of the situation was under- valued by the citizens, and how little they realized the subsequent growth of the city. It was proposed very seriously to build a well at the foot of Fort Greene and pump the water from there to a high-service reservoir on an adjacent hill. Among the variations of this plan one was advocated which should combine several wells, and the point of disagreement which finally defeated them all seemed to have been upon the subject of engines to do the pumping. The plan for the Ridgewood water- works, which was ultimately proposed, met with a ready and appreciative response from some quar- ters, especially in official circles, but upon being submitted to the people for popular vote it was twice defeated. However, the necessity of the city made the adoption of such a measure only a matter of time, and finally on the 12th of April, 1855, the advocates of the scheme were delighted at the passage by the Legislature of an act incorporating the Nassau water-works. The capital stock of the new company was fixed at $3,000,000, with power to increase it to $6,000,000 if necessary. On the nth of November the city council passed a resolution authorizing a subscription of $1,000,000, (which was afterwards increased to $1,300,000) to the capital stock of the Nassau Water Company. This subscription was conditional, how- ever, upon the success of the directors in raising the remainder of the capital within a specified time. Upon the ist day of July, two months and a half after the granting of the charter, the company broke ground for the new work. The beginning was made at the place now known as Reservoir Park on Flatbush avenue. The thing was, of course, to get the people of the city as fully interested as possible and to this end the services of well-known speakers, the exhilarating strains of bands of music and the pres- ence of crowds of people made a gala occasion of the throwing of the first spadeful of earth from the new reservoir. Flags were flung to the breeze and many very pretty and patriotic things were said, and the general jubilation suggested a victory — as indeed it was — over the twin enemies, sickness and fire. A board of water commissioners was appointed on the nth of February, 1857. Later the Legislature enacted that the board should be also aboard of sewer commissioners. The introduction of the Ridgewood water into the city mains took place on the 4th day of December, 1858, and within the month its first pub- lic use was made in extinguishing a fire which under the old regime would probably have proved very dis- astrous. There was a general demand for a grand jubilation; the common council arranged for a celebra- tion which should fitly commemorate an event which was justly estimated to be an important one in the annals of the city. The day fixed for this great pageant was the 27th of April, 1859; when the time arrived there was a great crowd of people assembled and they were addressed by Governor Morgan, Peter Cooper and other prominent men, while the usual accompaniments of a popular celebration were not wanting. Both public buildings and private houses were decorated, and in the evening, following a grand parade, fireworks and illuminations added brilliancy to the city streets and squares. At Fulton Street and Grand Avenue. A relic of the fumf days. ''"s'JS^-i^^ ^ The Brooklyn Phalanx in Camp near Bladensburgh, Md. {T/te 1st Long Island, or (yjtk N. Y. Vols., known as " Beecher's Pets.") DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 1861-1865. (HE feeling with which Brooklyn regarded the approaching and inevitable war precipi- tated by the Southern states in 1861 was loyal and strong. Of course there was a small proportion of the population who sympathized with the Southern cause, but the percent- age of such was probably less here, for many reasons, than in New York City. A rapid and general crystalization of sentiment occurred. It was shown in public meetings, in fervent speeches, in enlistment offices where men were enrolled for military service. The prevalent feeling found its expression in measures both defensive and aggressive by which '// our people sought to protect their interests at home and furnish to the national govern- l-'v ment the aid and comfort which it sorely needed. One needs but to glance at the honor roll of Brooklyn regiments that did service on many a southern battle field to under- stand how thoroughly and loyally the patriotic impulse was sustained. President Lincoln's proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers rang through the country with amazing effect. It was the bugle call to " boots and saddles." Nothing could bring quite so close to the minds of the people the urgency of the nation's need. In Brooklyn the response was patriotic, enthusiastic, immediate. The president's call was responded to by the opening of recruiting-offices and the preparation of the militia bodies, already organized, for the field. The excitement seemed to penetrate everywhere — to per- meate everything. From the offices of the newspapers to the pews of the churches, from the tent of the recruiting-officer to the dormitory of the Packer Institute, zeal was at a white heat. Among those able to bear arms there was rivalry as to who should be the first to volunteer. The 13th, 14th, 28th and 70th militia regiments made preparations for active service. The young men were naturally the most active and enthusiastic of those who thronged to swell the patriotic ranks, but to them did not belong by any means a 146 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. monopoly of warlike sentiment. Thousands of those in the prime of life made arrangements to leave their business and their families and go with the boys to the front, while not a few veterans, whose recollections were of Monterey or Buena Vista, shook off the weight of years and rubbed the rust of almost forgotten campaigns from their old swords. The attitude of the citizens of Brooklyn found its corresponding expression in the activity of the various organizations, civil, religious and commercial, in the city. The initial action of the common council in ap- propriating $7S,ooo for the relief of the families of volunteers was generally applauded. At the churches patriotic sermons were preached and collections taken, the sum of which was even more eloquent than the impassioned words of the clergymen; in one of the churches, the Pierrepont Street Baptist, over a thousand dollars were contributed toward equipping the 13th and 14th regiments for the field on an impromptu call. Plymouth Church responded in a similar way to the same call and private citizens donated liberally. In several churches the members met to make bandages, scrape lint, and otherwise prepare for war. The 13th and 28th regiments were the first to leave for Washington, General Abraham Duryee forwarding them with all dispatch. Every day the interest increased; all business had been virtually suspended at the out- break of the excitement and men could find nothing but war and war preparations to talk about, but before the end of April the pitch of enthusiasm which was reached made the first outbreak seem paltry by com- parison. If Brooklyn had been the centre of a camp and that camp in the heart of a hostile country the constant rush of men intent on war, the march of uniformed regiments, the uninterrupted music of martial bands, and the universal display of bunting could hardly have been greater. Another act of the common council at this juncture also met with the commendation of the citizens; this was the authorization of a loan of $100,000 for the equipment of volunteers and the support of their families. One of the most popular acts of this time was a pledge made by the Union Ferry Company to con- tinue to all the families of the employees who should volunteer the payment of their salaries and to re- employ all men who should leave them for the country's service, as soon as their term of enlistment was concluded. Private firms were not to be outdone in their response to the general demands. One com- pany not only followed the example of the Union Ferry Company in regard to the salary pledge but went further in furnishing equipments to all of their enlisting employees. Twenty-five thousand dollars of the city loan of f 100,000 was taken up by the Mechanics' Bank. One of the most popular expressions of the prevailing wish to do something for the cause was shown in its various contributions toward the support of the families of volunteers. Never before had a more earnest effort been made by those who could not take an active part in the conflict to free the hands of those who could by assuming their responsibilities. Those whose inclination and sense of duty led them to the front were cheered by the knowledge that those who were dependent upon them for daily bread would not be permitted to suffer. There is little doubt that the enlistment rolls were increased by a hundred per cent by this thoughtfulness on the part of those whose willing spirit was stronger than their flesh. There was an association for the relief of volunteers' families which at its meetings raised thousands of dollars for this worthy object. The citizens of Green- point (17th Ward) at a public meeting organized a committee of relief which accomplished much good. The women did noble service in preparing hospital stores and doing all that their fair hands could to com- fort those who were bearing the brunt upon far-away battle fields — if indeed they, who had husbands, fathers, sons and brothers in the army did not themselves support the most difficult 7-6le. The medical fraternity too were prompt in performing the important service which lay in their power. At a meeting of the Kings County Medical Association the members resolved to render professional services to the fami- lies of volunteers without pay, and in addition to this service many of them, not content with this home ser- vice, sought more active labor at the front. One of the incidents which is recalled by those who participated in it with lively interest was a surprise party that visited the house of Postmaster George B. Lincoln. The postmaster had been notified that a certain number of physicians were needed immediately and was requested to secure volunteers; going the rounds of the offices at a time when most of the doctors were at church, he succeeded in seeing but a very few, who however, to a man, offered to go. Some acquaintance, learning of his mission, hurried to police headquarters and by using the department wires soon had every captain in the city organized as a visiting committee to drum the doctors up, with the result that the post- master upon his return home found his house packed to overflowing with doctors, all eager to be of service. There was decidedly an embarrassment of riches, those who demanded to be sent being vastly in excess of the number required. But at length the twenty called for were selected and Mr. Lincoln was left to won- der how his mission had been so promptly learned and responded to. In addition to the doctors many ladies volunteered as nurses and went to the front. It will never be forgotten that Brooklyn, in common with other northern cities, sent not only her men but her women as well to the service of the nation. The activity of those whose interests were with the South cost the United States a vast deal in arms and public works in the early part of the civil war. Among other portions of the national military and naval equipment upon which the eye of the secessionist rested covetously was the Brooklyn navy yard. DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 147 and a plan was made to seize the important post, whose commanding position and stores of munitions of war made it so desirable to either side. The general belief that something of the sort would be done, or at least attempted, gave cause for a great deal of uneasiness. Captain Foote, who was left temporarily in charge of the navy yard by Commodore Bell, during the latter's absence, became the hero of what was long known as the Navy Yard Scare. Mayor Powell was one day waited upon by Captain Foote with the alarming story that a plot to burn the navy yard had been discovered and that it would be out of the cap- tain's power with the eighty men under his control to frustrate it unless he had aid from the city. The party who were to make the attack were supposed to be coming from New York city. The rendezvous was to be in the city park near the navy yard, from which place by the use of fireballs, etc., the incendiaries could easily accomplish their purpose. Since the government in the person of its officers had appealed to the city the mayor promptly responded, placing a thousand policemen in citizen's dress at or near the park, so that they might be ready to afford the required assistance. The 17th Regiment was in readiness at the Portland avenue arsenal and the 14th was under arms, while the river-front was patrolled by row- boats. In view of this prompt action the enemy reconsidered their plan and the navy yard was saved. In spite of the attitude and criticisms of some people it seems entirely probable that the danger was a real one and that had not Captain Foote received the information that he did the Brooklyn navy yard would have been demolished. Rear-Admiral Hiram Paulding was placed in command of the navy The S.'iNITARY F.47R IN 1S64. yard in '61 and held that post until '65. Much of the work of the navy yard during this active period was in the fitting out of vessels purchased from the merchant marine. These were converted into cruisers and many of them did excellent service in the navy after their adoption. There were in all four hundred and sixteen of these " converted " vessels that passed through the hands of the navy yard workmen, of whom there were five thousand three hundred and ninety employed during a single year (1864) their pay for that time amounting to upwards of $3,000,000. One of the attempted " steals " from the navy yard was that of the " Varina," a United States survey vessel from the south, by her southern commander. His plan was to withdraw quietly and run down the river at night, thence making an uninterrupted course to one of the states flying the palmetto flag. The scheme was frustrated, however, by the success of some of his crew in communicating with the commander of the receiving ship " South Carolina," who managed by stretching a line across her course to stop her and empty her of her men. An event which aroused much attention at the commencement of the following year (1862) and which, as it proved, was of signal importance to the Federal cause, was the launch of the " Monitor,"— the " cheesebox on a raft," as the Confederates called her. The craft was committed to the water in January, was placed in commission on the 2Sth of February and only eleven days later performed in Hampton Roads that amazing naval act which still reads like a chapter from the Arabian Nights and at the time almost convinced men that the days of chivalry and magic had returned. 148 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The New Englaxd Kitchen at the Sanitary Fair. During the years of the war Brooklyn throbbed to the beat of a drum. The most familiar sight was a recruiting-tent, there being sometimes six or eight at a time in the City Hall square and in open parks about the city as well as at the navy yard; from these soldier-mills those who entered plain citizens came out duly accredited with the patriotism and martial spirit which just then was the most popular thing a man could be possessed of. In April, 1861, a war meeting gathered 50,000 people at Fort Greene, where from the three stands, speeches were made and resolutions were read. A national home guard was also organ- ized at that time. The 13th Regiment of militia went to the front on the 22nd, and the 28th Regiment on the 30th of April. The "Reserves" of the 13th left soon after to join that body at Washington and the 14th, as the 84th N. Y. Vols,, commanded by Colonel Alfred M. Wood, followed on the 20th of May, their term of service to be for three years or for the war. Colonel ^Vood was the president of the board of alder- men, and the chair was vacant so far as the election of a permanent chairman to take his place went, till his return. His .conduct on the field, his imprisonment, his triumphant return and welcome by his fellow-citizens, which are a valuable part of Brooklyn's share in the war, are described in the sketch of Colonel Wood to be found among the lives of the mayors of the city elsewhere in this volume. The 14th, like many another brave regiment, wiped out the memory of the first Bull Run battle by a record full of courage and devotion, under Colonel E. B. Fowler. .Appended to this chapter we give what has not heretofore been printed, except in official records, a full list of the regiments and companies recruited in Brooklyn, omitting only the details of their service. The militia regiments at the beginning of the war were the 13th, 14th, 28th and the 70th ; of these the 14th, (under the volunteer designation of the 84th N. Y.,) as has been said, enlisted for three years or the war, having offered itself to the government and been accepted on these terms. The 13th returned at the end of July, and a few days later the 28th came home and was mustered out of ser- vice. Early in the following year a new militia regiment, the s6th, was organized in Brooklyn. A year later the great draft proclamation, ordering the service of 400,000 men for nine months, induced a great public demonstration which was held at Fort Greene on the 15th of August, 1862. The result of this " Union meeting," as it was called, was a fresh burst of enthusiasm, under the influence of which additional bounties were offered to those who would volunteer. The quota for Kings county which the order called for was 4,294 men, and an effort was made to raise the number by voluntary enlistment without having recourse to the draft. The contributions to the bounty fund materially aided this labor. It is not to be wondered at that Brooklyn found it harder to raise volunteers in 1862 than in 1861. She had already sent out ten thousand, ^\'hen the stream once began to flow, however, it came like a flood. Four regiments of the " Empire Brigade " were recruited in an incredibly short time and for a while the city seemed given over to recruiting-officers, each going about like a little Highland chief, with his " tail " of from one to a dozen men, and all heading for one or another of the various tents, where the recruits signed and received their DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 149 "bounties," which the banks immediately cashed; the Mechanics', in one day, cashing 175 of the checlcs ($50 each). Several times the militia regiments were called out to do service in other states, which was a straining of the conditions of service which the exigencies of the time demanded. The call in response to which thousands of Brooklynites of the National Guard precipitated themselves into Pennsylvania in June of 1863, was actuated by a real danger, but the boys came marching home again from their Gettysburg campaign none the worse for wear. The terrible draft riots of '63, which made New York a place of peril and bloodshed, did not visit Brook- lyn, though it was greatly feared that it would. Every precaution was taken to guard against a presentation in Brooklyn of the tragedy which was being. played across the East river, and the people here were not only successful in warding the danger from their own doors, but in sending aid to the sister city in her distress. A company of Brooklyn boys reinforced the New York militia, who were defending the state arsenal against the mob, and did good service. Following this the draft was enforced in Kings county in Sep- tember of that' year. A seventh of all the persons liable to conscription in the Second and Third districts was called for, the quota being 3,075 in the Second, and 4,045 in the Third districts. A substitute fund of $500,000 was voted by the common council to aid in exempting firemen, exempt firemen, certain of the militia men dependent upon their daily labor for support, and a few others. The firemen and militia men were after- wards omitted. The board of supervisors of Kiags county voted to borrow $250,000, for the purpose of paying a $300 bounty to every substitute enlisted in place of a drafted man; and a good deal of care was taken in paying these sums, because a new industry had sprung up, which, in the Hibernian vernacular, was known as " lapin' the bounty," — or in other words, "bounty-jumping," — which, being translated, signified a nimble- ness in enrolling in one place, receiving the $300 and then performing the same financial operation at another recruiting-office. Perhaps next to the bounty-jumpers, the men who gave most trouble to the supervisors and their agents at this time were the regular bounty brokers, who believed that all business should be done through their hands, and were scandalized that the committee should pay the bounty directly into the hands of the people it was intended for. One of the stirring and memorable scenes of 1864 was the return of the ist Long Island Regiment, the "Brooklyn Phalanx," on furlough and to recruit. With their gallant record of fourteen battles, only 234 men marched up Fulton street on that sixth day of January, of the thousand that had gone away two years and a-half before. The 28th N. Y. S. N. G. escorted the little band to the city hall, where they were cordially welcomed home. This was the first of a succession of similar returns. The constant and increased calls for men necessitated the adoption of unusual means to meet the demands made upon this community. At the outset men had been glad to go and had pressed eagerly to the service, and for some time there was no difficulty in raising volunteers; but, with the exhaustion of the best material and the most generous youth of the city, there was no corresponding diminution in the exac- tions of necessity; and we have seen how the offer of bounties was made and then increased with each draft. Finally, in addition to the bounties, " premiums " and " hand money " were found necessary. As soon as men were mustered out they were met by the recruiting-officers and induced, if possible, to re-enlist, and many did so, even before they had returned home. Up to the close of the war the difficulty grew, and yet no city in the country did more, or did its duty more readily than did Brooklyn, and her record is one which will ever be pointed to with pride when- ever the story of the Federal soldiers of the war is published. The noble work of the Sanitary Commis- First Fruits of the Sanitary Fair. {Treasurer Frot/tingham's first faymenl on accmmt. Nearly gioo.ooo additional proceeds held as a reserve.') J50 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. sion is, perhaps, hardly understood to-day, or its name fails to convey any adequate idea of its purpose, scope and accomplisnment. Officered by men whose labors were given without remuneration and whose travelling expenses were paid out of their own pockets, the commission disbursed hundreds of thousands of dollars in one of the most wise and far-reaching humanitarian schemes that ever was devised and exe- cuted by man. As some one pithily said, " The sanitary commission is simply the national sympathy for the soldier and his friends, organized and systematized in its operations." While the government, through its enginery of hospitals and appliances of various kinds, was doing what official intelligence and care could, it of necessity fell short of tender provision for sick and wounded men and comfort for well men, who were human under their soldier jackets, and got blue and homesick and heartsick like the rest of mankind. The sanitary commission was human charity working side by side with the government machine. It had its eyes everywhere, inspecting the sanitary arrangements of camps, inspecting soldiers' clothing, inspect- ing the home necessities of his family, inspecting the hospital accommodations and services, the medicines, the food, the thousand and one things necessary for his well being, and finding, with each inspection, some- thing to supply, something to do. As far as possible the soldier was to have some of the rough edges smoothed for him. The sanitary commission said, in effect, to the government, "That soldier is young; let him fight for you and do all that he can to save the country; let him give his strength and his life, if neces- sary, for you — but meanwhile I will be a mother to him." The War Fund Committee of the city of Brooklyn and the county of Kings was organized in 1862, with authority to add to its numbers at discretion. The organization, which was effected in the month of September, was subsequently approved, and the work of the committee, then only just begun, was enthusi- astically endorsed by the people in one of the largest public meetings ever held in the city of Brooklyn. The objects of the committee were to aid in procuring recruits, to succor discharged soldiers, care for the families of those who had been killed or who had died in the army or navy, relieve the sick and wounded, procure the pay or pension of those entitled to such emolument, to assist the sanitary commission and promote all its objects, and also aid the allotment committee in its work of philanthrophy. In fact, the committee was intended to step in everywhere and lend a helping hand whenever one should be required ; collect, beg, canvass, investigate, bestow wherever the large hand of Christian charity might find a worthy object. The origin of the committee was in the appointment by the governor of New York of two com- mittees, one in the second and the other in the third senatorial district each of which was to endeavor to raise a regiment of volunteers to serve for the usual long term of " three years or the war." About the same time the board of supervisors appointed a large committee, whose purpose was to act as auxiliary to the authorities in labors similar to those undertaken by the governor's committees. In both cases the primary object was to increase the numerical efficiency of the army and navy. The separate committees had not been long .engaged in their work when the imperative necessity for the existence of a central committee, to do more than merely recruit soldiers, should be formed. Back of the recruiting-tent lay a popular sentiment, and this must be fostered and stimulated in every possible way. The patriotism of one class must be appealed to, to supply the sinews of war, and to another class inducements offered to swell the musters of recruiting regiments. When the War Fund Committee began its work, one of the first things done was to form sub-com- mittees to the number of six. These were known as the committees on finance, enlistment, the sanitary commission, sick and wounded, pay and pension, and medals. Among the prominent gentlemen whose names appeared on these committees were Messrs, Low, Benson, Pierson, Frothingham, Caldwell, Wyman, Griffith, Chittenden, Meigs, Pierrepont, Strickland, Burnham, Stephenson and Baylis, At an early period in the history of the committee, Dr, Bellows, the famous president of the sanitary commission, was invited to lecture before it upon the purposes and work of that body, and especially upon the wants of the army. This he did in an able address, delivered on the isth of November. The immediate result of Dr. Bellows' lecture was a resolution that the sub-committee on the sanitary commission be empowered and instructed to make arrangements for a public meeting, to be held as early as practicable, for the purpose of organizing the efforts of the citizens in behalf of our suffering soldiers, and that the committee be furthermore requested to arrange with Dr. Bellows for the co-operation of the sanitary commission. Mr. Johnson, who was chairman of the sub-committee referred to, reported at the next meeting that arrangements had been made to hold a public meeting at the Academy of Music on Monday evening, November 24th. Two -hundred dollars were appropriated to defray the expenses of the meeting, which proved to be the largest and most enthusiastic gathering that had ever assem.bled under a roof in Brooklyn. The hall was not sufficiently large to hold more than a part of the people who wished to attend, and Dr. Bellows' stirring speech was listened to with the most eager attention. At the close of the meeting a number of ladies of the different churches organized a band of workers to act as auxiliary to Mr. Johnson's committee. A few days later, in the lecture-room of the Church of the Pilgrims, these ladies met a delegation from the Woman's Central Association of Relief from New York, and there and then planned the Woman's Relief DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 151 Association of the City of Brooklyn, a name which soon became asso- ciated with much patriotism, sacrifice and noble endeavor. The formal agreement upon articles of association took place at a meeting- held upon the 6th of December, 1862, and the objects of the society were defined. They were " to stimulate, concentrate and direct the philanthropic efforts of the community in behalf of the sick and wounded soldiers of our armies ; to obtain and distribute reliable information concerning their immediate and prospective wants; to collect supplies of hospital stores and medical comforts of all kinds, and generally to advance, the views and objects of the sanitary committee as appointed by the war fund, committee of the city of Brooklyn and the county of Kings, to which it shall be distinctly and permanently auxiliary, and to whose disposal all receipts of whatsoever nature shall be subject." The United States Sanitary Commission announced that the society would be recognized by it as the Brooklyn auxiliary. During the first year of its existence, it turned over about $60,000 worth of clothing and stores to the sanitary commission. Mrs. J. S. T. Stranahan was elected president of the Woman's Relief Association, and its secretary was Mrs. J. N. Lewis, while among its members were found the names of many ladies prominent in social life and in church and charitable work. A " sanitary fair" had been pro- posed in 1863 by Mr. James H. Frothingham, and a committee to organize such a fair was now appointed, consisting of Dwight Johnson, J. S. T. Stranahan, E. S. Mills, James D. Sparkman, Henry E. Pierrepont, James H. Frothingham, Thos. T. Buckley, Arthur W. Benson, Ambrose Snow and S. B. Caldwell. At a meeting of which Mr. A. A. Low was chosen president, and Mr. Lambert secretary, it was resolved to appoint an advisory board o co-operate with the Woman's Relief Association in the conduct of the fair. The fair took place in 1864, and was the great event of the year. It was organized and conducted through the joint efforts of the War Fund Committee and the Woman's Relief Association, aided by the Female Employment Society and other minor clubs and committees, as well as by private individuals. The plan for the fair was given up in 1863, as it was then feared that the effort might interfere with those of local organizations, without achieving a result which would equal the aggregate of their contributions to the common cause. In every possible way the committees had labored to raise money for hospital and kindred uses, but it seemed as though most of the channels through which contributions had flowed to them were exhausted ; again and again the churches had been appealed to, responding nobly, and from every other source the gifts had been unstinted. Now the idea of a mammoth fair, once having been started, grew in favor, and although for a time defeated in the councils of the committees, was finally revived. The plan, as first agreed upon, contemplated a union of forces between New York and Brooklyn, under the title of the Metropolitan Fair ; this being suggested and accepted because Brooklyn was not up to that time accustomed to believe in her own ability to accomplish any great result without the correspondence of her twin city. The first public announcement of the fair met with such instant and unqualified approval Colonel Alfred M. Wood. (Led the \\th at Bull Run.) Company "G." Brooklyn Fourteenth. In Camp Beeore Fredericksburg, 1S62, IS2 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Colonel Edward B. Fowler. Fourteenth Regiment. on the part of the people of Brooklyn that the committees were forced to the conclusion that they had under-estimated the ability of this community to stand alone. When New York suggested a post- ponement as advisable or necessary, the War Fund Committee here, with its co-workers, after a long debate, decided to proceed alone. Dr. Bellows afterwards alluded to this decision as the only justifiable kind of secession. Then pulpit and press caught fire, counting- house and office, store and home blazed in sympathy. Nothing was talked of but the great fair, :n which local pride, as well as phi- lanthropy and patriotic sentiment, was fully enlisted. Mr. Beecher from his pulpit gave the scheme the support of his genius, and to his words of burning eloquence were added those of the ablest clergy- men in the city, while the press caught up their impassioned appeals and added to them and circulated them in every corner of the city. A guarantee fund, headed by John D. McKenzie and subscribed to by A. A. Low, S. B. Chittenden and many others, grew to noble pro- portions. Gifts of all kinds, together with offers of aid of every description, poured in, and m the meantime the committees worked with a will to organize an affair which up to that time had never been equalled. The place fixed upon for holding the fair was the Academy of ?\Iusic, which was secured, and the erection of two auxiliary buildings was begun; one of these was known as Knickerbocker Hall, and the other as the Hall of Manufactures and New England Kitchen. Li addition to these the Taylor mansion, at Montague and Cliuton streets, was taken and connected with the others, to serve as a museum of art and curios. The time fixed for the opening of the great fair was Washington's Birthday, and as the time approached it became evident that the wildest expectations of those who originated it were to be realized or outdone. Cincinnati had raised in a similar manner the sum of $240,000 for the same object and her gift to Brooklyn was in the form of a challenge, being a mammoth broom, upon which was the following inscription: "Sent by the managers of the Cincinnati Fair, Greeting: We have swept up $240,000; Brooklyn, beat this if you can." A little later a way was opened to append the following legend to this challenge: " Brooklyn sees the $240,000 and goes $150,000 better." One of the notable features of the fair was the New England kitchen, a spacious room fitted up with all the appurtenances and furniture of a veritable old-time farmhouse kitchen, where the hum of the spinning-wheel was heard, the glow of whole logs in the great chimney cast a cheerful hue over the crowds that frequented the place, and the chowder-pot at intervals was emptied for the benefit of the visitors and replenished for the delectation of their successors. .\11 of the attendants in this room were in costume and no pains were spared to make the vraisemblance perfect. It is doubtful if any one feature of the fair is so perfectly re- membered to-day by those who had the pleas- ure of visiting it as this. The Hall of Manufact- ures, as well as the art galleries and collections of various kinds, attrac- ted also their share of attention, while in the beautifully.- decorated, brilliantly-lighted cen- tral hall the vast throng of those who bought and those who only came to see, surged and elbowed and shouldered till it seemed a mystery that Fourteenth Regiment Tablet, Foot of Gulp's Hill, Gettysburgh ,54 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. human nature could stand so much crowding without getting out of temper. The grand result of this effort was a contribution of $400,000, out of which a considerable surplus was retained by the managers as a basis for future work and contributions. Dr. Bellows, in commenting upon the matter, said that it was the largest sum which had been contributed from one source for the purposes of the commission. The fair closed upon the 8th of March. It was not only a magnificent charity, but was as well in the very highest sense educational as to what Brooklyn could do when thoroughly aroused. The daily announcements, made from one of the boxes, of the net results up to date, were profoundly interesting and acted as a stim- ulus to increase the total to the magnificent proportions finally achieved. The United States Christian Commission, for the dissemination of sound literature in the army and navy of the Union, had a large field of usefulness. It was organized in March, 1864, and numbered among its officers some of the wisest and most influential men in the community. Its first meeting here was held in the Reformed Church on the Heights, and its headquarters were in the Hamilton Building, at the corner of Court and Joralemon streets. It was the work of the Christian Commission not only to circulate litera- ture, but also to use every other means which could be suggested to keep the moral and spiritual tone of the army and navy elevated to Christian standards, a labor of which many an officer learned to appreciate the value. When the last glad news from the battle field was read and the whole people were delirious with joy over the news of General Lee's surrender; when men had done with shaking hands and congratulating one another, and old gentlemen began to remember their dignity again and refrain from acting like boys, Brook- lyn fell once more into the old ways of trade and activity of a civil and pacific nature; but stop — fell once more into the old ways? The city had never lost them. While the civil war was going on Brooklyn was add- ing to her business, adding to her manufactories, adding to her ship-building, her railroads, her streets, her edifices, her population. Thousands of buildings, from dwelling-houses to ferry-houses, from wharf sheds to mills, called for hundreds of miles of graded and paved thoroughfare that did not exist when the war began. The ship yards were busy. At Greenpoint the hands at Rowland's, at Underhill's and at Steers' Docks numbered many hundreds, and every sort of craft, from a ferry-boat to an iron sloop of war, or a monitor, was launched during 1864 and '65. The increased prosperity of the city in the years immediately succeeding the war will be discussed in another chapter. To this it only remains to add from official sources the war records of men recruited in Brooklyn and the organizations in which they served. The designation "militia" was changed to "national guard" in 1862. Certain militia regiments became volunteer organizations, offered to and accepted by the United States. Others remained members of the National Guard. Besides these were regiments and companies, etc., independently recruited for Federal service. Some of the militia regiments changed their numbers, being known by new official designations; others again, in addition to their numerical designation, were called by regimental syno- nyms. Certain of them which were not reorganized furnished both officers and men to the volunteer com- mands. To take the military bodies recruited in Brooklyn in numerical order, we will begin with the 4th Regi- ment of Cavalry, of which Company L and part of M were Brooklyn men. The regiment left the state The Fourteenth Regiment at Gettyseurgh. Capture of Davis' Mississippi Brigade, July i, 1862, by the l^th Brooklyn, C)!,th N. Y., and Uh Wisconsin, Col B. B. Fowler com- manding. From a -water-color by Conrad Freiiag, Co. B., after sketch made -while he lay -uminded. \ DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 15s The Brooklyn 13TH in Camp Near Harrisburgh, Pa., June, 1863. (Col. J. B. Woodward, commanding. Stationed here to guard the Bridge.) in August, 1861, served in Blenker's Division, sth Corps, and afterwards in other divisions, both in the Army of the Potomac and the Shenandoah until 1865. The sth Cavalry, of which Company I was recruited in Brooklyn, was known as Bliss' Cavalry. Leaving for the front in November, 1 861, it took part in a very large number of engagements, serving with the Department of Annapolis, that of the Shenandoah and the Army of the Potomac. In July, 1865, the regiment was mustered out. " Scott's Nine Hundred" was the synonym for the nth Cavalry, recruited by Colonel James B. Swain. Company F was raised in Brooklyn, and with the first ten companies mustered into service, left the State in May, 1862, serving with the Department of the Gulf and afterwards with that of the Cumberland. It was discharged in July, 1865, and a number of its members re-enlisted under battalion formation. Mayor George W. Smith commanding. The battalion was mustered out at Memphis, Tenn., September 30, 1865. The 13th Cavalry, which, under command of Colonel H. E. Davis, saw service in the Pennsylvania campaign and afterwards with the defences around Washington, had three companies recruited in part in Brooklyn. The i6th also drew some men from here. Known as " Sprague's Light Cavalry," it left the state, under com- mand of Colonel Lazelle, in September, 1863, and was mustered out in August, 1865, those of its men whose terms of enlistment had not then expired being transferred to the 13th Volunteers, which was reor- ganized under the name of the 3d Provisional Cavalry. Part of the 23d Cavalry (Sickles) was enlisted in Brooklyn in 1863 and 1864. Its scene of action was in Virginia. Of the artillery regiments, the 4th, originally known as Doubleday's Heavy Artillery, was one of the first in this arm of the service to recruit in Brooklyn, whence came parts of Company B (U. S. Lancers,) G and H, K and second companies B and D. The regiment left the state with seven companies in February, 1862. It was at first employed at or near Washington and afterwards transferred to the artillery reserve of the Army of the Potomac and was honorably discharged and mustered out in 1865. Two companies of the 5th Artillery, called Jackson's Heavy Artillery, were recruited largely in Brooklyn, Colonel Graham commanding the regiment until it was mustered out in July, 1865. The sth was conspicu- ous at Harper's Ferry and various other battle fields of Virginia and West Virginia. The nth Artillery was partly recruited when the order for its organization was revoked and the companies already formed were transferred to the 4th and the 13th Artillery. This regiment was commanded by Colonel William A. Howard and was composed almost entirely of men recruited for other organizations. It was in part a Brooklyn regiment. It served in Virginia and North Carolina, from October, 1863, till June, 1865. The i6th Artillery, of which part of Company E was from Brooklyn, left the state in the early part of 1863, served in Virginia and North Carolina under Colonel Morrison in a number of engagements, was present at the fall of Petersburg and was mustered out in Washington, in August, 1865. The 5th Independent Battery of Light Artillery, called the ist Excelsior Battery, was recruited in part in Brooklyn, and left the state under command of Captain Elijah D. Taft. In Virginia and Maryland, between November, 1861 and July, i86s, it took part in thirty-five engagements. Captain Edward W. Serrell organized the ist Regiment of Engineers, which became known by his name. It contained, when mustered into Federal service in the fall of 1861, nearly two companies of Brooklyn men, was present at twenty-nine engagements, principally in the Carolinas, and was mustered out at Richmond, Va., in June, i86s. The isth Engineers, commonly called the New York Sappers and Miners, drew Companies B and C and parts of D, H, I and K from Brooklyn in the early part of 1861. It iS6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. was one of the first regiments sent out and was originally designated the 5th Infantry, but in October of 1 86 1 it was converted into an engineer regiment, for which it had been intended. The first colonel was J. McLeod "Murphy. Afterwards, being mustered out in 1863, it reorganized under Colonel Colgate and served with the Division of the Potomac, with General Terry's force in North Carolina and with the Army of the Ohio, till the close of the war. From the siege of Yorktown to Appomattox the regiment took part in eighteen engagements. The 3d Infantry (Albany) Regiment was organized at Albany and accepted by the state in April, 1861, and mustered into the United States service in May, 1861, for two years. Com- pany A of this regiment was recruited principally in Williamsburgh and Brooklyn, as Williamsburgh volun- teers. Company I was also enlisted, in part, in Brooklyn. Colonel Frederick Townsend was commander of the regiment, which left the state in May, 1861, took part in twenty-four engagements and was mus- tered out in August, 1865, under the command of Colonel George W. Warren, at Raleigh, N. C. Duryee's Zouaves was a regiment of infantry which drew many of its enlisted men from Brooklyn in April, 1861. Its numerical designation was the 5th Regiment of Infantry. It was commanded by Col- onel Abraham Duryee and organized at Fort Schuyler. The first ser- vice of the regiment was at Fortress Monroe; it was afterwards with the Army of the Potomac and served with Sikes' and the Third Brigades. At New York city in May, 1863, while under the command of Colonel Cleveland Winslow, it was honorably mustered out of service, having taken part in twenty-two engagements. In May, 1863, Colonel Winslow received authority to reorganize his former regiment, the result being the formation of a battalion known as the " 5th Veteran," which was partly composed of new recruits and partly of men transferred from other commands. It saw much active service, principally in Virginia, and was finally mustered out in August, 1865, while commanded by Colonel William F. Drum. Company I of the " Steuben Guard " was recruited in Brooklyn in April, 1861, and under Colonel Bendix the reg- iment, which was officially known as the 7th Infantry, left for the front in May of that year. A portion of the famous Hawkins Zouaves (otherwise known as the New York Zouaves, Little Zouaves and " Zoo Zoos") was recruited in Brooklyn. It left the state in June, i86i, under the official title of the 9th Regiment of Infantry. After two years of active service, principally in Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina, the regiment was mustered out in May, 1863, at New York city. The Morgan State Zouaves, or Company K of the loth Infantry (Veterans), was recruited in Brooklyn among the first in the spring of 1861, leaving the state in June of that year under the command of Colonel McChesney, from whom the regiment gained its synonym of the McChesney Zouaves. It was mustered out of service in June, 1865, hav- ing up to that time been present in forty-six engagements, prominent among which were the second Bull Run, Gaines' Mills, Fredericksburg and the Wilderness, the aggregate loss of the command being 219 men. In 1863 Major W. T. C. Grower received authority to reorganize the 17th New York Volunteers, whose term of service had expired. A small part of the reorganized regiment came from Brooklyn. Several companies of the 20th Regiment of Infantry, known as the United States Turner Rifles, under Colonel Max Weber's command, were raised partly in Brooklyn and Williamsburgh. Company I especially was enrolled from Long Island. After three years of service at Fortress Monroe, Fort Hatteras, Norfolk and other points in Virginia, with a total loss in killed, wounded and missing of 427 men, the regiment was mustered out under command of Colonel Ernest Van Vegesack, June i, 1863, at New York city. The 31st, known as the Montezuma Regiment or Baxter Light Guards, under command of Colonel Calvin E. Pratt, was one of the early organizations, being formed in May, 1861. Com- pany I of this regiment was recruited at Williamsburgh. Its service was in Virginia, where the command took part in eighteen engagements, and was mustered out in June, 1863, under Colonel Frank Jones. One company — I — of the 36th Infantry, called the " Washington Volun- . „ r J ii r T) 1 1 rr., -I , Col. Tames H. Perky teers, was formed partly of Brooklyn men. The regiment s term of ^g,,/, ;y y_ y„j,_ Col. Calvin E. Pratt. 2is(N. Y. Vols. DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 157 service was from June, 1861, for two years, its liottest work being at Malvern Hill and Fair Oaks. It went out under the command of Charles H. Innis. The Washington Grays, as the 47th Infantry was named, was largely recruited in Brooklyn. They were mustered mto the United States service in September, 1861, for three years. The regiment left the state in September. It saw a great deal of active service, losing fifty men at Olustee, Fla., besides 184 wounded and seventy-six missing. In the operations against Petersburgh and Rich- mond also, as well as at other points, principally in Virginia and the Carolinas, the regiment took an active part. Colonel Henry Moore was the officer to whom authority was given to recruit this regiment, which was mustered out under Colonel Christopher R. McDonald, in August, 1865. The 48th Regiment, the synonym for which was the Continental Guard, or Perry's Saints, was principally a Brooklyn regiment, authority having been given to Colonel James H. Perry in July, 1861, to recruit such a force in Brooklyn. It left the state for the front in 1861, serv- ing in all of the coast states of the south during its three years' term of service, and when mustered out under Colonel Coan in 1865 it had suf- fered a loss of 868 men. Like the 47th, its heaviest loss in any one Col. Julius w. Adams. engagement was at Olustee, Fla., though it was present at thirty-eight Brooklyn Phalanx. principal engagements. The 54th Regiment (Veterans) was composed of Germans, recruited partly in Brooklyn and going under the names of Barney Black Rifles, Hiram Barney Rifles, or Schwartze Yaeger. It was mustered into service in the fall of 1861 for three years and went to the front in command of Colonel Koslay. The S7th Infantry was formed in the fall of 1861 by the combi- nation of several organizations. Company C, which was a part of the National Guard Rifles, was recruited in Kings county ; separate companies were mustered out in 1864, Captain Orlando F. Middleton being the last regimental commander. The 59th Regiment, known as the Union Guards, was also a consolidation of numerous organizations, a small part of the regiment being recruited in Kings county in the fall and sum- mer of 1861, for three years. A few of the men of the 62d Infantry (Anderson's Zouaves) also came from Brooklyn in the summer of 1861, being in service till July, 1861, in Virginia. Seven companies of the 67th Infantry Regiment — A, B, E (known as Beecher's Pets), and F, G, I and K, the whole forming the Brooklyn Phalanx — were recruited in Brooklyn in the spring of 1861. The regi- ment was mustered into service in June of that year and under the command of Colonel Julius W. Adams, started for the front in August. It served first in Graham's Brigade, then in Buell's, (later Keyes') Division and afterwards in other divisions of the 4th and of the 6th Corps. Its record included thirty engagements, beginning with the siege of Yorktown and ending with Charleston, W. Va.. At Fair Oaks, Va., especially, the command distinguished itself, losing in killed, wounded and missing upon the second day, 170 men. The battalion of five companies not mustered out with the regiment were in September, 1864, transferred to the 65th New York Volunteers and were honorably discharged, under command of Captain Henry C. Fiske, in July, 1865, at Washington. The 1st Regiment (Meagher's) Irish Brigade, under command of Colonel Robert Nugent, was officially designated the 69th Infantry. It was mustered into the service of the United States in September and October of 1861. A portion of Com- pany K was enlisted in Brooklyn. A small portion of the 74th Infantry of Sickles' Brigade was also recruited on Long Island in the latter part of 1861. The 84th Regiment was one in which Brooklyn took especial pride, being the 14th State Militia under a new numerical designation. Colonel Alfred M. Wood received authority from the War Department to recruit the regiment in the spring of 186 1. It left the State in May, 1861, though not officially turned over till September of that year. It was mustered in for three years, serving in Andrew Porter's Brigade, Division of the Potomac, in McDowell's division, in the Department of the Rappahannock and elsewhere in Virginia and Maryland, meeting with severe losses in several of its twenty-nine engagements, and being honorably mustered out in June, 1864, under command of Colonel Col. T. B. Gates. 80M N. Y. Vols. iS« THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Edward B. Fowler, those who were not entitled to discharge at that time being transferred to the sth Veteran New York Volunteers. For the 14th Regiment is claimed the distinctive honor of carrying Brook- lyn's name to the front. Although the official number of the regiment was changed to the 84th when it was offered to and accepted by the state as a volunteer regiment, yet it maintained its old militia number not only in ordinary parlance but in regimental orders. As there was another 14th Volunteer Regiment, ours was known as the " Brooklyn 14th," and bore its title bravely and proudly on many a battle field. The 87th was another Brooklyn organization, composed of the 13th Militia as a nucleus, and the Brooklyn Rifles and other bodies which were not complete. This regiment, under command of Colonel Stephen A. Dodge, was organized at Brooklyn on November 14, 1861. It was mustered into the Federal service for three years between Oct- ober and December, 186 1. It was transferred and consolidated with the 4th New York Volunteers in 1862. The 88th, partly recruited in Brooklyn, formed part of Meagher's Brigade and was known as " Mrs. Meagher's Own." Its service dated from August, 1861, to June, 1865. The Hancock Guards, McClellan Chasseurs, and McClellan Rifles were consolidated parts of the 90th Infantry. Its colonel was J. S. Morgan, with Louis W. Tinnelli, who had recruited the first organization, as ^^^ james Jourdan. lieutenant-colonel. Several companies of the 90th were formed of 15SM N. Y. Vols Brooklyn men, who saw service first in Louisiana and afterwards in Virginia from January, 1862, till Febru- ary, 1866. Of the 9Sth Infantry a part of Company E came from Brooklyn. This regiment. Colonel George H. Biddle, left the state in 1862 for the front and was mustered out at Washington in 1865. Part of the McClellan Light Infantry was raised in Brooklyn and became Company F of the Van Buren Light Infantry, the official designation of which was the io2d Infantry. The first eight companies left for the front in 1862, and after an unusually arduous service in Virginia, West Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, were mustered out at Alexandria in 1865. Portions of the 127th Regiment (Monitors) were Brooklyn men. They fought under Colonel William Gourney from the second year of the war to the close. Nearly every company of the i32d Infantry contained a quota of Brooklyn men, recruited in 1862. It was composed of part of the Spinola Brigade, nearly all the men recruited for the second organization of the 53d N. Y. Volunteers, and the Thurlow Weed Guards. From the time of organi- zation till 1865 it served in North Carolina, and when the regiment was mustered out the men not entitled to discharge were transferred to the 99th N. Y. Volunteers. The regiment was commanded throughout by Colonel Peter J. Claassen. The 133d Regiment of Infantry, known as the Metropolitan Guards, served from 1862 to 1865 under the command of Colonel Leonard D. H. Currie. Most of its companies were recruited partly, and G and I wholly, in Brooklyn. The 139th Infantry was recruited in Long Island, especially in Brooklyn, in the summer of 1862. Under command of Colonel Anthony Conk, it left the state in September of that year for its initial service with the Department of Virginia, from which time till June, 1865, it took part in twenty engagements, from Fort Magruder to the fall of Petersburg. The issth Regiment was the 2d, and afterwards the 5th, of Corcoran's Irish Legion. It was organized in 1862 for three years, and drew part of its men from Brooklyn. The is8th was the ist Reg- iment of Spinola's Empire Brigade and was organized in Brooklyn, being mustered into the Federal service in November, 1862, at Nor- folk, Va., under command of Colonel James Jourdan. Its service was in Virginia and North Carolina, being heaviest at the battle of Chafifin's Farm and in the Appomattox campaign in April of 1865. Colonel William H. McNary was commander when the regiment was mustered out in June, 1865, at Richmond, Va. A few companies of the 159th Infantry, also recruited in the second year of the war, were drawn from Brooklyn. Colonel Homer Nelson commanded this regiment, which was known by the synonym of the 2d Dutchess and Columbia Col. benj. f. Tracy. Regiment. It lost heavily at Irish Bend, La., at Opequor and at Silver logth N. Y. Vols. Creek, Va., and was present at a number of important battles. It was DURING THE CIVIL WAR. 159 mustered out at Augusta, Ga., in October, 1865. The 163d was also part of Spinola's Brigade and was commanded, first by Colonel Hale Kingsley and afterwards by Colonels Marion N. Croft and F. H. Brau- lick. The regiment left the state in October, 1862, for Virginia, and though previous to its transfer to the 73d N. Y. Volunteers in 1863 it had participated in but three engagements, its roll showed a loss of sixty- five in killed, wounded and missing, The most of these fell at Fredericksburg. The 164th Infantry went to Newport News in the latter part of 1862, under command of Colonel John C. McMahon. It was then reorganized and consolidated with several other organizations and served in Virginia till the close of the war. Several Brooklyn companies were included in the regiment. Portions of the 165th Infantry — second battalion, Duryee's Zouaves — were enrolled in Brooklyn. Colonel Hall raised the regiment. The second battalion, with Lieut-Col. Smith in command, left the state in December, 1862, and served principally in the Department of the Gulf and afterwards in Virginia ; it was mustered out at Charlestown in September, 1865. A number of the men of the 170th Infantry, 2d of Corcoran's Irish Legion, was recruited in Brooklyn in 1862, for three years. It saw heavy service in Virginia and was honorably dis- charged in July, 1865. Its first regimental commander was Colonel Peter McDermott ; its last Colonel James P. Mclvor. The 173d Infantry was organized under the auspices of the police force of Brooklyn and New York and was known as the 4th Metropolitan Guard. Organized by Colonel Charles B. Morton, it left the state in the latter part of 1862, and served in the Department of the Gulf for three years. The 176th Infantry was known as the " Ironsides." Colonel Mark Hoyt organized the regiment at Brooklyn in December, 1862, its ranks being partly filled by men transferred from Colonel Cole's 5 2d N. G., S. N. Y. The com- mand was partly composed of three years' and partly of nine months' men, who were replaced with drafted men, substitutes and volunteers in 1863. The regiment was mustered out in 1866. The i88th In- fantry, commanded by Colonel Bradley Winslow and serving from September, 1864, till the close of the war in Virginia, received a small quota of Brooklyn men. Of the existing regiments of the National Guard, the 23d., under Colonel William Everdell, and the 47th, under Colonel J. V. Meserole, in addition to the 13th and 14th, already mentioned, did duty at the seat of war. The 28th and 56th regiments also, since then disbanded, were ordered to the front, under Colonel Michael Bennett and Colonel J. Q. Adams, respectively. The foregoing list gives in brief an account of the various organ- izations in which Brooklyn men were included. It is believed to be the most nearly complete list ever published, outside of official records. Towards the end of the war a national celebration occurred, in which Brooklyn was prominently represented by her two leading clergymen, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs. The successful bombardment of the forts in the harbor of Charleston, S. C, by General Quincy A. Gillmore — afterwards an honored citizen of Brooklyn — and the ultimate capture of Charleston itself, gave to the government the opportunity of replacing on Fort Sumter the very flag which had been insulted there by the first rebel gun of the war in 186 1. The anniversary of the surrender of Sumter was chosen for the ceremony— April 14, 1865; Major Robert Anderson, then general, was designated to raise again the flag he had lowered; Henry Ward Beecher was invited to deliver the oration, and Dr. Storrs conducted the religious exercises of the occasion. The guests of the government were taken to Charleston harbor in the steamship " Arago." They included Vice-President Henry Wilson; representatives of the various government departments; many distinguished officers of the army; William Lloyd Garrison, the Enghsh George Thompson, and other abolitionists on whose heads in ante-bellum days Charleston had set a price. It was a gala week in the vicinity of Fort Sumter, replete with the festivities of rejoicing, all leading up to the ceremonies of the 14th. On that day, after the flag had been raised over the battered fort by General Anderson, and had been saluted by every battery in the harbor that had fired on it, Mr. Beecher delivered one of those stirring patriotic addresses which marked him as preeminently the spokesman of the people— emphasizing the les- sons of the war — "no more disunion; no more secession; no more slavery "—and -then spoke of the new future that lay before the whole country, at that time holding out to the South the fraternal hand he never again withdrew. A large party of Brooklynites accompanied the expedition in the chartered steamer " Oceanus," and were present at the exercises. They afterwards organized the " Sumter Club " to perpetu- CoL. William Everdell. 23^ Regt. N. G. S. N. Y. i6o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ate the memories of the trip, of which they published an account in book form. The assassination of Pres- ident Lincoln on the evening of this day of celebration, terminated the expedition in gloom. The hurried return home was not unmixed with apprehension for their own safety on the part of the excursionists, who thought the murder of the president might possibly infuse new fire into the dying embers of the war spirit in Charleston and that they might be captured. A city draped in mourning greeted them on their arrival in Brooklyn and they took their part in paying the last sad honors to the martyred president. Hardly more than a week after the triumph at Sumter, on Sunday, April 23, Mr. Beecher and Dr. Storrs again voiced the sentiments of the people, and the eulogies they then pronounced on Abraham Lincoln have become memorable in the annals of Brooklyn oratory. The war over, Brooklyn's representation in the vast army of soldier-citizens — such as remained of them — came home to receive the welcome and homage that awaited them, and to take their part in the upbuilding of their city; some, unhappily, weakened by wounds and exposure, but in general, reinforced by the experiences of the field for more vigor and enterprise in the discharge of their duties as citizens. One scene more, and the war episode was closed. On October 25, 1866, the Brooklyn soldiers who had served in the war were marshalled for the last time as one body, and after a parade which brought them to Fort Greene they were presented with service medals prepared by order of the common council. Mayor Booth made the presentation address, in which he estimated the representation of Kings County in the ar- mies of the United States at 30,000 men. Dr. Storrs also addressed the veterans, and the occasion was graced by the presence of the governor of the state (Reuben E. Fenton), Admiral Farragut, and others of note. 4-^ BiiiDSEYE View of Brooklyn from Top of Bridge Tower, A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 1865-1892. LTHOUGH the war was the absorbing topic during the four years it lasted, and nearly every activity of the city, public, commercial and social, was tinctured with a war flavor, yet its life went on, and these pregnant years were the period of much that has been lasting in Brooklyn. The development of Prospect Park took visible form ; the corner- stone of the new County Court House was laid, and the modern city began to show some of its permanent features. The dawning of the day when Brooklyn should be sufficient unto itself for amusements appeared with the completion of the Academy of Music and the open- ing of the Park Theatre. The Long Island Historical Society, the Brooklyn Club and the Atlantic Yacht Club took their places among the permanent agencies for culture and full-grown city life ; while the Home for Destitute Children, and other charities which took on outward form, bore testimony to the fact that in remembering the soldier on the tented field, Brooklyn did not neglect the suffering at her very door. The war, instead of having been a drain upon the energies of the city, proved a benefit, at least for a time, since its effect was felt as a stimulant to all manner of enterprises. In those days of stress and excitement, the old conservative methods which had governed general business gave place in a large measure to the spirit of speculation. Fortunes were quickly made, and the success of those who first seized the golden opportunities of the time induced an army of imitators, who, if they did not become wealthy, at least imagined themselves so on the strength of fictitious values. It was the same story that was told with slight variations in almost every city of the North. Among the men who turned their attention and energy to business pursuits after the war, were many who had graduated from the school of action in the army, and with a better knowledge of men, trained executive ability, and the i62 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. confidence which success in any field is calculated to give, took a prominent part in commercial affairs. In every department of life, social, political or financial, the impetus derived from the vi^ar was felt ; men did all things in a large way, and though the collapse of many a structure whose foundations were insufficient was bound to come, yet in the meantime a great and permanent benefit resulted to the city in the enlargement which was the result of its somewhat artificial prosperity. The making of great fortunes, which a few years before would have seemed fabulous, and the abundance of money stimulated public spirit, and institutions which had in them sufficient vitality to outlive the crash which came later, were started at that time. Art felt the influence of the prevalent optimism ; people built finer houses, filled them with better pictures and costlier furniture, accustomed themselves to more harmonious surroundings, and showed in their amusements, even, the disposition to adopt more advanced standards. It was the era of clubs, the day of operas, the time of expansion in ideas as well as in fortunes. And the fact that a great deal of sham and shoddy floated upon the surface of society for a while did not prove that the prosperity and the growth were all fictitious, any more than the froth on the surface of the wave indicates the absence of a strong tide underneath. The progress in art culture and the appreciation of the value of the standards and surroundings of beauty even in the homes of people of moderate means, has been steady from that day to this. The year 1868 saw a population of three hundred thousand souls spreading and crowding in every direction over the territory where only a generation before the scattered houses of the village of Brooklyn had stood. In 1867, three thousand five hundred and thirty-nine new buildings were erected ; in the following year the number was not quite so large, but the total value was greater. There were three hundred and seventy-five brownstone, seven hundred and seventy-five brick, and one thousand nine hundred and fifteen frame dwellings, making a total of three thousand and sixty-five buildings of this class, besides nineteen churches and a number of school, factory and business edifices. Among the public and mercantile buildings was the iron structure of the Long Island Safe Deposit Company, on the corner of Front and Fulton streets. Its cost was $150,000. On the opposite corner was the Union Association building, which had been erected at an expense of $33,000. Burnham's gymnasium occupied the corner of Smith and Schermerhorn streets, and cost $90,000. The Mercantile Library, on Montague street, also was built at that time, and the Kings County Savings Bank, at the corner of Fourth street and Broadway, E. D. Other buildings of importance swelled the aggregate to proportions which would have seemed fabulous to the most sanguine business man fifty years before. Not only in the number and value of its buildings did the city show the vigor of its growth. In 1868 twenty-three miles of improved streets, graded and paved, opening seven or eight thousand new lots to the market, were added to the street mileage, which at that time reached the grand total of five hundred miles. Along those streets at the beginning of that year there were laid two hundred and ten miles of water mains and one hundred and thirty-seven miles of sewers. Among the churches erected in 1868 were the North Reformed, on Twelfth street, upon which $60,000 was spent ; the Carlton Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, at the corner of Clermont and Willoughby avenues, which cost $75,000 ; the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Mercy, on Debevoise street, whose congregation paid $70,000 for it ; the Roman Catholic Church of St. Charles Borromeo, which cost $75,000 ; St. James', St. Stephen's, and others. Some idea of the activity of city real estate, which is always the most important indication of prosperity, may be gathered from the sum of the expenditures in this direction during several consecutive years. The value of the new buildings of all sorts added to the city in 1864 was $1,631,250; in the following year it amounted to $1,838,500; the next year saw this increased to $2,531,000, and in 1867 the additions amounted to $3,562,600; making for the four years a total of $9,563,350, the aggregate for the two years succeeding the war nearly doubling that for the two preceding. It is not designed in these pages to weary the reader with figures and statistics, and such have only been given where they have been necessary to show the development of greater Brooklyn from the meager beginnings of the time when those now eligible for membership in the society of " Old Brooklynites " were boys. The number of buildings erected during the past year, the total amount expended in their construction, the number of laborers employed, have more than quadrupled the figures for any of the years immediately following the war. But in the character of the buildings erected we find no evidence of larger necessities, since the average cost per building was about the same in 1892 as it was in 1872. As a stimulus to building operations, there have sprung up in the past few years thirty or more co-operative building and loan associations, the object of which companies is too well known to require any explanation here. Among their officers are some of the best known Brooklyn names, and their success, as well as their usefulness, has been assured from the outset. In 1866, the Erie Basin dry dock was completed, and the celebration of the event drew together a large number of people. In the same year the legislature by special enactment created a sanitary district for the city of Brooklyn, and provided for a board of health to take charge of it. The boundaries of the A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 163 Fulton Ferry, 1864. number of new streets sufficient to supply the Shipbuilding, too, took ces of health and vi- of low ground which front for business pur- this. The two men to sanitary district were the same as those of the already existing Met- ropolitan Police district, and it was provided that the board of health should be composed of the commissioners of the Metropolitan Police and four other sanitary commissioners appointed by the governor, and that the health officers of the port of New York should also be a member of the board, ex-officio.. The seventeenth ward, known as Greenpoint, showed the greatest advance in growth of perhaps any portion of Brooklyn at the close of the war. A were opened and many houses were erected, yet not increased demand for both dwellings and stores. a new departure, and everywhere there were eviden- tality. Red Hook had before the war a great deal was filled in, and the development of the water- Wall ST. Ferry, 1864. poses has progressed steadily from that day to whom the first improvements were mainly due, and whose energy made Red Hook an important factor in Brooklyn's commercial life, were Jeremiah P. Johnson and William Beard, senior members of the firm of Beard & Robinson. These men were improvers of property, builders of docks and wharves, of stores and warehouses. They reclaimed over a million square feet of submerged land and gave it a high market value. The improvements on Gowanus Bay, the Erie Basin, and the lands lying between Van Brunt street and Hamilton avenue, are indicative of the great energy and the indomitable will of the men who were engaged in the upbuilding of greater Brooklyn — the Brooklyn that we know to-day. Early in 1867 a meeting was held in the hall of the Academy of Music at which the Brooklyn branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was organized. By an act of the Legislature in May, 1867, the Kings County Home for Inebriates was incorporated. Another act of a somewhat different character was that passed in the same month, by which the dredging and docking of Gowanus canal was provided for. This work was placed in the hands of commissioners, and another committee was appointed to conduct the Wallabout improvements. In the multiplicity of business interests and the awakening of a broader commercial spirit, the younger residents of the city and not a few of their elders held to the old adage which admonishes Jack to play as well as work. Amusements were not neglected and outdoor sports were in especial favor, that being perhaps only another expression of the vigor which seemed to pervade every department of life. The skating mania made its appearance, and the famous Capitoline, Washington, Willow and other " ponds," precursors of the later " rinks," made their appearance. Clubs were organized, with prominent people among their officers ; these undertook to keep the ice clean and enforce such regulations as were made for the protection of skaters. To skate became the most fashionable of all accomplishments, and fancy dress carnivals took the place of indoor balls and hops. In the fall of 1861, the Nassau Skating Club was organ- ized and leased a pond of six acres on the Lefferts farm. This club was sustained by the sale of season tickets. A club house and other conveniences were erected. A curious feature of the " Steenbakkery," or " Steamer," as the skating pond of the Nassau Club on the edge of Flatbush was called, was that it furnished from ten to twenty days more skating each year than did the lakes at Prospect Park, as stated by a careful observer. An occasion which great- ly interested all classes of citizens was the bestowal of medals to the veterans of Brooklyn by the common council. This was at the close of the civil war, in 1866, and few more impressive sights can be remembered by the oldest inhabitant. It was upon the 25th of Octo- The East River Ice Bridge 01' January 23, 1S67. 164 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ber, and the conflict in which those who passed in review had taken part was too new a memory, the gaps in the lines of well-worn uniforms too suggestive of recent loss, the flags which had waved in battle too sugges- tive of the men who had followed them forward but not back again, not to awaken in the breasts of the great throng of spectators emotions that few events can arouse. Mayor Wood and others addressed the veterans in speeches that were full of earnest eloquence— words and phrases which had not then become the catch-vote property of the politician. Blood still ran hot in men's veins in 1866. In 1868, the corner-stone of the Ro- man Catholic Cathedral was laid, with appropriate and impressive ceremonies. This edifice was to be one of the most important belonging to that church in the State, and its commencement naturally attracted much attention. During the following year a great and important change was made in the constitution of the fire department, which had been up to that time a volunteer force. The last romantic chapter of that body was written, however, when the legislature by an act provided for a paid fire department. The Central Hall, Flateush Ave. and Fulton Street. completion of the municipal buildings which occupy the square to the south of the city hall, between Boerum and Court streets, was one of the events of 1878. These buildings form part of the same group with the city hall. A remarkable feature in the construction of these buildings was that they cost when completed $20 less than the appropriation, a performance which would be record-breaking but for the city hall in Baltimore. Six years later the ground was broken for the new Federal building on Washington street. Brooklyn during the war was not neglecting the means of travel nor the convenience of urban life, even while giving every attention to the great subject of the civil conflict. Regarding the city railroads in 1862, the weekly Standard sz.id : "Brooklyn will soon have a complete network of horse railroads running in almost as many directions as a spider web. The track for what is called the Coney Island road (though it will not for the present go any great way toward Coney Island) is pretty well completed. The cars have arrived and this route will very soon be opened for the accommodation of the public. The road running along Furman street, between Fulton and South Ferries, at a fare of three cents, we believe pays well. The road on Atlantic street is also a good one. A great part of our citizens are probably not aware that the old Long Island railway does not now run to South Ferry. The new cars go by horse-power to East New York, from which there are hourly trains to Jamaica by the locomotive. The change in the old route to and from Greenpoint, by which it passes along Classon avenue to Myrtle, and thus intersects the city hall, is a very great improvement. It supplies what was imperatively needed as an artery of communication between the Eastern District and the heart of the municipality. The Flushing avenue route now runs straight out on that avenue to Broadway. The Myrtle avenue route, too, has the same termination." The first use of street cars in this city was in 1854, when Brooklyn followed the example of New York and Boston, which cities had already found their advantage in this means of locomotion. Previous to this date a few stage lines had ac- commodated the traveling public. The new car lines were after a time consolidated in the Brook- lyn Street-car Company, which tried various ex- periments in running, among others that of using mules instead of horses in the line. Changes were made from time to time in the course and management of the earlier routes and new roads were added. The Greenpoint line was changed while H. G. Pearson was president of the company, so as to run through Myrtle avenue instead of Sands street (its original course), and at that time also the Gates avenue line was built. The ^he long Island Club, 1868. Third avenue and Halsey street line was built in On the site of the Hamiltoti Club. A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 1(35 HooLEY's Opera House, Court and Remsen Streets. 1870, while Mr. Thomas Sullivan was in charge of the line. Rapid as has been the growth of Brooklyn, the far-seeing managers of its systems of transit have kept the pace with their facilities. Twenty-five years after the first car line was in operation in Brooklyn the number annually carried by these conveyances numbered eight million people. In 1858 the Brooklyn City Railroad was the only com- pany in operation. The population at that time was less than a quarter of a million and the cars carried during the year about seven and a half million people. In 1882 there were ten companies: the Atlantic avenue, Brooklyn City, Broadway, Bushwick, Cross- town, Brooklyn City and Newton, Williamsburg and Newtown, Williamsburg and Flatbush, Grand street and Newtown, South Brooklyn Central and the North Second street and Middle Village. The capital stock of these roads aggregated $5,492,000 and the dividends in all amounted to $459,594. The first open cars were used by the City Railroad about 1864. In 1884 the organization of a cable road was completed. This was called the Nassau Cable Company. The necessary funds were soon paid in and the company commenced operations. In 1885 on the 13th of May the trial trip of the Brooklyn Elevated road was made. There were speeches and congratulations and a general belief expressed that the building of the road would serve largely to assist in building up the city, an opinion which has been borne out by the facts. The original incorporators of the Brooklyn Elevated road were Jacob Cole, Cornelius B. Payne, John H. Burtis, John Q. Kellogg, Joseph F. Bridges, Adrian M. Suydam, Schenck, Lott, Altwater, and others. W. Fontaine Bruff, the first president, became involved in a law suit and the road was for a time in the hands of a receiver. Mr. Bruff took hold of the affairs of the road when they were in a most precarious condition, securing a new capital at a time when it seemed probable that the enterprise would languish, and the road never be completed, but he encountered many difficulties with stockholders and directors. After the usual number of vicissitudes the Brooklyn Elevated began its career of usefulness, as has been stated, in the spring of 1885. In the autumn of the same year the work on the Kings County Elevated Railroad was commenced, the first ground being broken at the corner of Red Hook lane and Fulton street. The first cars on this line began to run three years later. Long before this the lessees of the old Coney Island Railroad Company had essayed the use of steam on Atlantic avenue. The first trial was made in 1875, the steam motor being applied to surface cars, the trial trips showing that the cars could attain a speed of eighteen miles an hour. The question of the right of the company to use steam power was brought up repeatedly; injunctions followed protests, charters were granted and repealed, bills were passed and vetoed and decisions of the courts led to appeals and new rulings. The Rapid Transit Company, organized in 1880, after a five years' struggle with the property holders, asked for a repeal of their charter. The property holders on Thirty-sixth street fought long and obdurately over the placing of tracks in that street and at length were jubilant over their victory. The idea of bridging the East river between New York and Brooklyn was almost coeval with the birth of steam navigation. An engineer named Thomas Pope, whose specialty was bridge building, projected a plan for such an enterprise in 1819, constructing a model for a bridge to consist of a single span from Fulton street, New York, to Fulton street, Brooklyn, beneath which the largest vessels might pass unhindered. He published a book containing a picture of his model and soliciting funds for carrying out his idea; but the only result was to provoke merriment at his own expense. He was a friend of Robert Fulton, and a pretty story is told to the effect that on a „ „ T, c certain showery day he was the guest of Fulton in a trip BrooklynTheatre, Old Postoffice AND Police Station <-ci uam =uuvvv,i^ :i , . , Washington Street, 1873. around the city in One of the newly mvented steamboats. 1 66 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. As the vessel rounded the battery a rainbow spanned the East river. Fulton tapped his friend on the shoulder, exclaiming: "See! There's your bridge, Pope. Heaven favors you with a good omen." Pope's model was destroyed, for his project failed to win popular confidence, though the irridescence of Fulton's omen was destined to solidify into piers of masonry, iron girders, and firm roadways. Many things conspired to revive agitation of the subject from time to time, and not the least potent factors were the delays in ferry navigation caused by fogs at various seasons and ice in the winter. Yet as late as the middle of the century the idea provoked good-natured ridicule, as may be seen in the answer given by the Long Island Star of January 9, 1850, to the question: " Bridging the East river — can it be done? " The possibility is admitted, and it is even declared that " Bridge street, in Brooklyn, running down to the water, just ready to receive the Brooklyn abutment shows that the thing was thought of some time ago." But the editor was convinced that the bridge was not an immediate possi- bility -because " it will cost too much "; " it will not be used after it is built "; " the boats are good enough "; " the people of Brooklyn don't want it "; and " last, but not least — it will afford too good a chance for the Russians and Austrians to march into Brooklyn by the way of New York after General Cass has brought about a war with them." It was only seven years later that the people of Brooklyn, who didn't want the bridge, according to the authority just quoted, were so dissatisfied with the ferry management, that in February, 1857, they held a public meeting at which Abijah Mann declared that one remedy at command was the construction of a suspension bridge, which he said was entirely practicable. During the same month Assemblyman Hanford gave notice in the legislature of a bill to incorporate the New York and Brooklyn Suspension Company. In the meantime John A. Roebling, who had already distinguished him- self in this special branch of engineering, had applied his genius to the problem and made public certain suggestions that were entertained with favor in some quarters. It is told of him that in February, 1853, he had an experience drifting about on a ferry-boat in the ice-choked East river which caused him to take a personal interest in the question of a bridge. Soon afterward he published a letter setting forth the feasibility of the project. In 1865 Oliver B. Ingersoll became interested in the matter and obtained from Mr. Roebling in 1866 an estimate of $4,000,000 for a suspension bridge, two hundred feet high, with one roadway for passengers and another for cars. Others whose attention was subsequently en- listed were William C. Kingsley, Alexander McCue, J. S. T. Stran- ahan, Grenville T. Jenks and S, B. Chittenden. In the state senate in 1867 Henry C. Murphy introduced a bill incorporating a company to build a bridge, and under its provisions the cities of Brooklyn and New York were authorized to subscribe to the capital stock such amounts as might be decided by a two- thirds vote of their respective common councils. The bill be- came a law in the same year. John A. Roebling was appointed chief engineer by the company which was formed, and the appointment was accepted on May 23, 1867. He at once began the preliminary surveys, and on September 1, in the same year, submitted a report and plans. Federal rule over navigable waters played its part in the ultimate formation of the plans, and those adopted were approved by a commission of army engineers consisting of Generals Horatio G. Wright and John Newton and Major William R. King. Before the work of construction was begun the first of that series of tragedies which seems to attend all such stupendous enterprises, ended the career of the man in whose mind had been conceived one of the greatest wonders of modern engineering. During his preliminary labor of survey Mr. Roebling had his foot crushed between the piling and the rack of one of the ferry slips and his injuries resulted in lockjaw which caused his death on July 22, 1869. He had perfected his plans, however, and his son. Colonel Washington A. Roebling, long his associate and confidant, whom he had appointed his assistant in this enterprise, was fully conversant with them. The son succeeded the father as chief engineer, but by a strange fatality became a physical wreck, even before the mighty work was well under way. His constant supervision of the operations in the compressed air of the caissons, wherein the foundations of the great towers were laid, undermined his health, but with unimpaired mind he was able, to the end, to direct the operations. Actual work was begun on January 2, 1872. The enterprise was carried on under the name of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Shore in 1873. The Bridge Tower Rising. A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 167 Stringing the Cable Wires. The Wheel at tlie Starting Point. Company until 1874, when a law was passed, under which the control was invested in the two cities, each to be represented by eight trustees appointed by the mayor, comptroller and auditor of the respective cities. The old bridge company was dissolved in 1875, the money of the subscribers being returned to them with interest. The new company formed to carry on the work was limited to $8,000,000 as the cost, exclusive of land damages, and of this sum Brooklyn was to con- tribute two-thirds, because the bridge was of more advantage to that city than to New York. It was expected that the bridge would be completed in 1877, but delays were caused at various times and the limit of cost had to be extended until it reached, in round numbers, $15,000,000. In the construction of the towers it was necessary to go to a great depth to find a foundation, and caissons were sunk which were filled with concrete and thus a solid and durable sub- structure was secured. The depth reached on the Brooklyn side is forty-five feet below high-water mark and on the New York side it is seventy-eight feet. The Brooklyn tower was completed in 1875 ^^^d the New York tower in 1876. On May 23, 1877, the first wire was strung across the river and then the seemingly interminable work of stretching and wrapping the wire went on. The four immense cables, each containing 5,296 parallel steel wires securely wrapped into the form of a solid cylinder, are held by huge anchor plates imbedded in great masses of masonry, and at the top of each tower are carried on " saddles " which give them sufficient play to accommodate them to the varying loads on the structure. They sustain a permanent weight of 14,680 tons. The height of the bridge above high water is 135 feet at the middle, and the river span is 159S feet 6 inches long; the total length of the bridge is about nine furlongs. It was opened with imposing ceremonies on May 23, 1883, and the cable cars began running on September 24, 1883. The promenade was made free to foot passengers at midnight on May 31, 1891. One of the most frightful calamities which ever visited any city, and which not only cast a gloom over Brooklyn, but roused the whole country to sympathy, took place on the 5th of December, 1876, when the Brooklyn Theatre was burned, an event which will be remembered by people of the present generation as one of the terrible and apparently needless sacrifices of human life that teach how quickly the stage is set for a tragedy. The new Brooklyn Theatre, built upon the site of the burned buildings, was begun in April, 1879, and finished the same year. Nine years after that catastrophe, another shocking event occurred in the conflagration which consumed the factories which lay between State street and Atlantic avenue and Columbia place and Hicks street. The victims were only three in number, but the list of injured filled long lines in the papers of that date, and the area covered by the flames made the property loss vastly greater than at the theatre fire. At one time the flames extended so that all the dwellings surrounding the factories were more or less destroyed or damaged, and numbers of people were driven into the streets. Several terrific explo- sions added to the consternation of those who feared that the whole of that portion of the city would eventually be in flames. The heroic work of the firemen, several of whom were seriously injured in the fight, finally resulted in checking the spread of the fire. To the Atlantic avenue fire still others succeeded, and public sentiment, never quickly aroused, at last was awakened to the necessity for preventive measures. The Ansonia Clock Company's loss by a conflagration amounted to $1,000,000. The St. John's (Catholic) Asylum, which was burned in 1884, proved the tomb of more than one hundred inmates. These were principally children, orphans who had been received at the home for care at the hands of the Sisters, many of whom perished with their helpless charges. On the 24th day of September, 1876, a great piece of engineering work reached its culmination. For nine years workmen had been busy as moles in constructing a system of tunnels and galleries in the rock Cable-Saddle at Top of Towers. ^j^^jg^lying Halletfs Point at Hell Gate in the East river. At length Its moHon adjusts the cables according to the j ^ ^ varying loads on the bridge. the mine, with all its chambers and passage-ways, was complete. 1 58 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Then the work of drilling for the charges of explosive was successfully conducted, and last came the dangerous work of placing the loads and making the connections so that a simultaneous discharge would be insured. When the appointed day arrived, the whole community was agog with curiosity and fear. It was prophesied that the use of so large a body of explosive would do as much damage as an earthquake, and that the explosion of a blast great enough to be of any service must be heavy enough to do mischief. Perhaps the fact, already noted in another chapter, that Brooklyn is built upon the detritus of a terminal moraine may have something to do with the fact that she is not easily shaken. At all events, the day came, a loud concussion shook the air, a distinct vibration of the earth was felt, and the gloomy prophets went home disappointed. The Hallett's reef explosion had been a success, and a great obstruction to navigation had been removed. One other obstruction still blocked that part ,i the East river, and made it very dangerous at certain tides. That was the submerged rock known as Flood rock. This, in turn, was mined and tunneled ; year after year the patient laborers went to their task under the river-bed, and finally, in 1886, the work was completed. Rackarock, a compound quite as explosive as dynamite, but having a habit of explosion upward and outward, instead of the downright hammer-blow of dynamite, was used in the cartridges with which the mine was plentifully supplied, and which were connected by electric wires. When the time came for the blast to be ignited, a child, the daughter of General Newton, who had the work in charge, pressed the electric button, and there followed a discharge so forcible that the porcelain bowl of mercury which is placed in the solitary observatory at Washington for noting seismatic disturbances, recorded upon its graduated side a terrestrial vibration at that hour. A long-needed addition to the terminal facil- ities of the Pennsylvania Railroad and a means of communication between Brooklyn and the mainland was made in 1877. On the 23d of August, the first boat of the "Annex" ferry, between Jersey City and Brooklyn, made its initial trip and was unusually well patronized. Parenthetically, it may be stated that nowhere in the neighborhood of the metropolitan group of great cities is there a pleasanter or more beautiful short excursion than that afforded by the "Annex " boats, which, leaving the slip at the foot of Fulton street, circumnavigate lower New York, passing between Governor's Island and the Battery and crossing at the best portion of what has been justly termed the most beautiful harbor in the world. In 1879, the old jail on Raymond street was almost entirely torn down, nothing but the walls remaining, and a new building, adjoining the old site, was erected at a cost of $250,000. The reconstruction of the old jail and the addition of the new wing gave to the city a long-needed building, its requirements in this direction having long outgrown its accommodations. The old jail was built in 1839 and added to six years later by the erection of what was known as the female wing. Many noted prisoners were confined there, and, like all such buildings, considerable romance gathered about it. The year 1880, being a census year, is impor- tant as giving official data upon which to base an estimate of Brooklyn's advance. The United States census of that year showed five thousand one hundred and fifty-four manufactories, with nearly sixty- nine million dollars capital invested, which produced in a year one hundred and eighty-eight million, four hundred and seventy-three thousand and sixteen dollars. These factories employed forty-five thousand men. The same census showed four hundred and sixty-four clergymen, twelve hundred and sixty-two lawyers, nine hundred and seventeen doctors and more than two thousand Suspending the Floor Girders of the Bridge. A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 169 Some of the Bridge-makers on the Brooklyn Anchorage, October, 1S78. 0. P. Quint ard^ Secy., Wm. Dempsey, Foreman of Ri^^ers, John H. Prentice, Treas., E. F. Farrington, Master Carpenter, Henry C. Murphy, Pres., Charles'C. Martin, ut Asst. Engineer, Wm. H. Paine, Asst. Engineer, F. Collingwood, Asst. Engineer, Wm. Van der Bosch, W. Hildebrand, Chief Draughtsman, Geo. W. AIcNiclty, Asst. Engineer. The photograph shows how the cables are fastened to the anchor bars, hading to the anchor plate itnder the masonry. teachers. The same year saw the establishment of one of the most exclusive of Brooklyn asso- ciations — exclusive by the very term of its organization; — the " Old Brooklynites," of which no one can become a member unless he has been for fifty years a resident of the city. Of course it must be realized that mere numbers, a large census enumeration of a population, does not tell the story of a city's prosperity. Large towns have been known to be bankrupt, and a sudden mushroom growth such as, in the expressive vernacular of the day, is known as a "boom," is not always, perhaps not often, healthy. But Brooklyn's prosperity rests on a surer foundation than the numerical statement of her inhabitants, and the latter is rather an effect than a cause. When we look back over the century so nearly ended and calculate the ratio of growth, we are less astonished at its magnitude, and yet the bare figures representing different epochs cannot but challenge atten- tion. In the opening year of the century the population was two thousand three hundred and seventy, smaller than many an insignificant village that one is surprised to see down upon a railroad map. It was to this little hamlet that Pierrepont brought home his beautiful and cultured wife; here the navy-yard was deeded to the government by John Jackson for forty thousand dollars; here the only manufactories were a few little grist-mills and the people were all farmers, as we have seen, and the hard riders hunted foxes in Flatbush. Then followed two decades of slow and steady growth and the little town showed seven thou- sand people in place of the two thousand of twenty years before. In the middle of the century the popu- lation had increased to ninety-six thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight, and in 1866 to two hundred and ninety-six thousand, with some odd hundreds. Then the census of 1880 presented its testimony that the city contained five hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty-nine. Twelve years more have passed; we read the figures again, prepared for a startling increase. We are now nearly a million strong. One of the attractive features in Brooklyn has been the custom of having parades composed entirely of children and their instructors. The Sunday-schools led the way, and for a generation their May anniversary parade has been one of the sights of the city — " Saint Children's Day," Mr. Beecher called it. For a few years past the public school children have paraded in like manner. On one occasion the public school procession was reviewed by Mayor Chapin, at another by Mr. Cleveland, and by other prominent men I70 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. at other times. The parade of 1882 occurred on the 24th of May and the children in line numbered sixty thousand. A more inspiring scene can hardly be imagined than that presented by those myriads of hopeful, fresh young faces, looking eagerly forward, a prophecy and full of promise to the city of the future. The years 1883 and 1884 showed a rapid growth of business at the docks, the latter year especially. New storehouses and other buildings were erected and a general feeling of prosperity prevailed. One of the incidents of 1884, while of national interest, had also a special significance for the people who had watched with interest the fitting of the Greely relief expedition at the Brooklyn navy-yard. More gen- erally in Brooklyn than elsewhere, because the expedition started from the Wallabout, public attention was on the alert for news of the Greely expedition, and when, on the 17th of July, the news of the success of the search party and the discovery of the missing men was published, the rejoicing was general and sin- cere. On August 10, 1884, a brief earthquake shock which extended from Ohio to Vermont, was perceptibly felt in Brooklyn and the immediate neighborhood. The vibrations, which began about 2 p. m., lasted eight seconds. Houses were shaken, church spires rocked slightly, and crockery was smashed in every direction. Many people were panic-stricken, and rushed from their homes, crowding the streets like herds of fright- ened cattle. In some places windows were smashed, and in the poorer quarters of the city it appeared for the- moment as though the rickety dwelling-houses and shops would tumble to pieces. The movement of the earth was rapid and oscillatory, and most people, after their first fright and surprise was over, promptly attributed a seismic origin to the disturbance. At the time of the shock the sky was cloudy, the mercury stood at 75° in the shade, and the barometer registered 30. The earthquake was felt with particular severity at Coney Island. About ten minutes after the tremors had subsided, there was heard a low, rumbling sound, like the muttering of distant thunder. The generally healthy condition of the city continued during the following year. There was great activity in building and the erection of a number of important buildings was completed. Among others were the Young Men's Christian Association building, the armory of the 47th Regiment, the Lee Avenue Baptist Church, a Gothic structure; the beautiful building erected by the Harriilton Club, at the corner of Clinton and Remsen streets, and a number of the most striking retail stores and business buildings in the city. At that time the bridge trustees were changed, the old board being retired by legislative act. There was an increase of travel and diminution of fares. The only fire of consequence during that year was a large one on the corner of State street and Atlantic avenue, in the early spring. In the police department the civil service rules were applied and fully enforced for the first time and in the post office department a notable and advantageous addition was made to the service by the introduction of the mail wagons now in use. The business of the post office materially increased during that year. The following year was one of almost unprecedented, or at least certainly unexcelled, material pros- perity. The activity of realty and of building operations continued, nearly twenty million dollars being expended in this class of investment during the year and over four thousand new houses being erected. The principal drawback to the general prosperity was the labor disturbance, which found its expression at the sugar-houses and the surface car lines. The sugar-house strike was a threatening one, but was kept well in hand by the police. The same was true of the tie-up on the surface lines, which accomplished nothing except the recognition of the Knights of Labor as an organization. The Wallabout coal handlers and longshoremen, dissatisfied with their pay, struck for higher wages in the latter part of January, 1887. At first the affair was not thought to be of importance and both employ- ers and strikers said that the difficulty would soon be settled. But each day presented new complications and fresh developments, so that by the 26th of the month the strike threatened to become general and serious inconvenience resulted to all concerned. Ocean steamers lay at their piers unable to go to sea because of the impossibility of coaling and because the longshoremen refused to handle Old Dominion freight. At the piers of several of the principal ocean transportation companies, vessels could neither load nor discharge cargoes. It was an affiliation of the coal handlers' and longshoreman unions and arose from the fact that the Old Dominion company had employed non-union men to handle its freight. The trouble increased from day to day, the men standing firm and the embarrassment extending from the steamship wharves to the sugar refineries, surface car lines and other industries, in fact wherever coal was a necessary adjunct to business or manufacture. At various points, non-union men were employed, but among them were constantly to be found the proselyting emisaries of the unions and many of them joined the ranks of the latter. Those who remained were under police protection. Not only in Brooklyn, but in New York and the Jersey towns, the effect of the tie-up was felt to the great detriment of business. Then came threats of violence, and an efl'ort to draw railroad employees into the war spread still greater consternation. Coal began to be so scarce that the want of it was felt not only in factories, stores and public institutions, but also in private houses and especially among the poorer classes. By the sth of Febru- ary it was reported that the longshoremen were weakening. For a few days no further evidence of this A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 171 Looking Down From Bridge Tower, Opening Day, May 24, 1883. was seen, but gradually, with the employment of new men and a readjustment of facilities, work at the piers was resumed, and finally the longshoremen, after a long idleness, were forced to admit their defeat and those who could find employment resumed work once more. When on Tuesday, the 8th day of March, at half-past nine in the morning, the announcement was made that Henry Ward Beecher was no more, a general mourning pervaded the whole city. Crowds gathered in front of the house, not drawn by curiosity but full of sincere sorrow and sympathy. By the order of the mayor the flags on all the public buildings were placed at half mast and emblems of mourning met the eye everywhere. Notice of Mr. Beecher's death was taken at Albany by the legislature in a resolution to pay state honors to the man whose courage, energy and mental endowment had been so long the pride of his fellow-citizens. The assemblage at his funeral in Plymouth church of representative men in every walk of life, eminent not only in the city, but in the councils of the nation, bore witness to the fact that his death was not Brooklyn's loss alone, but the country's. The city paused while its foremost citizen was laid to rest. A terrible fire which consumed the Havemeyer sugar refinery in June, 1887, destroyed a million dollars' worth of property and threw half a thousand men out of employment. The conflagration occurred during the night when all ordinary work was at a standstill. It was immediately whispered that the fire was of incendiary origin, but no proof of this could be found. The refinery was situated on Commercial street and within fifteen minutes after it commenced Assistant Chief Smith of the fire department had twelve engines, four trucks and the fire boat " Seth Low," on the scene, and all that could be accomplished was done to save the fated building. The sky was lighted so that the ruddy glare could be seen for miles, and the incident is recollected as one of the most severe individual fires that Brooklyn has ever experienced. 172 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. On the 8th of July, 1887, Brooklyn was visited by one of those remarkable storms which we are apt to consider peculiar to tropical countries. The weather had been hot and humid for several days and the indications of storm were pronounced enough to attract the attention of the weatherwise, but no one expected more than an ordinary summer thunder-storm, when suddenly, at ten minutes past noon, a cloud of yellow dust advanced through the city from the northwest. It came, not like a cloud but rather like a wall, broken into spirals and columns of whirling murk. People escaped from it as best they could, to houses or whatever shelter offered. Behind the wall of dust was a wall of water; it was not rain but a sheet like an advancing waterfall that deluged everything. Somewhere with the dust and the rain or between them or after them, no one seemed quite sure what the sequence, a terrific wind swept over the roofs and through the streets, levelling every movable thing that the dust did not bury or the rain sub- merge. Roofs became air ships and chimneys were catapults, church spires trembled, slate flew in showers, windows were broken, shutters and doors wrenched from their fastenings and conservatories ruined. But the -greatest devastation, perhaps, occurred among the trees that beautified the city. Dozens of these were destroyed, snapped off or twisted into firewood. From the elms and oaks in the park to the beautiful giant, two feet in diameter, that stood in front of the St. George hotel, nothing was spared that chanced to stand in the tornado's track. Out at Fort Hamilton a great deal of damage was done. Flatbush suf- fered much and many suburbs of Brooklyn felt the force of the blow, but the greatest devastation was in the 26th ward, from the Jamaica plank road to the New Lots road and between Eldert avenue and Alabama avenue. Everywhere , " , - throughout the city the elec- ''[ . ' trie wires, and even the poles, were down; vessels were driven away from the wharves and many were the losses experienced by those who were engaged in ship- ping. During the time that the storm lasted there was darkness, on account of the dust and the rain. After- wards a lull was accompanied by a dull, hot, humid after- noon, but at about ten o'clock in the evening the tempest began again, and it seemed as though the localities which had been lightly visited by the blow of the morning were specially selected for an Early Morning at the Wallaeout Market. eveninff visitation The damage done by this storm amounted to many thousands of dollars and was looked upon as one of those mysterious events to which no adequate cause can be assigned. The beginning of the year 1888 was marked by the prevalence of small pox in Brooklyn, to the great alarm of the people. While every possible precaution known to sanitary science was taken, yet for some days the disease not only prevailed but increased, and many of the more timid citizens left the city. For a time the pest wagons were busy, the hospitals were full, and a serious epidemic was anticipated. But the danger fortunately gave way to prompt measures and medical skill. It had given opportunity, however, for the heroism of some of the more self-sacrificing citizens to exhibit itself, and especially showed the efficiency of certain public officers. There are certain dates that are not likely soon to be forgotten by the people of the United States, especially those of eastern cities. The date of the great blizzard, March 12, 1888, is one of these. A flood of rain, which lasted until the small hours of the morning, was suddenly developed into a white-winged tempest, and by breakfast-time sidewalks were piled high and front doors were block- aded. In the morning of the first day of the storm people ventured to business, to store or office or court, but did not repeat the experiment at once. The mountains of snow which throughout the entire week blocked every street, making "no thoroughfare " of the highways, and imprisoning a whole population, have had too many descriptions to make another other than superfluous. Every one knows how the strong as well as the weak succumbed to the resistless force of the wind-driven snow, how lives were lost and com- merce was interrupted, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost in the great storm. The appliances of civilization, the uses of steam and electricity, upon which we are wont to pride ourselves, were all A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 173 Fulton Street, before the " L " Road or Trolley. rendered useless in a few hours, and for more than a week the problem of getting food and other supplies for which the city depended on the country, was a serious and a most perplexing one. During the famous storm the East river was for sev- eral hours, on Monday, March 12, frozen over so that persons could cross on it, though the severity of the weather was such that few attempted the feat. Apropos of weather, it may appropri- ately be chronicled here that on seven different occasions during the past hundred years or so the ice on the waters adjacent to Brooklyn and New York has been strong enough for the passage of persons and teams. In 1780, the harbor was frozen over, and teams crossed to Staten Island. In January, 1821, there was a crossing for sleighs from New York to Jersey City. On February 13, 1844, the Long Island Sound was passable a few miles above the city. The ice-bridge of January 20, 1852, still lingers in the memory of many who used it ingoing between Brooklyn and New York, and an illustration of the scene is presented in these pages, as well as one of that of January 25, 1867, when five thousand persons, Henry Ward Beecher among them, made the pas- sage. The ice broke up before it was expected to, and some of the adventurous spirits were carried down the bay, and the tug boats reaped a harvest in rescuing them. An intervening crossing was on February 10 and II, 1856. The last ice-bridge previous to that of the blizzard of 1888 was on February 12, 1875, when the East river was passable for three and a half hours. The year 1889 opened its list of casualties by a tornado that blew down a portion of the navy-yard barracks and did some further damage. This occurred upon the 9th of January. Before the end of the month, a sensation of quite a different character was caused by the tie-up of the Atlantic avenue road, owing to a car drivers' strike ; the affair begun to assume serious proportions, and caused great inconven- ience to people in that part of Brooklyn, but after nine days of inaction the cars were run again, under police protection. On the 2d of May, 1889, the Washington Memorial dinner, which was given on the evening of the last day of the Washington centennial celebration, at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, drew together at least five hundred and fifty of the most truly representative citizens of Brooklyn. Mayor Chapin, the Rev. Dr. Chamberlain, Dr. Behrends, Father McCarty, St. Clair McKelway, and others, made eloquent addresses, the excellent band of the 13th Regiment furnished the music for the occasion, and the father of his country was honored, eulogized and toasted in a way that must have satisfied the most patriotic guest. The great sugar refinery belonging to Dick & Meyer, between North Seventh and North Eighth streets, near Kent avenue, took fire on the afternoon of Saturday, the 7th of September, 1889. The plant consisted of an extensive group of buildings, among which was one .recently added to the main refinery. The fire com- menced with a loud explosion, which was heard at half past one o'clock. In a very few moments smoke was observed, and the workmen, panic-stricken, poured from the buildings. Such means as were at hand were used to quell the fire, but without suc- The Blizzard of March 12, iSSS. 174 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. cess, and when the engines of the department reached the spot, it had gained such headway that it was im- possible to save the property immediately involved. But it was of the utmost importance to protect the warehouses in the vicinity from the spread of the fire, and this was done effectually by the fire boat, the " Seth Low " being promptly on hand. But a cooperage opposite the refinery caught fire, and other build- ings followed. As wall after wall fell, and the fierce heat again and again drove back those who were fighting the conflagration, it seemed a miracle that the fire should be checked, but the feat was accomplished and vast fortunes were saved. As it was, the loss amounted to about $2,000,000. The members of the Pan-American Congress left Washington city for New York on the i6th of December, 1889, accompanied by Mr. Blaine, and proceeded in the afternoon to Brooklyn, where they had been invited to attend a reception at the Hamilton Club. Both from the standing of the club and the prominence given to the delegates of South American powers by virtue of their mission, the affair was one of significant interest. In October, 1889, the first board of commissioners of electrical subways rendered a final report of their work of putting underground the electric wires which had so long disfigured the city. Although the conditions of the law under which they worked were such that only a beginning could be made, neverthe- less a great improvement was effected in the appearance of important thoroughfares, and the system adopted has proved successful in its practical operation, as well as in avoiding the danger of underground explosions, such as have occurred elsewhere. This has been due largely to the thorough ventilation of the underground conduits, so that explosive gases pass off and do not accumulate, and also as to the fact that the high-tension electric light wires were omitted from the system, fifty miles of these being safely carried on the structure of the elevated railroads. In 1884 the legislature included the Brooklyn author- ities in a peremptory order to put all wires underground by November i, of that year ; this, however, was impracticable. An act of 1885 created a board of commissioners of electrical subways, and Mayor Low appointed Professor George W. Plympton, Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond and John Reynolds as members of this board. They adopted a system proposed by the New York & New Jersey Telephone Company, the iavention of W. D. Sargent, now vice-president of the company, in which creosoted wood was used for conduits. The work of building conduits and laying wires, begun immediately, was delayed in 1886 by interference of the common council, but was renewed in 1887, when the courts had settled the differences and the legislature had extended the term of the commission to 1889. By 1888 nearly three thousand miles of wire had gone underground, though the removal of poles did not follow in the same proportion, by reason of a clause in the act excepting from its provisions the poles carrying city wires^ and many poles are still stand- ing bearing only police and fire de- partment wires, which might come down if the departments had appro- priations for the purpose. An act of 1892 created a new commission, which operates under the inadequate law of 1885. It consists of Professor Plymp- ton and Frederick R. Lee. Enough has been accomplished to demonstrate the feasibility of underground wiring for cities, and the exhaustive final report of the first Brooklyn commis- sion has been used as an authoritative statement of the problems involved BOATHOUSES NEAR BeRGEN HOMESTEAD, THIRD AVENUE, 1SS4. • , . , , in electrical subways. A matter which excited not a little interest in 1891 was the securing of an injunction by William Zeigler to restrain the city from purchasing the plant of the Long Island Water Supply Company. The suit began upon the 5th of January, and lasted for several months ; two days after the granting of the injunction. Justice Bartlett continued it and decided that the case must be tried. The corporation counsel, at a later date, asked for a dissolution of the injunction ; then Mr. Zeigler served an amended complaint upon the city officials, which they answered in due form, and the next thing the interested tax- payers were startled to read was that important papers in the Zeigler suit had mysteriously disappeared. Just before this, Judge Dykman vacated Mr. Zeigler's injunction. Then Justice CuUen decided that the case must be tried before a judge. It finally reached, by various steps, the Court of Appeals, which at length decided against Mayor Chapin ^/ a/— or, in other words against the city government. Steps were A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. ■75 subsequently taken to acquire the property by condemnation. Early in January, 1891, the city of Brooklyn decided to buy Wallabout market lands, of the United States government, for $700,000. This sale was recommended to the government by the secretary of the navy, Mr. Tracy, as being desirable because of the unnecessary extent of Federal possessions there. The residents of the eastern district of Brooklyn assembled in a mass meeting on the 14th of April to advocate the construction of a new East river bridge. This project was then but in embryo. On the 5th of October of that year the new real estate exchange on Montague street was opened to the inspection of the public. During the same month an interesting event occurred at Clinton and Remsen streets. This was a mass meeting of the Christian Endeavor Union. The growth of the society in all its chapters, and the mammoth convention held in New York in 1892, are well known to everyone. Almost at the very close of 1891, on the 29th of December, the Right Reverend John Loughlin, bishop of the diocese of Long Island, died, to the deep regret of the many who knew him. And upon the very last day of the year, the boards of aldermen and supervisors, as well as various clubs and societies, took action and passed resolutions of regret and respect. Blasting of Flood Rock, Hell Gate, 1 Many of the important events of the years over which we have run in this chapter have not been chron- icled, because they have their place in other parts of the book in connection with special subjects. To narrate in their order and exhaustively the incidents which have aroused and interested the people of Brooklyn for the past twenty-five years would be both unnecessary and impossible. But the chronology of the past few years has so fresh an interest that the more important events are here presented as selected from the complete resume oi each year given in the pages of the Eagle Almanac since 1886 : 1886. Feb. 2 Governor Hill signed the Bridge Extension Bill. Mar. 2 Charles Pratt gave jSroo.ooo to the Adelphi Academy. Mar. 4 Tie-up on the Atlantic avenue road ; a riot suppressed by the police; the strikers won. Mar. 27 Tie-up on the Eastern District roads ; the men vic- torious. April 21 Three thousand employees of Eastern District sugar- houses go out on a long strike. April 22 Rioting in the Eastern District ; police fire on strikers. May II End of sugar-house strike ; the men give in. May 13 New Lots annexation bill becomes a law, without the Governor's signature. May 31 Decoration Day exercises attended by President Cleve- land and his cabinet. Jan. 7 Permit granted to Union Elevated Railroad to build on Hudson, Fifth and Flatbush avenues. Feb. 26 The bill appropriating Ji, 500,000 for the Brooklyn Fed- eral Building becomes a law. Mar. 2 Cable cars began running on Park avenue. Mar. 8 Death of Henry Ward Beecher. Mar. 31 Charter granted the Brooklyn German Hospital. May 19 The bill incorporating the Pratt Institute for technical education became a law. Sept. 30 At the installation of the Rev. R. R. Meredith, D. D., pastor of the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church, all Congregational societies in New York and Brooklyn were invited for the first time in twelve years. Oct. 4 Beecher Memorial service in the Academy of Music, Dr. Parker, of London, delivers an eulogy. Nov. 15 Fire destroyed the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad stables at Ninth avenue and Twentieth street, burn- ing 150 horses and causing a loss of $250,000. Jan. I Long Island Railroad rapid transit extended to Wood- haven. Jan. 17 Erection of new board of education building begun. Jan. 21 Small-pox alarmingly prevalent. Feb. 14 Fall of derrick on Union road, Broadway, near Fayette street; four killed, fifteen injured; struck a streetcar, kill- ing driver and horses. Mar. 24 First train to ferry runs on Kings County road. April 24 Kings County "L" formally opened. May 9 Dr. Lyman Abbott called as permanent pastor of Ply- mouth Church. Nov. 5 Opening Hudson avenue branch Union " L." 176 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Jan. 9 Tornado causes the explosion of a tank of the Citizen's Gas Company, Smith and Fifth streets — A portion of the Navy Yard barraclcs blown down. Jan. 25 Tie-up on the roads of the Atlantic Avenue Railroad Company. Jan. 26 No cars run on the Atlantic Avenue Railroad. Jan. 27 The thirty-fifth anniversary of the Young Men's Chris- tian Association celebrated in fourteen different city churches. Jan. 28 The railroad strike continues. Jan. 31 The first car on Fifth avenue line runs. Feb. 4 Cars run under police protection. Feb. 5 The strike nears its end — A bill introduced in the Legis- lature for a tunnel connecting Brooklyn and New York. Feb. 7 The strike at an end; a complete victory for the railroad company. Feb. II City bonds to the amount of $1,600,000 issued. Feb. 18 Opening of the new collegiate building of the'Adelphi Academy. April 4 Rev. Edward Beecher, D. D. was run over by a train and lost one of his feet. May I A banquet at the Academy of Music, Centennial of George Washington's first inauguration. May 12 Laying of the cornerstone of St. Louis' Church — Death of Electus B. Litchfield. May 30 Memorial Day — President Harrison reviews the parade in Brooklyn. June 6 Ex-President Cleveland reviews Sunday-school parade. June 12 The Jay Street Cathedral badly damaged by fire. July 13 The Brooklyn City Railroad Company gets control of five more lines. July 16 Hogan takes a fatal trip in the Campbell air ship. Aug. 5 Opening of the Fifth avenue branch of the Brooklyn " L " road. Aug. 22 Christian W. Luca killed by Charles McElvaine. Sept. 8 Dick & Meyer's sugar refinery burned; loss J2, 000,000. Sept. ID Storm and tide sweep Coney Island coast and cause great damage. Sept. n Storm at Coney Island continues. Sept. 21 Bishop Loughlin performs the first ordination rites in the new Cathedral— The Polytechnic and Collegiate Institute be- comes the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. Oct. 7 Seth Low elected President of Columbia College. Oct. 13 The Brooklyn Tabernacle destroyed by fire. Oct. 23 Charles McElvaine convicted of the murder of Christian W. Luca. Oct. 28 Ground broken for Dr. Talmage's new church. Oct. 31 Five car lines added to the Brooklyn City Railroad property. Nov. 13 Ex-President Cleveland lays the cornerstone of the Thomas Jefferson Hall. Dec. 6 Theodore Wild, alias John Greenwall, hanged for the murder of Lyman S. Weeks; last execution by hanging in New York state. Dec. 14 The cornerstone of the Montauk Club building laid— Death of Dr. Reuben T. Jeffrey, founder of the Marcy Ave- nue Baptist Church. Dec. 16 Delegates to the Pan-American Congress tendered a re- ception at the Hamilton Club. Dec. 18 The Adelphi Academy partially destroyed by fire ; loss about 175,000. Dec. 22 Twenty-fifth anniversary of the pastorate of the Rev. John White Chadwick. Dec. 26 $300,000 of the city's bonds sold at large premiums. 1890. Jan. 7 Continued increase of deaths from the " grippe." Jan. 9 Two children killed and five persons injured by fall of wall of Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church. Jan. II Bishop Loughlin formally opens new St. Francis Hos- pital. Jan. 13 Charity Ball, first in ten years at Academy of Music — Commissioner of City Works, John P. Adams elected Chair- man of Democratic General Committee — Senator McCar- ren introduced bill to construct bridge over the East river from Broadway, Brooklyn, to New York. Jan. 14 East River Railway Company incorporated to construct tunnel under East river from Brooklyn Eastern District to New York — Franklin Woodruff elected chairman of Repub- lican General Committee — Statue projjosed in honor of J. S. T. Stranahan. Jan. 28 Bill introduced for three more police justices for Brook- lyn — Captain Elihu Spicer gives $20,000 to Polytechnic Institute for a library in memory of his son — A broken switch causes serious delay on the Bridge. Jan. 30 Full collegiate charter issued to Polytechnic Institute. Jan. 31 Governor Hill commutes death sentence of Jockey Stone to life imprisonment. Feb. 2 Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler resigns his pastorate, to take effect April 6. Feb. 3 Ex-Mayor Seth Low installed President of Columbia College — Secretary of Navy Tracy's house burned Wash- ington ; Mrs. and Miss Tracy killed. Feb. 10 Cornerstone of new Tabernacle laid. Feb. 17 Committee on military affairs report favorably on Mar- tyr's Monument bill — Controlling stock of the Union Ferry Company passes into the hands of a New York syndi- cate. Feb. 26 Site of old Tabernacle in Schermerhorn street sold for $40,000 — New syndicate assumes control of Union Ferry Company. Mar. 31 Wagner's opera of " Parsifal " produced by Seidl Society at Academy of Music. April 5 Secretary of Navy Tracy advises United States Govern- ment to sell nineteen acres of Brooklyn Navy Yard lands. Ajaril 16 President J. S. T. Stranahan and four directors resign from Union Ferry Company — Commander McCalla placed under arrest at the Navy Yard — Reception to Rev. T. L. Cuyler and gift of $30,000. April 19 Asa Waterman shoots Peter Doran dead on Lorimer street — Hanover Club holds first meeting in new quarters — Electric cars commence running to Coney Island. April 21 The syndicate comes into complete control of the Union Ferry Company. April 22, Martyr's Monument bill blocked again in the house of rej^resentatives — Completion of new dry dock at Navy Yard. May 10 Death of Rev. Wm. Keegan, Vicar General of Long Island. May 15 Ferryboat " Pacific" nearly sunk by steamer "State of Georgia" in East river — Three boys killed by caving of earth bank on Seventh avenue. May 18 Death of Ripley Ropes. May 19 Fair in honor of Father Fransioli opened by ex-President Cleveland. May 24 Panic on overloaded steamer " River Queen " — $200,000 Charities deficiency bonds sejl above par — An embankment, corner of Dupont and West streets, falls and buries three Italian laborers — Twenty persons poisoned by ice cream in Eastern District. May 27 Jubilee banquet to Father Fransioli, fifty years in priest- hood. May 29 Exile wins the Brooklyn Cup. June 17 Salvator wins the Suburban. June 23 Steam tug " Alice E. Carew" blows up at Erie Basin ; two men killed — Serious fire at Penitentiary — Atlantic Color Works, Eleventh street, burned ; loss, $35,000. June 25 Justice Kenna made Chairman of Democratic cam- paign committee. July 1 1 New York Bagging Company's works in Eastern Dis- trict destroyed by fire ; loss, $200,000. Sept 3 $200,000 fire in Wallabout Market. A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 177 Sept. 12 Brooklyn Institute nearly destroyed by fire— Twenty- third Regiment team win the Creedmoor prizes. Nov. 12 Dedication of new Union League Club house— Henry M. Stanley lectures on Africa at Academy— Grand masonic reception at Criterion Theatre. Nov. 18 Launch of United States steel cruiser " Maine " at Navy Yard — State railroad commissioners authorize electric cars on Third avenue. Nov. 26 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle publishes entire fac simile of its first issue of October 26, 1841. Dec. 7 A. I. Namm's store, 335 Fulton street, burned— George William Curtis discourses on William Cullen Bryant at Second Unitarian Church. Dec. 12 Mechanics file a lien for jS76,ooo against the new Brook- lyn Theatre — A house in South Brooklyn blown down, kill- ing a young girl. Dec. 27 William Zeigler secures injunction against transfer Long Island Water Supply Company's plant to the city. 1891. Jan. 5 Beginning of William Zeigler's suit to restrain the city from purchasing the plant of the Long Island Water Supply Company — Rev. R. R. Meredith resigns chaplaincy of 23d Regiment. Jan. 12 John P. Adams re-elected Chairman of Democratic Gen- eral Committee — Stepniak, the Russian revolutionist, lectures at first Baptist Church on " Tolstoi's Ideas " — Bishop Little- john refuses a license to preach in his diocese to Father Ignatius, the English monk — The Tabernacle and Plymouth Church each gets a legacy of $5,000 from Emma Abbott. Jan. 13 Ex-Register Hugh McLaughlin receives j!r5,ooo from the city for his house on Jay street — William W. Goodrich elected chairman Kings County Republican General Com- mittee. Jan. 15 Fire Commissioner Ennis reports I,2i5 fires in Brooklyn in i8go. Jan. 27 Postmaster Collins establishes twelve postal agencies. Feb. 3 Fire at Berry street and Wythe avenue, destroys several manufactories ; loss $400,000, and hundreds of men thrown out of work — Bill introduced in the legislature to divide the Eighteenth ward. Feb. 10 Republican General Committee vote against civil ser- vice reform — Senator Birkett introduces a bill providing for two East river bridges. Feb. II Grand Jury investigate St. Johnland. Feb. 18 Disastrous fire in a Hopkins street tenement and a mother and four children burned to death. Mar. 5 Com. Hayden appoints as policeman Wiley G. Overton (colored), the first in Brooklyn. Mar. 6 Judge Moore re-sentences Chas. McElvaine, slayer of grocer Luca. Mar. 7 Justice Pratt grants permission to mortgage Tabernacle for $250,000 — Russell Sage of New York takes $125,000 of Tabernacle bonds. Mar. 8 The Citizens and Municipal Electric Light Companies consolidated with a capital of $2,000,000. Mar. 19 Governor Hill approves the new museum of Brooklyn. Mar. 20 Birkett bridge bill reported adversely. Mar. 21 Explosion of oil still in Charles Pratt's oil works ; five men badly burned — Brooklyn athletes win many prizes at New Haven, Conn. — Ground broken for cable road on Montague street ; workmen stopped by police. Mar. 24 Commissioner Adams re-issues a permit to the Montague Street Railroad Company. Mar. 25 The laying of cable track commences on Montague street. Mar. 29 " Easter Day " — Christ Episcopal Church new memorial chimes (second largest in America) ring out for the first time. April 4 Last performance of Edwin Booth as " Hamlet " at Academy. April 12 The "grippe" very prevalent. April 13 The Water Case argued before the Court of Appeals. April 15 Eastern District residents in mass meeting advocate a new East river bridge. April 23 A new ferry company incorporated to run between Brooklyn and New York. April 29 A row of flats burned in DeKalb avenue ; loss $30,000 ; 40 families homeless. May 5 Court of Appeals decides against Mayor Chapin et al in the Long Island Water Supply case. May 6 Gov. Hill signs a bill to make the Bridge footpath free — A conflagration of lumber yards at Hunter's Point; loss, $500,000. May 23 The first coaching parade at Prospect Park. May 29 Opening of Second avenue electric road. May 31 At midnight Bridge footpath made free. May 6 Unveiling of Statue of J. S. T. Stranahan at Prospect Park entrance. June 16 Loantaka wins the Suburban race. June 24 Unveiling of statue of the late Henry Ward Beecher in City Hall Park, vast assemblage present; addresses by ex- Mayor Seth Low, Mayor Chapin, Rev. Dr. Chas. H. Hall, Rev. S. B. Halliday and others. July 20 Montague street cable road open to the public. Aug. 25 Fierce fire on Atlantic and Georgia avenues ; $100,000 loss; narrow escape of firemen from falling walls — Superin- tendent Martin and Engineer Bryson examine plans for a pneumatic tube on bridge to connect Brooklyn and New York post offices. Sept. 12 Informal opening of new route to Boston via Long Island Railroad to Oyster Bay, thence to Connecticut by ferry. Oct. 5 The old Bridge street ferry-house destroyed by fire. Oct. 19 Jamaica town officers give franchise to Brooklyn City R. R. Co., to extend its route to Richmond Hill. Oct. 23 Judge Cullen decides as constitutional the act authorizing the widening of Liberty street for Bridge terminals. Oct. 28 First locomotive ever used in Navy Yard started on the three-mile track, connecting store houses, docks, etc. — City sold $750,000 Wallabout market bonds at above par. Nov. 14 Governor Hill lays cornerstone of new Twenty-third Regiment armory at Atlantic avenue and Pacific street — Crescent Club defeats New York Athletic Club at football and captures the Eagle trophy. Nov. 21 Serious break in the conduit near Ridgewood pumping station; four men killed and city's water supply cut off; hotel elevators, factories, the bridge cable and Navy Yard machinery obliged to shut down. Nov. 23 H. Searvant, professional nurse, shoots Mrs. Hawley Chapman, wife of his employer, at 38 St. Mark's avenue — Boad of Aldermen receives petitions from four Brooklyn surface roads, to use electric trolley system — A fire at 264 and 266 Court street baffles twelve engines, from lack of water ; fire boat " Seth Low " renders great aid ; loss about $100,000 — Bridge cable and dynamo engines obtain water from an artesian well at 45 York street ; water famine con- tinues. Nov. 25 Comptroller Jackson sells entire issue of $1,000,000 four per cent, water bonds to Blake Bros., New York, at 104 j\y. Dec. 12 The two sections of big sewer, two years building, joined corner Greene and Vanderljilt avenues; city officials lunch in sewer, eight feet underground. Dec- 22 Disbanding of the old Washington street M. E. Church Society. Dec. 24 The "grippe " very prevalent in Brooklyn and vicinity. Dec. 29 Death of Rt. Rev. John Loughlin, D. D., first Roman Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn. Jan. II Corporation Counsel Jenks prepares a bill to condemn property of Long Island Water Supply Company — First I7S THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. annual election Brooklyn Institute ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, donates valuable collection; Mayor Boody donates |i,ooo— Bay Ridge citizens oppose annexa- tion to Brooklyn. Jan. 13 State R. R. Commissioners permit Brooklyn City & Newtown R R. to use trolley system— Sir Edwin Arnold lectures and recites his "Light of Asia" before Brooklyn Institute— President Hendrix of Board of Education makes annual report and advises $500,000 for new school-houses. Jan. 15 Opening of new building of Polytechnic Institute. Jan. 21 Mayor Boody sends a bill to Albany providing for a single head park commission. Jan. 23 Aldermanic resolution permitting trolley system on sur- face roads becomes a law. Jan. 26 The Young Woman's Christian Association endowment fund of $125,000 all paid in; many gifts to the Association- Brooklyn manufactories of war projectiles running day and night on government orders — Two cases of small-pox in city. Jan. 29 Orders to Navy Yard to stop all overtime work. Feb. 8 Chas. McElvaine, slayer of Christian W. Luca, electro- cuted at Sing Sing — County Treasurer Adams reports $729,646.15 trust funds as held by him January i, 1S92 — Many property owners on line of Brooklyn City and New- town Railroad file consent to use of trolley system. Feb. 1 1 A bill sent to Albany to enable Brooklyn to acquire title to Long Island Water Supply Company's property — Wallabout marketnien call on Mayor Boody and object to erection of permanent market building — Fire Commissioner Ennis reports 1,496 fires in Brooklyn last year, and a loss of $1,608,000. Feb. 18 The new artesian well for use of bridge completed; capacity 216,000 gallons per day — Statistics just compiled show one liquor saloon to every sixty-two male adults of city's population. Feb. 23 Atlantic Avenue Railroad Company pays $90,000 for an electric power station on Gowanus Canal, in view of change to trolley. Feb. 24 A bill sent to Albany to establish a public library in Brooklyn — The McCarren East River Bridge bill passes the Senate. Feb. 28 Total destruction of Smith, Gray & Co.'s clothing house on Fulton street and Flatbush avenue ; car traffic suspended, firemen injured ; losses nearly a million. Mar. 4 Governor Flower signs bill providing for several small parks in Brooklyn — State census shows Brooklyn's popula- tion 955,268. Mar. II Very Rev. Mgr. Charles E. McDonnell, selected to suc- ceed the late Bishop John Loughlin. Mar. 12 Verdict for the Eagle in the Jones suit ; the paper vin- dicated at every point; during the trial 258 witnesses were called, their testimony filling twenty-nine working days. Mar. 23 Brooklyn sells $650,000 3^ per cent. Bridge bonds at about io3j^. Mar. 24 Death of Rev. Frederick A. Farley, oldest minister in Brooklyn. Mar. 26 East River Bridge incorporators organize and adopt charter — Death of Walt Whitman, the poet ; in 1846 editor of Brooklyn Daily Eagle — Old Washington street post- office building abandoned for the new quarters in Federal building. April 9 $50,000 pledged by Brooklyn citizens to Grant Monu- ment Fund at committee's meeting. April 19 Riot among longshoremen at Woodruff's stores ; two persons shot and several injured. April 20 A salary of $2,000 per annum allowed Aldermen under the new law. April 27 One million 3}^ per cent. Bridge bonds sold about 104. May II City sells $1,143,000 water and sewer bonds at about 103. May 17 United States Government advertises for bids to build largest dock in America at Navy Yard, Brooklyn. May 19 General James McLeer receives orders from Albany to disband the 32d Regiment — Brooklyn Gas Light Company considers J. E. Addicks' offer to buy it for $2,400,000. May 26 Plans approved for new $125,000 bridge over Newtown creek — 32d Regiment formally mustered out. May 30 Terrific fire in Grand street ; warehouses, stores and tenements destroyed, narrow escapes, several injured; loss, $300,000. June 7 School-house committee of Board of Education recom- mend purchase of several sites for new schools — Requisitions of City and County departments show increase of $3,000,000 over 1892 — Judge Pratt appoints commission in the Long Island Water Supply Company proceedings — Board of Edu- cation vote for four new buildings and four additions to school-houses. June 13 Thermometer 93 degrees ; four prostrations from heat — Strike of 200 Greenpoint iron workers — City Works Depart- ment report 77,000,000 gallons of water used in Brooklyn to-dav, the largest on record. June 14 Police report 21,910 dogs in city. June 30 The budget for city expenses next year is $10,108,381.80. July 7 Board of Assessors value "L" roads at $200,000 per mile for taxation purposes — Board of aldermen award fran- chises for surface roads through Union street, and through Second avenue to Thirty-ninth street. July 14 Postmaster Collins' annual report to July i, shows Brooklyn receives nearly a million letters a week. July 28 City sells $600,000 2}i per cent- bonds at nearly 105. July 29 Thermometer 99 degrees, and in mailing department of ])ost office 118 degrees; work suspended at Navy Yard and factories ; many deaths and prostrations. Aug. I Department of Assessment shows taxable increase of real estate valuation of $18,804,925 over 1891. Aug. 18 Departure of 23d and 13th Regiments for Buffalo to quell riotous railroad strikers; 14th and 47th ordered to be in readiness. Aug. 19 Brooklyn and New York troops sent to Buffalo without rations ; food cars raided ; the 13th guards freight yards. Aug. 20 13th Regiment routs Buffalo strikers with bayonet in hand to hand conflict ; several injured on both sides. Aug. 22 Strike continues at Buffalo; Brooklyn 13th in position of danger ; Colonel Austen calls for 30 day volunteers. Aug. 30 Steamer " Moravia " arrives from Hamburg ; reports twenty-two deaths from cholera on trip. Sept. I Health Commissioner Griffin adopts precautions against cholera. Sept. 2 Mayor Boody issues cautionary proclamation regarding cholora. Sept. 13 Governor Flower orders 13th and 69th Regiments and naval reserves to Fire Island to protect quarantined passen- gers. Sept. 15 Health Commissioner Griffin reports no cholera in Brooklyn. Sept. 17 Fire at machine shops at Navy Yard; damage to engines of new cruiser " Cincinnati ; " loss, $100,000. Oct. 3 Board of Aldermen appoint October 21st for the Colum- bus and Memorial Arch celebration. Oct. 4 East River Bridge Company files its detailed plans with New York Board of Ald..rmen. Oct. 5 New York and East River Ferry Company incorporated to run ferries from New York to Long Island shore. Oct. 9 Special Columbian services held in principal churches ; pastors of all denominations discourse on the discovery of America and its effect on civilization. Oct. ■ 10 Opening of "Columbus" weel{ ; halls, stores and dwel- lings festooned with flags ; vessels in harbor dressed in bunt- ing ; imposing naval parade from Gravesend Bay to River- side Park, N. Y. ; 250 vessels in line ; French, Italia.n and Spanish war ships escorted by American war vessels, vessels of Naval Reserve and yachts; salutes all along the line from ships and forts ; vast crowds of people along the shore. A GENERATION OF PROGRESS. 179 front and Bay Ridge ; superb display of fireworks on Brook- lyn Bridge ; Bridge closed to trafific at 7.45 P. M. ; after fireworks dense crowds block its entrance ; 170,000 persons travel on its cars, 20,000 in excess of any previous day. Oct. 12 Brooklyn sends four regiments, the Third Battery and Second Brigade Signal Corps, to take part in Columbian procession in New York — Heaviest travel on Bridge since it was built ; 223,625 cross in cars ; receipts, $6,467 ; in last three days 570,387 travelled on the cars. Oct. 20 Parade of 25,000 children from parochial schools. Oct. 21 Grand Columbus procession ; parade of military, naval and civic organizations and public school pupils ; dedication of Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, at Prospect Park plaza; addresses by Mayor Boody, Dr. Talmage and Father McCarthy ; reception to Grover Cleveland by Mon- tauk CUib — Col. \V. E. Sinn and his son decorate the statue of Henry Ward Beecher in City Hall Park. Nov. I Dedication of new building, Young Women's Christian Association, on Schermerhorn street ; addresses by Rev. Dr. Storrs, Dr. T. J. Backus and others — The old Lott farm in Flatlands sold for jSi 11,000, first transfer of the property by " sale in 300 years. Nov. 5 Fire in South Brooklyn ; three factories and scores of tenements destroyed on Hicks and Columbia streets; thirty- one families homeless; New York Fire Department called upon ; losses, jS50o,ooo. Nov. 12 — Burning of Harbeck's warehouse, No. 3, on Furman street; two firemen killed ; loss, $300,000 — Crescent Athletic Club defeats New York Athletic Club at football and wins the Eagle trophy cup — Supervisors pass Columbian celebra- tion bills over Supervisor-at-Large Kinkel's veto. Nov. 25 Bills against city for Columbian celebration amount to $5t,226. Nov. 28 Prominent New York railroad men inspect Long Island road; a tminel proposed from foot of Atlantic avenue to New York — Senator Hale, of Maine, inspects Navy Yard lands, in view of proposed sale to Brooklyn. Dec. I New Utrecht citizens advocate annexation to Brooklyn. Dec. 2 A syndicate in treaty to purchase Brooklyn City surface lines. Dec. 5 John Bogart, expert, testifies value of Long Island Water Supply Company is $2,147,000 — Report of New York and Brooklyn Bridge shows large increase of business over 1891. Dec. 7 $200,000 surplus bridge earnings turned over to city treas- urer. Dec. 13 Petition to board of aldermen to change statue of Henry Ward Beecher so as to face the Bridge. Dec. 14 The grand jury to investigate Columbian celebration bills against city. Dec. 15 Brooklyn library reports over 115,000 volumes on its shelves. Dec. 17 Fire in Arnott's stores, foot Twenty-seventh street ; thousands of bales of cotton burned ; Chief Nevins and several firemen jump into the water to avoid falling walls ; loss nearly $400,000. Dec. 19 Brooklyn City Railroad petitions for leave to extend its lines on fifty additional streets and offers $250,000 for the privilege. Dec. 22 President Harrison signs bill for the sale of Navy Yard lands to Brooklyn — City officials testify before grand jury in the Columbian investigation — Long Island Railroad Com- pany authorized to commence boring at Pier 19, East river, for projected tunnel — New York underwriters propose to raise Brooklyn insurance rates twenty-five per cent., because of alleged inefficiency of fire department. Dec. 24 Burning of the " Berlin " dry goods store, Broadway and Myrtle avenue; 150 employees rescued with difficulty; loss, $100,000 — Exciting fire at 169 Columbia Heights ; women leap from windows to save their lives. Dec. 27 A Boston, Mass., syndicate formed to buy all Brooklyn gas companies — Wiley G. Overton, Brooklyn's first colored policeman, resigns — Beginning of taxpayers suit against supervisors in Columbian expenditure matter. Dec. 29 New York police officials visit Brooklyn stations for "points." — S. V. White, who failed a year ago, pays the last creditor in full with interest. Dec. 30 $75,000 excise money apportioned to charitable institu. tions — Sale of Montague street cable road and the Equity Gas Light Company. City Hall, 1864. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. T that interesting hour when the first and the third cities in the United States celebrated their union in the completion of the great East river bridge, the orators who were called to eulogize the occasion, and who ransacked the realms of simile for some figure appropriate to so distinguished an historical moment, found nothmg more effective than the allusion to Brooklyn as the bride of New York. There are certainly many reasons why the metaphor should be considered felicitous. It is appropriate because Brooklyn is of slightly lesser antiquity as a town, while suffi- ciently contemporaneous in her development to guarantee a unity of taste and sen- timent. If one city calls up the idea of commercial eminence, the other represents a special emphasis on those principles which are symbolized by the word " home." But nothing is more hazardous, and perhaps particularly in the United States, than a broad characteri- zation of a city. As we shall have occasion to see later on, Brooklyn is so much more than might at first be inferred from any single descriptive phrase, that no general terms will answer the purpose. This fact becomes quickly apparent if we stop for a moment to recollect that Brooklyn's position is unique among the cities of the world in that no other city so large as Brooklyn is so near another city so large as New York. Just what are the results of this contiguity, the reader may be informed as the present sketch proceeds. When Brooklyn congratulates itself upon its geographical position there is something more than local bias to explain the assumption. Touching the waters of the sea on the southeast. New York Bay on the south- west, and washed on the west and north by the swiftly running river that separates it from New York; with THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. much high ground, and soil that is generally sandy below an excellent surface mould, the city finds a sanitary cooperation with nature a far from difficult thing. It has less to justify congratulation in the physical character of its northern and northeastern boundaries, where the ugly waters of Newton creek and the low- lying marshes adjacent present an uninviting prospect; but the creek, by docking and dredging, is becoming less unsightly and more useful to commerce, the low lands are being reclaimed by filling and draining, and certain factories the refuse of which in times past has worried the waters of the Creek are being brought under the surveillance of the health authorities. Within the space of more than two centuries and a half, since the Dutchmen brought to this region the enlightened domestic and civic ideas of progressive Holland, Brooklyn has had time to spread itself over a good deal of territory. This it has done by an interestingly systematic progress and not upon erratic lines. The city occupies the northern part of the county of Kings. Its northeastern boundary is Newton Creek, which separates it from Queens County to a point where an arbitrary line carries the division for a distance of about two miles. Here the line meets Evergreens cemetery (having passed midway very cloSe to Union ,^'. The Brooklyn Water-front — Looking North from the Bridge. cemetery) a large and beautifully appointed burial-place of 375 acres, whose size and importance may be judged from the fact that there are six or seven thousand interments in a year. A corner of the Newtown (Queens County) township separates the Evergreens, from another great city of the dead, Cypress Hills ceme- tery, lying partly in both counties. This burial-place, older by three years than the Evergreens, with a greater total number of interments, has at this time a smaller annual rate. Lying to the south of these two large cemeteries is a district which formerly constituted the village of New Lots, and long popularly known as East New York, but now the Twenty-sixth ward of the city. Its eastern boundary touches the town of Jamaica, and its southern boundary Jamaica bay. This district, joined to the city by a narrow integument, is bounded on the southwest by the towns of Flatbush and Flatlands. Of these two old townships, that of Flatbush is the more intimately associated with the city, of which it has long seemed to be on the verge of becoming a municipal part. It is rich in historical associations, having among its houses some of the finest examples of the old Dutch and English colonial architecture now to be found in this country, as well as many of the most artistic modern Queen Anne and Colonial types. Its main avenue, lined with magnificent trees, begins near the eastern gate of Brooklyn's greatest breathing space. Prospect Park. Brooklyn people are generally of the belief that Prospect Park rivals in natural beauty any park in the world. This patch of beautiful country, with its 500 acres of lawns, woods, hills, lakes, romantic grottos and glens, its drives and footways, is rightly regarded as one of the most potent attractions of a city with many features of physical beauty. Rich in shrubbery, its oaks, maples, ashes, elms, birches, sumachs, larches, pines and cedars give it an attractiveness as a pleasure-ground, and a charm as a resort for the BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 1S3 student of nature that cannot be too warmly described. South of the park is a iield of twenty-five acres used for military parades and reviews and, in the summer season, for baseball and tennis; and leading from this side of the park is a broad tree-lined boulevard known as the Ocean Parkway, and running straight as an arrow five miles southward to the sea. Half a mile east of the park and still on the south- western boundary line of Brooklyn we come to Greenwood, the most beautiful of cemeteries. Its picturesque charm, with its lakes, its fountains, its groves and its vistas, has stirred many a poet, and its distmction as a burial-place is indicated by the presence of many imposing monuments, including those erected to the memory of individuals such as Henry Ward Beecher, DeWitt Clinton, Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett and others, and many fine memorials such as the soldiers', the pilot's, and the firemen's monuments. Managed by trustees as a great public trust, enveloped in half a century of sentiment. Green- wood offers a formidable obstacle to the advances of the later scientific ideas as to the disposal of the dead. About two-thirds of Greenwood is within the city line, which runs southwest for over a mile, and then turns northwest through Sixtieth street until it reaches the shore line of the upper bay, and a point The Brooklyn Water-front — Looking South from the Bridge. distant on a straight line about seven and a half miles from the starting-point of this tour of description. Having thus skimmed the tortuous inland boundary of the city, we may now glance at the city's highly interesting water-front. In purely picturesque interest this water-front is one of the most striking to be found anywhere in the world — a fact of which Brooklyn people themselves are very largely unsuspicious The long line of stores, factories, etc., grim and forbidding, that stretch from Red Hook to Newton creek, with breaks only where the ferry slips occur, tells an eloquent story ; and the masts and spars and funnels of a vast fleet of steamers and sailing vessels emphasize the story. Brooklyn has a water frontage of more than fifteen miles, including the indentations of bays and basins. The boundary line through Sixtieth Street represents the division between Brooklyn and the town of Bay Ridge. Starting from the foot of Sixtieth street and passing northeast along the bay shore, the opportunities of which for a fine driveway have been perceived and are to be further developed in the near future, we come to Gowanus Bay, which terminates in a canal running into the city for the distance of over a mile. Several bridges cross this canal, which has subserved various lumber, grain, coal, brick and other shipping interests. The neck of land bounded on one side by the canal and Gowanus Bay, and on the. other by Buttermilk Channel — now separating Governor's Island from the mainland, to which a strip of land once united it — is called Red Hook, and is notable for a famous series of docks. The Atlantic docks, with a wharfage of two miles or more, and the Brooklyn and Erie basins adjoining, give a hint of the extent to which Brooklyn, while not a port of entry, but within the customs district of the port of New York, participates in the great shipping industry. The Erie basin is surrounded by a breakwater three hundred feet wide, extending out into the 1 84 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. bay nearly one thousand feet, and from that point east about four thousand feet to Columbia street; thence north about two thousand feet to the original beach. The largest ships and steamers can enter the basin and land cargoes right at the dock sides. The great Anglo-American dry docks, recognized as the largest dry docks on this continent, are located here. The other docks in the basin are lined with warehouses and grain-elevators. Ships arriving from all parts of the world, and canal-boats with grain from the west, discharge cargoes there, and their freight is stored on the spot ready for reship- ping. The receiving and exporting of grain at this point represents a traffic greater than that carried on in New York, Jersey City and Hoboken taken together. In a single hour the grain elevators of Brooklyn, most of which are m this region, can transfer one hundred and twenty-seven thousand bushels. We have already passed one ferry running from the Battery, New York, to the port of Thirty-ninth street, beyond Gowanus Bay. At the north end of the Atlantic docks we come to the Hamilton ferry, also from lower New York, and running to the foot of Hamilton avenue. Brooklyn has sixteen ferries, run by seven companies. Some of the boats are double-decked, and most of them are comfortably and handsomely fitted. Most of the ferries run boats on a few minutes' headway. Electric lights, porters who are con- stantly sweeping and scrubbing, and boot-blacks who do a flourishing trade in the men's cabins, are comparatively recent features of a service of which the public seems to have few serious complaints to make. A Brooklyn clergyman once said that salvation was " like the life preservers on the Brooklyn ferry- boats — hard to reach." But nowadays the life preservers are generally found under the seats, or in accessible depositories at the doors. Brooklyn's oldest ferry, at the foot of Fulton street, called simply " The Ferry," in the days when the city was settled by the Dutch, and still going by that title when, in revolutionary days, Washington and his army escaped by its boats under the very noses of the British, became Fulton ferry when the genius of the paddle-wheels had made river transit a little easier and quicker. It was a great line of traffic until the magnificent span of the suspension bridge, in whose shadow its boats now run, was completed, and made a medium for the transit of thousands who cross from Brooklyn to New York and back again every working day in the year. The massive bridge was the result of the rapidly increasing demand for easy transit. With the serious interruptions of fog and ice, and the absolutely dangerous pressure of the morning and evening crowds, the demand for a bridge became imperative. The building of the bridge began in 1870, at a time when the ferries of the city were carrying about fifty million passengers a year. To the impatient public the labor of the unprecedented undertaking seemed interminable. After thirteen years of the most skillful engineering work the world had ever seen, after struggles with stupendous natural ob- stacles in the building of the great piers, in the making, testing and stretching of the cables, after the loss of many lives and the pressure of many difficulties in the matter of public funds, and the expenditure of $15,000,000, the bridge was opened to the public on May 24, 1883. In September of the same year the cable cars began running. The fares were originally five cents for railway passen- gers and one cent for foot passengers. The fare on the cars was subsequently reduced to three cents and the foot-way became free. Structurally the bridge is marvellously light and strong. The fiercest storm, like the blizzard of 1888, whistles past it with no more strain on it than would be given to a board bent upward but with its edge to the wind. Each of the hanging cables contains 5,296 parallel galvanized steel, oil-coated wires, closely wrapped in a solid cylinder 15^ inches in diameter. The total height above high water mark of each tower is 272 feet. The central span is 1,595 fset long, and it is 135 feet above high water mark in the centre. One needs but to station himself at either end during the busy hours of the day and watch the outpour- mg of people from the cars, the constant stream of foot passengers, coming or going, the long train of vehicles of all kinds, from the coaches of the more luxurious travellers to the trucks and vans of commercial houses, to be convinced that this great artery could never be severed or closed without most serious con- Kings County "L" Approach to Fulton Ferry. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 185 On the Bridge Promenade. sequences to the energy of the city. The total receipts of the bridge, which in 1884 were $682,755, reached the sum of $1,801,661 in 1892. The daily travel on the cars and in vehicles reached an aggregate of more than one hundred and twenty thousand people. The total number of passengers for a year is about fifty millions, including foot passengers. With all the facilities of its many ferries, and the development of a comparatively rapid system on the bridge the travelling thousands are con- stantly demanding better facilities for crossing the river. The bridge train system will be greatly amplified, that there may be a relief from the pressure which now characterizes the early morning and particularly the early evening hours of travel, and makes the scenes at the bridge termini among the most striking in the lives of the cities. The present bridge was built by the two cities. By a recent legislative charter a private corporation is to build across the East river from about the foot of Broadway on the Brooklyn side to the foot of Grand street (approximately) on the New York side. The river being wider at this point than at the point where the pres- ent bridge crosses, the new undertaking is one of great magnitude. A third bridge also is being planned to span the water from the foot of Hudson avenue. Continuing our journey along the water-front we find beyond the bridge tower a picturesque line that brings us*to the navy-yard, which, while not so large as that at Mare Island, is the principal naval station in the United States. The visitor finds forty-five acres of very interesting ground; for not only is there the various departments concerned in handling four-fifths of the stores for the entire navy, relics of early naval engagements and many fascinating illustrations of the machinery of sea warfare, but there are the great granite dry dock whose original cost was over $2,000,000, the new dry dock completed in 1889, and the busy building and repairing yards where big cruisers like the " Maine " are launched, and monitors like the " Miantonomah " and the "Terror" are fitted for service. When naval business is brisk, as many as 2,000 men will be found at work at this station. Visitors are admitted ev- ery day excepting Sun- days and holidays, be- tween 8 A. M. and sunset. The navy-yard is thus one of the " sights " of Brooklyn's water-front that are worth looking up. It lies in what is called the Wallabout region, into which came the Wal- loon emigrants from Hol- land, who first settled the northern part of the city. It was in Wallabout Bay that the British prison ships anchored after the battle of Brooklyn in August, 1776, and it was here that ir.ooo or 12,000 The Roadways of the Bridge. i86 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Brooklyn Navy Yard. prisoners perished of starvation and disease — altogether the most tragic event in the history of Brooklyn. A short canal runs into the city from Wallabout Bay. This canal is crossed by a drawbridge at the head of Washington avenue, which divides the great tract of land originally reserved by the government for navy yard purposes. Between this avenue and the Marine Hospital which stands on high ground in the eastern angle of this tract, is the Wallabout Market, established by the city in 1884, under a lease of a tract of swamp-land, which was filled up for the purpose. The Market, laid out in streets and squares, and thickly built up with wooden structures, has developed with remarkable rapidity into a great trading cen- tre. The land which it covers is now owned by the city, under a purchase effected in 1891. The most striking objects on the whole of Brooklyn's water-front have yet to be named. Just to the north of the Wallabout canal we come to the first of the series of sugar refineries, whose towering outlines on a foggy day, or in the last of the twilight, will suggest the lineaments of a Rhenish castle. We are here in the midst of the greatest sugar refining centre in the world, where one establishment will some- times in a single day convert 4,000,000 pounds of raw material into 12,000 barrels of refined sugar. Vessels bringing the raw sugar come from the West Indies, from Louisiana, and from other points as remote as Java, and make up many a grotesque picture along the wharves at this point. At the foot of Broadway, at the point from which the proposed new bridge is to cross, is the greatest ferry centre in the city. From here boats run to the foot of Roosevelt street (adjoining the New York tower of the present bridge), to the foot of Grand street, and to the foot of Twenty-third street, with other New York connections in progress. From the foot of Grand street, Brooklyn, still within the sugar refining district, boats run to Grand street and Houston street. New York; and from the foot of Greenpoint avenue other boats run to Tenth street and Twenty-third street on the New York side. Lumber-yards, machine-shops, and oil refineries occupy much of the remaining water-front to Newtown Creek. The river is made exceedingly active at all times of the year by the movements of oil, sugar, lumber, coal, brick and freight-car lighters, by the great numbers of ferry-boats, by passenger, excursion and freight steamers, hay and grain barges, puffing tow boats, steam yachts and men-of-war. But it is time to glance at the interior aspects of a city whose inland and river borders we have thus hastily scrutinized. Brooklyn's streets, in the main, follow rectangular lines, but their arterial system, if Ave may use this image, may be described as representing the radiating lines of two great fans. If we place the handle of one fan at the foot of Broadway and the handle of the other at the foot of Fulton street — in other words, at the point where the present bridge crosses and at the point where the next bridge is to cross — the radiations of the frames will express not only the general tendency of the street lines but the general tendency of trafific and growth. The right-hand — the Fulton street — fan, will represent the older town of Brooklyn, and now designated as the Western District, The left-hand fan will represent the East- BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 187 em District of the city, including the former villages of Williamsburg and Bushwick, which are of almost equal antiquity with " Breuckelen " and which became a part of the city in 1855. As in one section all roads lead to the bridge and Fulton ferry region, in the other all roads lead to the foot of Broadway. The lines of the two fans cross each other beyond the curve of Wallabout Bay, the navy-yard and Wallabout Market. The outer points of the intersection represent the region of Brooklyn's newest growth. At what was the most eastern point in the city until New Lots and East New York became the twenty-sixth ward, Broad- way, the main artery of the Eastern District, and Fulton street, the main artery of the Western District, the one by a southern and the other by a northern turn, come together within a short distance of Evergreens cemetery. Within a short distance of where Fulton street and Broadway come together the two streets are crossed by the Manhattan Beach railway, which starts from the river front, where it is reached from New York by the Twenty-third street ferry, runs eastward to the city line, skirts the cemetery and runs thence to Coney Island. A branch of the Long Island railroad enters the Bushwick region. The main Long Island railroad terminus is reached through Atlantic avenue, which runs parallel with Fulton street, two streets dis- tant to the southward. The station is at the point where Atlantic avenue crosses Flatbush avenue. In addition to the regular trains starting here for various points of Long Island are " rapid transit" local trains. The tracks are on the level, but are fenced from the driveway on each side, and the crossings are protected by gates and a flagging system which have reduced to the minimum the chances of accident. Western Atlantic avenue beyond the station, at the foot of which is South ferry, is a busy business thoroughfare, traversed by a street railroad. At Franklin avenue, Atlantic avenue is met at a right angle by the Brighton Beach railway, running to the Central Coney Island region, as the Manhattan Beach line already mentioned, runs to the eastern region. West Coney Island is reached by the New York and Sea Beach, the Brooklyn, Bath and West End, the Prospect Park and Coney Island and the Coney Island and Brooklyn (electric) lines. This great bathing resort, and those of Rockaway and others to the east, are brought so near by quick summer trains as to seem like immediate suburbs of the city. The Great Ice-floe of January, 1S93. Brooklyn is divided into twenty-eight wards ; but more interesting to the general observer of the city are those historical and social divisions which every city acquires in the course of its natural growth. To the south of lower Fulton street the old thoroughfares of this region rise by a steep grade to a plateau which, maintaining the level reached by Fulton street after a climb of nearly a mile, runs to the edge of a bluff overlooking the river and bay. The residential region covering this plateau is known as the Heights, and is by history and development the especially artistocratic region of the city. There are more beautiful THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Montague Street Hill and Wall Street Ferry. avenues, and there is more sumpt- uous architecture in other parts of the city ; but the Heights, skirted and not invaded by the streams of travel and business, retains that cultivated quiet and the " elegant repose " which be- long to regions in which the wealth of a city first establishes Itself. The houses facing Colum- bia Heights, fringing the bluff, recall the Back Bay region of Boston. Their gardens terrace the cliff and look down upon Fur- man street far below, and out over the long line of storage houses and the forest of shipping. Montague street, running down to Wall street ferry, passes, at its lower end, through a deep cutting over which is a bridge for the traffic above. Southeasterly from the Heights extends the growing section known as South Brooklyn, penetrated by the Gowanus Canal and touching Greenwood cemetery and Prospect Park. The avenues and cross streets immediately westward of Prospect Park are among the handsomest in the city. The high ground in the heart of the city, beyond Washington Park, east of the Heights and north of Prospect Park, is generally described as the Hill, and is famed for its elegance as a residential section, for the beauty of its churches, and chiefly, perhaps, for Clinton avenue, with its fine trees, its " detached " mansions and its dooryard gardens. Beyond the Hill is the Bedford region, acquiring its title from the early village of the same name. Farther to the east is the broad district, covered by the extraordinary growth of recent years, which receives the loosely- defined title of New Brooklyn. The Eastern District has three local names for its principal sections. The Williamsburg region colloquially includes the nineteenth ward, the region of fine residences beyond the Wallabout, the district of the great sugar refineries and the chief business division on this side of the city, with the Broadway ferries for its focal point. Bushwick is the name given to the district approxi- mating the area of the old village of the same name. This district contains some of the most famous breweries in the state. It has an immense German population. The sixteenth ward, which has some- tmies been called " Dutchtown," boasts of a population of over 60,000 people, and with its singing halls, ball rooms, summer gardens, theatres and merry-go-rounds, is one of the most picturesque and interesting portions of the city. To the extreme north, ad- joining Newtown Creeli and Long Island City be yond, is the region called Greenpoint, which in many respects seems like a city by itself. It com- poses the seventeenth ward of Brooklyn, and its principal business inter- ests are on the water- front. Brooklyn's longest and most important thor- oughfare is Fulton street. We have seen, in the pre- ceding historical section, how interesting have been the traditions of this old road line. To-day it is the main business thor- oughfare of the city, a Pierrepont Place, Leading to Columbia Heights. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 189 great mart of trade, bristling with thriving shops, among these those marvellous bazars, providing all things for all people, which are so interesting a feature of modern trade. A little less than a mile from the ferry, at the point where the busy shopping region begins, opens the rectangle in which are the gray, Ionic mass of the city hall, half an acre of lawn with a fountain and the statue of Henry Ward Beecher. Behind the city hall, on Joralemon street and facing the triangle, are the municipal office building, the county court house, two marble structures, and the hall of records of white limestone, all of excellent though not especially distinguished architectural style. These buildings are alive with business between ten o'clock in the morning and three in the afternoon on week days. Police head- . quarters are in the municipal building, with certain other departments of the city government, while the mayor's office and the common council chamber, as the meeting-place of the city aldermen is called, are in the more venerable city hall. The city and county politicians find a congenial congregating place on the sidewalk in front of the municipal building and the court house, and the fact of this rendezvous supplies an element of picturesque interest to a region which naturally has much of civic importance. Legal interests being so largely centralized in this section, the city hall triangle inevitably includes a number of large office buildings. Gathered at this point are also many of the city's more prominent commercial banks, insurance and trust companies, and other financial institutions. Four important streets branch from the head of the triangle : Myrtle avenue, a business thoroughfare of modest and miscellaneous shops, running eastward for FuRMAN Street, and Embankment under Columbia Heights. over four miles to the city line ; Court street, a business thoroughfare of a high class, forming the west side of the triangle and running southwesterly to Gowanus Bay ; Montague street, crossing the Heights, near the head of which are the Academy of Music, the building of the Brooklyn Art Association, the Real Estate Exchange and the Brooklyn Library ; and Washington street, one of the formerly aristocratic thoroughfares of Brooklyn, upon which now stand the Federal building, the Columbia Theatre, the finest playhouse in the city, and the Eagle building. On the west side of lower Washington street once rose the solid and stately columns of the Brooklyn Institute. This old building, injured by fire in 1890, was after- ward torn down with other buildings on this side of the street to make way for the approach to the bridge, now in course of construction. From Fulton street, half a mile or more above the city hall, Flatbush avenue branches to the southeast and runs in a straight line until it reaches the Flatbush road, beyond the limits of the city. Midway, Flat- bush avenue passes through Prospect Park plaza, possibly the most imposing centre in the city. In the middle of the plaza, with flanking enclosures of trees and shrubbery, is an ornately designed fountain pool, with circular walk and a statue of Lincoln. Near the park end of the oval is the soldiers' and sailors' monument, a fine marble arch still incomplete in its decorations, although formally dedicated on Columbus day in 1892. At the foot of the oval is the main entrance to the park. At the left of the entrance is Mac- Monnies' full-length statue of J. S. T. Stranahan, to whom has been conferred the rare distinction of a public monument within his life-time. In another part of the park are bronze busts of Thomas Moore, Washing- ton Irving and John Howard Payne. ipo THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Broadway, like Fulton street, has plenty of history. It was for many years traversed by a lumbering coach which had a habit of getting stuck in the mud of the steep places-a chance which the male passen- gers took into consideration when they used to get out and walk as a means of giving the horses and the wheels an easier time. The stage was here, as in other parts of the city, succeeded by that combination of coach and car-a coach with small iron wheels-called in Washington a "carette." Broadway differed from Fulton street in being a long time over deciding where it would start. Five streets converged at its lower bend, and the present Division avenue came so near being chosen to be lower Broadway that one house bears an inserted tablet with the name "Broadway." South Seventh street was finally chosen for lower Broadway, and the whole thoroughfare was widened. The marble or other stone tablets set into corner houses to give the names of the intersecting streets are often misleading by reason of changes in the names. Thus at one point in the Eastern District the tablet of one corner says " Lewis avenue ; " the tablet of the opposite corner, " Second street," while the ac- tual name of the street to-day is Wythe avenue. Many Brooklyn streets have an exceedingly broken line, as in the case of Bedford avenue, which, begin- ning at Greenpoint, runs like an elon- gated " S " until it reaches the opposite end of the city near Prospect Park. This is generally the result of an effort to simplify the street nomenclature, although it often results in some con- fusion. The most symmetrical sections of the city are South Brooklyn and New Brooklyn ; the least symmetrical sections are in the old " Breuckelen " and Williamsburg regions. At various places remain some peculiar signs of the times of the early farming days and the old roads. About two miles up town from the city hall, on Putnam avenue nearly opposite Ormond place, three houses, standing with their faces at an acute angle to Putnam avenue, commemorate the old Clove Road on which they were originally located. Shade trees are a familiar and charming feature of Brooklyn streets. Many streets are luxuriously lined with foliage, and there is often an effort to keep neat stretches of grass at the curb between the trees. Romping children, who give these grass strips a hard life, have generally combined to make unfenced court- yard gardens an infeasible undertaking in Brooklyn; but light iron fences, low and unobstructive, exhibit the full beauty of many very attractive garden devices. On the older streets linger many signs of the colonial and later periods. The sight of a Dutch house, with gracefully curved roof and cozy porch, in the midst of bustling Fulton street, is one of the anomalies of the city vistas. Sometimes the clatter of a smithy is heard coming from the grimy interior of a house whose tall columns recall the period of classical woodwork in the forties. Here and there street cuttings have left old houses twenty or thirty feet above the new grade. Wooden houses are still moved from place to place as they are elbowed by the march of improvement, and even the colonnaded mansions of the mid- century are lifted to permit of the building of a store below. The fire regulations prohibiting the further erection of wooden houses now cover nearly all parts of the city. Here and there, too, a wooden water- ing-trough on hitching-post, or a wooden well-pump, recall the earlier life of the city. It long ago became necessary to forbid the use of street well-pumps which, as the city became populous, were continually being poisoned by drainage. The pumps belonged to the distinctively provincial period of Brooklyn's growth, and their disappearance obliterates a picturesque element of street life. The substitution of electric lights for gas, and the consequent disuse of the iron lamp posts, which when dismantled only serve to lonesomely announce the names of streets, offer another reminder of the change forever going on. The lamplighter still scurries on his round, but he does not seem so interesting a figure as the lamplighter of the days when street lamps had the dignity of being the only source of illumination. Moreover he has no longer his stubby ladder and his matches ; he carries a patented wind-protected lighting-stick, with which the perfor- marice becomes unromantic and perfunctory. An occasional figure, like an occasional landmark, recalls the earlier days of the city. The portly gentleman with an awful voice, who with the aid of a massive wooden Brooklyn Heights : Pierrefont street, west from Henry. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 191 yoke peddled hot soup from two suspended buckets, has gone forever. The soap-fat man is seldom if ever heard ; but the fish peddlers are much as of yore, and the hand-organ multiplies, though not so rapidly as the " gutter band," which displays the greatest energy and theprofoundest musical feeling in regions where beer saloons are presided over by citizens of generous disposition. The modern scissors grinder has a bell, or a horn, where he has not a bugle on which he sounds a "taps" which is all his own. The lungs of the hawker are possibly as good in one era and in one city as in another. Certainly it is impossible to fancy a species of fruit cart peddler more thrillingly vociferous than that seen and heard in many sections of Brooklyn. In what lies below the surface of its streets, Brooklyn is as efficiently supplied as in other respects with the physical necessities of a great city. For many years, during a transition period in the develop- ment of its sewerage system, certain sections were disturbed by a sewer overflow in times of heavy rain. In one " flooded district," the citizens organized a life-boat corps that was not entirely ironical. The raising of street grades and the improvement of the sewerage system has placed the city in excellent condition as regards this important element of sanitary precaution. By the completion of the immense Greene avenue relief sewer, emptying into Gowanus Canal, the final precaution was taken against damage by overflow. This sewer, which only receives drainage in case of an undue rise in the main system, is of fifteen feet internal diameter, and the largest in the world outside of Paris. The first water supply of the city was from wells, which yielded generously in all parts of the city. The early efforts to supply a pipe system from the Long Island water-shed were met with much indiff'erence and opposition. It was not until 1858 that the Ridgewood reservoir to the east of the city was ready to receive water. The sources of its supply were originally Jamaica pond, Clear Stream pond. Valley Stream pond, Rockville pond and Hempstead pond. The area of the Ridgewood reservoir is over fifty acres, and its capacity exceeds 300,000,000 gallons. Extraordinary extensions of the system have been made necessary by the rapid growth of the city's population, which in 1834, at the time of the first movement toward a city water supply, was but 23,000, but which is now close upon a million. From a drainage of Montague Street, from Fulton and Court. seventy-four square miles, the Brooklyn water supply is sent out from the Ridgewood reservoir through four mains, the last of which was completed in 1891, and went into use in April, 1892, and which insure a daily delivery of 25,000,000 gallons. There has been an additional reservoir near the main entrance to Prospect Park, which is superseded to a great extent by a new high service water-tower, cutting a conspicuous figure in the city's outlines at this point, and designed to insure a force of water in the highest residences of this high region. 192 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Brooklyn's system of government emphasizes the principles of centralizing responsibility in the occupant of the chief elective office. The mayor appoints the city assessors, the members of the board of education, the heads of the departments of city works, of buildings, of health, of fire, of parks, of police and excise, etc. The board of aldermen is composed of nineteen members, seven aldermen-at-large, and twelve district aldermen. The city ^^HnBB&l^ represents so large a proportion of «^H^nwt': Kings County that the county officers occupy a particularly intimate rela- tion to the government of the city. A supervisor-at-large is associated with a board of thirty members. The city police department is headed by _ ii^iMk.^ ^ a a commissioner of police and excise, I'M ■^(^JhBH fa .rf^^^^^. Z^ a appointed by the mayor. This offi- ?S*f*,^^^ SWmlMMBJIji.^ ""f ili m JHBBBmIiJ OH W^" ' "* cial has sole control of the police. J I ■ > £a. P,t'^Sil^^^Bli^S«'i_.iB. -I^^^^^^^KsM^iiBMH In matters of excise he has two asso- ciates, who, with him, form a board of excise. The city is divided into twenty-two police precincts, each presided oyer by a captain, who has sergeants, and detective-sergeants, roundsmen and patrolmen under his direction. The patrolmen number over a thousand. In former days, the bringing in of drunken and dis- orderly persons was one of the most shocking features of street life. Often a ragman's cart would be the vehicle in which an unconscious wretch would be conveyed to the lock-up, the city recognizing the rag- man's service by a payment of fifty cents in each case. Nowadays the patrol-wagon supplies a more decent and sightly method of carrying out the necessary functions of the police service. The city fire department comprises thirty-two engine com- panies and twelve hook-and-Iadder companies, each under a foreman and subject to the direction of district engineers. Besides these, there are two fire-boats for service along the water-front. A call from an alarm box brings a district engineer and the companies in the district in which the alarm is sounded. Further calls sent to headquarters bring out reinforcements from other districts. A fire bell hangs in the city hall, and another hangs in a high observation tower in the Fourteenth ward. These relics of the past are superseded by the newer method of giving alarms, yet the old observation tower has been kept in com- mission, largely, it is probable, from a deference to a public sentiment in the wide section of the city swept by the watchman's glass, which has been ready to remonstrate against the silencing of the bell. The county jail is on Raymond street. The penitentiary and its grounds, covering the space of two blocks, is on the outskirts of the city, about three-quarters of a mile eastward from Prospect Park. Pris- oners committed for thirty days or over are sent to the penitentiary. Thus " twenty-nine days " is a familiar sentence for offenders who are not deemed deserving of commitment to the penitentiary, with its obligatory labors. The county almshouse, baby ward, small-pox pavilions and insane asylum are at Flat- bush ; public charities and corrections are under the charge of three commissioners. The private charities of the city include a list of charities representing every phase of benevolent activity. In addition to private sources of income many of these organized charities receive specific government aid under charter, as well as a certain division of the moneys collected under the excise In the Shopping District— Fulton Street. BROOKLYN OF tO-DAY. 193 taxation in accordance with the number of individuals benefited by the institution receiving aid. The hospitals, dispensaries, " homes," training-schools, day nurseries, employment bureaus, work exchanges and other philanthropic enterprises are at this time exhibiting much activity ; many fine new buildings have been reared and are being reared to give accommodations to the institutions already in existence, while the organization of new ones is rapidly covering fields hitherto not specially provided for. The city's public school system, under the control of a board of education, whose members are appointed by the mayor, has made great strides in recent years, but although the city has now over eighty day schools it scarcely has been able to keep pace with the rapid increase in the school-going population, which now numbers 100,000. Nearly a score of evening schools are active in the winter months. The Flatbush Avenue, above Junction with Fulton Street. girls' high school on Nostrand avenue, and the boys' high school at Putnam and Marcy avenues are structures of architectural beauty and excellent equipment. Elements of the kindergarten system are being introduced into the lower classes of the schools, and a normal training-school is among the newer projects for the enlarged scope of an already strong educational system. Teachers receive their licenses from the superintendent of public instruction, a director chosen by the board, upon whom devolves many responsibilities in the arrangement of educational methods. The public school system is brilliantly sup- plemented by the private educational institutions, which include three large non-sectarian colleges — the Packer Institute, for girls, on Joralemon street ; the Polytechnic Institute, for boys, on Livingston street ; and the Adelphi Academy, for both sexes, on Lafayette avenue; and two large Roman Catholic schools, St. Francis' College on Baltic street, and St. Johns' College onWilloughby avenue. Besides these the Pratt Institute and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences furnish additional opportunities of peculiar advantage. The proportion between the number of its churches and the extent of its population once gave Brooklyn the title of the " City of Churches." In the growth of the city this proportion has not been preserved to an extent sufficient to justify the permanence of the title. The title, if there must be one, of " City of Homes," now seems nearer the mark. But the number of Brooklyn's churches and distinctively religious societies and institutions is great enough to indicate very clearly the disposition of the city to support institutions of this class. There are 366 churches in the city ; the present number of parishioners and church members has been estimated at over a third of a million and the value of church property almost reaches twenty millions of dollars. In many respects, the purely modern alliance between the church and the press is nowhere more marked than in Brooklyn. Brooklyn's representation in the state National Guard comprises four regiments, a signal corps and a battery, forming, with the 17th Separate Company of Flushing, the 2d Brigade of the state. The 23d 194 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Prospect Park Plaza. Regiment is often mentioned with tlie 7th of New York city as a " crack " regiment. It is the strongest in numbers among Brooklyn military organizations. The city armories during the winter are the scene of many gay social entertainments. Being to so great an extent a city of homes, Brooklyn's social life has developed along those lines which are inevitably marked out by a strong domestic bias. In cities where the idea of the home is not so strongly emphasized by local conditions, society will be found entertaining itself in a metropolitan fashion. In New York, for example, the drift of social entertainments is always likely to be in a cosmopolitan direction. The club life of the two cities illustrate this difference as interestingly as anything might. In New York the club has not always a discernible association with the home. In Brooklyn it is impossible that the club should avoid an intimate partnership. Social life in Brooklyn is in a peculiar and universal sense interwoven with the life of the churches. Probably in no city of the Union are the churches to the same extent centres of social life and social influence. The fact has its influence upon the churches and its influence upon society. There are many instances, also, of the extent to which the churches are con- servators of Brooklyn's intellectual progress. The Brooklyn Ethical Association, which has made some of the most important contributions to the study of evolution that have been furnished by students on this side of the Atlantic, holds its meetings in one of the churches. Other societies of scarcely lesser impor- tance have had their origin in the atmosphere of church life. Toward literature and the fine arts Brooklyn shows a most cordial disposition. The city shelters many writers of distinction, more than one of whom are elsewhere supposed to be residents of New York city. Of literary clubs there are many; some of them ambitious in aim and in extent of membership; but most of them partaking of the quietly studious and homelike character, noted in other local societies for different purposes. There are numerous reading clubs, as well as science and language classes. The Cercle Parisieii is a society devoted to the study of French conversation. Other clubs are devoted to German and to the classic tongues. The Tabard, a club of writers, finds the itinerant principle in keeping with the city's habits. The same seems to be true of Mrs. Field's literary club. A few organizations, like the Bryant Literary Society, have made a success of the lyceum plan. Some brilliant contributions to lit- erary culture have been made under the auspices of the Long Island Historical Society and the Brooklyn Library. The former with its fine accumulations has been seconded in the preservation of local historical material and traditions by the Society of Old Brooklynites, and of late years there has been an interesting development of what at one time the city seemed to lack — a spirit of interest and pride in local reminis- cence. Brooklyn is rightly regarded as one of the most musical cities on the continent. The extent to which church music has been cultivated, has doubtless had much to do with the advance of musical taste in the community. Emma Thursby is one of many singers of the higher class who have been graduated BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 195 Corner of Washington and Greene Avenues. from the city's choirs. The brilliant career of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society, organized in 1857, is one of the marks of culture upon which all Brooklynites agree to congratulate themselves. In the musical director- ship of this society Theodore Thomas was long an interesting figure in Brooklyn's winter life. It has often been said that the audiences at the Philharmonic concerts are not to be excelled for refinement and distinc- tion anywhere in America. The city has made an exceptional record in the success of its choral societies. Some of these, like the Apollo and the Amphion, are choruses of men. The Cecilia Society, the public schools, and the Brooklyn Choral Society are made up of both sexes. Naturally the large German population of Brooklyn has had an important influence upon the development of musical interests. The United Singers of Brooklyn, representing many societies and a membership of probably 1,500, is a powerful factor. The Arion Society, the Brooklyn Maennerchor, the Saengerbund, the Zoellner Maennerchor and other organizations of flourishing member- ship, make the winter season interestingly active. The Euterpe chorus and orchestra has not only brought together both voice and instrument from the ranks of the amateur performers, but has availed itself of the skill of both men and women instrumentalists. In opportunities for musical education the city is well provided. Music is taught in the public schools, and the colleges and conservatories have ample resources. A conspicuous feature of the concert season is the entertainments by the pupils of private instructors and public academies. Some of the finest art collections in the United States are housed in Brooklyn. When the museum of the Brooklyn Institute is completed its activities are likely to be enriched in due time by many of these collections, the presence of which has facilitated on various occasions the formation of highly interesting and educational loan exhibitions. While in its public exhibitions the Brooklyn Art Association has seriously felt the heavy competition of New York's displays, it has, under a provision of its charter, main- tained a free art school in the Montague street building, and otherwise endeavored to advance the art interests of the city. In the same galleries the Brooklyn Art Club, an organization wholly composed of artists, has of recent years held successful exhibi- tions. The Brooklyn Art Guild, corresponding in character to the Art Stu- dents' League in New York, was recently ab- sorbed by the school of the Art Association. Many of the prominent local collectors are repre- sented in the Rembrandt Club, a society of connois- seurs, meeting privately to hear lectures and to hold exhibitions. In the interesting phase of art progress represented by photography, Brooklyn has been conspicuous. The Academy of Photog- raphy, to the skill of whose members the present vol- ume owes many of its Clinton Avenue, Looking North from Lafayette Avenue. embellishments, IS the t.^j'^ ^I 'y^^'j- J--' . -,_ 196 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. oldest society. Another prominent society of the same cast is the Department of Photography in the Brooklyn Institute. Many of the more important of the business interests of the city have been sketched in the scrutiny of the water-front. Between 1880 and 1890 the number of manufacturing establishments reported in the census was more than doubled, the last census showing 10,561, representing 229 different industries, and an invested capital of nearly $126,000,000. Among particular industries chemical establishments lead, with an invested capital of 18,483,835. Sugar re- fining establishments follow, with a capital of $3,999,510. The roasting and grinding of coffee and spice, confectionery making, the working of cordage and twine, and slaughter- ing and other leading industries, together with 169 foundries and machine-shops, rep- resent an aggregate capital of $13,725,518. These figures have, of course, all materially increased since 1890. The banking and financial institutions of the city have shown great enterprise within recent years and give every sign of pros- perity at this time. With twenty-one banks of deposit, over a dozen savings banks, three safe deposit companies and eight trust com- panies, the city is well furnished with finan- cial machinery. Cooperative, "building-loan" The Great Sewer Tunnel under Greene Avenue. j 1 • j j ■ ,.■ „„™ <- -, u„ „ „ and kmdred organizations seem to have a particular prominence in the city, and to enjoy an exceptional prosperity. The development of real estate values and of realty business interests in the city has rarely been par- alleled. Such rapid advances and fortunes so speedily made have seldom been equalled except in towns of mushroom character, where a "boom" was followed by a decline; but in Brooklyn the growth and enhancement of values have been sound and permanent. A generation ago, the business of real estate agency and property speculation was an inconsiderable item; to-day it is one of the very foremost features of the city's character and there is much good reason for the claim that no city suburbs afford better oppor- tunities for real estate investment than those of Brooklyn. The judiciary of the city is represented by eight superior courts, besides two United States courts, six police courts and three civil courts, all presided over by a total number of twenty-three magistrates. The legal profession includes many men of national reputation and some of the most famous cases in the annals of the law have been tried at the Brooklyn bar. In politics Brooklyn returns a Democratic majority which varies from six to ten thousand in municipal elections and from twelve to twenty-five thousand in state and national elections. The city's influence in the field of federal and state politics has been second only to that of New York and it is always considered of momentous importance. In the realm of athletics and sports Brooklyn has a reputation second to that of no city in the country. It is the home of more racing, yachting, athletic and sport- -ing associations of diverse kinds than any other city. Here the records in various lines have been broken again and again; Brooklyn cham- pions have figured in almost every class of sports and the number of horse races, ath- letic contests, boxing tour- naments, etc., of national importance which occur here every year make good the The Fire Boat "Seth Low." BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 197 city's reputation of having done as much as any city in the country for the encouragement and development of sports and athletics. The population of Brooklyn, as fixed by the federal census of 1890, was 804,476; according to the police census, made subsequently in the same year, it was 853,945, and by the state census of 1892, it was 955,268. The population in January, 1893, as estimated in the health department, is over 978,000. In population as in manufactures Brooklyn stands fourth among American cities. It is in every sense a metropolis, and in a number of various important respects it is foremost among all its sister cities. Yet the last fact is one that is not generally realized until the actual figures are arrayed for comparison, and this will be done in the succeeding chapters, each devoted to some especial feature of the city's life. Brooklynites have abundant means of traversing the interior of the city. One of the perennial jokes of the New Yorker is the incomprehensibility of the Brooklyn elevated railroad system. This is really a compliment to this system, for the joke is based upon the amplitude and varied directions of the lines. New York lines adjust themselves to the long parallel of the main thoroughfares. Brooklyn lines follow the fan lines of the street system, and by a system of transfers make it possible for a passenger to ride a great distance on one fare, and in a great many different directions. The two general systems now cover- ing the city are controlled by the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company. A third company, the Fulton Elevated Railroad Company, is building a road from Fulton and Sackman streets, at the eastern end of the city, to run in a southwesterly direction to the city line. So many Brooklyn people have busi- ness on the other side of the river that the quick transit of the elevated or some equivalent system is absolutely necessary to the successful extension of the city. At this writing the elevated system is confront- GowANUs Canal — Drawbridge at Ninth Street. ing a new rivalry in the introduction of electricity on the surface lines. In surface railways Brooklyn is very well provided. It is true of these as of the street system that they follow the form of two great fans, Fulton street and Broadway being the points of radiation. Nearly fifty lines of street cars, managed by six companies, are now carrying passengers by horse, cable and electric (trolley) power. Many transfer stations facilitate convenient travel upon lines crossing one another. Brooklyn street-cars, unlike those of New York, are uniformly heated, Brooklyn has preceded New York in many material reforms in the street car service, not to mention various minor advances, like the introduction of the double-bell signal for start- ing, and a bell register at the head of the car as the prevailing method of recording the fares collected. The average " headway," that is, the average period of time between street cars, is three minutes. The average rate of travel on horse cars is six miles an hour; on trolley and cable cars about seven miles an hour. Last year the number of passengers carried by the various railroads of Brooklyn and vicinity was 189,845,332, an increase of 15,653,499 over the preceding year. Over seventy-eight millions of these passengers were carried by the Brooklyn City Road, the elevated roads accommodating about fifty millions of the remainder, and the balance were passengers on the cars of the smaller corporations. Over ten thousand employees are in the pay of different Brooklyn railroad corporations, their wages amounting annually to millions of dollars. Toward the close of the year 1892 occurred the beginnings of a most significant movement in regard to the surface railways of the city. A corporation, under the name of the Brooklyn Traction Company, began the process of gaining a controlling interest in the various companies, and the prospect at this writing is that before long all the lines in the city will be under the direction of one consolidated company igS THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The principal horse-car lines in the city, and the majority of all of them, are owned and operated by the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, and few corporations in the United States control street-car systems more extensive in all their ramifications than this company. Its property includes twenty-seven distinct lines, and the capital invested represents the aggregate sum of $12,000,000. It operates 184.40 miles of track, and employs horse, steam and electric power. The lines which it controls are the Bushwick avenue; Court street; Calvary cemetery; Cross-town; Cypress Hills (steam); Flatbush; Flushing avenue; Fort Hamilton (electric); Fulton street; Furman street; Green and Gates avenues; Grand street; Greenpoint; Lorimer street; Hamilton avenue (electric); Knickerbocker avenue; Lee and Nostrand avenues; Lutheran cemetery (steam); Meeker avenue; Myrtle avenue; Putnam avenue; Prospect Park and Holy Cross cemetery; Second avenue (electric); Third avenue (electric); Tompkins avenue; Union avenue and Richmond Hill (steam). Many of these separate routes are made inter-communicant by the adoption of the transfer system. The Brooklyn City Railroad Company filed articles of association and became a corporate body on December 17, 1853, the capital authorized being $2,500,000. The first directors were Seymour L. Husted, Charles Whitson, Whitson Oakley, William Burden, John Killmer, J. O. Whitehouse, George S. Howland, Thomas J. Cochran, Jeremiah Johnson, George L. Bennett, Henry N. Conklin, Thomas Brooks and Henry C. Murphy. In 1858 the company erected the office building on lower Fulton street, which it occupied until June 25, 1892, when it moved to the new structure which it built on the corner of Montague and Clinton streets, on a site that once formed part of the old Pierrepont farm. This building, one of the most imposing in Brooklyn, is completely fire-proof. The exterior aspect presents a pleasing lightness of design and finish; the material utilized in the construction of the fagade is flesh-colored brick. It contains five stories and basement. The first floor is devoted to the executive departments of the company. There is a safe deposit vault which is built up from the cellar with walls of solid masonry two feet thick. The floor is mosaic, while the partitions that divide the clerks' departments are of Eschaillon marble, highly polished and surmounted by brass and nickel railings with grill-work and metal gates. The front vestibule is finished in Numid^an marble, with trimmings of genuine bronze; the inner vestibule is finished in white Italian marble of purest hue, and trimmed in gold. The halls and staircases are wain- scoted to the height of five feet in Italian marble, resting on a base of Tennessee marble. The halls are floored in marble mosaic patterns. The walls are decorated in softened tints of lemon, buff and sage green, with ornaments of cream color and with cornice and ceiling finish of plaster relief-work. In the centre of the building there is an open court for lighting purposes. The staircase, of light cast iron, is ornamented and has polished brass grills and white marble steps, while the elevator car is of light wrought iron-work. All the iron-work of the staircase and elevator shaft is colored white, with porcelain and gold finish. The floors above the first are arranged for office purposes, and apartments can be let either singly An Eastern District Centre — Corner of Bedford and Division Avenues. Brooklyn City Rail Road Company Building. 200 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. or en suite. There are sixteen offices on each floor, all well lighted and finished in the most elaborate fashion. The entire building is heated by steam and lighted by electricity. The present equipment of the company consists of 813 box cars, 714 open cars, 76 motor cars, 29 steam motors and 5,587 horses; and there are 3,870 employees. During the year ending June 30, 1892, the number of passengers carried was 78,500,000. The present iDificers of the corporation are: Daniel F. Lewis, president; H. M. Thompson, secretary and treas- urer; Crowell Hadden, auditor; Thomas P. Swin, assistant secretary and treasurer. The presidents who have held office from the inception of the company have been: Seymour L. Husted, H. W. Conklin, Amos P. Stanton, Alexander Studwell, Charles C. Betts, Henry R. Pierson, Thomas Sullivan, William H. Hazzard and Daniel F. Lewis. The secretaries who held office have been: John Kellum, George L. Bennett, George B. Howland, Charles C. Betts, Charles W. Betts, Charles Rishmore, William B. Lewis, Daniel F. Lewis and H. M. Thompson. The list of treasurers includes: W. H. Carr, John Schenck, Purcell Cook, Charles C Betts, Fisher Howe, Daniel F. Lewis, Crowell Hadden and H. M. Thompson. Men who stand at the helm of gigantic corporative interests and have climbed to success on the ladder of persevering effort naturally claim a large share of public attention in communities where prosperity depends upon individual and associative enterprise. Daniel F. Lewis is one of those whose educa- tion has been chiefly that afforded by the best of all teachers, experience. He learned how to direct by first acquiring the ability and willingness to serve, and as the controlling element in an important corpora- tion, his reputation has become something more than local. The present splendid equipment of the lines which he manages is a matter of gratification to all who regard the development of whatever pertains to Brooklyn's material advantage. Mr. Lewis began his association with the Brooklyn City Railroad as a ticket agent, and after a year's service in this capacity he was given a clerkship under his father, who had lately been elected secretary of the corporation. His success in his new position was pronounced, and in 1880 he was made assistant secretary. Two years later he was elected treasurer; in 1883 he became a director in the company, and in 1884 succeeded to the office of secretary, which the demise of his father rendered vacant and which he continued to hold in conjunction with that of treasurer Two years later, when Mr. Hazzard resigned the presidency of the company, Mr. Lewis was chosen as his successor. The wisdom of placing him in a position which demanded executive capabilities of greater measure than the ordinary was demonstrated the very day after his election, when a big strike occurred among the vast army of employees under his control. He gauged the situation with ready comprehensive- ness, and twenty-four hours after the difficulty had assumed active expression he had adjusted all grievances between the corporation and its employees, and everything was moving with its accustomed clockwork regularity. Not only in this particular instance has Mr. Lewis evidenced his qualifications for directing the affairs of a corporation in perilous straits, but his conduct as president has convinced the public that he believes prevention better than cure and his treatment of employees has been such that friction is avoided and strikes are unknown on the lines of the Brooklyn City Railroad. Since Mr. Lewis became president, the corporation has more than doubled its mileage and increased its efficiency in numerous ways especially in substituting electricity for horse-power on several of its most important lines. Daniel F. Lewis is a native of this city, where he was born on March 28, 1849. He was educated at Public School No. 3, and left there when he was thirteen. He terminated his schooling at this early age in deference to the wish of his father, who believed that the boy would derive more advantage from at least a temporary contact with the practical side of life. William B. Lewis, the father, was at that time state treasurer under Gov- ernor Horatio Seymour, and the son received a position in his office at Albany. He remained there a year and became so thoroughly imbued with a fondness for business that all thoughts of his returning to school were abandoned. At the end of this period of service with his father he obtained a situation in a whole- sale drug establishment in New York, where he worked four years. While so engaged he continued his studies with such close application that the continuous confinement began to tell seriously upon his health. From this position he passed to his first association with the corporation over which he now presides. Mr. Lewis is of French and Welsh extraction. His father's ancestors emigrated from Wales to Hempstead, L. L, and thence to Brooklyn, several generations ago. His grandfather. Shepherd Lewis, was a prominent builder in this city and handled many important contracts. His father, William B. Lewis besides his association with state politics, was identified with many movements of local importance. He was one of the original water commissioners of Brooklyn and was afterwards elected comptroller. Mr. Lewis's ancestors on his mother's side embarked from France many years ago, and early in the history of this country settled in Portsmouth, N. H. His great-grandfather was Captain Daniel Fernald, who served in the United States army during the war of 1776. His uncle, Daniel F. Fernald, has resided in Brooklyn for a period of nearly seventy years. He was an old insurance man, was the Brooklyn manager of the Phenix Insurance Company, and was also president of the Montauk Insurance Company for some years before that organization went out of business. Mr. Lewis has many important interests beyond those connected with the management of the Brooklyn City railroad. He is president of the Brooklyn Heights ^_/^:^v7%/S^. 202 THE EACxLE AND BROOKLYN. Railroad Company, the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, and is a member of the board of trustees and of the executive committee of the People's Trust Company. He is a director of the Long Island Bank, trustee and treasurer of the Lewis & Fowler Manufacturing Company, and trustee of the Brooklyn Savings Bank. He is treasurer of the United States Projectile Company and was president in 1890 and 1891 of the Street Railway Association of New York State. He belongs to the Hamilton, Carleton, and Marine and Field clubs, and to the Engineers' Club of New York. The second largest surface-railway corporation is what was known as the Atlantic Avenue Railroad Company until it was absorbed by the Brooklyn Traction Company. It controlled eleven lines, as follows : Atlantic and Third avenue (trolley), Fifth avenue and City Hall line. Fifth avenue and South Ferry line, Bergen street, Butler street. Fifteenth street, Hicks street crosstown line, Hoyt street crosstown line. Park avenue line, Seventh avenue and Vanderbilt avenue lines. William Richardson, the late president of the company, is a man whose judgment in street-railway matters has been sought after in many sections of the country. He is a son of John and Sarah Richardson, and was born in Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, England, on December 8, 1822. On September 2, 1834, in company with his father and younger brother, he sailed for America, going to Gambier, Ohio, the father securing for his son William a place in the office of the Knox County Republican, in Mount Vernon, Ohio. He was employed in several positions prior to 1840, when he left Ohio, and made his home in Albany, N. Y., where he resided for nearly a quarter of a century. Forty years ago when New York state was greatly agitated by the temperance movement, Mr. Richardson was active in organizing the Grand Division of Western New York. He was a member of the first Republican state committee in the state of New York, and in 1857 was elected clerk of the Assembly. He was reelected clerk at the sessions of 1859 and i860. For the first three weeks of the session of 1858, he acted in the dual capacity of clerk and speaker. After the adjournment of the Legislature of i860 he was employed for several months on the editorial staff of the Albany Evening Journal. On the breaking out of the civil war he was appointed additional paymaster in the United States army by President Lincoln. In November, 1864, he was appointed superintendent of the Dry Dock, East Broadway and Battery Railroad Company, in New York, and a few weeks thereafter was elected a director and made president of the company. During his term as president various lines and extensions were completed and the company's receipts were increased from $500 to $2,000 a day. In 1867 he resigned that office, and became sole lessee and pro- prietor of the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad for a term of forty years. The equipment of this line was in the most unsatisfactory condition, but its new lessee conducted it successfully until 1872, when a mortgage which had been made in 1855 by the Brooklyn and Jamaica Railway Company became due and was fore- closed. The property was purchased by Mr. Richardson and a corporation known as the Atlantic Avenue Railroad Company of Brooklyn was formed, with him as its president. In 1870, he was elected to the board of aldermen from a ward which had usually been Democratic, and was reelected in 1872. Six years later he was nominated by the Republicans for state senator in a Democratic district, and being defeated, he retired from active politics. In 1844 he was married to Miss Mary Freeman, daughter of James and Ann Freeman, at Albany, N. Y. Seven children have been born to them, of whom three sons and a daughter are living. Mr. Richardson is a man of strong personality and possesses executive ability in a marked degree. Holding that the good will of the public is essential to his undertakings, he promptly corrects any complaint of inattention or misconduct that is brought to his notice. The Broadway Railway Company operates five of the lines running through the Eastern District and communicating with the Western District. These are the East New York line. Cypress Hills extension, Ralph avenue line, Reid avenue line, and the Sumner avenue line. The president of this company is Edwin Beers, The Brooklyn City and Newtown Railroad Company operates the Franklin avenue line, and the DeKalb avenue (electric) line. Of this Colonel John N. Partridge is president. The Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad Company controls two trolley lines, one of which runs from Fulton Ferry to the city line on Fifteenth street, and there connects with trolley cars for Coney Island; the other trolley line runs from Hamilton Ferry through Hamilton avenue and Ninth street to Prospect Park. The short line from the Flatbush entrance of Prospect Park to Greenwood also is controlled by this company, of which Gen. H. W. Slocum is president. The line running from Hamilton Ferry to the Erie Basin is owned by a distinct company, of which Michael Murphy is president. The cable road running from the head of Montague street to Wall Street Ferry is owned by the Brooklyn Heights Railroad Company, of which Daniel F. Lewis is president. S. Spencer is president of the trolley line which runs from Manhattan cross- ing in the Twenty-sixth ward to Jamaica. The most extensive elevated railroad system in the city is that of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company, which was incorporated on May 26, 1874. On September i, 1879, the company conveyed its franchise and property to the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, as trustee, to secure the issue of its first mortgage bonds. On May 12, 1884, the first mortgage was foreclosed, and the property sold to Fred- BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 203 erick Uhlmann and others. 0;n May 29, 1884, a new company was organized, under the laws of 1873, 1874 and 1876. In the spring of 1892 the following officers were chosen: Adolf Ladenburg, president; Anthony Barrett, vice-president; Frederick Uhlmann, secretary and treasurer. The executive committee consists of Frederick Uhlmann, chairman; A. J. Hardenbergh and Simon Rothschild. In 1886, the Union Elevated Railroad Company was organized to build certain lines in the city. These lines were leased to the Brook- lyn Elevated R,ailroad Company for operation as soon as completed, and, in 1890, the two lines were con- solidated. The original Brooklyn line extended from Fulton Ferry to East New York, a distance of about seven miles. The Union lines aggregated about eleven miles, making a total of eighteen miles. The cap- ital stock of the Brooklyn was $5,000,000, and the capital stock of the Union about $8,000,000, making the present capital stock of the Brooklyn about $13,000,000. In 189Q, the Sea Side and Brooklyn Bridge Ele- vated Railroad Company was organized, and empowered to build about seven miles of line in Kings County. The construction of this last-named railroad has been commenced, and, as fast as completed, it will be leased to the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company for operation. The several routes, when completed, will have a total length of twenty-four miles and about one hundred stations. When the new bridges are Broadway and the Ferries. constructed it is expected that trains will be run to and from New York, carrying passengers from East New York, if necessary, to the North river, without change of cars. Similar connections will be made for the Hudson avenue bridge, by which passengers may, with slight if any inconvenience, be conveyed from the Myrtle avenue and South Brooklyn lines to the same point in New York city reached by the other bridge. The Kings County Elevated Railway operates over an almost straight route, seven miles long, from Fulton ferry, through Fulton street to Van Sicklen avenue, at the eastern end of the city. General James Jourdan is president of the company. Edward L. Langford is president of the Fulton Elevated Railway Company, which is building the line from Fulton and Sackman streets to the city line. The several steam railroads leading out of the city to Coney Island and points on Long Island are treated of in the chapter on Suburban Development. Eight gas and four electric illuminating companies supply Brooklyn with light. The gas companies control, in total, about six hundred miles of gas mains, and the wires of the electric companies thread a large percentage of the city's streets. There is a rapid development in methods of supplying electric lights for shops and houses in the incandescent form and in methods of supplying electricity for power. The electric company which is supplying nearly all the incandescent lights for interiors is the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, which was organized in March, 1887, with a capital of $500,000. After two years of hard work, a city franchise was obtained in November, 1888. In 1889 the capital of the company was 204 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. increased to $600,000. As soon as possible the main power station of the company was erected at 358, 360 and 362 Pearl street, and its wires were laid in its own tubes underground. The lighting system adopted for its purposes was the Edison incandescent method. After the organization of the company, the first lights supplied from its wires were placed in and around the Park Theatre. In 1890 the business of the corpora- tion had increased to such an extent that 25,000 lights were in continual operation; two years later, the number had risen to about 80,000 lights, connected by the underground conductors. In 1891 the capital was increased to $2,000,000, thus placing the company among the most important organizations in either New York or Brooklyn. The company has lately begun to furnish the motor power to factories, and at present has more than 1,000 horse-power in use; its incandescent lights are used in Brooklyn by more than one thousand private consumers. The stock of the company is almost entirely in the hands of Brooklyn capitalists. The dividends paid are on a par with those yielded by the most prosperous corporations in this country. The original and principal power station of the company is in a structure which has a frontage of seventy-four feet and a depth of eighty-nine feet, two inches; it is three stories in height and was built from the plans of architect George L. Morse, who selected the solid simplicity of the Romanesque style as most suitable for the purpose. The walls and foundation were reared with every care necessary to secure mason work of the best description, while the floors and their supports were made of iron, thus rendering the building as completely fire-proof as the science of modern construction would permit. The materials used in the erection of the main facade are CoUenbergh brick, Belleville brownstone and terra cotta. Conspicuous features of the building are the twin chimneys, which rise to the height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet above the street level, and are visible over a wide stretch of territory. In the front section of the ground-floor are situated the high-speed engines, from which all the power of the great plant is derived; in the departments to the rear all the steam generators have been placed, all of which are non-explosive. Under the checkered iron plate floor of the engine-room, in the basement, is a perfect labyrinth of piping, including also the various fixtures and subordinate parts of the plant. The front Power Station of Edison Electric Illuminating Company, Pearl Street. section of the second story is occupied by the dynamos, with the intricate switching and regulating devices. All this portion of the interior can be viewed from an iron observation gallery, adjacent to the main stair- case and accessible to the public. The rear section of the second story is entirely given over to coal storage-rooms, from which the fuel is fed, by gravity, to the boiler-rooms. The third story contains the Ethan Allen Doty. business and executive offices and various working and store rooms. The building is supplied with electrical passenger and freight elevators, and is equipped throughout with every convenience which architectural skill and science could suggest. Besides this station, the company has built others in different localities. There is a large one near the corner of Lexington and Cirand avenues, and another on Guinnett street, near Tompkins avenue, which in every particular rival the best electric light stations in the world. The present officials of the company are: Ethan Allen Doty, president; Edwin Packard, vice-president; Royal C. Peabody, secretary and treasurer. The following constitute the board of directors: E. Legrand Beers, Charles E. Crowell, Ethan Allen Doty, Frank S. Hastings, C. N. Hoagland, Darwin R. James, J. G. Jenkins, Martin Joost, Edwin Packard, Lowell M. Palmer, George F. Peabody, Charles M. Pratt and George H. Southard. Ethan Allen Dotv, president of the Edison Electric Illuminating Company, was born in New York city in 1837. After graduating from the public school, he entered the College of the City of New York, where he won high honors as a student. Upon leaving college, he accepted a position as a clerk m the Mercantile Library, which has since become the present Brooklyn Library, and remained with that mstitu- tion about fifteen months. He then became the librarian of the Brooklyn Athenasum. After acting in the capacity of librarian for a year, Mr. Doty entered upon his mercantile career, accepting a confidential position with Charles B. Norton & Company. In 1856 he accepted a similar position in the office of Doty & Bergen, manufacturers of paper, and one of the oldest concerns of its character in New York. His father, Warren S. Doty, was the senior member of this firm. The firm was originally Pollock & Doty, and was established in 1839; later it became Doty cV Jones, and in 1845 it became Doty & Bergen. ^Vhen Warren S. Doty died, in 1857, his son succeeded to his interest, and the firm continued under the old name until 1862, when it became Doty & McFarlan. In 1889 it was changed to the present firm of Doty & Scrimgeour. In 1845, the firm of Doty & Bergen occupied the lower floor of the famous old " Rigging Building," which stood until 1850 on the site now known as 120 William street. New York. This building was the birthplace of Methodism m America. In the rigging-loft of the aged structure, the first Methodist meeting was held in 1767. Mr. Doty, in addition to managing his paper house at 70 Duane street, New York, and his paper mill at Willoughby avenue and Walworth street, Brooklyn, is interested in several busi- ness enterprises in Brooklyn and New York. He is a director of the Fifth Avenue Bank, the Franklin Safe Deposit Company, the Lafayette Insurance Company and the Journeay & Burnham Company He is a mem- ber of the Hamilton, Lincoln and Union League clubs. He served as chairman of the first civil service 2o6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. commission under Mayor Seth Low, and throughout his term of office received the commendation of all with whom he dealt. Fair and just, and with the greatest consideration for the feelings of all, he won the regard and good wishes of men irrespective of party. Although his friends have'desired him to compete for official positions, he has always declined on account of business arrangements. Mr. Doty was married in 1861 to EUie E. McFarlan of Brooklyn. Mrs. Doty is well known in Brooklyn social affairs, and takes an active interest in the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, the Homoeopathic Hospital and various other charitable institutions. Since the organization of the Edison Illuminating Company, in 1887, Royal C. Peabody has capably borne the dual responsibilities of secretary and treasurer to the company. He was born in Columbus, Ga., in the month of February, 1854. He had already studied for a time in the schools of his native ' . , ', ' town when, in 1865, he came to Brooklyn and com- pleted his education at Public School No. 15. After leaving school he went westward and spent two or three years in the newer states of the Union; he returned to the Atlantic seaboard in 187 1 and en- gaged in the hardware business with Walbridge & Co., of New York. He passed from their employ to that of the dry goods commission house of White, Payson & Company, and after a subsequent asso- ciation with the Electric Time Company, a Brooklyn corporation, he engaged in his present occupation. He is married and has one son. The conditions under which Brooklyn news- papers exist are decidedly unique, and call for wide knowledge of local requirements, as well as com- prehensive journalistic experience and ability. For not only must the news of the world be given with metropolitan promptness, exactness and thor- oughness, but the everyday happenings of the city must be chronicled with the detail and exhaustive- ness naturally demanded by a community in which the purely home and social elements form so large a part. The anomalous situation of Brooklyn, almost within sound of New York's presses, has had its influence upon journalism, as upon other phases of Brooklyn's life, and thus the city has no morning newspapers. But there are between forty and fifty newspapers and periodicals, including monthly mag- azines and weeklies, devoted to club, society and other special objects. As regards the ability with which the various local newspapers are conducted, they have no superiors, and the city is peculiarly rich in distinguished editors. The principal even- ing journals, taking them in the order of their establishment, are the Eagle (independent Democrat), the Times (Republican), the Standard-Union (Republican), the Freie Presse (independent Republican), and the Citizen (Democratic). The story of the Eagle and its owners, managers and editors has been given fully in an earlier chapter. The Times was established in 1848, and came under the control of its present editor, Bernard Peters, twenty years later. He has distinguished himself in two professions which men class among the noblest. As proprietor and editor-in-chief of the Times, he has raised that paper to the front rank of journalistic enterprises in New York state; and as pastor of All Souls Universalist Church, in this city, his work stood forth preeminent at a time when the province of a clergyman was to teach men their duty to the nation and the cause of humanity, as well as obedience to the laws of God. Mr. Peters was born in the Rhine Palatinate, in the picturesque old town of Durkheim, about twenty miles from Heidelberg, in the month of October' 1827. Seven years later, his father, John Philip Peters, emigrated to the United States, and settled in Marietta, then the pioneer town of Ohio. Here Bernard Peters passed his childhood and youth. He early displayed so much talent that his entry into one of the liberal professions was considered advisable, and, although reverses prevented him from devoting his whole time to the study of law, he managed by diligence and perseverance to acquire some mastery of its details, while attending at the same time to the duties of a clerkship in a country store. His preceptor in his law studies was Ferdinand Buell, one of the three BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 207 examiners before whom Rutherford B. Hayes subsequently quaHfied for admission to the bar. Mr. Peters did not pursue his legal studies to the end, but yielded to his own inclinations and the advice of his friends and decided to enter the ministry. He became a student in the Liberal Listitute, at Clinton, N. Y., and was ordained as a minister of the Universalist Church in 1852. His first pastorate was in the city of Cincinnati. The opening of the civil war found him occupying the pulpit of the First Universalist Church of Williamsburg, organized in 1844, the name of A\hich was changed in 1S70, to All Souls Universalist Church, and while pastor of this church his voice was raised with energy in support of those great principles which then claimed attention from the whole civilized world. His loyalty to the Lhiion and his unsparing denunciation of those hostile ele- ments which sought its disruption e.\posed him, during the riots of 1863, to the danger of personal violence. The frequent calls to speak in public which were then made upon him finally impaired his health so seriously that in 1864 he resigned his Brooklyn charge and accepted a call to Hartford, Conn., where, after a time, he assumed editorial charge of the Post. His work on that journal was able and vigorous, and, at length, he left the pulpit altogether and gave his entire attention Uy journal- ism. For a short time, in 1868, he resumed his ministerial labors and accepted a call to Pennsyl- vania, but his health once more interfered and he retired permanently from the ministry. In the autumn of 1868 he bought from George C. Bennett, founder of the Brooklyn Times, a half-interest in that paper. Six years later the affairs of that journal passed under his absolute control and his devotion to its interests has, on more than one occa- sion, induced him to refuse opportunities of public preferment. In 1S51, Mr. Peters married Camilla W. Pollock, daughter of Thomas Pollock, of West Virginia; of their five children, three survive. These are: Mrs. James A. Sperry, Mrs. William C. Bryant and Thomas Pollock Peters. The Standard-Union is the outcome of a series of newspaper changes and consolidations which occurred at intervals since the foundation of the Daily Union, in September, 1863, as a journal to reflect the senti- ments of the North during the civil war. In 1877, through the purchase of the name and good-will of the ^rt,'-?/j-, the name became the Union- Argus. Later, under the editorship of John P'oord, its old name, the Union, was resumed. Following this there were several changes in the management of the paper, until finally it was consolidated with the Standard, and its present title was adopted. Shortly after this, the new proprietor and editor, William Berri, called to the helm the present chief editor, Murat H.alstead. The virile pen of Mr. Halstead has for many years been occupied with subjects and affairs national in their scope, and his career has been notably eventful. H- has had something to do with the making of history, and di ;tinction came to him amid stirring events, but it is related that he proved a distinct failure as a worker on his father's farm, near Paddy's Run, Butler County, Ohio. 'I'here the present editor of the Standard- Union was born, on September 2, 1829. This farm had been taken up by his paternal grandfather, who emigrated there from Pasquotank County, North Carolina, Murat's father, C.riffin Halstead, being at that time an infant. Twenty-five years later, in November, 1827, the latter married the daughter of James \Villetts, who occupied a farm not far from Chillicothe, CJhio. Three children were the fruit of this union, Murat; his brother, who was captain of Company F., 79th Ohio Infantry during the war; and a sister, who married John Scott and now lives on the Paddy's Run farm, where she was born. Young Murat was taught to read and write by his mother and was then sent to ihe district school. Having acquired about all the knowledge he could get there, and " gone through the arithmetic " — a great feat in those days — he studied surveying for awhile and then attended an " academy," near by. Completing his studies there, Murat attended an institution which was called an agricultural college, the course of instruction being designed to fit boys for farm life and to render them satisfied with that kind of existence. It was while pursuing his studies here that Mr. Halstead first wrote for the papers, his contributions consisting of snake, Indian and bear stories. After being graduated from the farmer's college and successfully combating all efforts to Bernard Peters. 208 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. make a farmer of him, he went to Cincinnati in 1851. Then he beg'an writing for the press in earnest and soon laid the foundation of his reputa- tion as one of the greatest newspaper men of the ^V«j^ century. In - 1853 he began his career of nearly ^k forty years with the Cincinnati Coiniiicrcial, now ^ the Comiiicrcial-Gazettc^ serving in nearly every capacity upon tlie paper until he became its editor- in-chief, and finally its principal owner. His field of effort, however, was by no means confined to the Cincinnati paper, even from his first identifica- tion with it, for he became one of the foremost of workers in the Repulilican party and his writings and counsel became of national importance. Fre- quently he has been called to the fore-front to battle in the crises of his party, notably during the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, when he not only edited his Cincinnati paper and a campaign publica- tion in New \'ork, but also wrote reams of campaign literature for circulation throughout the country. In 1890, Mr. Halstead became editor-in-chief of the Standard-Uiiion, and in addition has done admirable work in the Cosmopolitan magazine, the Coniincrcial- Gazt-tfe, and other ])ublications. Mr. Halstead married Mary Banks, daughter of Hiram Banks, a 5iri;\T iiALSTED. wcll-known Cincinnati buslncss man. Of the twelve children born to them, all are livnig, excepting two of the nine sons. The Frcie Fresse was originally established in the Eastern District by Edward Franz Roehr, an e.x-ofificer in the army of the little principality of Reuss, (lermany, and the father of Henry Edward Roehr, the present editor of the paper. When the revolution was overthrown in 1849, the elder R(.)ehr came to America and settled in \Villiamsburg, shortly afterward sending to his wife in Schleiz, where his son Henry was born in 1841, the means with which she was to come to him with her four children. They arrived in August, 1850, and the boy, Henry, began the battle of life bv carrying news- papers. In a bookstore opened by his father on South Seventh street, now known as Broadway, he helped in the store and developed moreover a love for literature that undoubtedly determined the career in which he was destined to shine. The father's next venture was a paper called the Long Island Anzcigcr, first issued on September 2, 1854, and in this office this boy be.gan to learn the printer's trade. The Anzcigcr lived scarcely a year, being abandoned after the issue of August 23, 1855, but the printing office was firmly established, and so was a Masonic paper called Dcr Triangcl, which Mr. Roehr had begun to publisli and which he main- tained for tv,'enty-five years. In 1857 the lad went to Albany, where he worked for a short time on the Frcic Blarltei-. Next he went to Cincinnati, and in the fall of 1859 he returned t^lc, 226 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. pupil of a private scliool there until his return to Brooklyn, thirteen years ago, when he became a student at Trinity College. After finishing his studies at Trinity, he began the study of architecture with JMcKim, Mead & White, the architects of New York, from whose offices he went to Boston, where he spent two years and a half. Returning to Brooklyn, he was en- gaged by George B. Post, of New York, with whom he remained for a year, and at the expiration of that time began business on his own account. In his in- dependent venture he achieved a success which was continued after he formed the partnership now ex- isting between himself and Mr. AVallace. He is a member of the Architectural League, of New York, the Advisory Board of the Brooklyn Institute of Fine Arts, the Crescent Athletic Club and the Long Island Wheelmen. \Villiam J. Wallace is a Virginian and was born in Richmond, but his parents moved to New York city while he was a child, and he was edu- cated at the Flushing Institute and at Columbia College, where he was graduated from the architectural department in the class of 1886. His practical educa- tion in the profession was acquired by work in several offices, among which were those of G. E. Harney and C. W. Clinton, architects, and J. & R. Lamb and Herter Brothers, decorators. Mr. Wallace is a member of the Architectural League, of New York, the Advisory Board of the Brooklyn Institute of Architecture, the Architectural Association of Columbia College and the Columbia College Alumni Association. He is inter- ested in military matters and is a member of Troop A, N. G. S. N. Y., the only cavalry organization in the state military force. Of the newer buildings in Brooklyn specially adapted to commercial purposes, an admirable example is that erected by Mrs. Lucy E. Stoddard and now occupied by Liebmann Brothers. It is situated in the main artery of city travel and is equipped with every convenience likely to benefit its occupants and facili- tate the business of their patrons. Though built in a comparatively short space of time, not a single struc- tural detail was slighted in the effort to effect its rapid completion. It fronts on Fulton street, not far from the corner of Hoyt, and in the details of it^facaik it displays the beauties of the Italian Renaissance. There are two entrances, one each on Livingston and Hoyt streets, besides the main one. The structure contains four stories and a basement. The Fulton street front is thirty-eight feet in width and is constructed with walls of polished Nova Scotian granite, pink Georgia marble and the finest French mosaic, intricate and beautiful in design. The entrance rests upon twin columns of Georgia marble with ornamented capitals and is flanked on either side by show windows. The woodwork of the entrance is all of highly polished mahogany, and the roof of the vesti- bule is finished in circles of ornamen- tal plaster-work, which are studded with small electric lights. Just above the vestibule is a long rectangular panel of glittering black onyx, on which the title of the firm is inscribed in gold letters. The total depth of the building is 312 feet and the Burt Buildinc, Fulton and Hoyt Streets. Water Tower, Mt. Phuspkct Reservoir. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 227 space utilized on each floor amounts to 27,000 square feet. The interior woodwork is Hght in finish and the walls and ceilings are covered with white plaster. The finishing is in quartered oak and white maple. There are four Otis electric passenger elevators in use. The building is protected against fire by an excellent system of sprinkling pipes, which cross the ceilings at proper intervals. It was opened in March, 1892, and cost more than $200,000. The Burt Building, at the corner of Fulton and Hoyt streets, also was erected by Mrs. Lucy E. Stoddard. Rising to a height of four stories above the basement and presenting as many Romanesque features in its architecture as its com- mercial purposes will permit, it is one of the conspicuous structures on the line of Brooklyn's principal thoroughfare. It was begun on May i, 1888, and was ready for occupancy in the October following, when it was leased by its present tenants, Edwin C. Burt & Co. The materials used in its construction are Philadelphia brick, Euclid stone and terra cotta; there is a frontage of thirty feet on Fulton street and a depth of one hundred feet on Hoyt street, while the entire height from the curb to cornice is fifty-five feet. The main entrance is on Fulton street, through an arched doorway reaching to the base of the second story, which is framed in heavy stonework, and handsomely carved wherever ornamentation of that nature is possible. Projecting from the keystone of the entrance-arch is a massive corbel stone, weighing seven tons ; on this founda- tion rests the base of a tower which rises above the roof to a total height of seventy-five feet ; it is built of iron and is roofed with terra cotta tiles. The interior of the building is finished in a fashion that makes it exceedingly attractive. The staircase and halls are wider than the average. The ground floor is trimmed in cherry while those above are fitted up with Liebma.nn Building. North Carolina pine ; and all the iron-work throughout, from basement to roof, is finished in bronze. The store is steam heated, lighted by electricity and provided with every covenience. The Pouch Gallery is a feature of the city due to the late Robert Graves, who, about five years ago, began to build a residence designed for his own occupancy on a plot of ground fronting on Clinton ave- nue, near the corner of Lafayette. The owner and his architect, William A. Mundell, visited many of the most striking dwellings in New York, and there acquired the ideas that were modified and embodied in the plans of the proposed structure. The result was a building, surpassing the majority of its class, which pre- sented an appearance of elegance coupled with simplicity of design. Death prevented Mr. Graves from enjoying the fruit of his toil, and the property eventually passed into other hands. The house and grounds were purchased by Alfred J. Pouch, and the building, completed and improved through his enterprise, became the principal resort in Brooklyn for public events of a fashionable nature. The Pouch Gallery, as the Graves mansion is now known, has a frontage of 86 feet, including the conservatory; it has a depth of 100 feet and stands back some little distance from the building line. In designing the structure Mr. Mun- dell chose the Grecian style as best adapted to the situation. The material used in building is brown- stone on a natural foundation, and in this respect the house has few rivals in any city ; it is an edi- fice that will stand for centuries, barring accident from fire or other causes. In height it is four stories and a basement. The entrance is through a square-roofed porch, which is approached by a flight of steps, terminating in one broad platform-stone, 14 x 16 feet in dimensions — the largest single stone ever brought to Brooklyn. The porch rests upon pillars at either side, while its roof forms a balcony and a foundation for other pillars of somewhat different shape, which in turn support another porch that touches the base of the third story. A spacious conservatory of stone, iron and glass, with an arched roof crowned by a stone structure about six feet in height, joins the house on the left side. The classical simplicity of the entire structure is relieved by delicate carvings and traceries at various points, which greatly enhance its beauty without violating the canons of architectural taste. From the pillared porch a spacious vesti- bule leads into a grand hallway, sixteen feet in v/idth, having a lofty ornamented ceiling and heavily wain- scoted walls. The entire apartment is finished in oak, with a polished inlaid floor ; at one end there is a huge tiled fireplace and a great mantel of oak, carved in designs which seem worthy to have grown into 228 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. being under the chisel of a Gibbons. At the right of the hallway, and lighted by bay windows, is a recep- tion-room finished in dark mahogany with a glass-like polish. The room has a handsome mantel, and the side walls and ceiling are finished in white, with artistic frescoes. On the opposite side of the hall there is a parlor, i8 x 40 feet in dimensions, which, in many respects, is the most beautiful apartment in the house. It is finished and furnished in the purest Louis XVL type ; elaborate white and gold ornamentations pre- vail ; there are costly mirrors of panelled glass, and a floor, inlaid with fancy woods, which surpasses in elegance of workmanship any other in the building ; the ceiling is decorated in befitting style, and the fur- niture corresponds in the smallest detail with the period that preceded the first overturn of the old French monarchy. The conservatory, measuring 20 x 23 feet, connects on the right with the drawing-room, and has side walls and floor composed of endolythic marble ; the arched windows in this apartment are four- teen feet high, and five and one-half feet wide. In the rear of the hall, on the right and just beyond the great staircase, a wide doorway leads to the dining-room ; this apartment is twenty-four feet wide and thirty-four feet long, and is finished in carved oak with ornamental side walls and ceiling ; there are all the appurtenances of a luxurious establishment, such as china closets, buffet, butler's pantry, massive tables and richly upholstered chairs. Opposite the drawing-room the hall forms a short L, in which lofty doorways open into a picture gallery and music -room. The former is sixty feet long and twenty-four feet wide, with a cove-shaped roof, twenty-seven feet high, ribbed with iron and divided into panels of ornamental and tinted plaster. The apartment has the inlaid floor common to the house, and is lighted by a skylight; the side walls, to the level of the cornice, are hung with crimson cloth. The music-room will accommodate about one hundred and fifty people ; its ceiling, which is forty feet in height, terminates in a dome with frescoed walls of cloud-flecked blue. The side walls are finished in quiet colors, while half-way up, on the left of the apartment, there is a series of embrasures with arches supported on columns of the finest Mexi- can onyx, profusely ornamented on base and capital. Between the dining-room and the hallway, the stair- case begins : it is of oak with magnificently carved newel posts and handrails, and has steps eight feet wide; at a height of about nine feet the first flight terminates in a broad platform, sixteen feet in width, upon which the sunlight streams through a window of cathedral glass ; from this landing the stairway branches, in two flights, from story to story. The second floor presents a hallway thirteen feet wide, with oak wain- scoting and carved ceiling, and is divided into six chambers, the largest of which measures 24 x 30 feet, and the smallest, 18 x 18 ; each of these is finished in a different kind of hardwood, including bird's-eye maple, cypress, mahogany and white mahogany. The third story is similar to that below in almost every detail, while the fourth is divided into eight rooms for the occupancy of servants ; all these apartments are finished in oak. Each floor is abundantly provided with lavatories and bathrooms, those on the main floor being located under the staircase. The hardwood used in the interior fittings alone cost $75,000. There is no cellar under the house. The basement has a spacious billiard-room, 31 x 24, which is finished in ash and provided with every necessary appliance, besides rooms for household work. The rest of the base- ment is devoted to the coal and boiler rooms, with the exception of that portion underlying the conser- vatory and picture gallery. This is occupied by four bowling alleys, one hundred and eight feet long^ located under an extension which has been added to the rear of the house since Mr. Pouch became the owner of the premises. The extension has two stories and a basement, is constructed of Philadelphia brick, measures 22 x 68 feet and cost about $15,000. Above the basement, it is used for billiard-rooms, but it is the intention of Mr. Pouch to remove the partition at the eastern end of the picture gallery and so incor- porate that portion of the house with the first floor of the extension, forming in this way a ball-room of the most desirable type. The house, exclusive of the land, cost about $225,000. Alfred J. Pouch stands in the front rank of Brooklyn's public-spirited citizens and enterprising busi- ness men. Few, if any, have done more than he toward promoting and aiding, both by his own wealth and perhaps greater influence, those permanent public improvements which within the last decade have made Brooklyn grow " by leaps and bounds." Mr. Pouch was born in Brooklyn in 1844 and was educated in the city, and here has always made his home. His wealth, power and prominence he has won for him- self. His first business situation was obtained with Wallace & Wickes, wholesale provision merchants of New York, in whose employ he remained for eight years. In 1866, when the petroleum trade was carried on entirely by private concerns, he became engaged with Mr. J. A. Bostwick of New York, who was at that time one of the most prominent dealers in the trade. About that time Mr. Bostwick opened a branch house in Cleveland, Ohio, which was the principal refining-point, and placed Mr. Pouch in charge, where he remained for the succeeding five years and built up the largest business there. In 187 1 business changes occurred which caused him to return east, and, in the following year, to associate himself with the Standard Oil Company. He has remained with the company until the present time, and is at the head of the crude oil export department. Mr. Pouch is president of the American Dock and Trust Company, which controls numerous large docks and warehouses, where about one-third of all the cotton shipped to New York is stored. He was one of the chief promoters of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad, and trustee and X THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Alfred ]. Poucii. treasurer of the construction company that built it. Discerning the increased values in real estate which were likely to follow the introduction of this improve- ment, he invested largely in real estate in the eight- eenth and twenty-fifth wards, and in other parts of the city. His expectations were realized, although his holdings were transferred by him to other hands before they had reached their highest values. He is a trustee of the Hamilton Trust Company, in which he holds the office of second vice-president. Mr. Pouch became most popularly known in Brooklyn through the benefit he conferred upon the city by purchasing the Graves residence and transforming it into a place suitable for almost any public event. Among the private mansions and the public halls, the Pouch gallery is unique ; and it has a certain social function that no other place can serve. Mr. Pouch is a member of the Union League Club and a trustee in several charitable and other institutions in the city. One of the best-known sons whom New England, from time to time, has sent to Brooklyn, is Henry Carlton Huluert, who was born in Lee, Massachu- setts, on December 19, 1831. He is a descendant of Lieutenant Thomas Hulbert, who came from England about 1630 and served as an officer in the Pequot war; and from William Bassett, to whom the territory now embraced in the town of Bridgewater, Massa- chusetts, was set off. Two of his more recent ancestors — Amos H. and Sylvanus Dymock — were patriot soldiers at the time of the American revolution-. Young Hulbert attended the Lee Academy until he was sixteen years old. In 1848 he entered the store of Mr. Taylor as a general clerk, and in May of the same year accepted a position with the firm of Plunkett & Hulbert, at Pittsfield, Massachusetts; but he very soon found the Massachusetts town too narrow a field for his ambition. In February, 1851, at the age of nine- teen years, he came to New York, despite the earnest protestations of his father, who even offered to establish him in business if he would forego his purpose. He was provided with letters of introduction and he found employment at a salary of $400 a year, with White & Sheffield, a leading house in the paper trade. He engaged lodgings in a small attic room on Willoughby street, Brooklyn, and a more striking contrast could not well be imagined than the one between his first and his present home in this city. He never had to call upon his parents for assistance, and, as he determined at the outset, he lived within his income. In December of the first year of his services with White & Sheffield, the cashier and book-keeper became ill at a time when it was necessary to get out the annual account of sales, and Mr. Hulbert volun- teered his services. Owing to his youth and his inexperience, there was some hesitation about accepting his offer, but it was finally accepted and the work was done to the full satisfaction of the firm. From that time he was pushed on, and when the head salesman and general manager of sales left, he was given the position. In 1854 Mr. Hulbert married Miss Susan R. Cooley, of Lee, Mass., and at that time his salary was only $1,000 a year and his total cash in hand was less than $300; but the firm had promised to give him the following year an interest in the profits of the business. This promise was fulfilled on January i, 1855, and the interest netted him $2,500 a year. In 1856 he was made a full partner, and the name of the firm then was changed to J. B. Sheffield & Co. This partnership terminated in January, 1858, and Mr. Hulbert declined to renew it, although he was offered a fifty per cent, advance upon his former interest. In March, 1858, he associated himself with his cousin, Milan Hulbert, of Boston, with Otis Daniell as spe- cial partner, under the firm-name of H. C. & M. Hulbert, and began to deal in-paper-makers' supplies, the sale of paper itself being only a secondary object. In October, 1858, the firm opened a warehouse in New York, at 83 John street; on May i, 1861, they moved to 13 Beekman street, and in the following year Mr. Daniell sold out his interest. Ten years later, in 1872, Milan Hulbert withdrew and Joseph H. Sutphen and George P. Hulbert were admitted, the name of the firm being changed to H. C. Hulbert & Co. Since that year the business has been carried on under the same name. On January i, 1891, Charles F. Bassett, a cousin of Mr. Hulbert, was admitted to partnership. Mr. Hulbert is a director of the Cel- luloid Company, the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, the United States Life Insurance Company, the South Brooklyn Savings Institution, the New York Mutual Marine Insurance Company, THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. 233 and the Pullman Palace Car Company, of Chicago. He has for over twenty years been one of the direc- tors of the Importers' and Traders' National Bank, of New York. Mrs. Hulbert died in August, 1882; she was greatly interested in the Brooklyn Industrial School and Home for Destitute Children, of which institution she was treasurer for many years. She left two daughters, of whom the eldest, Susan C, is the wife of Joseph H. Sutphen, one of Mr. Hulbert's partners. On October 16, 1884, Mr. Hulbert married again, his second wife being Miss Fannie D. Bigelow, of Brooklyn. Mr. Hulbert's house is the most strik- ing private residence, from an architectural point of view, which has been erected in Brooklyn for some time. It stands on the southwest corner of Ninth avenue and First street, opposite Prospect Park. In style it is a beautiful example of the Romanesque. The architect who designed it is Montrose W. Morris. It is a large double house and the southern portion is occupied by Mr. Hulbert's partner and son-in-law, Joseph H. Sutphen. It is constructed of rock-faced Indiana limestone, of a whitish grey color, elabor- ately carved and molded. To the right of the front stoop platform is a window which in itself is a perfect work of art. It is of opalescent and clear-cut glass, the design being strikingly novel and beautiful. The entrance hall is panelled and finished in antique oak, artistically carved, and from it, through a handsome screen of wood, supported by Corinthian columns and entablature, entrance is afforded to the reception hall, which is in the centre of the house and " bayed out " on the First street side. The parlor is fitted with sliding doors and finished in St. Jacquot mahogany, specially selected for its handsome figuring, while in the library the finish is in vermilion wood. The dining-room is octagonal in form, finished in light, nat- ural quartered oak, with raftered and bracketed ceiling. On the second floor landing is another stained- glass window, the design of which is illustrative of an incident in connection with Mr. Hulbert's ancestors on his mother's side, who were the hereditary " Royal Champions " of England. Mrs. Hulbert was a descendant from the Bassetts and De Dymokes, the latter of whom have held tijgjDffice in .question for many generations. The home of the Dymokes has for many centuries been Scrivelsby Court, in Lincoln- shire, England. The scene depicted on the window by the artist gives an accurate representation of one of the entrances to Scrivelsby Court, called the " Lion Gate," drawn from a photograph which was taken for Mr. Hulbert expressly for this purpose. In the foreground is an accurate representation of the cham- pion, who is supposed to be returning to his home towards the close of coronation day. As the con- struction of the house progressed, Mr. Hulbert became more and more impressed with the beauty of the view from the northwest front, and in order to enjoy it to the fullest extent, caused a spacious piazza to be constructed on a level with the first story. The house itself is built upon a raised plateau and any edifices which may be erected in the future cannot by any possibility become an obstruction to the. view. J. Rogers Maxwell, president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, is widely known in financial and railroad circles as a man whose business methods are of the direct and comprehensive character which insures a successful issue from any enterprise in which he engages. His capacity for dealing with large interests has made him prominent in the development of the railroad systems converging toward the metropolis. As a resident of Brooklyn from his childhood, he has won and holds a high rank for personal character and social qualities. He is a member of several of the leading clubs, including the Atlantic Yacht club, the Brooklyn, the Montauk, and the Riding and Driving clubs. Yachting is one of his chief pleasures; he has owned several fine boats, with which for a number of years he has taken part in every regatta of the Atlantic Yacht club, always sailing his own boat, for he is a practical sailor and as thorough in his pursuit of pleasure as he is in his management of business affairs. The yacht which he owns at the present time is the " Shamrock," a handsome and fast-sailing vessel which never fails to give a good account of herself in a race. Mr. Maxwell was one of the incorporators of the Atlantic Yacht club, and has held almost every office within its gift, including that of commodore; he is a member of the present board of managers of the club. His business abilities are due to heredity and a thorough training; his father, John Maxwell, attained prominence in the business world more than half a century ago as a success- ful banker and broker in New York city, where he established the firm of Maxwell & Co. in 1837. In addition to their banking business, the firm dealt largely in the notes issued by southern and southwestern banks in the days before the civil war, when state banks issued the only paper money in use, and the notes of any one bank fluctuated in value according to the financial strength of the bank, the general condition of business, and the locality where the notes were tendered, notes issued by banks in one state frequently being subject to discount in other states. When the war changed these conditions, the firm began to deal in government securities and gold, in which direction its business met with equal success. John Maxwell was Austin Corbin's broker in New York city when the latter was engaged in the banking business in Davenport, la. J. Rogers Maxwell began his business career as an employed in the American Exchange Bank, where he remained until 1865, and then, in connection with his father and Henry Graves, organized the firm of Maxwell & Graves. In 1880-1881, the firm of Maxwell & Graves, then consisting of J. R. Maxwell, Henry Graves and Henry W. Maxwell, cooperated with Austin Corbin in the purchase of the Long Island Railroad and the connecting lines, and J. Rogers Maxwell was elected as vice-president of J. Rogers Maxwell. 23S THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the company organized to operate the road, Mr. Corbn. being elected president. Mr. Maxwell rendered efh- oent serv.ce n. the work of perfectn.g the organ.zation and developing the property, and the - - of the latter has greatly multiphed sn.ce the purchase. Mr. .Nfa.xweirs connection w.th the Central Ra Iroad of New Jersey began in the winter of 1886-87, when that road was botight by a syndicate, of which he was a member, and which he represented in the negotiations; in the transfer of the property he was elected to the presi- dency of the company. The house m which Mr. Ma.\well lives is a note- worthy piece of architecture externally considered, and in point of interior finish is among the finest in ISrooklyn. It is of a modified Gothic style, is con- structed of Philadelphia brick and brownstone, and is surrounded by hand- some grounds which have a frontage of one hundred and forty feet on Eighth avenue, two hundred feet on Union street, and seventy-five by one hundred feet on I^resident street. Mr. Maxwell is a native of New York city and was born in 1846. His parents came to Brooklyn before he was a year old, and he was educated here at th Poly H..\LL\VAY. now a trustee, and which he attended until he left school to take a place in the world of business, wherein he has grown strong and influential. He is a man of pleasing per- sonal appearance and gra- cious manners, and one who thoroughly appre- ciates the wisdom of alter- nating the cares of busi- ness with the relaxation of healthy enjoyment. 'Po Albert Brown Chandler, of Brooklyn, the American public is very largely indebted for Dining-room— RrsiDEN'CE of T. Rogers IIaxwell. ,, '~" ' ^^■,,,c ' the present comparative inexpensiveness of telegraphic communication, l-'or many years he has been prominently identified with enterprises and iiK.ivements that have been fruitful in Ijringing this immense interest into its present profit- able and useful condition. He was burn in West Randolph, \'t., on -\ugust 20, 1840, and is the youngest son of \Villiam lirown Chandler. His first ancestor in America was A\'illiam Chandler, who settled in Roxburv, Mass., now a part of the city of Boston, in 16:57. Amon.g William's descendants are Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, who was I'nited States senator from that state, and was secretary of t'le interir)r under President Grant; William E. Chandler, senator from New Hamp- shire, who was secretary of the navy under President Hayes; and Commander Benjamin F. Chandler, BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. '^2,9 Residence of A. B. Chandler, Clinton Avenue. an officer in the navy. Albert B. Chandler numbers also among his ancestors in a direct line Mary Win- throp, daughter of John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts. Having studious tastes, Mr. Chandler made effective use of the opportunities af- forded him for securing an academic education, and in the intervals between school proved his native in- dustry by working as a compositor in printing offices in his native town and in Montpelier. There was a telegraph office located in a bookstore at West Ran- dolph, in connection with the printing office in which he worked, and this enabled him to acquire the art of telegraphing. For a time he was telegraph messen- ger and operator. In October, 1858, through the influence of his brother, William Wallace Chandler, who then was general freight agent of the Cleveland & Pittsburg Railway, he was appointed manager of the Western Union telegraph office, at Bellaire, Ohio. In February, 1859, he was promoted to a position in the office of the superintendent of that railway com- pany at Pittsburg, and on May i, of the same year, he was appointed agent at Manchester, opposite Pitts- burg. He occupied this position with much credit until the end of May, 1863, and there became familiar with the various branches of railway service. On the first of June, 1863, he entered the United States mili- tary telegraph service as cipher operator in the War Department, at Washington, D. C. In October of the same year, he was disbursing clerk for General Thomas T. Eckert, superintendent of the Department of the Potomac. In performance of these duties he man);- times visited the armies in the field. He also became personally acquainted with many of the prmcipal civil and military officers of the government, and particularly with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. Early in August, 1866, before the general consolidation of the several tele- graph interests in the United States into one company had become fully organized, he was made chief clerk in the office of the general superintendent of the eastern division, and was also placed in charge of the transatlantic cable traffic, which had then just commenced. In addition to this posi- tion, Mr. Chandler was appointed super- intendent of the sixth district of the eastern division. He continued in the performance of these duties until January, 1875, when he was made assistant general manager of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. In June of the same year he was appointed secretary, and the following year he was made a member of the board of trustees, and sub- sequently treasurer, and vice-president. In December, 1879, after the resignation of General Eckert, Mr. Chandler was elected president. In the summer of 1881, he acted as treasurer of the Western Union Company during the absence of that officer. In Octo- PosTAL Telegraph Building. ber, 1881, he accepted the presidency of the i.4o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Fuller Electrical Company, which was one of the first to undertake the development of the arc system of electric lighting. Early in December, 1884, he was employed as counsel by the Postal Telegraph and Cable Company. In 1885 lie was appointed receiver of the property of that company by the Supreme Court of New York, and upon its reorganization, in 18S6, he was elected president of the company. In connection with his care of the property of the Postal Telegraph Company, he assumed the general management of the newly organized Uniteil Lines Telegraph Company, which subsequently became a part of the Postal. In the meantime, he filled important offices in the Commercial Cable Company, the Pacific Postal Telegraph Company, and of the Commercial 'I'elegram Company. Mainly through his efforts, the control of the plant of the latter company was sold to the New York Stock E.xchange, for the purpose of enabling that institution to make smiultaneous distribution of its quotations to its members and Mr. Chandler became vice-president and general manager of the New York Quotation Company, which assumed control of the Inisiness m the interest of the Stock E.xchange. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Brooklyn District Telegraph Company, of which he was president during the first three years of its e.xistence. In October, 1887, Mr. Chandler was invited to confer with certain of the principal owners and officers of the Western Union Co "^M^any, the conference resulting in the discontinuance of rate cutting, rebating, and other destructive methods of competition which had previously prevailed when- ever any telegraph interest attained considerable extent. The magnificent new building, now in process of construction at the corner of Broadway and Murray street, New York, which, when completed, will be the home of the Postal I elegraph Company and the Mackay-Bennett Cable Company, is entirely the project of Mr. Chandler. I he structure will be a notable one among all the big business buildings of the metropolis; It will be thirteen stories above the ground and three below the level. The accompanying illustration made from the architect s drawing, affords a partial idea of its character and its fine proportions Mr' BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY, 241 Chandler married Miss Marilla Eunice Stedman, of West Randolph, Vt., on October 11, 1864, and three children have been born of the marriage. Mr. Chandler owns a handsome home on Clinton avenue, and has a commodious country house in his native town, where his family passes the summer. He is a man of extremely pleasant manner, very approachable, and amid his many cares and responsibilities finds time to cultivate the graces of social Hfe. His domestic attachments are strong, and he is a lover of music and literature, cultivating his taste quite freely in both these directions, and wields a ready pen in literary and historical work. William H. Lyon is one of those Brooklynites who fully honors his citizenship. He has freed himself from the cares of active business, but finds sufficient occupation in conserving important interests with which he was connected before his retirement from the firm of William H. Lyon & Co., which he established years ago. When Zachariah Chandler, secretary of the interior, was requested by President Grant, in 1876, to select two eminent New York merchants for membership on the board of Indian com- missioners, the secretary's choice fell upon Mr. Lyon and William E. Dodge. Mr. Lyon accepted the position and brought to it the practical, decisive methods of the business man and the conscientious Residence of William H. Lyon, New York Avenue. zeal of one in whose nature there ran a broad, deep stream of human sympathy. At once he was placed on the purchasing committee, and during the greater portion of his rnembership in the board, which has continued fifteen years and under six national administrations, has been chairman of that com- mittee. Mr. Lyon established the principle that what was not good enough for the white man was not good enough for the red, and honest dealers were found who would faithfully give to the Indians the full value of the money expended by the nation in their behalf. In this work he began in New York city, and extended a thorough reform to other places. He was so interested in the people under the care of the board that he gave several summers to the work of studying them, their customs and their needs, vis.- iting and holding councils with many tribes on their reservations and acquiring a vast fund of infor- mation. His study of the Indians made him a strong advocate of industrial education, and especially of that branch of it relating to agriculture and stock raising. Mr. Lyon was born at Holland, Mass., on October 18, 1819, and was a descendant of one of those Puritan families that settled in New England more than two hundred and fifty years ago. When fourteen years old he went to Hartford, Conn., to attend school, afterwards becoming a teacher. In the course of his pedagogical experience he was principal of the Clyde High School, in Wayne County, N. Y. He turned his attention to commerce in 1845, coming to New York in that year and engaging in the wholesale dry goods trade. Two years later he changed his 242 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. business and became a dealer in fancy goods and " Yankee notions," and to the selection of fancy goods in the European markets he gave his personal attention, with the result that in most lines they were m advance of anything placed upon the market by his business contemporaries. He was in Belgium durmg the revolution that overturned the throne of Louis Phillippe in 1848; and he was the first American mer- chant to visit Paris after order had been restored by the provisional government of Lamartine. His busi- ness followed the up-town migration of the wholesale trade from Pearl street, where he was first established, to 483 and 485 Broadway, where, from 1870 until his retirement, the firm of William H. Lyon & Co. was one of the familiar features of lower Broadway. He is a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, first vice-president of the Hamilton Trust Company, of Brooklyn, and a director of the Bedford Bank and Brooklyn Life Insurance Company. In 1878, while he was absent on his beneficent mission among the Indians, he was nominated for Congress, and in a hopelessly Democratic district cut down the usual Democratic majority by one-half. His name was presented to the Republican city conven- tion in 1879 for nomination to the mayoralty, but lost by the narrow majority of one vote. He is identified with the Twenty-fourth Ward Republican Association, of which his son, William H. Lyon, Jr., is the president. His home is a handsome house, at 170 New York avenue, in the Ocean Hill local- LiNCOLN Road, Flateush. ity. Among its unique beauties is a room which, in its furniture and decorations, is a museum, com- memorative of visits to famous places in the Orient. The rugs and portieres are from Constantinople and Bagdad, and among the articles of furniture are specimens from Egypt, Turkey, Damascus, Jeru- salem, India, China and Japan. Silk from Mecca forms the draperies of the windows, and in a large bay window there is a divan, with luxurious pillows covered with tapestry from Constantinople. Tables, beautifully inlaid with pearl, tell of visits to Damascus and Cairo; a Koran stand and chair from Cairo speak of the religion of Islam, and disposed about the apartments are several highly pol- ished brass flower jars from India and Cairo, all filled with plants; a large Arabian coffee table of finely engraved brass, with cups from Algiers; Persian tea glasses and a Russian "samovar." Beautiful vases from Pekin and Nagasaki, from Damascus and Bagdad are among the ornaments on the mantel, above which are a Damascus sword and shield, a Persian blunderbuss and a Syrian battle-axe. The side walls are ornamented with daggers from Japan and Nubia, a large cloisonne plaque from China and very fine inlaid pearl brackets from Cairo. A Turkish jewelled swinging lamp hangs in an arch of the bay window, and a finely-perforated metal lamp from Damascus hangs in front of the large mirror. The land of Othello is illustrated in a large open fireplace, with Moorish arch frame and massive Moorish andirons. Among the social and other organizations, not already mentioned, of which Mr. Lyon is a member, are the New England Society, of which he was one of the incorporators; the Long Island Historical Society and the Oxford and Union League clubs. 244 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Lefferts Homestead, Flateush Avenue. John Lefferts is a son of the late John Lef- ferts, and a descendant of Leffertse Pieterse and the long and historic line of Lefferts, whose members have been so closely con- nected with the story of Brooklyn, and especially of Flatbush; they are re- ferred to in an earlier chapter. Mr. Lefferts still occupies the homestead at Flatbush, and, like his an- cestors, has always been a staunch upholder of the old church of Flatbush, in which for many years he has been an officer. He is a man of public spirit and has held many offices of trust in the community. For many years he was a member of the board of direction of the general synod of the Reformed church, and has been for years a trustee of Erasmus Hall Academy. He is the president of the Flatbush Water Works Company and treasurer of the Flatbush Gas Company. He is one of the oldest directors in the Brooklyn Bank, a trustee of the Long Island Loan and Trust Company, a director in the Long Island Safe Deposit Company, and after the death of Judge John A. Lott, was, for a number of years, the president of that company. He has been a warm advocate of the project of annexing Flatbush to Brooklyn. He is one of the incorporators of the Flatbush Park Association, and a member of the Midwood Club, whose beautiful club-house and attractive grounds are well known to visitors in that section. He was one of the promoters of the Flatbush Water Works Company, and is the president of that corporation. He owns a large tract of land in Flatbush, and is doing much to add to the attractiveness of that suburb by building a number of handsome cottages on Lincoln road and other streets, a number of which he has opened, and also he has abetted the introduction of water and gas. The near- ness of Mr. Lefferts' land to the city renders his cottages among the most desirable in the town of Flatbush. To another branch of the Lefferts family than that of John Lefferts, belonged Leffert Lefferts, after- wards known as Judge Lefferts, who was born in 1774 and died in 1847. He was, perhaps, the most celebrated member of this branch of the family, and in- herited a large part of his father's estate. He studied law in the office of Judge Egbert Ben- son, whose daughter he married, and practised law in Pine street. New York. He was county clerk from 1800 to 1816. In 1805 he was com- missioner in chancery. In 1823 he succeeded The Lefferts Homestead. Front View. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 245 Ralph Ladd Cutter. William Furman as first judge of Kings County. He was among the leading spirits who secured the charter for the first bank in Brooklyn, the Long Island Bank, of which he was the president from the beginning until, in 1846, shortly before his death, he resigned. Like other members of this family, he received des- ignating names to differentiate him from the others. In the early days he was known as " Lawyer Leff," which was surrendered as he reached the higher dignity and became familiar to his own and later generations as " Judge Lefferts." Ralph Ladd Cutter traces his lineage into the sixteenth century. His great-great-grandfather, Ammi Ruhamah Cutter, was a graduate of the Harvard class of 1725, and afterwards entered the ministry. Ralph Cross, of Newburyport, Mass., another great-grandfather of Mr. Cutter, was a descendant of that Captain Cross referred to by Motley in " The United Netherlands," in his descrip- tion of the battle between the English fleet and the Spanish Armada. Mr. Cutter has lived in Brooklyn since 1853, and resided in the Sixth ward since 1854. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and has been connected with the dry goods trade during his entire business career. In 1856, he entered the house of Catlin, Leavitt & Company, of New York, who were engaged in jobbing dry goods to the S?)Uthern states, leaving them, in 1857, to go with A. and A. (Amos and Abbott) Lawrence & Company, of Boston, who had established a branch of their great dry goods commission house in New York. In 1874 he was admitted to an interest in the business of the successors of the Lawrences, becoming a full partner in 1878, and remaining so in the present firm of Smith, Hogg & Gardner. He is a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, the New England Society of New York and the New England Society of Brooklyn; the Merchants' Club, of New York; the Hamilton Club, Brooklyn, and Altair Lodge, F. and A. M.; he was treasurer of the First Presbyterian church on Henry street for ten years, and is still a member of the board of trustees. In 1867 he m.arried Laura M. Eliot, of Guilford, Conn. Six children were born of this uniolt, of whom three survive. He resides at the corner of Clinton and Amity streets, in a house originally built about fifty 5rears ago by Aaron Degraw. The house came into Mr. Cutter's possession two years ago, and has been practically rebuilt under the architectural supervision of Messrs. D'Oench & Simon, of New York. It is of brick, simple in design, and exhibits some of the characteristics of the Dutch style which prevailed in dwellings erected several generations ago by descendants of the early settlers of Manhattan and Long islands. The roof is surmounted by a tower, which forms a convenient retreat in warm weather, and commands a view of the Narrows, Staten Island, New York bay, Prospect park. Greenwood, and other points of interest. This tower is made easily accessible, and of great practical use by an Otis electric elevator running from the basement, which was the first to be used in a private dwelling in this city. As a successful director of great manufacturing interests, a capable executive officer of charitable societies and a loyal and enthusiastic worker in the Catholic church, John C. Kelley is highly respected. Through four terms as president of the Loyal Union he has promoted the growth and broadened the influ- ence of that excellent organization; he has served the Emerald Association and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in a similar capacity for several years, and he was one of those who labored for the creation of that magnificent order, the Catholic Benevolent Legion. With the far-reaching and effective work accom- plished by the last-named society since its institution, he has been conspicuously identified, and for numer- ous consecutive terms has been elected to the presiding officer's chair of Transfiguration Council No. 6. Woodford, in the county of Galway, Ireland, is Mr. Kelley's native place. He was born on April 17, 1839, and when only six years old was brought to the United States by his parents, who made their home in Rochester, N. Y. He was instructed in the public schools in that city, afterwards in Palmyra, N. Y., and in Franklin, Ohio. When he attained the age of fourteen, his family removed to Cincinnati, Ohio. After the death of his father, which occurred when the son was sixteen years old, he found work in various dry goods stores in Cincinnati and earned the confidence and esteem of his employers. In i860 he came to New York and entered the manufacturing business with an uncle. Eight months later, on September 9, f7 Residence of Ralph Ladd Cutter Clinton and Amity Stele £^.(.j^ ^0^ \ -4 BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 249 he married the lady who is his present wife. Withdrawing from association with his uncle, on January S, 1870, he organized the National Meter Company, in which, since its organization, he has continuously held the office of president. At the earnest request of Mayor Low, he accepted some years ago an appoint- ment as member of the Board of Education: his second term was marked by his election to the post of vice-president. He is a director of the Merchants' Alliance Insurance Company, of New York; the Ports- mouth & Suffolk Water Company and the Nanesmond Water Company. He is a member of the Oxford Club and the Columbian and Amphion societies. His home, at 247 Hancock street, is one of the magnifi- cent private residences of the city, and is a credit to Mr. Morris, the architect, being as perfect a specimen of the Renaissance style of architecture as can be found anywhere in Brooklyn. It covers a tract of ground 81 by 100 feet, is three stories and a basement in height, and the entire front, including the open carved parapet of the roof, is constructed of brownstone which has a peculiar grain and texture and is of rare quality. It was procured only after three years of careful searching among the products of many quarries; by dealers and experts it is said to be the most perfect specimen of cut stone that can be found in Brooklyn. The grouping of the different salient features of the front of the house, the arrangement of the windows and the harmonious proportions of the whole are such as will strongly impress even the most casual observer. The building stands ten feet above the level of the pavement and a flight of eight steps leads to a broad canopied vestibule, finished in antique English oak. From the vestibule one enters, through massive oak doors of artistic design and exquisite workmanship, a wide hall with high wainscot- ings and decorations in relief. The finishings are of St. Jacquot mahogany, elegantly polished in its natu- ral colors. The mantels have carved Corinthian columns, supporting an entablature over a bevelled mirror, while the open fireplaces are of inlaid marble mosaic. To the right of the hall is the library, which is finished in natural cherry. In the rear of the library, having a separate entrance from the hall- way, is the dining-room; it is finished with antique oak, high panelled wainscoting, and has a handsomely- carved buffet and a cabinet mantel built in. In the front basement is a billiard-room, fitted up in superb style. All the cabinets and mantels were specially designed for this house by Mr. Morris and are in the most perfect taste and harmony, to the minutest details. James McMahon, president of the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank of New York, has been conspic- uous before the Brooklyn public in various capacities. He was born in Franklin County, N. Y., in 1831, and in his infancy was taken by his parents to Rochester, where he acquired an elementary education in the public schools. When seventeen years of age he came to New York, and remained for a year in the book trade, with Cooley, Keys & Hill. He then went to New Haven, where he associated himself with an elder brother, who owned a carriage manufactory. His brother leaving the carriage business in 1849, he returned to Rochester, where he reentered the book business as a clerk, and shortly afterwards began in the same trade on his own account. At the age of twenty-five he crossed the continent and again joined his brother, who was engaged in mercantile pursuits in San Francisco. One winter concluded his experience in California, and in the following spring he again returned to Rochester. In 1865, he ac- cepted a position of deputy grain measurer in New York, at the same time making his home in Brooklyn. His new business associations resulted in his establishing, in conjunction with James T. Easton, of Brooklyn, an organization to protect the interests of grain carriers, under the title of the " Protective Grain Association," from which sprang the great transportation business of Easton, McMahon & Co. When the federal government, in the days of the civil war, made a requisition on the tonnage of the Camden & Amboy Railroad Co., which had acquired a monopoly of the growing traffic between New York and Philadelphia, Easton, McMahon & Company immediately established a line of propellers between the two cities, and continued to conduct the business on a successful basis until the Camden & Amboy road was reinstated in its former privileges. In 1877, because of certain changes, Mr. McMahon retired from the firm. But in a comparatively short time the business, which he had formerly directed to success, developed so many evidences of approaching disintegration, that the parties interested in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, urged him to resume his interest in its affairs. He ultimately yielded to their solicitations, and, in 1881, reorganized the business, making it a stock company, known as the Easton & McMahon Transportation Company, of which he became president. Within five years, Mr. McMahon again retired from the business and gave himself to the less arduous duties of a financier, also unselfishly devoting time and money to charities that had always claimed from him much attention. The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, of which he is president, has its assets placed at $45,000,000. He is also a director in the People's Trust Company, of Brooklyn. His experience as a public official followed his appointment by Mayor Low to a seat in the board of education. He participated with all his energy in the plans for reform, which attacked few other departments of municipal administration more severely than they did the educational system; sweeping changes were made and permanent improvements were established. He has been, for an extended period, a trustee of the House of the Good Shepherd; he belongs to the Orphan Asylum Society, and to various charitable and philanthropic societies. He was president of the committee V\^*VY,0,Vn,.T5vv^ 252 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. which perfected arrangements for the jubilee celebration of the late Bishop Loughlin. The residence of Mr. McMahon, at 87 McDonough street, is situated on the north side of the thoroughfare. The house is surrounded by about half an acre of ground, running through from McDonough street to Macon, and shaded by numerous trees. The front entrance is about thirty feet back from the street. Ascending a flight of five steps, the visitor enters upon a spacious piazza, which extends across the entire front. The main entrance hall is wide and high-studded, and to the left of it is the library, a large, square apart- ment, elegant in its decorations and appointments. The parlor is situated to the right of the main entrance and, like every other apartment in the mansion, has been furnished with an eye to comfort rather than to gorgeous display; but distributed about on carved cabinets, or otherwise artistically displayed, are articles of bric-a-brac and vertu which have been gathered from every quarter of the globe. The decorations are in perfect harmony with the furnishings. The dining-room is in the rear of the parlor on the main floor and is fitted and furnished on the same scale. In the second story are charming boudoirs and suites of chambers and spacious baths. Upon the top floor is the billiard-room, and it is here that Mr. McMahon seeks and obtains his recreation from the care of his great responsibilities; this is quite a large room, finished with high oak wainscoting, and fitted with every necessary appliance for the proper enjoyment of the game. Drawing-room, Residence of Herbert Booth King, South Oxford Street. A comparatively young man who has attained a high position in commercial as well as in the world of letters is Mr. Herbert Booth King. Perhaps it may be an added distinction that he is a man of one club— the Montauk. He is a grandson of William Chatfield King, the first public school principal appointed in Brooklyn, and is a kinsman of Miss Mary L. Booth, the author of the " History of New York," and the originator of Harper's Bazaar. Mr. King was born m Remsen street, Brooklyn, on Janu- ary 2, 1858. After having studied under private instructors and at the public schools in New York, he went abroad to continue his education. His first practical knowledge of the publishing business, in which he has since achieved success, was gained in the establishment of Harper & Brothers, with whom he was asso- ciated for four years. AVhile with them he was brought into close contact with the late George William Curtis, and a lasting friendship between them was the result. Leaving the Harpers he embarked in the publishing business on his own account, soon associating with him his brother, Frederick L. King. From Herbert Booth King. THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. publishing they branched out into the advertising business. Mr. King is president of the Herbert Booth King PuWishing Company, of New Yorlc; he is also a member of the board of directors of the New York Dairy Company He finds his greatest pleasure in his home. For many years he has been connected wth the North Reformed church, of which he .s one of the elders. He marned, on October 27, 1887, a daugh- ter of \lexander Campbell. He has one son, who is now four years old. His residence, at 45 South Oxford 'street has recently been remodeled and decorated in an artistic and handsome manner, adorned with choice paintings and fitted up with a complete system of incandescent electric lights. His favorite room is the library, in which are gathered not far from two thousand carefully-selected volumes. Here, too is a unique collection of autographs, including not only those of prominent personages of the present day but of many individuals noted in history. Mr. King is a warm personal friend of Grover Cleveland, who', together with Mayors Boody, Chapin, Low and others, has been frequently entertained at his residence. Hallway in Residence of Harvey Murdock. Harvey Murdock is descended from a family which has been known in the annals of New England since the days of the Pilgrim fathers. The first American Murdock settled near Plymouth, Mass., in 1628. The family subsequently removed to Uxbridge, Mass., of which place they were the first settlers, and there the present family is yet a leader. The Murdock family took an active part in opposing the terrible witchcraft frenzy which prevailed in Massachusetts in 1692, and their influence with other liberal colonists did much to save the colony from still more fatal consequences arising from the bigoted zeal of Cotton Mather. Colonel Lewis Murdock took an active part in the war of the Revolution, and was a cousin of General Warren, who was killed at Bunker Hill. The family in every generation has furnished patriots, and at least one representative has been in each of the country's wars. Harvey Murdock's father, Wm. C. CiSfcBO.*!, ■^.^:,£g^n^iiiaa-MatgiS!iyt*J^#iaga^^^-a^a^ 1 Residence of Harvey Murdock, Montgomery Place. 2S6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Murdock, was among the first to enlist in the 5th N. Y. Volunteers, Duryee's Zouaves. Mr. Murdock's mother is the granddaughter of Samuel Fickett, who in the early part of the present century was the largest ship-builder in New York. This family for several generations were ship-builders at and near Portland, Me., from which place Samuel Fickett moved his ship-yard to New York in 1815, and established himself at the foot of Gouverneur street, where he built in 1818 and 1819 the first steamship to cross the Atlantic ocean, the " Savannah." He built also many other large and notable vessels. Harvey Murdock was born in New Canaan, Connecticut, on January 9, 1858, and was educated at Norwalk, Connecticut, and at the Cleveland High School of Cleveland, Ohio, to which city his parents had moved. After graduation, Mr. Murdock came to New York and found employment in the wholesale dry goods house of James Talcott, and some time later he entered the employ of his uncle, James Howard Blasdell, a dealer in building granite. While in this position he obtained orders for the granite work of the Mills building, the Produce Exchange, and other large contracts. His experience in this line of business led him to enter the business of general contract building for himself in 1884; since that time he has been employed chiefly in the erection of private dwellings, designed especially for the owners. Of these, he has erected between seventy and eighty in this city, and almost as many in New York; the chief field of his activity was that part of the city known as the " park slope." Among the residences of his building are those of Messrs. Hulbert, Dettmer, Adams, Hanan, Chauncey, Remington, Kenyon, C. Robinson Smith, and many others equally prominent. Mr. Murdock married Miss Gabrielle Woodward, of Mount Kisco, New York a descendant of the old Quaker family of Thorn, who were among the first English settlers of Westchester county; they have two children, a son and a daughter, and live at 11 Montgomery place, in a handsome residence erected by Mr. Murdock. He is a member of the Montauk and Crescent Athletic clubs and Kesidence of Thomas Adams, Jr., Eighth Avenue. a^4AM/ r^ 2S8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. attends the First Reformed Dutch church. He is a Republican in politics, but is extremely liberal in his ideas. He has a student's love for books, and possesses many curious and valuable volumes. The life of Thomas Adams, Jr., has been eventful and interesting. By energy and determination he has achieved marked success in various business enterprises. Several of his undertakings at the outset did not give much promise of profit, but his energy and discretion ultimately placed them upon a sound finan- cial basis. He was born on April ii, 1846, in New York city, and for a brief period attended the public schools there. Through practical experience he knows something of the civil war. His father, who was a photographer by profession, received an appointment with the Army of the Potomac and took his son Thomas with him as an assistant, in which capacity he served for three years. Returning to New York, he was employed in several situations, such as book-keeper and salesman, until he finally became interested with his father in the manufacture of chewing gum, to which he has devoted the greater part of his business life. To Mr. Adams is due the existence of the automatic vending machine. After a great expense of time and a large pecuniary loss, he has brought it to its present state of perfection. He is president of the Williams Auto- matic Machine Company, which has a capital of $150,000, and president of the Tutti-frutti Automatic Vending Company which has a capital of $300,000. He is also president of the Brooklyn Union Elevated Railroad Advertising Company, and for two years he was a director of the Edison Electric Light Company. The busi- ness, however, in which he is principally interested is the production of chewing gum. Besides a Brooklyn establishment, the company has a large factory in Canada and branch offices in Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and in England and Sweden. Mr. Adams was an active member of the National Guard of New Jersey. He served seven years and was then honorably discharged. For two years he held the rank of sergeant-major and was elected captain of Company D, 4th Regiment, but declined to serve. He has served in the National Guard of this city, with the rank of captain, upon the staffs of General Barnes, Colonel Austen and Colonel Fackner. In 1891 he was a delegate to the Republican gubernatorial conven- tion at Rochester. He is a member of the Oxford, Union League, Montauk, Riding and Driving, and Parkway Driving clubs, as well as the Kings County Wheelmen. He is an Odd Fellow and a 32° Mason, and a member of the Royal Arcanum. Mr. Adams is an admirer of dramatic art, and has contributed greatly to its development in this city, by his connection with the Amaranth Dramatic Society, of which he was an enthusiastic member for ten years, serving in every capacity, from lay member to president, being twice elected to that office. Mr. Adams married Miss Emma Mills, daughter of Samuel Mills, the well- known manufacturer, of machinery, at Rochester, N. Y., and Jersey City, N. J. One of the few Kings County homesteads that have resisted the inroads of time and the modern mania for change -is now occupied by the only farmer in the city of Brooklyn, Peter Wyckoff, a descendant from one of the original settlers in Flatlands, in 1636. Four generations of the Wyckoff family have lived in the homestead at the corner of Flushing and Cypress avenues, and all have been farmers on a greater or lesser scale. Mr. Wyckoff has added to the original farm and now cultivates ten acres of land. Be- sides this, he has ninety acres leased to gardeners, one of whom has.cul- tivated his plot for forty-one years. This land originally belonged to the Schenck family, forming part of the dowry of a daughter of that family. Nicholas Wyckoff, who served in the American army during the Revolu- tion, bought the property in 1765- Peter Wyckoff, the present head of the house, is a great grandson of Nicholas Wyckoff and was born in the homestead he now occupies, on February 27, 1828. In 1851 he mar- ried Miss Catherine M. Rapelyea ; they have three children, two daugh- ters and one son. Mr. Wyckoff is a director in the First National Residence of Peter Wyckoff. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 259 Bank, the Williamsburg Fire Insurance Company, and the Williamsburg Savings Bank ; all those institutions were founded by the same coterie of men, of whom Mr. Wyckoff is the only one that holds office in the three corporations. He is a member of the First Re- formed church in Williamsburg, which his family have regularly attended since its organization. From 1848 until 1883, the date of his death, his father was vice- president of the St. Nicholas Society of Nassau Island, and Mr. Wyckoff is the present incumbent of that office. He is also a member of the Holland Society, and is a director in the Broadway Railroad Company and the Metropolitan Plate Glass Company of Brooklyn. Philo p. Hotchkiss is a prosperous New York banker whose home is in Brooklyn and who has in the social circles in the city a prominence equal to that which he has attained in the business world. He is one of those men in whose characters are seen the strongly contrasting but not incongruous elements of " practical business ability and love for the arts, for he is a musician, a composer, an orator and a litterateur, as well as a skilled financier, and can turn with facility from commercial notes to musical notation — from the figures of the ledger to the figures of rhetoric. His work on " Banks and Banking " is an interesting re- view of financiering from 1171 until 1892, wherein Peter Wyckoff. historical facts and practical statements are pleasantly diversified by quaint descriptions and comment that is sparkling or sapient as occasion suggests. He has had frequent invitations to deliver lectures on the same topic, and to these he has always responded readily. At Bay Shore, Long Island, where he has a beautiful summer home, he has lectured before the local literary society with marked success, and he has appeared also before the New York Institute of Accounts and other organizations, invariably giving his services free as a contribution to the interest of the general cause represented. The Brooklyn home of Mr. Hotchkiss is the fine old mansion at 80 Willow street, on the Heights, which was built about the year 1850 by Major Morton, and was rebuilt by Mr. Hotchkiss in 1887. When the mansion was rebuilt Mr. Hotchkiss engaged Midmer & Son, of Brooklyn, to build in the main hall a fine church organ, upon which he exercises his musi- cal talent. Among his musical compositions are a setting of Phoebe Gary's beautifullines, "One Sweetly Solemn Thought," and a song, " Ah, Dear Bay Shore," the words of which, from his own pen, are artistically wedded to the music. Mr. Hotchkiss was born in Meriden, Connecticut, on June 24, 1838, and was edu- cated in his native state. He is a member of the vet- eran association of the Hartford City Guards. His wife is a daughter 9f the late William H. Imlay, of Hartford, Connecticut, who was the promoter of the Atlantic Dock Company, and was for years its presi- dent ; she is a niece of Elias Hicks, the eminent Quaker preacher. At the corner of Evergreen avenue and Woodbine street, in an old-fashioned stone farm-house, which contrasts strongly with the many modern dwelling- houses surrounding it, dwells Adrian Martense SuYDAM, the living representative of a family that for many years has been identified with Brooklyn and the once independent communities which it has absorbed. Residence of Philo P. Hotchkiss, Willow Street. Jacob Suydam, his grandfather, who was bom on 2 6o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. February 3, 1740, married Elizabeth Leaycraft and settled upon a farm of three hundred acres in what then was the town of Bushwick. The house, in which his grandson was born and has ever since lived, was then situated in a clearing on the edge of the thick woodlands which existed in the locality at that time, something over two hundred years ago. A picture of it may be found in the chapter on Brooklyn in the Revolution. Jacob Suydam was one of the patriot soldiers during the revolutionary war, and while he was away from home the British took possession of his house and farm and occupied the most desirable half of the homestead for one winter, considerately allow- ing the absent soldier's family to occupy the other portion. The sword which Mr. Suydam used in the war of independence was presented to the Long Island Historical Society by his grandson, Adrian. Adrian M. Suydam, born on November 26, 1825, was educated at the district schools and at an early age began to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as a tiller of the soil. He was only eighteen years old when a portion of the farm passed into his possession. Upon the death of his father on August 31, 1847, he received his half of the estate, the remainder being divided among the other members of the family. Until 1869 the only house on the Suydam farm was the Adrian M. Suydam. old homestead, but Mr. Suydam perceived the possibility that the rapid growth of New York and Brooklyn presented for attracting desirable residents into his neighborhood, and marketed the greater part of his land advantageously ; the farm is now intersected by several streets and avenues and is occupied by a large number of dwelling-houses. He retains a quarter of a city block, which gives him space around his home for the out-door exercise which he loves and for his fruit-trees, graperies and poultry houses. Public affairs have demanded some of his time. He was elected alderman from the eighteenth ward in 1855 and served for one term; and in the fall of 1872 he was elected to the assembly, receiving two consecu- tive reflections. He is one of the trustees of the Bushwick Savings Bank and a director of the Wil- liamsburgh City Fire Insurance Company and the Kings County P'ire Insurance Company. Each in its turn, both sword and pen, have been used by General Stewart Lyndon Woodford, a lawyer, soldier and statesman, whose presence is re- quired to grace almost every civic and social event of special character which occurs in Brooklyn. He was formerly lieutenant-governor of New York, member of congress from the third congressional district, and United States attorney at New York city. He was born in New York city, on September 3, 1835. His father was Josiah Curtis Woodford, of Hartford County, Conn., grandson of Captain Josiah Curtis, of Wethersfield, Conn. Thomas Woodford came from Lincolnshire, England, in 1650, being one of the ear- liest settlers of Hartford. Stewart L. Woodford's mother, Susan Terry, was born in Southold, Long Island, where her ancestors had lived since i6go. His early education was at the Columbia College grammar school in New York, and before he was fifteen years of BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 261 age he entered the freshman class of Columbia College. In January, 1852, he entered the sophomore class of Yale College, New Haven, returning to Columbia, however, in 1853, and being graduated there in June, 1854. Immediately after graduation, Mr. Woodford began reading law in the office of Brown, Hall & Van- derpool, of New York city, and was admitted to the bar in 1857. In i860, he attended the national Republican convention, held in Chicago, III, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency. On his return, he entered into the canvass with great zeal, developing splendid oratorical abilities, and working incessantly for the success of the Republican ticket. In April, 186 1, he accepted the appointment of assistant United States attorney for the southern district of New York. During the civil war a bureau was created in the office of the United States attorney for the special prosecution of cases and trials arising out of seizures under the blockading regulations. This bureau was placed in charge of Mr. Woodford. In 1862, after the disastrous seven days' fighting and General McClellan's retreat across the Virginia peninsula, Mr. Woodford resigned his civil office and enlisted as a private soldier in Company H, of the 127th Regiment, New York Volunteers. Almost immediately he was elected captain of the- company^ and before the regiment had left for the front, he became its lieutenant-colonel. About this time he removed his residence to Brooklyn. During the summer of 1864, he acted as judge advocate general of the Department of the South; then as provost marshal general, and then as chief of staff to General Q. A. Gilmore. In the early autumn he was entrusted with the supervision of the exchange of prisoners at Charleston harbor. He had participated in several engagements on the coast, had been promoted to the rank of colonel for gallantry in action, breveted as brigadier-general, and assigned to duty according to his brevet rank, by the special order of President Lincoln. He was the first Union commandant at Charleston after its evacuation, and organized its provisional government. His success as military governor of that city was so marked that he was subsequently transferred to the com- mand of the city of Savannah, Ga. In 1865 he resigned his commission, and was mustered out of the service on August 22. Returning to Brooklyn, he resumed the practice of his profession in New York city. In October of that year, although no longer a resident of the ciiy, he was unanimously nominated by the Republican judiciary convention of New York city as their candidate for judge of the court of common pleas, but declined the honor. In the autumn of 1866 he was elected lieutenant-governor of New York. In 1868 he declined the Republican nomination for congress from the third district. Two years later he was the candidate of his party for governor of the state, but was defeated by Governor John T. Hoffman, the incumbent, who was a candidate for reelection. In 1872, General Woodford was a delegate to the national Republican convention, held at Philadelphia, Pa., which nominated General Grant for a second term, and was subsequently chosen president of the electoral college of the state, which voted for Grant and Wilson. At the same general election he was elected member of congress from the third congressional district. In 1874 he resigned his seat in congress, to return to his legal practice. In January, 1877, he was appointed United States attorney for the southern district of New York by President Grant, and was reappointed in March, 1881, by President Garfield. He was a member of the national Republican conven- tion in 1876, and again in 1880. At this last convention he placed General Arthur in nomination for the vice-presidency. In 1876 General Woodford had himself been a candidate for this high office, but after receiving some sixty votes, he withdrew in favor of William A. Wheeler, of New York. In 1883 General Woodford resumed his private practice, and has since held no public office. He is a member of the law firm of Arnoux, Ritch & Woodford. General Woodford has never lost his interest in military, literary or educational matters. He has long been a comrade in the Grand Army of the Republic and the Society of the Army of the Potomac. He has been president of the New England Society of New York, and of the Phi Beta Kappa Alumni of New York. He is vice-president of the City Savings Bank, and a director of the Sprague National Bank of Brooklyn, and of the Farragut Fire Insurance Company of New York. He was for long a trustee of the Adelphi Academy, of Brooklyn, and is now a trustee of the Berkeley Institute, and also of Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. Y. He has received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Columbia, Trinity and Yale Colleges; and that of LL. D. from Trinity College. He was married on October 15, 1857, to Miss Julia E. Capen, daughter of Henry T. Capen, of the firm of H. B. Claflin & Co., New York, and has three daughters. Among General Woodford's noteworthy addresses were the oration over the remains of General George H. Thomas, at Troy, N. Y.; a commemorative address in honor of William Cullen Bryant, before the faculty and students of Williams College, Mass.; an address on the "Common Needs of the Republic," at the University of Mississippi, at Oxford, Miss., in 1877; and one on the '' Labor Problem," before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Columbia College, N. Y., in 1886. An address delivered at Arlington Cemetery, on Decoration day in 1876, has been many times republished under the caption of " True Friends of the Union." He recently delivered the Washington's birthday oration before the Union League Club of Chicago. He is a member of the University, St. Anthony's and Lawyer's clubs in New York city, and of the Hamilton, Montauk, and Riding and Driving clubs m Brooklyn. ,62 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Seldom in the history of any city has there been one man to whom so much was owing for the inspira- tion and abetting of its great enterprises, its most magnificent and distinguishing features, as is owed by Brooklyn to J, S. T. Stranahan, who has been honored by the people with the designation of " First Citizen." Mr. Stranahan is descended from Scotch-Irish ancestry, and possesses the rugged and indomitable charac- teristics of the Celtic race. His great-grandfather, James, emigrated to this country in 1725, and settled in Rhode Island, but afterwards removed to Connecticut. James' grandson, Samuel, made his home in Peterboro, Madison County, New York, where his son, James S. T. Stranahan, was born on April 25, 1808. He was brought up as a farmer's boy and attended the district school until he was seventeen years old. He taught school for about a year, and then began the study of civil engineering. After a visit to the north- west an opportunity was given him by Gerritt Smith to develop the town of Florence, New York. Under his energetic influence the population of the place increased in a short time from a few hundreds to thousands of persons. In 1837 he was elected to represent his county in the assembly, notwith- standing the fact that he was a Whig, while the district generally went Democratic. In 1840 he removed to Newark, New Jersey, embarking there in several railroad enterprises. After four years in New Jersey, he came to Brooklyn, where he has resided ever since. The city was then just recovering from the set- back which had been given to its growth by the panic of 1837. Mr. Stranahan was quick to see the possibili- ties of the water-front of South Brooklyn, and he set on foot a movement which resulted in the development of the Atlantic Dock Company's system. He also became interestsd in the Union Ferry Company in 1851, when it absorbed Hamilton Ferry. In 1848 he was elected a member of the board of aldermen on the Whig ticket. At the close of his term, in 185 1, he was nominated by his party for mayor, but was defeated by Samuel Smith, In the exciting days of the " Missouri Compromise," in 1854, he was sent to congress, and served his constituents faithfully and honestly. When, in 1857, the metropolitan police district was created, covering New York, Brooklyn and Staten Island, he was appointed one of the. commissioners, and served in that capacity for several years. In i860, and again, in 1864, he was chosen as one of the delegates from Brooklyn to the National Republican conventions which placed Abraham Lincoln in nomin- ation for the presidency for his first and second terms. In the latter year he also had a seat in the electoral college. He was an elector~at-large in 1888, when Benjamin Harrison was elected president. During the civil war he gave his best efforts to the national cause as president of the War Fund Committee of Brooklyn. At the same time, the first Mrs. Stranahan was at the head of the Womans' Relief Association. From its formation in i860, until 1882, Mr. Stranahan served as president of the commission which laid out and devel- oped Prospect Park. Next, perhaps, to his foresight, his most remarkable quality is his patient waiting for results. His management of the park employees, during the twenty years of his control of the department, was a practical e.xemplification of civil service reform. Notwithstanding the fact that he was a director of the Union Ferry Company, he took a deep interest in the building of the bridge, and was one of the directors in the original company. For sixteen years, 1869-85, he was a member of the board of trustees, was on the executive committee and, with Henry C. Murphy and William C. Kingsley, practically managed the details. Upon the death of Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Stranahan acted as president of the board of trustees and presided at the ceremonies on the day when the great structure was opened to the public. Since his retirement from active work in connection with the bridge management, his ideas in relation to its affairs have been largely followed by his successors ; experience having demonstrated beyond a doubt their wisdom, from both theoretical and practical standpoints. In the summer of 1891, his fellow-citizens brought to completion an unusual tribute to his worth. A fine bronze statue of Mr. Stranahan, paid for by popular subscription, was unveiled at the entrance to Prospect Park on Saturday, June 6, 1891. It was designed by Frederick McMonnies, the talented young pupil of the celebrated sculptor, Augustus St. Gaudens. The statue is more than life-size, and represents the subject standing in an easy pose, with his silk hat in his hand and his overcoat thrown across his arm. At the unveiling, Mr. Stranahan and his wife were both present; and from the crowd that gathered on the stands and open spaces around the Park gateway, few prom- inent Brooklynites were absent. Mayor Alfred C. Chapin and many of the heads of municipal depart- ments were present. The exercises, presided over by General John B. Woodward, chairman of the statue fund committee, were especially notable for the fine historical address delivered by Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs. The veil was removed from the statue by its sculptor, Mr. Stranahan relin- quishing into Mr. McMonnies' hand the privilege of giving his creation to the gaze of the public. Mr. Stranahan's first wife was Miss Mariamne Fitch, daughter of Ebenezer R. Fitch, of Westmoreland, Oneida County, New York. He wedded her in 1837. Mrs. Stranahan figured prominently in the social, religious and charitable circles of Brooklyn until her death, which occurred at ATanchester, Vermont, in the month of August, 1866. She it was who presided over the Womans' Relief Association already referred to, and there were few enterprises of charitable import, which women aided or controlled, with which her name was not connected. The present Mrs. Stranahan was Miss Clara C. Harrison, a native of Massa- chusetts. Prior to her marriage, she was well known in Brooklyn as one of the principals of an important il ^ ^, -^jAa^ (Vv/v (Jvc ^lAaD BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 265 private seminary for young ladies. Mrs. Stranahan has been, and still is, connected in an executive capacity with such well-known organizations as the Kings County Visiting Committee of the State Charities Aid Society, and the Society for the Aid of Friendless Women and Children. Public movements for charitable purposes usually include Mrs. Stranahan's name in the list of patronesses. Stephen Van Cullen White was born in Chatham County, North Carolina, in 1831. He was raised in the west, and for over a quarter of a century has had a very active life in New York city, while for the past decade he has been prominent in the political and social circles of Brooklyn. His father was descended from a Pennsylvania Quaker family; and during the "Nat Turner" uprising, in 1831, defied the sentiment of the community in which he lived by refusing to do police duty to guard against difficulty with the slaves. For this he was compelled to leave the state, six weeks after his son Stephen was born. The family jour- neyed by wagon over the rough mountains of Tennessee and through the "wilderness of Kentucky," to settle in the virgin prairies of Illinois. In a log cabin, about six miles from the junction of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, young Stephen became thoroughly acquainted with the work of a frontier farm. He was an inveterate reader and a close student. During his boyhood he attended the Hamilton primary school, in what is now Otterville, Jersey County, Illinois. He entered Knox College in the class of 1854, and during his course partly supported himself by teaching school. He afterwards studied law with Brown and Kasson. In November, 1856, he was admitted to the bar, and the following month he began to practise in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1 86 1 he defended successfully the only treason case ever tried in that state. During the illness of the United States district attorney for Iowa, in 1864, Mr. White filled his place and conducted the civil and criminal cases of the general government. He still occasionally argues a case before the United States Supreme Court. In 1865, Mr. White became one of the broker's firm of Marvin & White, in Wall street. New York. They were successful, but Mr. Marvin withdrew in 1867, leaving Mr. White to continue the business alone, which he did until 1882, when Arthur B. Claflin and F. W. Hopkins became associated with him under the firm name of S. V. White & Company. He has been a member of the New York Stock Ex- change for over twenty-seven years, taking part in some of the largest dealings in the street. Success was assured by his cool judgment and fearless operations. He has suffered defeat but once, when, through a combination of circumstances and a determined effort of the great operators of Chicago and New York^ his splendid fortune was swept away and he was buried beneath a load of debt. Mr. White's creditors, asked him to continue operations on the floor of the Stock Exchange and to settle the indebtedness in his own time. For many years he had been the chief operator in Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad securities, and on his return he at once took up his stand at the Lackawanna post. Just at that time the coal stocks took an upward turn, and within two days Mr. White had paid one hundred cents on the dollar to every creditor whose claim did not exceed $500. At the end of a month he had paid over $50,000, and materially reduced his obligations; and before the year 1892 was out he had paid in full, with interest, every cent of an indebtedness which to the ordinary man would have been a crushing load for a lifetime. He entirely justified the confidence of the creditors who preferred to put themselves without reserve in his hands, rather than trust to the ordinary operations of the forms of law and business customs. The unswerving courage, splendid ability and sterling integrity that Mr. White has shown, command the unstinted admiration of creditors and business associates, and place him in the front rank of honor able business men. In 1886, Mr. White was elected on the Republican ticket as member of congress from the third congressional district. He proved an able and efficient representative during his term of office. On his removal to Brooklyn, he became a member of Plymouth church and a close friend of Mr. Beecher. For a long period he has been treasurer of the church, and is now president and treasurer of the board of trustees. He owns the largest private telescope in the country, which is mounted m an observatory in the rear of the house. He is an accomplished classical scholar, as well as a lawyer, banker, astronomer and church officer. He has made a translation of the " Dies Ir^ " which has been highly commended. Mr. White's name is associated with many of the charities of the city, and Mrs. White is an indefatigable worker in several of the more prominent of them. Darwin R. James was born in Williamsburgh, Mass., on May 14, 1834, of parents who were descended from Puritan ancestors and who were early settlers in that state. The family removed to Williamsburgh, L. I., in the autumn of 1847, at which time Darwin James was a scholar at Mt. Pleasant Boarding School, at Amherst, Mass. At the age of sixteen he began his business career as a clerk with a large wholesale silk-goods firm in New York city. In February, 1858, he formed a copartnership with his intimate friend, Mitchell V. Packard, under the firm-name of Packard & James. At the early age of eighteen he began mission work and a system of visiting the houses of the poor, in what was then the outlying part of Brook- lyn. During forty years he has continued in this field of work. In order to be nearer to it, he removed, shortly after his marriage, to a place within convenient distance, when his home and the mission Sunday- school became centres of religious and benevolent work. For a number of years he has occupied the position of chairman of the Brooklyn Presbytery's committee on church extension. With Ripley Ropes, 266 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Alfred T. White and others, he had part in the organi- zation of the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. He is also connected with several benevolent organiza- tions, such as the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and the Brooklyn Industrial School Association; he is a member of the board of foreign missions of the Presbyterian Church, and is associated with many religious, social and mercantile bodies. He is director, trustee, or officer in a number of important companies. Since 1873 he has been secretary of the New York Board of Trade and Trans- portation, lie has always taken an active part in the councils of the Republican party and during four years served in the United States congress, while at the present time he is a member of the United States board of Indian commissioners, having been appointed by President Harrison. Mr. James was elected to congress by notably large majorities. In the forty- ninth congress he distinguished himself by his success- ful efforts in the committee on coinage, weights and measures, and upon the floor of the house, in defeat- ing the bill for the free coinage of silver, having charge of the opposition to this measure during the debate. He took an active part in furthering the erection of the government's public buildings in Darwin R. James. Brooklyn, and has the credit of initiating the effort which resulted in acquiring on a short lease the use of the vacant navy-yard land on the east side of Washington avenue, at the Wallabout, for market purposes; which land the city subsequently purchased. He is a man of large and practical views and has a well-cultured mind, enriched by experience from extensive travel in all parts of the world. Eminent and successful in his profession of a lawyer, and fully alive to his privileges and duties as a citizen, William Oilman Low would stand forth in his own individuality as one of the representative men of Brooklyn, even were his family name not so closely associated as it is with the history of the city. On the maternal side. General Bedell, his great-grandfather, and Mott Bedell, his grandfather, were both patriotic men, and were with the Long Island militia when it gathered at Fort Green in 1812 to repel a threatened landing of British forces to attack New York. His paternal ancestors settled more than two hundred and fifty years ago in the sturdy old Massachusetts county of Essex. His great-grandfather was one of those young heroes who served faithfully through the campaign of 1776. Seth Low, the grandfather of William G. Low, was a native of Salem, Mass., and came to Brooklyn as a young married man in 1829. He was one of the incorporators of the city, served in the city council as alderman from the fourth ward, and was actively interested in founding the Brooklyn Institute, the Society for the Improving the Condition of the Poor, and other useful organizations. He was an officer of the Packer Institute and of the institution which pre- ceded it. A younger son of Seth Low was William Henry Low, father of William G. Low, who married Anne Davison Bedell, and their son was born in Cranberry street, on April 9, 1844. Matriculating at Columbia College in 1861, William G. Low was graduated in the class of 1865, and two years later he took his degree at the Columbia College law school. As a lawyer, Mr. Low has been largely engaged in and connected with real estate and insurance cases, and has been remarkably successful m his practice. Within the past two or three years he has had the management of a French spoliation claim, represented by the Pierrepont estate, in which he was finally successful before the court of claims at Washington, securing a judgment for over $160,000 in the interest of an old firm of which a former Pierrepont was a member— a case originating as far back as the year 1797. He is counsel for the Home Life Insurance Company of New York, and for other important corporations. For many years Mr. Low was actively in sympathy with the Republican party, but in 1888 he withdrew from his ward association, and he is at the present time an Independent. He represented his ward in the Republican general committee for several years, and he was three^ times selected as a delegate to the Republican state convention. He was largely instrumental in securing the establishment of the state railroad commission. Mr. Low married Lois Robbins Curtis, a daughter of the Honorable Benjamin R. Curtis, a justice of the United States supreme court. He is an Episcopalian, active in church and Sunday-school work, and especially in mission enterprises. He is presi- dent of the Brooklyn Hospital, of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Association, and of the Civil Service i-- C.^^.^ ^^PUf. 268 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Reform Association, and a member of the executive committee of the National Civil Service Reform Association- he is also a member of the Lawyers' Club of New York, the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn, and a director of the Home Life Insurance Company, the Fidelity and Casualty Company, and the Brooklyn Savings Bank, and a trustee of the Packer Listitute. He is a tireless and conscientious toiler, in his taste is philosophical, and is especially fond of reading. His appearance is that of a professional man, but his business and social life do not intrude upon each other. The name of Pierrepont, which has been one of the most prominent and respected in the city of Brooklyn from the time when it was a hamlet, was well known to all the people through Hezekiah B and Henry E., respectively the grandfather and father of Henry Evelyn Pierrepont. The late Henry E Pierrepont, from the incorporation of the Union Ferry Company down to his death, two years ago, was the leading spirit in its management and guardianship. He was a man of great wealth, and associated with many charitable, financial and educational institutions. His son, the present Henry E. Pierrepont, was born in Brooklyn in 1845, and graduated from Columbia College. Shortly after leaving college, he embarked in the warehouse business with his father in the well-known and extensive Pierrepont Stores on Furman street, of which he soon assumed the sole management, and continued in it for twenty-one years. He occupies such important positions as trustee in the Franklin Trust Company, of which he was one of the incorporators; in the Brooklyn Savings Bank, the Home Life Insurance Company, the City Dispensary, and the Brooklyn Hospital. He is also a warden in Grace Episcopal church. Hezekiah B. Pierrepont orig- inally owned a mansion which stood on the brow of the hill occupying Montague street, with parks on either side, and was for many years, both before and after the commencement of the present century, one of the leading merchants of Brooklyn. General Alfred C. Barnes, the eldest son of the late Alfred S. Barnes and Harriet E. Burr, daugh- ter of General Timothy Burr of Rochester, N. Y., was born in Philadelphia on October 27, 1842. In 1845 the family removed to New York, and in 1846 to Brooklyn. He entered the employment of A. S. Barnes & Co. in 1857, and working through all the grades, he became a partner in 1865, and head of the firm in 1868. In i860 he joined the 7th Regiment as a member of Company C. In April, 1861, he went to the front with the regiment, and in 1862 he became a member of Company E., 23d Regiment. In 1864 he was elected first-lieutenant of Company E, and in 1867 he resigned and retired. He was invited in 1876 to ; return to the regiment as major, and in the railroad riots of 1877 he commanded the detachment which ran a train through a mob of rioters at Corning, and dispersed them at Painted Post. On January i, 1880, he was appointed brigadier-general, and general in- spector of rifle practice of the state, vice Wingate. He superintended Creedmoorand all the other ranges and introduced a system of rifle practice now gen- erally followed. As a member of Governor Cornell's famous staff, he had as companion officers Generals Fred. Townsend, Lloyd Aspinwall and Horace Russell. He retired in 1883; but again in 1884 he was recalled by a unanimous election to the colonelcy of the 13th Regiment and with the brevet rank of brigadier-general, being the only colonel in service holding that rank. He was president of the Twentieth Ward Republican Association for several terms, was delegate to many important conventions and presided at the great citizens' meeting which nominated Seth Low for mayor. Afterwards, changing his political views and being unwilling to pose in the role of an Independent, he is now classed as a Democrat. He is an agreeable writer and speaker. In collaboration with Dr. J. 1). Steele he prepared a popular historical school text-book — " Barnes' Brief History of the United States." He has been a director of the Brooklyn Library for rrfany years and was its president for three terms. He was the first secretary of the Adelphi Academy and has been a trustee since its foundation in 1889. He is a trustee of Cornell University and endowed with a reference library the Barnes Hall, erected on the University campus by A. S. Barnes, his father. For some time he was a trustee of the Polytechnic Institute in this city, of which he was one of the first Alfred C. Barnes. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 269 pupils. In 1879 he was appointed a trustee of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, and for some years has been the trustee longest in continuous service. His best individual work has been in con- nection with the bridge termiHal improvements now being made in accordance with the much discussed " Barnes plan," which includes the new station between Sands and High streets with a spacious plaza in front. Being impressed with the want of banking facilities in the Broadway district bounded by Bond street and Fourteenth street, he organized a successful canvass for capital stock to found the Astor Place Bank, of which he is president. The foundation of the Oxford Club took place in the house of General Barnes on Washington Park in 1880. He is now more actively connected with the Hamilton Club, of which he was until recently a director, and he is president of the Aldine Club on Lafayette place. New York. In church life he has been successively connected with several churches and actively engaged in their work. While attending the Clinton Avenue Church he vigorously opposed the action of the Rev. Dr. Budington and a majority of the congregation in calling a " council " to sit in judgment on Henry Ward Beecher. Among other associations with which General Barnes is or has been connected may be named Lafayette Post 140, G. A. R., of which he is a charter member. He isa member of the Sons of the Revolution and holds membership in other prominent associations. In 1863 he married Josephine, daugh- ter of Henry A. Richardson. They have had three children. David M. Stone, editor-in-chief of the New York Journal of Commerce, and long president of the Asso- ciated Press, is now seventy-four years old, and is the oldest editor in continuous service in New York. From the time when he became connected with the Journal of Cojumerce in 1849, he has never had a single vacation, and for more than thirty years he has not been absent from the office one whole day, not even on a legal holiday, and he observes the same regularity in his other engagements. He is distinguished among Brooklynites by his public spirit and philanthropy. He comes of Puritan stock, and was born in Connecticut, on December 23, 1817. Unwilling to be a burden to his father, who was a country physician, he left home a month before he was fourteen years old, and from that time on supported himself. Early in 1849, he entered journalism as editor of the Dry Goods Reporter, in New York. After a few months he secured a position on the editorial staff of the Journal of Commerce, at a salary of $1,000. The paper had been published since 1827 without a money market report, but at his suggestion this was thenceforth a special feature of the publication. During the war a change of ownership occurred, and in 1861, Mr. Stone became a partner in the firm of Prime, Stone, Hale & Hallock, which came into control of the paper and conducted it until it was incorporated in 1866, since which time Mr. Stone has been president of the corporation. Mr. Stone became a resident of Brooklyn in 1849. The famous lawn and conservatory at his residence on Franklin avenue, are considered among the finest on Long Island. The grounds are 200 .\ 300 feet in extent, and are filled with the choicest trees and plants. The conservatories cover 20,000 square feet. The religious side of Mr. Stone's nature has been always conspicuous, and interspersed among the dry reports of mercantile matters in the Journal of Commerce are many devout meditations, all sparkling with the poetic fire which marked the first literary productions of his youth. It was doubtless the death of Mrs. Stone, in 1887, that inspired an article from his pen on prayers for the dead, which recently attracted much attention. Among those who have interested themselves in the question of municipal reform, William Ziegler will long hold high reputation. As a manufacturer and man of business, as a real estate operator and public-spirited citizen, his name will not easily be forgotten by his fellow Brooklynites. He was born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, of German parentage, on September i, 1843. While he was yet a child, his parents made for themselves a new home in Iowa, a few miles from the iown of Muscatine. He received the ordinary common school education obtainable near his home, and in 1858 entered the printing office of the Muscatine Journal, where he served for two years and mastered the printing trade under John Mahin, the editor and proprietor. After an intermission of nearly a year, spent on his father's farm, he secured employment in a drugstore, where he remained for about two years, and in his spare moments studied telegraphy. In the fall of 1862, he left the west for Poughkeepsie, N. Y., entering Eastman's Business College there, where by persistent work he went through the course and secured his diploma within three months. Early in 1863, he left Poughkeepsie for New York city, and secured a position in a wholesale drug house, where he remained until 1868. During this period, he attended the school of phar- macy attached to the University of the City of New York, taking the full course. Dr. E. R. Squibb of Brooklyn being at the head of the chemistry division there at that time. In 1868, he determined to engage in business for himself, and not having sufficient capital to start a store, started in a small way to supply extracts, drugs, etc., to confectioners and bakers, gradually founding a supply business in which to-day the annual dealings aggregate millions. In 1870, he organized the Royal Chemical Company, and thereafter made a specialty of manufacturing baking powder. His success in this line led to the incorporation of the Royal Baking Powder Company, in 1873. In July, 1890, he purchased the Price Baking Powder Company of Chicago, which now pays a large dividend on an investment of $2,000,000. In March, 1891, he bought 270 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. out the Tartar Chemical Company of New Jersey. It was in the winter of 1890-91, that Mr. Ziegler came before the public in the light of a protestant against alleged municipal extravagance. He wrote to Mayor Chapin, asking that official to refrain from consummating the proposed purchase of the Long Island Water Supply Company's plant and stock, at a price which Mr. Ziegler declared was vastly in excess of its true value, and requested that time should be allowed for consideration and explanation before the money was paid. A second letter which he wrote to the Mayor was not answered by that official, and shortly afterwards Mr. Ziegler assumed the right given to every private citizen by what is known as the "Tilden Act," which permits a taxpayer to take legal measures to restrain public servants from extravagance and wastefulness in the expenditure of the public funds. The result of his efforts came in the form of an injunction from the supreme court restraining the officials from making the purchase. The wide notoriety given to the case by the newspapers all over the country, brought Mr. Ziegler prominently before the people as a candidate for nomination for the mayoralty on the Republican ticket, in November, 1891. He expressed his willingness to accept only in the event of Mayor Chapin being chosen as his opponent, so that the discussion of the famous " water scandal " might be made prime issue in the campaign. After considerable discussion among the political leaders, the idea of Mr. Chapin's candidacy for a third term of office was dismissed, and Mr. Ziegler felt himself relieved from the obligation of accepting an uncongenial responsibil- ity that had in a great measure been forced upon him. Having served his fellow-citizens so materially, Mr. Ziegler retired to his business interests and his private life. His operations in real estate have been extensive. He was one of the moving spirits in the organization and building of the Brooklyn Real Estate Exchange and is interested in other investments and real estate dealings. He is a special partner in the dry goods firm of William B. Hislop & Co., of Syracuse and Auburn. His wife was Mrs. E. M. Gamble, sis- ter of Mrs. W. Jennings Demorest of New York city. For a number of years Benjamin Estes has been prominent in Brooklyn as one of those men whose constant and consistent efforts have been directed towards securing purity in politics. Although he never has held any public office, or allowed his name to be used as a .candidate for the suffrages of the people in any way, he has none the less exerted a ■■ positive influence for good government, and many times his name has been a barrier intervening between partisan ambition and questionable methods. He was the first to propose to the Republican General Com- mittee the measure since known as the " Chapin Primary Election Law," incurring for a time the ridi- cule of his fellow-members. He was a member of the Republican General Committee for several years, and is at present a member of the Young Republican Club and other party organizations. He is also a member of various social and benevolent societies. Since 187 1 Mr. Estes has lived in the ninth ward; but he has been a resident of the city since 1865. He was born in Schenectady County, N. Y., in 1827, of Quaker parentage, and he still affiliates with the Friends, although not a regular attendant at their meetings. His education was obtained through his own efforts; he worked on a farm in summer and taught school in the winter, thereby obtaining suffi- cient money to enable him to attend Hartwick Seminary at Otsego, N. Y., for some time. A few years since he endowed several permanent scholarships for poor boys in that institution as an expression of his recognition of the value of the school. It was only by severe economy that he was able to obtain a legal education, but his carefulness of opportunities has made him one of the foremost lawyers in the state. He began practice in Otsego, N. Y., but in 1865 transferred his practice to New York city, becoming a resident of Brooklyn at the same time. Mr. Estes is not now so actively engaged in the practice of his profession as formerly, but he is in the field yet and takes an active interest in the affairs of the city, and of the party with which he has been connected since 1856. The town of Delphi, in Onondaga County, New York, was the birthplace of General Henry W. Slocum; but his name is always identified with the city of Brooklyn from the fact that he has made his home here since the war of the rebellion, during which he made his brilliant military record. He has Benjamin Estes. 272 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. taken an active part in the public affairs of the city; he has been twice a member of congress, once a candidate for secretary of the state of New York, and he has. been talked of as a candidate for president. The qualities which he exhibited on the battlefield have given him a grasp of political questions, and a prominence in the management of affairs that have caused his fellow-citizens gladly to honor him. Henry Warner Slocum was born on September 24, 1827. In early life he evinced a desire for a military career, and received an appointment from his congressional district to the Military Academy at West Point, in 1848. He was graduated in 1852, with the commission of a second-lieutenant in the ist Artillery. In 1855 he was made first-lieutenant, but one year later he resigned and entered upon the practice of law in Syracuse. When war was declared, he promptly offered his services, and on May 21, 1861, he was commissioned colonel of the 27th N. Y. Volunteers. He was wounded in the thigh at the first battle of Bull Run. As the summer of 1861 closed, he was promoted from colonel to brigadier-general, and served in the army of the Potomac. He fought courageously in the engagements at Gaines' Mills, Malvern Hill and on other battle- fields. . He was made a major-general of volunteers on July 4, 1862, and he took part in the second battle of Bull Run and the struggles at South Mountain and Antietam. In October of the same year he received command of the 12th Army Corps, and did gallant fighting in the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellors- ville and Gettysburg. At the latter contest he commanded the right wing of the Union, forces, which turned the tide of the battle. General Slocum had charge of the district of Vicksburg after April, 1864. In August of the same year he took the place of " Fighting Joe " Hooker at the head of the 20th Army Corps, and accompanied General Sherman to Atlanta. He participated in Sherman's famous " march to the sea," and commanded the left wing of the army until the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston. In September, 1865, he resigned and came to Brooklyn, where he made his home and resumed his law practice. The fall of the same year saw him nominated for secretary of state for New York by the Democratic party, but the ticket was defeated at the polls. In the year 1866 a colonelcy in the regular army was offered him, but he declined it. He was a presidential elector in 1868, and in the same campaign was elected to congress from the third district; he was re-elected in 1870. In 1876 he was appointed president of the department of city works, by Mayor Schroeder. He was one of the stockholders in the Bridge Company at the time when the two cities assumed control of the work in 1875, and he was appointed one of the Brooklyn trustees the same year. He was reappointed several times afterwards. He also interested himself greatly in street railroad matters, and was made president of the Cross-town Railroad Company. In 1882 the Brooklyn delegates to the Democratic state convention worked hard to secure his nomination for governor, but he was defeated by Grover Cleveland. A year later he was elected congressman-at-large from the state, which was his last public service. General Slocum owns a fine house on Clinton avenue, where he resides. Even were he not the chief editor of the Eagle, St. Clair McKelway would still be a prominent citi- zen of Brooklyn, by reason of his attainments and his personality. As an intellectual force his presence is continuously felt in lines apart from his journalistic work. From youth he has been a student of books . and of affairs. A boyhood passed among the surround- ings of culture and under the influence of a scholarly father gave him great advantages, which a life of application has broadly developed, and he is steadily looked to in this community to speak for thoughtful men on the topics that interest them. As a speaker in the lighter vein he also ranks high, and no one is in greater demand for those " after dinner " utterances which, from one who understands the art, not only amuse at the time but can be made the medium for thoughts that will outlive the moment and the atmos- phere of persiflage in which they are spoken. But it is in the presentation of serious subjects that the range of his study and thinking is indicated, and a great variety of ethical topics have been discussed by him in occasional addresses, which have been extensively read and listened to. Among these subjects may be mentioned " The Press and the Pulpit," " The Modern Movement of Religious Thought," " A Plea for Old- - fashioned Preaching," " What the World has done St. Clair McKelway. for the Church," " The Doctor and the Times," " The BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 273 Lawyer and the Times," " The Study of Pohtics m Schools," etc. In recognition of his learning and abilities, Mr. McKelway received, in 1890, the degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Syracuse, and in 1883 he was chosen to be a Regent of the University of the State of New York for life. He is a member of the Albany Institute and of the American Academy of Science, and is a corresponding member of the British Association of Science. His professional experience — which, together with other facts in his career, has been noted in the chapter devoted to the Eagle newspaper — has given him an exceptionally intimate familiarity with the public affairs of the nation, the state and the city; and this knowledge has resulted in an influence which is exercised in the spirit of the true publicist. His views of men and measures are the expression of conviction based on dispassionate observation, and consistent with a long and ably maintained line of political activity in the field of economic discussion. Clear and incisive, his utterances command respectful attention on the part of opponents as well as sympathizers, and he is an acknowledged exponent of the principles and policy of the re-born Democracy, with which he is in affiliation. Mr. McKelway entered journalism through the gate of the law. He was a student of that profession under Clarence A. Seward and Judge Samuel Blatchford, but he resumed labor on the press at once after his admission to the bar. A somewhat less degree of application to medicine and theology thus gave to him the advantage of exact professional knowledge in three great callings, before he set himself at his life work. This has made his utterances on science and the humanities as frequent and authoritative as those on politics. Travel at home and abroad has put a practical and cosmopolitan stamp on his views of government and of life. The World in the hands of Manton Marble, and the Argus of Albany and the Eagle of Brooklyn, in his own hands, represent the principal papers on which Mr. McKelway has been. He went from organship to independence in journalism by natural progress, and is regarded as more independent of politicians in his editorship than most men of the fourth estate in any land. His duties have tested his executive as well as his literary abilities in equal measure, and with equal success. He is so fond of those duties that no suggestion of office from state or national govern- ments have been longer considered by him than their courteous declination required. A contempt for the humbug that coarse and untrained minds have unsus- pected fitness for journalistic functions concurs in him with an estimate of his profession as a public trust of the highest sort. Mr. McKelway is a member of the Manhattan Club of New York; the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn; the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Rochester University Chapter; the Cliosophic Society of Prince- ton College; the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, in succession from his father; and the Press Aux- iliary of the Columbian Exposition. The vast responsibility entailed by the numerous mechanical appliances and engineering problems in- volved in the operation of the Brooklyn Bridge, rests upon the shoulders of Charles C. Martin, chief en- gineer and superintendent, who has proved himself an efficient officer of a great public corporation. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in the town of Springfield, Bradford County, on August 30, 1831. His parents were descended from the sturdy Puritan stock of New England. The family settled in Pennsylvania when Bradford County was on the very verge of eastern civilization, and amid the surroundings of frontier farm life the early days of the future famous engineer were passed. He followed a successful course of study at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- tute at Troy, N. Y., from which ht was graduated as a civil engineer in 1856. After his graduation he spent a year in the institute as a teacher. In 1891 he was unanimously elected Director of his alma mater, but his interest in the further development of the great Bridge, which then engaged him, induced him to decline the high honor. From Troy he came to Brooklyn, where he secured a position as rodman in the engineering department of the Brooklyn water works. He rose within two years to the position of assistant engineer, and superintended the construction of the three large reservoirs and of about four miles of the big conduit. He perfected his knowledge of iron work and bridge building in the works of the Trenton Locomotive Machine Manufacturing Company, of which he finally became Charles C. Martin. 274 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. superintendent. When the civil war began he v/as engaged in building a railroad bridge across the Savannah river, and was obliged to make a long detour in order to regain his northern home. During the progress of the rebellion he built bridges, superintended the manufacture of guns, ranging in size from the eleven-inch Dahlgren to the Springfield rifle, and supervised the boiler experiments which were instituted by the federal government in the Brooklyn navy-yard. When peace was restored, he was employed by the city to lay the 48-inch main along Atlantic avenue, through which the city is supplied with water from the Ridgewood reservoir. He afterwards became identified, as chief engineer, with the making of Prospect Park; in this capacity he sank the great well, at that time the largest in the world, and perfected the system of driveways and drainage which has added so much to the perfection of the city's chief pleasure-ground. The most important epoch in his professional career began when John A. Roebling called in his aid in sinking the huge caissons upon which were to rest the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge. From the beginning of work until the span was thrown open to the public, he labored faithfully as first assistant engineer, and when, upon the completion of the structure. Colonel Washington A. Roebling retired from the position of chief engineer, Mr. Martin was appointed chief engineer and superintendent. His record presents an example of faith unbroken and duty satisfactorily performed. To his suggestions are due nearly all the increasing facilities afforded year by year for the successful management of this means of inter-urban traffic, and to the same source the Brooklyn of the future will credit much of the magnifi- cence designed to adorn the proposed new termini of the Bridge. The characteristics which made the career of John T. Martin preeminently successful from a material standpoint are those which have assured the prosperity of many of his contemporaries. The characteristics which have marked his private life, which have commended him to those who have known him either personally or by reputation, are less common and therefore all the worthier of commendation. He amassed wealth by the exercise of an indomitable will, a tireless energy, and exceptional business tact. He has dispensed that wealth with a generous hand in aid of all charitable projects and he has unostenta- tiously given financial assistance to many of our more important public institutions. He has reared for himself a lasting monument, which carries its inscription in the kindly tributes of those who have experi- enced his benefactions or recognized how valuable such an example as his may be in a large community, where selfish ideas too often dominate. His personal tastes are those which refine and ennoble life. He has not lived solely for the purpose of acquiring money and spending it again, and he has set domestic ties above those social attractions which in our time too frequently allure men from their own firesides. John Thomas Martin was born in Baltimore, Md., on October 2,1816. He was the son of John Martin, the descendant of an old Maryland family. St. Mary's School in his native city gave him his education and while yet in his boyhood he entered the employ of Birckett & Pearce, one of the most prosperous mercan- tile establishments in Baltimore. At the age of seventeen he went to St. Louis and engaged in the cloth- ing business. What measure of success he attained may be inferred from the fact that he retired fifteen years later and came to Brooklyn with a fortune at his command. Soon afterwards he purchased the house at 28 Pierrepont street, which he has ever since made his home. During war time Mr. Martin interested himself in army contracting and so added largely to his wealth. He has invested also to a great extent in railroads, banks and trust companies. He is a director in the Brooklyn Trust Company, the Long Island Loan and Trust Company, the Nassau National Bank, and the Home Life Insurance Company. Elsewhere in this book the results of Mr. Martin's artistic predilections have been detailed. Scarcely less marked has been his attention to methods and means of public culture and education. He was one of the founders and first treasurer of the Polytechnic Institute and is still associated with its management. He is a member of the Long Island Historical Society and a director of the Mercantile Library. For just half a century James H. Frothingham has been a resident of Brooklyn, having come here in childhood and grown up to fill a large place in the community of which his father, the late Isaac H. Froth- ingham, was long an honored member. He was born in Salem, Mass., on June 2, 1833, and is a represent- ative of one of those families who formed the early colony of Massachusetts Bay. He is descended from William Frothingham, who settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1630, arriving in the fleet which brought Governor John Winthrop to America. The name of Frothingham has always been honorably known in that town, and through many generations members of the family have attained high standing both there and in the various communities to which they have removed. He received his early education at the old Phillips school in Salem, and was one of the original pupils of that somewhat famous school. For some years before coming to Brooklyn his parents lived in Boston, and there he attended the public schools. In Brooklyn he was for many years a pupil at Walter Chisholm's grammar school, and later entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y. At the latter institution he was graduated as civil engineer in the class of 1849. Mr. Frothingham never, however, adopted engineering as a profession His first business experiences were obtained in various clerical capacities, and before engaging in business on his own account he made an extended tour in Europe. After his return in 1855, he became a member of the B76 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. firm of Howland & Frothingham, of New York, and was for many years engaged in an extensive shipping business. After the civil war the firm was obliged to go out of business, and was dissolved.' Mr. Frothing- ham for a number of years held the presidency of the World Life Lisurance Company. In 1857 he was one of the organizers of the American Fire Insurance Company of New York, and still remains one of its directors. He has been a member of the Marine Society and of the New York Chamber of Commerce for more than thirty-five years. During the war he gave conspicuous evidence of his public spirit, and lost no opportunity for upholding the Union cause. He was one of the foremost organizers of the 23d Regiment, and was one of its original staff officers. In the subdivision of the work of the \Var Fund Committee, of which he was a very active member, the interests of the United States Sanitary Commission engaged Mr. Frothingham's unremitting attention. At the time of the sanitary fair in the Academy of Music in 1864, he was treasurer of the fair committee. He was with Simeon B. Chittenden on the committee which established the Brooklyn Union newspaper. Like his father, he has always been averse to the limitations to freedom of action and continuity of efl'ort incident to the public service, and has never held public office save as a member of the board of education during a period of si.\ years. He assisted during that period in greatly improving the course's of instruction in the publicschools and in establishing the graded system of studies, which marked at the time a great advance upon previous methods. In all the undertakings of the Brooklyn Library, his assistance has been one of the elements relied upon, and in the growth of the library his earnest interest and incitement have con- stantly been felt. At various times, and for many years consecutively, he has been president of the cor- poration, and he is at the present time the treasurer ; of its board of trustees. He was one of the organ- izers of the Children's Aid Society, and for a long time a director; he is a trustee of the Brooklyn Hospital, and was one of the organizers of the Sec- ond Unitarian Church of this city. Mr. Frothingham was one of the men who, in the face of many discour- agements, gave to the city the Kings County Elevated Railway. He has been treasurer of the company since a short time after its incorporation, later be- coming a director, and has been closely identified with the road in the various stages of its progress towards success. In the town of Owego, in Tioga County, N. Y., v,-hich has the reputation of having been the birth- place of more eminent lawyers, statesmen and clerics, than any other of its population in the country, Wil- liam B. Leonard was born in 1820. He received his early education at the Owego Free Academy. His father, Stephen B. Leonard, was a prominent man in Tioga County, and represented his district in congress for three successive terms, riding to Washington on horseback. He was also the editor of the Owego Gazette, the first newspaper published in Tioga County and one which is in existence yet. At sixteen years of age young Leonard left school and went to Trumansburg, N. Y., where he was apprenticed to his uncle, a dry goods merchant. There he remained four years and at the end of that time came to New York city and was employed in a wholesale dry goods jobbing house on Broadway. Five years later he became a member of the dry goods commission house of Von Valkenburgh cS: Co. Subsequently he became con- nected with the house of Farrington & Co., wholesale grocers. Then he entered Wall street, being a member of the firm of Leonard, Sheldon & Co. three or four years, after which the firm of Leonard & Howel was organized, the name being subsequently changed to that of Decker, Howell & Co., with Mr. Leonard as a silent partner. After spending a year in Europe, he returned to Brooklyn and founded the Kings County Bank, of which institution he was made president, remaining in that position until 1890. He has also been connected with many other commercial and financial institutions as director and trustee, among them being the Yuba Water Power Companv, the Vosburgh Manufacturing Company, Hanover Fire Insurance Company, Indemnity Surety Company and Bank of North America. In his con- nection with the Church of the Holy Trinity he has been prominent. He has been vestryman ever since the church was rescued from comparative obscurity by the Rev. Dr. Lewis, and for ten years he has been William B. Leonard. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 277 the senior warden. He was once offered the nomination for the city mayoralty, but declined. He is a trustee of the Brooklyn Homoeopathic Hospital and vice-president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. His eldest son is Bishop Wm. A. Leonard, of Ohio, who has attained a high reputa- tion in the Protestant Episcopal church, although he is the youngest in the college of bishops. Lewis H. Leonard, his second son, is connected with his father-in-law in the management of the Empire Stores, and Mrs. Louise B. Van Nostrand, his only daughter, is well known by reason of the foremost part which she takes in matters connected with many charitable institutions of the city. Edward H. Litchfield occupies a position among leaders of Brooklyn society, for which he is as well qualified by character and attainments as by the possession of wealth and the fact of honorable ancestry in both the paternal and maternal lines. He is a son of the late Edwin C. Litchfield, and his mother was a member of the Hubbard family, which, tracing its lineage back to the early settlement of New England, originated on the other side of the Atlantic in sterling English stock. The American Litchfields are of New England and have a family history extending back to colonial times and beyond the ocean to Old England. Both families became prominent in the state of New York. Edward H. Litchfield Edward H. Litchfield. was born in the old Hubbard homestead, in Utica, in 1845, and was only seven years old when his father, who had resided some time in New York city, became a resident of Brooklyn. His early studies were made at Clark and Brownell's school in Brooklyn, and at the Rectory school in Hamden, Conn., and during several years he travelled in Europe until 1863, when he became a student in the University of the City of New York. In 1867 he was graduated as Bachelor of Science. While in college he was a member of its literary and local societies, including the Zeta Psi. His interest in education has been retained and he is now a member of the council of the New York University. Educated and qualified for the legal profes- sion, he engages in practice only when any litigation connected with the interests of his large estate demands it. He resides on Montague Terrace. From his father he inherited a taste for art and his home contains one of the finest collectio-ns of sculpture in the city, besides many paintings of the modern Kesidence of William Hester, Kemsen Stkeei'. 28o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. schools. He is a member of the Hamilton, Brooklyn, Crescent Athletic, Montauk, Rembrandt, Riding and Driving, New York Yacht, Down Town and Robins Island clubs, and the Metropolitan Club of New York. In 187 1 'he married Miss Madeleine Sands, grand-niece of Admiral Joshua Sands, U. S. N. His chief pleas- ure, standing far above all social distinction or city pleasures, is found in the forest, or on the prairie, hunt- ing'large game. This has resulted in the possession of probably one of the finest collecdons of trophies possessed by any individual in the country, consisting of Rocky Mountain goats, almost the rarest animals on the continent; grizzly bear, antelope, elk and many others. In the presidential election of 1892, he was one of the Democratic electors. This is the fifth time this honor has been in his family since 1812, and always on the Democratic side. He was recently appointed by Governor Flower a member of the state board of charities. Alexander Ector Orr, now and for many years a prominent factor in Brooklyn's financial and com- mercial circles, is descended from the famous Clan McGregor. He was born in 1831, in the town of Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland; and when he was three years old, his father, who was a gentleman of private fortune, died. In the autumn of 185 1 he came to Philadelphia, and from there to New York. In the office of Ralph Post, a shipping and commission merchant, he remained until 1856, when he entered the service of Wallace & Wickes. After two years he accepted a similar position with David Dows & Co. In 1861 he became a partner in this firm, and since then has been acrively engaged in its management. He has been president of the New York Produce Exchange for several terms. He became a member of the exchange in 1859, and it was largely because of his persistent efforts that the organization as it now exists was established, and its magnificent building erected. He is vice-president of the Mechanics' National Bank, a director of the Bank of Commerce, the United States Trust Company and the Produce Exchange Bank, of the Continental and American Fire Insurance Companies, and of the Union Pacific, the Rock Island and several other railroads. He was a member of the electoral college which cast the presidential vote of the state of New York for Samuel J. Tilden in 1877. He is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was one of the incorporators of the cathedral at Garden City, and is a trustee of the cathedral schools of St. Paul's and St. Mary's, located at that place. He is chairman of the civil service commission of Brooklyn, and takes a deep interest in all matters of municipal reform. He is also connected with many Brooklyn institutions; is president of the South Brooklyn Savings Bank, vice-president of the Academy of Music, a director of the Long Island Historical Society, of the Art Association and the Brooklyn Library, and a trustee of the Packer Collegiate Institute. No man, the larger portion of whose life has been spent in an active business career, has done more to promote the interest in and study of natural science and archseology in Brooklyn than has Elias Lewis, Jr. He was prominent among the founders of the, Long Island Historical Society and his interest in its success has been continually manifested in many ways. His crowning work in connection with that institution was the establishment of the interesting museum of natural history, ethnology and historical relics, which has proved invaluable to Brooklyn students, and of which Mr. Lewis is now the curator and sole manager. Mr. Lewis was born at Westbury, L. I., on December 30, 1820. His education in the district school of that town covered a period of three years, his studies even then being interrupted by working on a farm and learning a weaver's trade during the summer months. He was occupied for a few years in a store in the neighborhood. Subsequently, he removed to Brooklyn and became a partner in the wholesale grocery house of Valentine & Bergen, and continued in that business for twenty-seven years. He held the presidency of the Brooklyn Bank from 1881 to 1891 when he voluntarily redred on account of ill health. The directors of the bank presented to him on this occasion a testimonial of the most flattering nature. Mr. Lewis was for many years a director of the Brooklyn Institute. He is now a director of the Long Island Historical Society, the Brooklyn Bank, the Home Life Insurance Company, the Brooklyn Savings Bank and the Nassau Fire Insurance Company. Mr. Lewis was married in 1853, and has been a resident of Brooklyn for nearly forty years. John Oakey was born in 1829, and was prepared for college at Erasmus Hall Academy. In 1845, he entered Yale College, and was graduated in 1849. After studying law in New York with James Humphrey, he was admitted to the bar in 185 1; and continued in the practice of his profession, unril the beginning of the civil war. In 1858, he was made a justice of the peace in the town of Flatbush. In 1861, he was the first man to leave Flatbush for the seat of war, being at the time a member of the 7th Regiment of New York, with which command he went to Washington. He served in the campaigns of 1862 and 1863, and during the draft riots in New York city. On January i, 1865, he was appointed commissioner of excise for Kings County by Judge Dykman. In 1866, he was elected a member of the assembly, serving two years. During his last term of office he was chairman of the committee on commerce and navigation, and performed the duties of that position to the sarisfaction of all with whom he was brought in contact. He was judge-advocate on the staff of Major-General Shaler, ist Division, N. G., S. N. Y., with the rank of lieutenant-colonel from April, 1867 until 1873. From 1874, until 1878, he was counsel for the Brooklyn BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 281 police and excise departments, and in the last-mentioned year he was appointed assistant district attorney for Kings County, under General Isaac S. Catlin. In this position he remained until January i, 1884. In 1889 he was appointed assistant United States district attorney for the eastern district of New York. He ■ was one of the founders and the president of the Amaranth Society, and besides Major R. ^\'. Butler is the only honorary member of this society; he has also been instrumental in the organization of other dramatic societies. Colonel Oakey is a man of much eloquence. He has "taken the stump " for the Republican candidates in every campaign since the Fremont campaign of 1856 and is a favorite speaker at public dinners. Henry W. Maxwell. Henry W. Maxwell, whose name is connected with many of the clubs, charities and financial pro- jects of Brooklyn and Long Island, was born in Brooklyn on December 7, 1850, attended public school No. 15, and began his business life at the age of thirteen. Throughout a large portion of his career, Mr. Max- well has been interested in the various enterprises originated or carried out by Austin Corbin. He is a director of the Brooklyn Trust Company. Socially he is exceedingly popular. He is a member of the Hamilton and Exeelsior clubs. He .has been intimately connected with some of the most sensible charities of Brooklyn. One of his latest benefactions is the erection of the Memorial Industrial School, No. 2, an addition to the Brooklyn Industrial School system, and dedicated to the memory of his mother and wife. This building is not only an artistic addition to the public buildings of Brooklyn, but is of great value in widening the scope of one of the most deserving of Brooklyn's benevolent institutions. Mr. Maxwell has been prominent in many of the significant movements in behalf of good government and pure politics which have characterized the past decade and enlisted the attention and services of thoughtful men in all parties. Colonel Alexander S. Bacon, soldier, lawyer and public-spirited citizen, was born in Jackson, Michigan, nearly forty years ago, and in 1872 was appointed by Ex-Governor Austin Blair to the West Point Military Academy, at which institution he won enviable reputation as a leader of his class, and was one of the "stars " of the class of forty-eight students who were graduated in 1876. On graduating, he was re- tained for three months as an instructor, and was promoted to a full second-lieutenancy and assigned to the ist Artillery. He served with his battery, first in the Indian Territory, and then at Washington, D. C, and Fort Adams, at Newport, R. L During the Pennsylvania riots of 1877, Lieutenant Bacon was dispatched 282 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. OLU^^ ^^ /3'pi^i^o^^, to that state to serve with the troops in Philadelphia, Reading and Mauch Chunk. He resigned from the army, in 1878, and turned his attention to the study of law, at Canandaigua, N. Y., being admitted ta the bar in 1879. In 1881 he came to New York city, later forming one of the members of the firm of Nichols & Bacon, with which he is now connected. In 1884 Mr. Bacon was elected captain of Company A, of the 23d Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y., and in the follow- ing year he was promoted to the position of major. In i88i5 he was elected lieutenant-colonel, and resigned in the latter part of the year 1887, when he was chosen to represent the ninth district in the Assem- bly. During his career at Albany he was conspicuous as the leader of the Bacon Investigation Committee, which delved deeply into Brooklyn political affairs of that day. Just previous to the centennial celebration of 1889, he was made colonel in command of the 2d Provisional Regiment, made up of a number of the existing " Separate Companies " in the State National Guard. Colonel Bacon is prominent in church work and is a vigorous temperance advocate. He has delivered lectures on this and other subjects. He has travelled extensively in Europe, Syria and the United States, and has given many interesting lectures on his journeys through foreign lands. On September i, 1886, Colonel Bacon married Miss Hattie Schroter, of this city. He is a member of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church. He has been a member of the Republican party since his entrance into the political arena, but his work has always been in the direction of good government and the reform of existing abuses. This, with his abstemious habits, won for him the sobriquet of " Puritan of the Assembly," while sitting with that body. John A. Taylor was born at Providence, R. I., in 1844, but his father, a clergyman, removed to the Httle town of Westerly in the same state. At the Westerly high school his progress was rapid. When he was sixteen years of age, he entered the office of the Christian Messenger as a printer. He was soon advanced to the literary department of the paper, but his health failed, and he was obliged to retire from business. By judicious medical treatment and constant exercise in the open air, he regained his health sufficiently to become the instructor of a class in geometry in the Westerly high school. Here he remained for some time; but the desire to be'come a lawyer, for which profession he had a predilection when a )^outh, returned; and he finally entered upon the study of law with Congressman Dixon of Rhode Island, and in 1865 was admitted to the bar. He opened an office in New York city and made his home in Brooklyn. In 1870, he married the daughter of John Dean. His legal practice was of such a nature as to bring him into court prominently, and to cause him to be acknowledged speedily as a forensic leader. Both with the court and jury he has been eminently successful. Although Mr. Taylor has never been an office-seeker, office has frequently sought him. In 187 1, he was elected alderman from the thirteenth ward. In 1879, he was appointed a member of the board of elections; and when, in 1880, that board was reorganized and made a strictly non-partisan body, he was elected its president. When Seth Low was elected mayor, without any application from Mr. Taylor whatever, and without any personal effort on his part, Mr. Low appointed him corporation counsel, and he continued in that office during the two terms of Mr. Low's admin- istration. Since his retirement from that position, Mr. Taylor has been engaged in an increasingly valua- ble and successful private practice. He has found time also to devote himself, to some extent, to literary and scientific study. He is the author of a work entitled " Exonerative Insanity," and of many lectures and addresses which commend themselves to the reader both for the thought which they contain, and for a delightful literary style. He is officially connected with the Brooklyn Institute; the Brooklyn Ethical Association; the Nineteenth Century Club of New York; the New York Unitarian Association, of which he has been president; and he is a member of several social clubs and secret societies. Through several generations, the ancestors of General George W. Wingate have obtained a place in military history. Several members of the family were prominent in the revolutionary war, and General Wingate's grandfather served in the war of 1812. Two of his maternal ancestors were in Cromwell's " Ironsides" regiment. He was born in New York, on July i, 1840. His education was obtained at the BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 283 public schools and the New York Free Academy. He was admitted to the bar in 1861, and in 1866 began practising law with William C. Whitney, who was his fellow-student in Judge Lawrence's office. In 1867 he married Miss Susan P. Man, and two years later came to Brooklyn, living until 1875 at No. 61 Jefferson avenue; in 1875 he returned to New York. He figured conspicuously in the attacks upon the Tweed ring, many of the editorials in the New York Times, when the famous scandal was first made public, being the product of his pen and levelled particularly against the "ring judges." In 1873 he formed a partnership with the late Henry J. Cullen, Jr., which continued until the death of the latter on March 7, 1892. He has been prominent in the rapid transit and railroad litigations that have occurred in Brooklyn for a number of years, was one of the originators of the Union Elevated Railroad and one of the original directors of the Brooklyn Bridge. He belongs to the Lincoln Club, Brooklyn Club, New York Liederkranz, Brooklyn Gun Club, United Service Club, Twilight Club, Way-wa-wanda Fishing Club and the 2 2d Regiment Veter- ans' Club. His military career began with his enlistment in a cavalry company at the outbreak of the rebellion. The organization was disbanded after a few months' drill, and he re-enlisted as a private in Company A, 22d Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y., and served until the period of his enlistment had expired, when he was again mustered into the U. S. service in the summer of 1863, while Lee was invading Penn- sylvania and participated in all the work of the 22d Regiment from Harrisburg to Monocacy Junction, in Maryland. He drafted and aided in securing the passage of the act establishing the rifle range at Creed- moor, L. I., and supervised the shooting matches held there by the National Rifle Association. He was vice-president of the association for many years, under the presidency of Generals Grant, Sherman, Sheri- dan and Hancock, and is now its president. In 1871 he wrote " Wingate's Manual of Rifle Practice," which passed through seven editions and became the standard text-book for the National Guard of New York and other states. The construction of the Creedmoor range was accomplished entirely upon his plans and under his supervision. General Wingate is the author of " The Last Campaign of the 22d Regiment," " On Horseback through the Yellowstone," " The Great Cholera Riots," and numerous essays and addresses on military and other subjects. Some of the living representatives of those elements which constitute dominant features in the city's character have been sketched. There were others, now no longer among us, who, during their lives, made an impression on the community so deep and lasting as to render some account of their careers appro- priate in a chronicle of the city to the making of which they contributed their effective part. They have been home-makers, upright citizens, men of business enterprise, faithful servants of the people, when called to positions of public trust; and in various ways they have laid foundations, upon which those who follow them will build; and so their lives and deeds endure as factors in the ceaseless progress of the city. Brooklyn has been favored in her formative influences, for some of them have been men of command- ing strength, while all have been of high character. Some of them attained world-wide fame. Others were the quiet workers, whose ambition was satisfied by the consciousness of duty faithfully performed. Henry Ward Beecher. — " The greatness of a man is measured by the greatness of his influence. When a shadow is cast clear across two continents, there is something somewhere to account for the shadow; and the power must always be at least adequate to the effect that is produced by it. Judging, then, by these standards of greatness, I think you will not regard my words as extravagant when I say that Henry Ward Beecher is probably the greatest citizen that this country has ever seen." These words, spoken in March, 1887, by the Rev. Minot J. Savage of Boston, will, all things considered, probably commend themselves to the dispassionate reader. Words to the same efl'ect were spoken by many orators in the week following the death of Brooklyn's great citizen; and, however men may have differed from him — in religion, in politics, in sociology, in literary taste and method, in views of ecclesiastical or civil administration, on any of the great questions that aroused the thought of his time — their testimony to his influence was that it was unique, both in range and in power. A history of Brooklyn without spe- cial mention of Henry Ward Beecher would be a most inadequate and incomplete work, omitting that which, in spite of her million of inhabitants, her great merchants, her eminent scholars, her brilliant clergy- men, and lawyers, and physicians, was the most potent factor of her fame: and this, not because of his remarkable success in his profession, so much as by reason of the genuine greatness of his character, and the pervasive power with which it was diffused throughout the city, the country, and the English-speaking world. It is difficult to avoid seeming extravagance in treating of so peculiar and effective a personality as this, even when attempting a description in all sober truth; but it will be just, while writing for readers of this generation with fresh memories of the man who died but a few years ago, to make a picture that they will recognize and receive as correct. One difficulty is the familiarity of Brooklynites with the essential facts of Mr. Beecher's career. All know of his famous father. Dr. Lyman Beecher, whose third son he was, his lovely mother, Roxana Foote, and the remarkable family of brothers aqd sisters — the eldest of whom. Dr. Edward 284 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Beecher, is still living in Brooklyn at the age of eighty-nine. Henry's very-boyish boyhood is well known, too:— the plain New England home in Litchfield, Conn., where he was born on June 24, 1813; the scant schooling; the sturdy boy's own shyness, amounting to dullness; his indistinct utterance and slowness of learning; his delight in fields and woods and flowers and birds and skies, in fishes and animals and all out- doors in anything but books and study; his first real training at the Latin school in Boston, to which city his father went as a pastor — and even there his passion for the wharves and ships and streets; his sudden desire to go to sea, and his father's shrewd enticing of him to study mathematics, that he might become " a navigator instead of a common sailor; " his ardent pursuit of that, resulting in an arousing of his wish to go to college; his spirited career at Amherst, where he plunged into omnivorous reading and got his first taste of elocutionary training and the delights of combat in debate; his conversion and instant choice of the ministry as his profession; — this, in all its detail, is interesting but familiar ground. Lane Theological Seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, whither Dr. Lyman Beecher had gone as president, inducted the young man into all the usual theological education of young ministers and especially the mysteries of Presbyterian Calvinism; and as those were the days of Old School and New School controversies, in which the elder Beecher was a doughty champion, the entire family had a daily diet of theological discussion for years together, so that as Henry Ward Beecher said in later days, he " knew all the doctrines forward and backward, like pins in a paper of pins." Indeed, he had a theological train- ing more thorough and complete, in all the distinctions and discriminations of the scholasticism of the day, than nine-tenths of the ministers of his generation. But he did not enjoy it. On the contrary, as he wrote in 1848, to his friend Dr. John H. Raymond, relative to the Bushnell theological controversy then raging: " Others may blow the bellows and turn the doctrines in the fire and lay them on the anvil of controversy and beat them into all sorts of shapes; but I shall busy myself with tising the sword of the Lord, not m forging it." That was his early decision. He "saw no benefit in fierce disputes about proposi- tions, at the expense of vital godliness; " and thus his very familiarity with systematic theology was the secret of his wholesome neglect of it in all his practical work. It is worth while to make a pomt of this, since one of the favorite criticisms of him always has been: "An eloquent speaker, yes; but no theolo- gian;" which is much as if one should say of a skillful surgeon, "A fine operator, but he never lectures to his patients on anatomy." Mr. Beecher believed in theology as he believed in the human skeleton; it was useful and necessary in its place, but should be kept out of sight. Everybody knows how he accepted his first call to a little shed of a church in Lawrenceburg, Indiana; and how, after two years of poverty there — living with his young wife in two rooms over a provision store, on a salary of $250 from the Home Missionary Society and $150 more from his church, paid in provisions — he was called in 1839 to Indianapolis. During all this early time the young man was reading hard, especially the old sermonizers — South, Bar- row, Howe, Sherlock, Butler, and Edwards particularly. And he did much circuit-riding. He says: "I was sent into the wilderness of Indiana to preach among the poor and ignorant, and I lived in my saddle. My Hbrary was in my saddle-bags. I went from camp-meeting to camp-meeting, and from log hut to log hut. I took my New Testament, and from it I got that which has been the very secret of any success that I have had in the Christian ministry." In Indianapolis he worked and learned for eight years, getting at men, their temptations and trials, and unconsciously developing his growing powers of absorbing knowl- edge, assimilating ideas and giving them forth with effectiveness. It was here that he became acquainted with Loudon's encyclopedias of horticulture, agriculture and architecture; and during long stretches of daily preaching (once through eighteen consecutive months without one day of intermission) he used to read these ponderous tomes at night, for relaxation and to drive the sermon-fever from his brain. Not only did he read them through, but over and over again, and mastered their contents. To the end of his life he never ceased this insatiate pursuit of knowledge among books as well as among men and affairs, so that the marvellous affluence of his illustration was not altogether due to his native gift of imagination, but came from a well-stored mind. In 1847, he came to New York to address one of the missionary anni- versary meetings, was asked to preach in the just-formed Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and was unani- mously invited by the church and society to become their pastor. He accepted, and came to Brooklyn. His fresh vigor, unconventional manner, lofty spirituality and moving eloquence instantly made a great impression, not only in Brooklyn but in the great metropolis across the East river, and it was not long before his parish extended far beyond his church and eventually became the whole country. What, then, was this man to Brooklyn ? When he came herein 1847, it was a city of 60,000 inhabitants; when he died on March 8, 1887, it harbored over 800,000: and it is safe to say that before he had been here ten years, and from then until his death, there was hardly one of all these tens and hundreds of thousands who did not know of him— the most of them knowing him well, his life, his words, his works, his influence. As it was in ISrooklyn, so it became throughout the land; he was the best-known man in America; and always for good, His tongue, his pen, his acts, were ever for the upbuilding of men, for the helping of his fellow- b^r^c^ Cj^^e-^/^ju^ ^gg THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. creatures. Mr Beecher was thirty-four years old when he began with Plymouth Church, having had ten yelrrof hard work and growing success as his practical preparation in professional work. In Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis he had earnestly sought to " catch men " out of the current of evil lives; and his own illustra- tion of the power of personal effort, in the fact that the most perfect mechanical polish attainable comes from applying " the living leatherof the human hand," indicates his directness in bringing himself to bear on men. He cut away the high pulpit and spoke from a platform with a desk on it. He went out straightway into the haunts of city men to learn their habits and temptations; and, leaving the ancient Jews and Pagans to God, dealt directly with the people of Brooklyn and New York. He preached no aesthetic homilies or symmet- ric crystallization of theology, but downright blows and trenchant thrusts at sins, in a glow of love for sin- ners He labored with heart and might for " revivals " of religious feeling, stirring up men's consciences and arousing their better desires. He cultivated especially the social element among his church people, and drew them together in sympathy and in work for one another and for the needy. He made the prayer-meeting an Tntense centre of interest, and had it all alive with frank, familiar conference— never was it cold, thinly attended, perfunctory— always it was crowded like the Sunday services, a place that men and women loved to go to. All this was out of the common. Men recognized a new power among them. The critical affected to look down upon his " sensationalism," and " gave him a year to run himself . out; " but " the common people " have a keen scent for greatness. And so it was that Henry Ward Beecher and Plymouth Church speedily became the most notable facts in Brooklyn; and Brooklyn thereby came to gain a larger fame, as the great metropolis beyond the river every week sent over its streaming hundreds— gathered from all parts of the land— to feel the influence of the great preacher. But this was only the beginning: although it was the tap-root of all the rest. Mr. Beecher's ardent love for God and for God's children, especially the poorer and needier of them, was that which fed his whole life with vital sap, and caused it to put forth its healing leaves, its efflorescent blossoms of beauty, its abounding, nutritious fruit. The Autumn of 1847, when he came to Brooklyn, was the time when the question of slavery had just arisen again in Congress and all over the country, and from that time till 1850 discussion grew hotter. Henry Clay's great compromise bill was then brought forward, the chief of its thirty-nine sections provid- ing for the admission of California as a free state, while not only giving Southerners the right to pursue and capture fugitive slaves, but making it the legal duty of Northerners to help them. The weekly relig- ious paper, The Independent, had been established in New York by the Congregationalists in 1849, under the editorship of Dr. Leonard Bacon, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, and Dr. Joseph P. Thompson; and Mr. Beecher had already become one of its most valued contributors, over his signature of a large asterisk (*). His articles became known as the " Star Papers." Several strong articles on the political situation had appeared in the Independent, but in February 21, 1850, came one, entitled: "Shall We Compromise?" which threw to the winds all the artificial complications, and set forth plainly the inevitable issue: " Slavery is right, or wrong. Slavery shall extend, or it shall not extend. Slavery shall live, or die." This article made a great sensation; it was copied everywhere, and cleared the atmosphere. It was read to John C. Calhoun on his dying bed, and the great statesman said: " That man understands the thing. He has gone to the bottom of it. He will be heard from again." And, in fact, that article did strike the keynote toward which succeeding years of discussion toned up the North to the election of Lincoln, when Fort Sumter brought the explosion, and the war, begun by the South, killed slavery, and gave new life to the nation. That article made Henry Ward Beecher a national force. From that time he never rested in his labors, for practical religion among his own people and among the vast audience that his pen now found, and for the enlightenment of the Northern conscience and the freeing of the slaves as a direct and inevitable logical application of that practical religion. But the vital necessity of slavery was extension into fresh territory; and this at once compelled its aggressive advancement and aroused more and more the sentiment of the North against it. The compromise debates of 1850; the Kansas struggle of 1854-5; the formation of the Republican party in 1855-6; the Fremont campaign of 1856; the increasing excitements of the years to 1859, when John Brown made his mad attempt in Virginia; Lincoln's election in i860; the four horrid years of war, including the incessant efforts of the anti-slavery men to induce President Lincoln to proclaim Emancipation, and the glorious ending of war — all found Mr. Beecher in tireless labors for the cause of Liberty and Law; and the nation's appreciation of them was marked by his selection as orator of the day at the triumphant raising of the old flag again on Fort Sumter in April, 1865. This brief sketch can hardly include mention of his world-famous visit to England in 1863. He bearded the British lion in his den, and not only had a succession of the most wonderful oratorical triumphs over immense hostile audiences that history has ever recorded, but actually gave pause to a great nation, made it stop, think, see the other side, and change the whole course of its sentiment and action; and that too, not by diplomatic fencing with authorities but largely by influencing the " unvoting population," and " through the heart of the people reaching nobles, ministers, courtiers, the throne itself." BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 287 His course after the war was equally notable. His grand eulogy on the murdered Lincoln; his sermons, addresses and public letters concerning the restoration and reconstruction of the Southern states in 1865-6; his labors for unity, education, sound money during the silver and greenback craze in 1877, and his share in the great breaking away from the Republican party in 1884, on principles which his friends had to respect, although many of them bitterly opposed him— a break which grieved him and tested his courage at seventy years of age perhaps more severely than it had ever been tried during.his whole life — this is a part of the history of the country. There was no individual during all these years, even of those who officially wielded the power of the nation in civil or military affairs, whose personal influence was so wide or so deep as that of this untitled man. There is not space in which to speak of his collateral labors except by mere allusion. On the lecture platform he was for thirty years the most prolific and the most popular of all the gifted men who have thus entertained and educated the people. His thirty or more books, his weekly family paper. The Christian Union, his many letters and articles, his innumerable speeches and addresses on occasions of public interest —only a small portion of which have been preserved — simply go to swell the current of his life-work; and all was in the one direction of making men better and happier, religion more naturally beautiful, God more filially beloved and Christ more potent and more precious in the human soul. In Brooklyn itself he was an unceasing power for good. In matters of education, clean civic government, advancement in music, the arts, letters, all public enterprises of pith and moment, he was always sought and never found wanting. The poor blessed his generosity. AVeak churches appealed to him in certainty of help — first out of his own pocket, and then, if necessary, out of the pockets of the generous men he had gathered in his church. His friends loved him with matchless devotion, and he was no man's enemy. Even when he was passing through the most crushing trial of threatened disgrace, fighting the poisoned arrows of slander, wounded by the barbed stings of envy and all uncharitableness, no one ever heard him say a bitter or unkind word of those who sought his destruction. Men were bound to him by his manliness, his geniality, his honest goodness, his greatness; women were grateful for his large sympathies and strong helpfulness; children flocked to him and loved him — the very gamins of the street would bring him poor little nosegays of dan- delions and grasses, which he would receive with an appreciation that warmed their hungry hearts through and through. The wonder of the man was that, being so great, with endless stores of knowledge, gained by sedulous application of study and observation, and gifted with the ability to use his knowledge in so many domains of thought and influence with an almost unparalleled effect on other men, he was yet so simple, so childlike in disposition. He must have been conscious of his power and place; yet no man or woman, no youth, no child, ever felt from him an unpleasant chill of overshadowing superiority or con- ceit. The idea that he was perfect would excite no one's laughter so quickly as his own. He well knew his own defects, his impetuosity, his forgetfulness, and other faults that made trouble for himself and for others. Yet how insignificant and inconsequent they all appear in any view of the grand totality of his life, his character and his achievements! " A man of the people, Christward," said Dr. Charles H. Hall. And another writer marks him " a mind that minted many knowledges; a heart that thought no evil; when reviled, he reviled not again." Spurgeon, of England, noted his " Shakesperean wealth of imag- ination and vocabulary." Abraham Lincoln marveled at his fertility and owned his impressive power. Gladstone, in 1886, bowing in acknowledgment of a compliment paid him by Beecher, who had just listened to one of the great speeches of England's greatest orator, replied, " You, sir, should surely be a judge in such a matter." Dr. Parker, of the City Temple, London, says: "As a preacher, I believe the whole pulpit of the world would give him the palm." Charles Kingsley paid him the tribute of tears through a whole discourse, and exclaimed, " He has said the very things I have been trying to say ever since I entered the Christian pulpit." The Dean of Canterbury personally thanked him for what he had "taught us respecting the fatherhood of God." " He was a great preacher," says Lyman Abbott, "because he was a great and good man." But there would be no e,nd to these notable opinions from notable men. Let them be summed up in the words of John W. Chadwick: " Mr. Beecher was not perfect, certainly, but in his imperfection the most unique and splendid personality of our civic history; one of the most unique and splendid in the history of the United States and their colonial beginnings." The world honored him; Brooklyn loved him. And the city has honored itself by erecting his statue in enduring bronze at the very focus of its busiest life. Samuel Bowne.— With the most important period in the history of river traffic between New York and Brooklyn, the late Samuel Bowne, grandfather of the late Samuel Bowne Duryea, was prominently associated. Those who remember him recall a man of medium height, with a compactly built frame, cap- able of sustaining a great physical strain, one who was energetic and persistent, devoting himself to busi- ness with an assiduity that, in combination with his well-known integrity, earned him the esteem of the many in his employ. He was descended from the Bowne family, of Flushing, L. I., and from the Pells and THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN, Rodmans of Westchester County, and was born at Pelham Point, N. Y., in 17 go. When his father died his mother moved with her family to New York, where he and his brother Rodman began business together at Catherine Slip. They interested themselves chiefly in shipping. In 1809 they purchased the New Ferry or Catherine Ferry, as it was sometimes called, and, by increasing the capacity of the boats which then crossed on that route, gave evidence of that enter- prise which distinguished them throughout their entire career. In 1814 the Bowne brothers were the first to abandon the use of the sail and oar as motive powers, and introduced on Catherine Ferry the first horse-boat used on the East river. The change rev- olutionized ferry traffic. In 1822 steamboats were first used on Catherine Ferry, and two years later Samuel and Rodman Bowne introduced on the same route two single-hull steamboats, the first of their class that ever crossed the East river. During the first quarter of the century immediately succeeding the Revolution, patriotism ran high among our first citizens and Mr. Bowne gave to his twin boats those magic and synonymous names, " Independence " and " George Washington." Under different leases and in consideration of various rentals, Samuel Bowne and his brother managed Catherine Ferry until 1836, when Samuel obtained a seven years' lease in his own name, at an annual rental of $3,500. On March 24, 1852, he disposed of his title in the ferry to Messrs. Smith & Bulkley, who eventually merged their in- terests in those of the Union Ferry Company. Mr. Bowne died in 1853, at his home on Washington and High streets. Well known to the Brooklyn villagers from the early twenties onward were the active figure and cheer- ful presence of Eliakim Raymond, who had something to do with most of the good works of that awak- ening period. A temporary residence in Brooklyn in 1822 was utilized by him for getting together the few Baptists of the village, for whom he erected their first church, on Pearl street, and he came regularly from his home in New York to attend their services, using a row-boat when the ferries were not running. Pie soon afterwards settled here, and established his fur factory on Pearl street, and from that time on, like Robert Snow among the Methodists, Frederick Peet among the Episcopalians and Abram B. Baylis among the Presbyterians, he was the representative of the Baptists in such public movements as looked to the churches for support. He became a trustee of the Brooklyn Orphan Asylum, a director in the Brooklyn Savings Bank, and during 1828 and 1829 he was a trustee of the village and worked zealously for the establishment of a public park on the Heights. Raymond street was named after him. He was a de- scendant of Richard Raymond, who became a Mass- achusetts freeman in 1634, was a member of the first jury ever impanelled in Salem, and was one of the early settlers, in 1655, of Norwalk, Conn. From him and his brother all the American Raymonds de- scended. Eliakim Raymond's father, Nathaniel, a sergeant in the coast-guard, was among the Connect- icut troops present at the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. Mr. Raymond's three sons became well known in Eliakim Raymond. BROOKLYN OF TO-DAY. 289 Brooklyn. They were Israel Ward Raymond, of the Pacific Mail S. S. Co.; John Howard Raymond, the first president, and Robert Raikes Raymond, the professor of English literature, of the Polytechnic Insti- tute. Eliakim Raymond died in Brooklyn in 1845. Teunis G. Bergen. — A man in whose life the remote past blends with the present would be, it might seem, a man not abreast with the age, and yet this was not in any sense the fact in regard to the late Teunis G. Bergen, although in the story of his life there is a remarkable connection between the ancient and the modern history of Brooklyn and Kings County. In his boyhood he spoke only that language which was spoken by his ancestors when New York, New Jersey and a portion of Connecticut formed a Dutch colony, a language they continued to use exclusively when their New Netherland passed under British rule, and which they did not renounce even when their adopted land was freed from the yoke of monarchial domination. Throughout his life he was true to his Dutch blood, but at the same time he was truly American— a progressive, democratic citizen, full of public spirit, and one whose influence and work were felt in public affairs for many years. While busy in the affairs of the present, he found time to explore the past, and to his antiquarian research, the results of which he was careful to perpetuate with his pen, the historical student is in a very large degree a debtor. He was in the sixth generation from Hans Hansen Bergen, who came to America in 1633, and all his ancestors in the direct male line have resided in Brooklyn, where they have been influential members of the community and frequent incumbents of positions of trust and honor. His father was Garret Bergen, who married Jane Wyckoff, and they Hved in the homestead on Third avenue, near Thirty-third street, Brooklyn, where their son was born, on October 6, 1806. The old homestead was torn down a few years ago because the owners, descendants of Hans Hansen Bergen, were unwilling to permit the historic- heirloom to be put to unworthy uses. When Teunis G. Bergen began to attend the public school he could not speak English at all, for in those days only Dutch, and the purest Dutch, was spoken in Kings County by the people who were descendants from the early settlers. He soon mastered the English language, in which he afterwards became proficient, both as a writer and speaker, and his education was finished at Erasmus Hall Academy, in Flatbush. He fitted 290 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. himself for the profession of a land surveyor, and varied his work in that calling by cultivating a fine farm on the Shore road, Bay Ridge, to which he moved in 1829, and which he owned and occupied during the rest of his life. Previously, in 1827, he had married Elizabeth, the daughter of Rulef Van Brunt of New Utrecht. The farmer-surveyor possessed, in addition to his capacity for the management of affairs, a soldierly instinct and the elements of statesmanship, and followed out the former by enrolling himself in the New York State Militia, in which he was successively ensign, captain, adjutant, lieutenant-colonel and colonel of the 241st Regiment. His connection with public affairs was long-continued and honorable. For twenty-three years, from April, 1836, till April, 1859, he was supervisor of the town of New Utrecht, and from 1842 until 1846 he was chairman of the board; and as chairman of financial committees during many years of his service he earned the title of "Watch-dog of the county treasury." In the conventions held to amend the charter of the state in 1846, 1866 and 1867, he was an energetic member. He was a steadfast Democrat in politics, and was repeatedly sent as a delegate to the state conventions of the party. In the famous Democratic national convention held in Charleston, S. C, in i860, he was prominent by reason of his sturdy opposition to the resolutions, the adoption of which caused the breach between the northern and the southern Democracy. He was nominated in 1864 on a Democratic ticket to represent the second district in congress, and was elected by a plurality of 4,800 over his " Union " opponent. His term was marked by an honorable devotion to the duties of his position that was in keeping with the high record he had previously made as a public man. He was a willing worker for his party in any position, and for a long time he was chairman of the Democratic General Committee of Kings County. His integrity and good judgment as a business man were so well known that he was continually called upon to act as arbitrator or commissioner in condemning property for public use, while the descendants from the early settlers of Kings County regarded him with a feeling of trust that was frequently made manifest in seeking his services in the settlement of private disputes, determining land boundaries and dividing property. As a surveyor, he surveyed and mapped out most of the farms in the towns of Kings County, and did a large amount of work in Brooklyn. As a farmer he was successful, for he gave much study and careful experiment to the raising of produce for the New England market. He was a man not easily wearied, and could secure rest by turning from one kind of work to another. Thus it was that he devoted a great deal of time to studying the early history of New Netherland, and his familiarity with the Dutch language was invaluable to him in the study and translation of early historical manuscripts, family papers and inscriptions in family Bibles. In this work he became very expert. He published many historical and genealogical articles in local papers and magazines and in the Neiv York Genealogical and Biographical Record. In 1866 he issued a work entitled " The Bergen Family," and in 1876 he put forth a new edition of this work, so enlarged as to mclude genealogies of most of the Dutch families of southern New York and eastern New Jersey; in 1867 he published a genealogy of the Van Brunt family, and in 1878 the genealogy of the Lefferts family. At the time of his death, in 1881, he had in the hands of his printer a book entitled " Register in Alphabetical Order of the Early Settlers of Kings County, Long Island, N. Y., from its First Settlement by Europeans to 1700, with contributions to their biographies and genealogies, compiled from various sources." This work appeared a few weeks after his death, which occurred on April 24, 1881, being caused by pneumonia. He left, in manuscript, a history of the town of New Utrecht. He was a member of many local and state historical and genealogical societies, including the Long Island Historical Society and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and he was one of the founders of the society first named. Isaac H. Frothingham.— One of the conspicuous factors in the development of the character of Brooklyn as a community, has been the infusion of the sturdy integrity, business energy and broad views of human relationships that were nurtured for generations in New England. There are many names promi- nent in the history of this city that have long been familiar in the old towns that were planted along the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Among these none are worthy of more honor than that borne by Isaac Harding Frothingham. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on Sepcember 19, 1807, and was a lineal descendant in the seventh generation from William Frothingham, who came from England with Governor Winthrop in 1630 and settled in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The family has always been well and honor- ably known in that old town, now a part of Boston. Among its members have been scholars and clergymen of note, as well as many men who have attained eminence in the business and financial world. Mr. Froth- ingham's father was Deacon Nathaniel Frothingham, for more than sixty years a resident of Salem, Mass- achusetts. Deacon Frothingham was honored by the town in many ways, and represented it in the Massachusetts legislature for the larger part of twenty-six years. He died in 1857 at the age of 87. He was twice married, his second wife being the widow of Captain Isaac Harding, and daughter of Captain John Whipple, of Hamilton, Massachusetts. Isaac Harding Frothingham was the oldest of the four chil- dren born of this marriage. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Isaac Newhall, of Salem, to learn the dry goods trade, in which he began business on his own account seven years later. In 1832 he married ^^ 334 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. source of justifiable pride. In 1858 the legislation was begun which resulted two years later in the purchase of the first portion of the present Prospect Park, also- in the final improvement of AVashington, City and Tompkins parks, and ultimately in the purchase of others, until now Brooklyn boasts of about 760 acres of public parks, exclu- sive of the Ocean and Eastern Parkways, than which no handsomer drives exist in the world. Until the agitation began for some large park and the plan of Prospect Park was formulated, the several parks were brought into being and cared for by special commissions appointed for the purpose. When the legislation preparatory to the laying out of Prospect Park began a commission was appointed for the purpose by the State Legislature and subsequently another law enacted by the same body created a board of Seven park commis- sioners, who were thereafter to have exclusive charge of all park properties. It was after the completion of Prospect Park, however, before the commission actually assumed control of either the City Park or Fort Greene, both of which had been neglected during the construction of Prospect Park, but since 1868 all the parks have been directly cared for by the commission, which has dwindled to a " single- headed " one. The parks of the city now open to the public are, in order of importance : Prospect, Wash- ington, Tompkins, City, Carroll, the Parade Ground and the City Hall Park. Besides these there are several small triangles not accessible to the public, or not used as places of resort. These are located at Gwinnett street and Broadway ; Underhill and Washington avenues ; Greene avenue, Fulton street and Cumberland ; Lafayette avenue, Fulton street and South Elliott place : and that at Putnam and Grand avenues and Ful- ton street, where an old pump once stood under the shed. The first three named are grassy enclosures, the last two not so. Several other parks are planned and negotiations are pending for the purchase of the property. One project of the park commissioner is a new boulevard, laid out after the fashion of the Ocean and Eastern Parkways and connecting the latter with the park at Ridgewood Heights, thus forming an uninterrupted and beautiful drive from Coney Island to the Queens County line. Another plan is a still more picturesque drive along the Bay Ridge shore bordering the Narrows. Among the lands already acquired, but which as The Stranahan Statue. The Long Meadow, from the Thatched Shelter. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 335 The Coaching Parade in i8gi. yet are incomplete, are the Coney Island Concourse, the forty-six acres on the heights at Ridgewood, adjoining on one side the main source of the city's water supply, and on the other the Cemetery of the Ever- greens ; Bedford Park, Sunset Park, Bushwick Park, Winthrop Park ; and eight acres in the heart of the densely populated Twelfth Ward. That at Ridgewood abounds in variegated levels, well wooded and com- manding a view that sweeps the distant horizon. Thirty more acres to be added are now in process of acquisition, and when actual construction begins it will probably be named Highland Park. Bedford Park is contained in the four acres of the old Spanish-Adams estate, bounded by Prospect and Park places, Brooklyn and Kingston avenues. An ancient colonial mansion still stands on the grounds and is the source of a considerable income. This plot cost the city $150,000. Sunset Park is another grand park site, situated on a crown of land 170 feet above tide water, within the limits of the Eighth Ward. It covers an area of four large city blocks, or about fourteen and a half acres. It was purchased about a year ago at an outlay of $165,000, and promises when improved to be one of the most attractive of the local parks. In October of the present year negotiations were com- pleted for one-half the ground needed for the Twelfth Ward park. As planned, it is three blocks wide and one deep, bounded by Richards, Verona, Dwight and King streets. Four acres have been obtained at an outlay of $1,400 per city lot. Bushwick Park takes its name from the well-known and historic locality in which it lies. Located in the Eighteenth Ward, Knickerbocker and Irving avenues, and Starr and Suydam streets form its boundaries. Its six acres of area have been for many months under process of cul- tivation and adornment and by ne.xt summer it will be thrown open to the public. Win- throp Park is to be the local breathing spot allotted to the residents of the Greenpoint district. It comprises nearly eight acres, , . , ,^ „ , ,T CROQUET CLUB House. lymg between Van Cott and Nassau avenues and Russell and Monitor streets in the Seventeenth Ward. It has been about completed and, like Bushwick Park, will, when finished, resemble Tompkins Park. At one time the jurisdiction of the park commission 336 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Litchfield Mansion, Park Offices. extended also over the four small openings or plazas, on Columbia Heights, one each at the foot of Clark, Pineapple, Cranberry and Middagh streets. These places— five were originally planned — were re- served as public squares in order to preserve the view of the river and harbor, which was rapidly being shut off by the progress of building. The City was to raise and expend for their maintenance $500 each year, but this it failed to do and they were finally transferred by lease to the wealthy holders of adjacent prop- erty. The points of individual his- tory relative to each park are given in the sketches of them which follow. PROSPECT PARK. Weary of the ceaseless clamor natural to a city's streets, tired of the turbulence of travel and worn by cares commercial and domestic, the fatigued Brooklynite turns in a mood of unconfined contentment and delight to that pure pleasure-ground and verdurous stretch of acres gratefully presented to the mind in two short words — Prospect Park. A city park more opulent in native beauty than this one, whose primitive features have been so well preserved and wisely augmented by the artificial touch of man, verily it would be difficult to discover. Wander where you will within its pleasant precincts the eye cannot escape the constantly unfolding panorama of pastoral loveliness. There are a few rare spots in Prospect Park where only the intrepid robin knows the way and the saucy gray squirrels whisk their silvery tails in the straggling sunbeams. There is ruggedness in plenty for those who seek it; places of uncouth aspect, wild as the day after chaos, abound. And yet one cannot get very far beyond the curving carriage-ways and sinuous foot-paths ; the rude and rustic throughout the park are nicely balanced by the prim and polished. To understand and appreciate its varied charms it is necessary to see Prospect Park under many conditions and in every season. In summer time, of course, its wealth is most abundantly dis- played, though to the true lover of Nature all seasons have an equal fascination and felicity. One is impressed at the very gateways of the place by its large simplicity. Approaching the park from the north, by way of Vanderbilt or Flat- bush avenues, a glimpse is had, at the point of a long perspective, of tumbling water, spouting and scintillating in the summer sun like a bunch of brilliants tossed in the air by fairy fingers. A closer view reveals the familiar fountain, its restless flow of liquid light hiding from sight much of its circular form of lasting Coignet stone, and only now and again revealing the chaste design spread upon its dome- like surface. Beyond the sparkling fountain and the terraced prome- nade, looms palely against the blue of the sky and green of the tree tops the graceful white granite arch raised to the memory of stout- hearted soldier and sailor boys who gave their lives in defence of the menaced Union. Li front of the fountain, an effigy in bronze per- petuates the form and calls to mind the deeds of Abraham Lincoln ; while in a direct line beyond the big stone span and just inside the paling of the park, stands a statue of the man to whom we owe the existence of this princely pleasure ground. With a passing glance at the summit of the hill on the east where is the Prospect Hill Reservoir — and at one end of it the newly built water tower, lifting welkinward, gray and grim, like a piece of trans- planted medieval architecture— we enter the park proper and come at once under the spell of full-foliaged trees, blossoming bushes and fragrant flowers. Along the winding pathway, walled by a wealth of greenery, we arable in peaceful mood, drinking in the sweetened ozone for the refreshment of the lungs and feasting the eyes on the myriad beauties of smiling Nature. Up and down easy grades, past where a few steps aside The Irving Statue. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 337 tiT Players on the Long Meadow. on a little by-path lead to one of the prettiest of nooks, a shelter called "The Thatch," because of its roof of thickly thatched straw ; it is almost hidden in an arbored bower which is draped by trailing vines and from it is gained a charming view of the West Drive, with the Long Meadow, the woods, hills and vales beyond. Along the main path, under a cool archway — the lichen-grown Meadow Port, of ancient aspect — one's way leads on to the upper part of the level meadow-lands, close cropped and soothing to the wearied foot. Here on a carpeting of emerald velvet, with a fair background of distant hills pale, purplish and vapor-veiled — free-minded and light-hearted men and women engage in games adapted to the open air, such as croquet and quoits, while children run and tumble about the grass in pastimes more robust. Walking from the common, back, westward to the path, the visitor reaches the intersecting walkway from the Third Street Entrance. Following this across the driveway he may quickly walk out to the Ninth avenue edge of the park, where upon a little rise of ground, within the park proper, stands the historic Litchfield mansion of sombre brown, now used as the headquarters of the park police. Strolling back along a woodpath one may return to the walk which skirts the common and the meadow and find upon its west side the "old" picnic grounds, where Sunday schools and small societies have merry outings in the summer, and here when the patter made by the falling of the chestnuts begins to be heard, the small boys, and big boys, too, strain backs and eyes poking among the fallen leaves in search of the luscious harvest. Along the path beside these grounds are the small carriages drawn by the bronze-horned goats which so fascinate the toddlers ; here, too, just to one side, are the ponies which furnish to ambitious Young America a first-class jolting about an arena of soft earth. On the other side of the walk, opposite from the ponies and the picnic ground, is the Picnic Shelter where soda, cream and cakes, but no " ale " may be purchased. This shelter, and the carrousel, which is close by, are on the border of the central division of the Long Meadow. Down in the further meadow the great green plain is dotted thickly with the white nets and gay costumes of many tennis players. Healthy youths and WO^ >f At fPk ^f*. fZ^^^Mlt^. 'A Flock of Sleek and Well-fed Sheep." 338 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Tom Moore's Statue. maidens, clear-eyed and rosy-cheeked, glowing with the heat of exer- cise, toss the evasive little spheres of rubber back and forth across the nets and make a spectacle of moving color which has peculiar charm ; very brilliant the contrast and pleasing, the picture made by the white and parti-colored flannels of the players as they move about the deep-green flooring of the turf. Beyond the tennis courts, a wide piece of unkempt pasturage recalls the distant country. This part of Prospect Park is genuinely rural in its character. At certain hours of the day the casual pedestrian who wanders, mayhap, by chance, into this section, finds himself confronted by a natural picture, per- fectly composed and full of positive but harmonious color. Disposed upon this expanse of fresh herbage is a flock of sleek and well-fed sheep, their woolly sides well matching the tiny, floating islands of cloudland which drift listlessly through the blue ether of the upper air. Nibbling the turf or shambling about with that amusing help- lessness so characteristic of their race, the restless flock lends a live interest to the scene and forces the thought to turn in reminiscent revery to the masterful canvases of Mauve and Millet, whereon choice bits of nature just like this of Prospect Park have been lastingly reflected for the eyes' delightment and gentle excitation of the emotions. And, as in the paintings of Mauve and Millet, the shepherd, stoical and picturesque, forms an important adjunct of the represen- tation, so in this living picture of the park the shepherd moves and plays his part precisely. A quaint old fellow is this master of the flock; as with his timid and ungainly charge, there is a strain of shyness and of mental aimlessness in his interesting personality. Leaving reluctantly the sturdy old shepherd and his sheep, one naturally turns leftward and proceeds across the green to the foot of Cemetery Hill, an eminence, tree-crowned and gradual in its rise, whose winding paths, scarce visible between tall grasses, lead to a shaded summit from which the outlook is a joy. A portion of this hill, fenced from the public ground, is used as a place of interment by the Friends' Society. Here, beneath half-hidden tombstones, moss-laden and crumbling in the partial gloom, sweet-mannered folk, who made but little stir in the bustling circle within which their lives were ordered, but who left behind them lasting lessons in the art of amiability and gentleness, sleep in that dreamless slum- ber which knows of no awak- ening. The solemn stillness of a forest's heart pervades this place ; with ancient oaks and time-dried maples arching their gray arms over- head, their mingling foliage whispering in soft, leaf-lan- guage the sad message of the breeze, and untrained flowers and grasses rioting in wanton luxury among the nameless and forgotten graves beneath, the spot has all the hallowed hush of pre- cincts peculiar to the dead, and none of the pomp and tawdry show of the conven- tional city cemetery. Down from the quiet hill and its restful shades one may fol- lowthe open driveway which skirts the base on the west side, or cross a piece of open land beyond. A short walk brings the pedestrian in sight of the park reser- voir and the superbly constructed artesian well, both of which are in the shadow of lofty Lookout Hill. From the top of this one beholds an exquisite vista — with little towns lying snuggled here and there amid the greenery, and tiny, chalk-white church spires pointing their slender fingers to the sky, while far beyond The Dairv. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 339 a narrow belt of turquoise blue, is the distant sea drawn, like a narrow rib- bon, taut against the pure, pale azure of the world's curved wall. The slope of this superb view-point is thickly grown with fir and maple trees, and it is a favorite spot for dreamy- idlers who love to be alone far away from human hubbub ; here seems to be the most popular resort of the song birds, and nests are quite plentiful among the trees ; with a book in hand, or with hands clasped behind the head, one may lie here for hours listening to the full-throated warblers, watching the flit and soar of the prettily-plumaged crea- tures, inhaling the precious perfume of the pine-bud's breath and staring in sublime contentment at the drifting bits of cloud life, till all the earth seems a fairyland as glorious and as perfect as a poet's dream. By circling the southern extremity of the great lake, where the tiny toy yachts skim like gulls over the placid plain of water, the handsomely adorned Boulevard Entrance is reached. Returning on the east side and skirting a forest of stately size on the right hand, or south side, one catches here and there refreshing glimpses of the silvery sheen of the lake — a polished mirror in which Dame Nature smiles and frowns alternately — and sees the tiny, tree-like peninsulas, with secluded shelters on them, which overhang the water's edge. Onward, the path leads to the flower gardens, rich in bits of ornate architecture, and native and exotic plants; here is the little bay where the swans and gold-fish swim up to gather the crumbs thrown to them by children over the granite coping. Here is also the pedestrian concourse and near by are the bronze bust of Washington Irving, presented by the late Demas Barnes; and of Tom Shelter and Pavilion at the Flower Garden. Tennis on the Long Meadow. Moore, the Irish poet, which was the gift of the St. Patrick Society. Above here the lake makes a big sweep to the eastward and following it the wayfarer discovers Breeze Hill, where formerly the camera obscura stood on a mound near the driveway. To go straight on would mean to cross Terrace Bridge, the 34° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. big stone and iron structure which spans the narrow neck of water leading from the greater to the lesser lake ; beyond the bridge the road climbs on to the well and Lookout Hill. But to make a circuit of the park requires one to turn about and follow the bend of the lake westward again through a long arbor of wondrous beauty, which runs along right on the rim of the water, on past Cleft Ridge Span, probably the prettiest arch- way in the park, and so to the boat house and shelter on the northern border of the smaller lake, from where the light cedar row-boats and the steam launch start with their interesting and interested passengers. But how different looks this same house in winter time, when huge stoves throw a ruddy glare about the room and, without the plankways lead to the smooth, white fields of glistening ice over which glide the graceful skaters, while the clink of the steel mingles lightly with the musical shouts of laughter and comradic calls. Just behind the boat house is the little drinking fountain where the water bubbles ceaselessly up from a small bowl of perforated metal and forms a convexed lump of crystal liquid into which the children — large and small — love to push their lips and noses while they quaff the refreshing draught. Turning to the right, or eastward, the walk leads under the East Wood Arch, where the youngsters like to fill the air with their merry shouts. Following the path, there is opportunity of egress by the Willink Entrance, more familiarly known as the Flatbush entrance; but, by making a turn to the left, one may roam along on the Flatbush avenue side, past where the gracile deers and the waddling ducks from Muscovy have a park with ponds made exclusive for them by the high iron fence. Along here the pedestrian feels satisfied that Eden has been artificially restored; with the deer paddock on one side he looks to the other hand upon an ideal driveway which has a miniature forest for its background and is sepa- rated from the footpath by a narrow grove of trees, as picturesque as any which ever waved their branches in the wanton winds ; traversing the pathway, one reaches the point where the little rustic arbor juts out over a stream which splashes down over rock and boulder toward the pond within the deer park ; this is one of the most secluded and yet most inspiring of the ramble routes within the park. From the deer enclosure, by a slight deviation to the left, one walks to Battle Pass, where a bronze tablet set into a massive boulder, half buried in a hillock known as Battle Pass Redoubt, commemorates the intrepid valor of the Revolutionary soldiers who, under General Sullivan, represented the outer lines of the American defences on the fateful day of August 27, 1776. when, after a dauntless struggle to maintain their position, they were mercilessly massacred between the Hessian and English troops. The Dongan Memorial. Oak stands here a few feet from the driveway to mark the spot where the patriots felled a forest mon- arch across the road to obstruct the onslaught of the enemy. The tree was planted with ceremony, on Arbor Day in 1890, as nearly as possible on the spot where the original grew. From this point is easily reached the Children's Playground, an almost circular, gravel-strewn plaza of about an acre, where in days gone by was heard the whirr and wheeze of a merry-go-round. This is near the Vale Cashmere, a locality which might well be called a miniature paradise ; on every hand are beds and banks of flowers and shrubs which yield intoxicating incense to the breeze ; here is a little lake, whose reflective face is flecked by lily-pads and from which a single-spray fountain tosses liquid pearls into the air. On a walk which runs along one side of this delightful vicinage, on a somewhat higher level, is an arbor, from PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 341 ;v '■ X ,/• , 1 h 1 1 '^ ■■ ./ / 1 |&# Wj --=. The Farm Yard, Bear Garden, Slave Kitcheh, Etc. which may be obtained a vista of the whole locality, which while closely circumscribed, is as refreshing and entrancing as a bride's bouquet. Leaving here and following the pathway leading under the vine- shrouded Endale Arch, the main entrance at the plaza is gained, where besides each gateway nestles a little shelter. In making this encircling journey about the park many important and interesting places in the central part will be missed. Chief among these is the Music Pagoda and the Music Grove, the trees about which have so often echoed the strains drawn forth by famous bandmasters. Opposite this is the Nethermead Common, between which and the lake runs one of the most beautiful of walks ; it runs close by the lake shore, and visitors are permitted to enter the sloping grove, which intervenes between the tarred walk and the water's edge ; seats are found at intervals in this grove, and it affords keen joy to the artistic to sit and watch the boats swim along the water between the wood-fringed banks. If instead of following this path, which eventually tends to the big well, the rambler follows the little stream from the music pagoda, he passes under the Nethermead Arch and may wander on till he reaches the pool on the south side of the Long Meadow and opposite the picnic shelter in which the Rotary Yacht formerly afforded a peculiar pleasure to the children. Or the strolling sightseer may seek the Music Grove Bridge, and, crossing the stream just above the pool called Ambergill, ascend the path which runs between a fir-clad bank and a gorge in which the stream flows on toward the main lake ; here he comes upon one of the most rugged pieces of scenery in the park, where the water tumbles with incessant roar over big rocks down to the gorge which winds about beside the path. The walk beside this waterfall is rock-bound, and opposite the falls a silvery stream juts out from between the stones, and forms a pool in a rock which the water has worn until it is a natural bowl; dippers hang here and many persons are wont to walk out of their way in order to drink from this grateful stream. To the right from the waterfall the ascent leads over two flights of stone steps between which is a terrace and an arbor from which you may watch and listen to the rollicking waters. Climbing the second flight brings the delighted visitor to the Dairy having little terraces and arbors about, where the weary ones may sit and feast their eyes upon the pretty surrounding while they feast the stomach with the caterer's compounds. On the hill-slope, a short distance from the Dairy, is the bronze bust of John Howard Payne. from which across the meadow may be seen the " lowly thatched cottage," before spoken of as The Thatch. Turning back toward the Dairy a path leads past the Dairy stables, cow-pen and sheep-fold, where the pigs grunt and the peacocks utter their discordant cries, onward to a turn where the bear-den always holds a fascinated cluster of spectators who watch the clumsy fellows, and timidly toss them nuts to crack. Just across from the bear-den is Sullivan Heights, known to many as the " new " picnic grounds. But, however 342 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. carefully and quickly one may travel about this Elysium, its points of beauty and grandeur could not be all discovered in a single day, and there are many interesting features yet to Oe mentioned. North of the Long Meadow, beside the path which runs along by the croquet grounds, is the club house of the Brooklyn Croquet Association, a new and very handsome building. Away down along the Ninth avenue side, extending opposite Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh streets, are the Archery Grounds, on which is the Archery Shelter. This side of there, opposite Seventh street, are the conservatories and tree nur- sery, the park stables, carpenter shop and bell tower. Other spots which strangers inquire for are Lily Pond Lake, just back of the Music Pagoda ; Binnen Water Pool, which is on the stream that wends north from the Music Grove toward Ambergill below the Dairy ; Binnen Bridge, which crosses the stream at a picturesque point behind the boat house, and over- looks Lily Pond Lake ; Binnen Water is the little lake imme- diately in front of the boat house, and is separated from Lull- water by Lullwood Bridge, known to the skaters as the " first bridge." Then there is Fallkill, where a cunning cataract tum- bles under a bridge into the pool that borders on the meadow ; Culvert Arch, opposite the pond within the Deer Paddock ; Ford Bridge, which is away over on the east side of the lake, near the carriage concourse where the big drinking urn is ; Val- ley Grove Bridge, under which one passes on his way from the Music Grove to the Dairy ; Esdale Bridge, which you cross just before reaching the meadow, when coming from the Nethermead and Music Grove ; and besides all these, there are numerous shelters, arbors, plazas, fields, groves, mounds and prettily seques- tered walks that have no name, but which fix themselves forever in the memories of those who have reveled in their beauties. The park, including the ten acres of the Quaker Cemetery, comprises 526-^ acres, which are divided as follows : Water courses, 15 acres ; lake areas, 62 acres ; woodland, 110 acres; meadow, 70 acres, and planta- tion, 259^ acres. Therfe are nine miles of drives, nearly four miles of bridle roads, and twelve miles laid out in walks. Few who visit the park realize the wealth of vegetable life that it contains ; over 300 varie- ties of trees and shrubs and nearly all the flora which will thrive in this climate, is spread in this pleasure ground for the joy and instruction of all the masses, the commonest citizen, no less than for the most dis- tinguished and wealthy. The birds which frequent the trees are equally numerous and varied in species, and the burden of their sweet songs would blend into one stupendous symphony if human ears could gather The Payne Statue. Lullwood Bridge. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 343 The Willikk, uk Flatbush, Enikance. the scattered strains. Outside the park proper, adjoining its southeasterly corner on Coney Island avenue, is the Parade Ground, which covers forty acres. Since it was laid out and the shelter and other accommoda- tions completed, it has been given over to the uses of the local militia and to field sports. The militia first took advantage of the privilege on May 23, 1871, when Brigadier-General Thomas S. Dakin paraded the Fifth Brigade of the National Guard. Many fine games of polo, lacrosse, cricket and base ball have been played here, and it has been the field of several sham battles. In the days of the old " Atlantics" base ball nine it was made famous by those players. The driveways leading from the park are regarded as being also a part of the city's parks. Ocean Parkway— a magnificent three road driveway opened to the sea in November, 1876, surpass- ing in length and beauty the famous Hague — is 5-^ miles long by 210 feet wide. At the seashore it divides the Coney Island Concourse, an unim- proved park of 70 acres ex- tent, with what was once a water front drive of over half a mile in length and 100 feet wide ; but Neptune's inroads by winter storms have re- duced its length about one- half. The Eastern Parkway, which wends easterly from the Plaza to the Twenty-sixth ward, two and a half miles away, is the last link in the chain of magnificent drives from the ocean, through city, park and suburb, constituting a smooth course of about ten miles. Plans for two new drives are at present being formulated, one to be along the Bay Ridge Shore, the other connecting the Eastern Parkway with Highland Park and Queens County, on which more millions will be expended when the plans have been completed. Prospect Park, since it was begun, has cost, for land and improvements, the sum of $9,268,231.05, of which amount nearly 60 per cent, was paid for the latter. Some idea of how well it has fulfilled the purposes of its projectors may be gleaned from the knowledge that dur- ing last year it welcomed 16,567,956 visitors and, ac- cording to the same record, 132,137 equestrians and 6,696 sleighs entered the park dur- ing the past year. Thirty-three years ago the idea of a Prospect Park was conceived, and the active brain of Mr. J. S. T. Stranahan played a part in tlie birth and, but for his labors at home and in the legislative halls, it had never been the thing of beauty which it is to-day, to remain a joy forever for those who come hereafter. He it was also who projected and planned most of its beauties and where nature had failed CLEFT Ridge Span, Approaching the Flower Garden. to adapt her clay to such uses. 344 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ►^ ,_^ I3^S t '^m .^^K^BSfEfi '- '^ .'^■i^^'^a^^« '^'^QP^^^^^H '^^^^^mi^m^^^S^^^SBl k%:-^^M(<,M ss^^^^^^^m J^^^^Mki^ 'fil ^^^^-'^K^^^BH HHj^r 'w ^^M|?^^" ^^P^^mBhK^^^ ^Sj^^H^^it jai^^ja^ \Hi ■."'' :/^ ^J^T^&^S^^MffPWBWM ^^^^ms f^m i^?^'-^^*^^j^8 ^^Jl^^^^^wnnF^' ^^-'^ini^MBH >^-«L-%4.'^^^fl^HK^&^ffiB^^m^^BP( - .. , ^^^^^f^BhHHSB^I^HI^I ^BM. gR -l-'»>r'^<$y :--f ',,-.., ;^ ■ --' . ^ --i;™??*!?*-.*"'-'"-.; ■;-;,. View from Lookout Hill, towards Flatbush. art and science were summoned in aid. At that time the City Park, Tompkins Park and Fort Greene Hill comprised the city's lungs. The resident of Williamsburgh wanted a park and parade ground on the eastern outskirts of their bailiwick. Discussion and time finally evolved a plan which called for a park of generous proportions which would embrace the field in the old town of New Lots, which the militia at that time used for grand parades and field evolutions. This idea did not meet with serious opposition until the original plan was enlarged and it was suggested that the several cemeteries which cluster on the heights overlooking Williamsburgh, on the Queens County border, be also included. Immediately a protest went up in many quarters and from many proriiinent citizens : prominent among those opposed being Mr. Stranahan, who became the first president of the first board of park commis- sioners. The protestants in Brooklyn proper banded together and fought the project of the " Burghers" with all their united wealth and influence. A conference between the leaders of the opposing factions followed, during which Mr. Stranahan executed one of his masterly strokes of diplomacy and suggested a compromise which was readily agreed upon. It was in effect that the Eastern District should have its park in any place and of any kind desired, but the residents of the Western District also have one big park ; each district or portion of the city thus benefited to pay the cost of its respective im- provement. One year later, in 1859, a commission was appointed which reported a plan suggesting a chain of eight parks. Three of them were to be extensive in area, and furnish breathing spots for the then eastern, central and southern districts of the city, while the other five called for squares, in area equal to Washington Park, as places of purely local resort. Two of the large plots were to surround and protect the great reservoirs at Ridgewood Heights and Prospect Hill, respectively, while the last was to embrace a portion of the village of Bay Ridge. The estimated taxable value of these three parks was $300,000. On April 15, the Legislature passed a bill appointing, as Park Commissioners, fifteen well-known citizens. On the first Monday of the following month there was a gathering of the newly appointed commissioners to take up the lines as laid down in the act, to " authorize the selection and location of certain grounds for Public Parks, and also for a Parade Ground for the City of Brooklyn." Those present were : John Greenwood, J. Carson Brevoort, William Wall, James Humphrey, John A. Cross, Nathaniel Briggs, Abraham J. Berry, Samuel S. Powell, Thomas H. Rodman, Nathan B. Morse, Thomas G. Talmage, Jesse C. Smith, Daniel Maujer, William H. Peck and Luther B. Wyman. Nine months after their appointment they forwarded to the Legislature, through Governor Morgan, an exhaustive recapitulation of their labors. They chose, among others, as a site "that piece of land situated on what is commonly known as Prospect Hill," then lying in the Eighth and Ninth Wards and the town of Flatbush, which had then scarcely outgrown the ancient name of Midwout, and whose boundaries existed mainly on the maps. As suggested by the com- missioners the park was originally to be bounded by lines running from the intersection of Douglass street and Washington avenue, along the latter to the Flatbush town line, thence across the intersection of Ninth street and the city line, along Ninth street to Tenth avenue, to Third street, down Third street half a block on the northerly side, and thence parallel with Ninth avenue to Douglass street, and again to Washing- ton avenue. The parade ground feature was not forgotten, and a portion of the White-Howard estate PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 345 in East New York was recommended. At this time also three smaller pieces of land were recom- mended for auxiliary parks. One was a nook on the Heights (still private property), at the very door of a dozen modern palaces ; its boundaries were Remsen, Montague and Furman streets and Pierrepont place. Another was a small park of four blocks area, between Ewen, Smith, North Second and Ainslie streets, in the Eastern District. The third was designed to- take^in-oiTe-of the historic spots of the city, about seventeen acres lying between Fourth and Fifth avenues, from Third to Sixth streets. It is now a portion of the property known as the Washington Base Ball Park, and until recently was occupied by the Brooklyn Base Ball Club. Note was also made of the fact — strange to the reader of the present — that the County had " recently purchased land upon which it was proposed to erect a court-house near the reservoir," which was then completed. The Prospect Hill site suggested met with general public approval, and after some minor changes in the boundaries, such as following the lines of Ninth and Vanderbilt avenues to Warren street, instead of to Douglass street, another bill was drawn, authorizing its laying out and including the East New York parade ground clause ; also it provided for the appointment of three commissioners of estimate and assessment and the issuing of bonds for necessary payments for land acquired. The interest upon the bonds was to be included in the general tax levy until 1865, when a sum equal to one-half of one per cent, upon the total was to be added to the same, the addition to be one per cent, after 1875, and the whole indebtedness to be discharged ten years later. By the same act seven com- missioners were to be appointed to have exclusive control and management, in the persons of James S. T. Stranahan, Thomas H. Rodman, E. W. Fiske, R. H. Thompson, Thos. G. Talmage, Stephen Haynes and Cornelius J. Sprague, the term of office to be three years. This act became a law in April, i860, with the same facility which characterized its forerunner. The new board of commissioners organized with Mr. Stranahan as president and Mr. Thompson as secretary, and the important work was begun. About this time there arose also a question as to the constitutionality of the act, and another snag was encountered in the delay of the Supreme Court in appointing the commissioners of estimate and assess- ment. The remainder of the year was occupied in obtaining accurate surveys, plans and estimates of the work, consultations with property owners and taxpayers, and the filling of the vacancy caused by the resig- nation of Commissioner Rodman by the appointment of Thomas McElrath. It was not long before the "chain " plan was abandoned as impracticable. While the war between the North and South was still rag- ing, the board of estimate and assessment concluded its labors and the commissioners came into posses- sion of 320 acres of ground, for which an award of $1,357,606 was made and three-quarters of that amount paid almost immediately. During the next year it became evident that effective discussion of the matter ^i#^ - Nkthermead Archbs. 34-<5 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. had centred the public mind, a very different idea from that which had led to the acquisition of the two pieces of ground on Flatbush avenue. The unadvisability of allowing Flatbush avenue to divide the pro- posed park became apparent, as it would necessarily interfere with the impression of amplitude desired, and moreover, the cost of bridging the thoroughfare to connect the two portions would be too great. The commissioners decided in consequence to ask for the power to dispose of the lands east of Flatbush avenue and purchase additional property further to the southwest, in order to carry out the plan finally devised by Messrs. Olmstead and Vaux, which had been adopted. The Legislature granted the request to acquire more land, but the discussion of the bill to sell the east side lands was deferred, the assembly fail- ing to concur. Considerable litigation, caused by the depressed financial situation, ensued. When in the following year the care and control of the new parade ground, in the town of Flatbush, was given over to the park commissioners, the actual work of laying out the present great pleasure ground began. There were 642 men employed on the work that year, under Chief Engineer Joseph P. Davis, with John Bogart and John J. Culyer as principal assistants. Nearly 100,000 trees were planted during the succeeding twelve months and after a portion of the Eastern drive that had been completed the park was thrown open to the public in November, 1867, and, although winter's chilly blasts were blowing, there passed through the main entrance before January i, 24,74^ single and 17,341 double vehicles ; 9,766 equestrians and 54,242 pedestrians according to the original record. Thus far the land acquired by purchase for Prospect Park had cost $2,289,909.70 and there had been spent for improvements $1,078,645. That the popularity of this new resort for the people had become an indis- putable fact was demonstrated by the figures showing that nearly 1,600,000 people had wandered about its picturesque grounds within the first twelve months. One-quarter of the total came on Sundays and 51,201 in one day, May 31. And thus the march of progress continued, fulfilling the prophecy of the Rev. Dr. Storrs, that " the silent precession of nature will help abundantly all proper work even though it be tardy." When the tenth year of the commissioners' husbandry had closed the limit of the $3,000,000 fund for con- struction had been reached and a legislative appeal was made for more. Two hundred acres had now been improved and the total city indebted- ness for the park amounted to $6,975,648.41, and the prim- ary plan of construction was announced as realized in all of the territory originally secured, as well as in a greater part of the remainder, includ- ing the Parade Ground. Al- though the construction of the Park began in June, 1866, six years after the Legislature authorized its purchase, it is not yet finished. Many de- lights were originally planned which have never been carried out for various reasons, lack of sufficient appropriations being principal among them. One was the erection on the crown of Lookout Hill of a magnificent observatory of or- nate masonry, several stories in height, from the top of which the observer might at a glance survey the country and ocean against the distant horizons. Another was a pet plan of President Stranahan's, which called for the laying out of a music concourse on the lake shore of the present flower garden, with a circular drive for carriages adjoin- ing. The music pavilion itself was to be located on the little island near by. Later on a temporary music stand was built in the Nethermead Grove which finally gave place to the present one. Mr. Stranahan retired from the Park Board after nearly a quarter of a century of honorable service. During his adminis- tration about $8,000,000 was received and expended for the purposes of the park. Until 1889, when the commission was reduced from eight to three members, the Mayor was an ex-officio member of the board. Endale Arch. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 347 The "Well and Pumping Station, Prospect Park. In 1891, by an act of the Legislature, the Board was again reduced and made a "single-headed " commis- sion in the person of George V. Brower. WASHINGTON PARK. No locality within Brooklyn's borders, save only that of Prospect Hill, presented more natural advan- tages and adaptability for a popular and picturesque breathing spot than did the historic hill of Old Fort Greene, when, in 1847, it was acquired by the city to be converted into a pleasure ground which, under the new name of Washington Park, is to-day the most historic of the city's park preserves. It is a piece of tree and grass-grown rolling land, embracing thirty acres, and has in places an altitude so considerable as to overlook the city's highest buildings ; over its highest levels gentle and cooling breezes play even on the hottest days of summer. Rare wisdom and discrimination were displayed in laying out this piece of natural summit-land. Except for the walks, the play grounds and the arbor plot, little leveling was done ; a picketed wooden fence was built around it, which, after the park was placed in charge of the commissioners, was replaced by a rubble masonry wall with a granite coping ; grasses were nurtured, trees and shrubberies cultivated, all with a care to assist and not pervert nature, until the rugged, primitive hill where Revolu- tionary patriots kept heroic guard is now a massive mound of beauty which rears its verdant heights from out the heart of the city, bearing in its bosom lesser hills and hollows, all robed in Nature's emerald velvet,her bright-hued flowery spangles and her leafy plumes. Within all the park there is not one level pathway ; the tar-and-pebble walks trace about among the hillocks like miniature valleys, having rounded slopesof lawn and bush rising sheer on either side. Along these pretty paths school children trundle their hoops and doll- carriages, or race and romp, while in the pleasant summer evenings the benches which stand at intervals along the walks are occupied by romantic couples who whisper tender phrases to the soft rippling of the leaves. The two playgrounds, which occupy one-tenth of the park's area and are separated by a walk, are favorite resorts, in the warmer seasons, of croquet and tennis players, whose graceful iigures in bright colors are silhouetted against the bushy background as they pose, or make kaleidescopic images of great beauty as they flit about on the dark green turf. Over the hills, and among the trees and shrubberies the boys have "bunks" and hiding places which make the park a hallowed one for the purposes of "hide-and-seek," "cops-and-thieves" and similar games ; and the occasional alert policeman adds only excitement to their sport. In winter time the steep paths offer rare attractions for coasting, and when wrapped in a snowy sheet the park is as much or more enlivened as it is in summer. Nearly all the paths of the park tend to- ward or communicate with the other walks which lead to the arbor on the crest of the greatest prominence. Up here is a plaza from which a magnificent view may be obtained of the lower part of the city, the Bridge, 34§ THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the river, alive with craft, and the upper bay. Over this plaza is the music stand, and at its edge, which is guarded by a granite wall, are the cannons used for saluting purposes. Immediately below this smaller plaza is the grand parade and assembly ground, affording ample standing room for 30,000 persons ; descent to it is made by means of three broad flights of granite steps; and one-third the way down, on the first ter- race, is found, built into the hillside, the tomb of the prison-ship martyrs, for which so often it has been attempted to wrest from Congress an appropriation sufficient to erect a suitable monument. The remains of these victims were left in the sand on the shores of the Wallabout until 1808, when they were removed to a tomb on the land of John Jackson, near the Navy Yard ; from there they were removed on June 17, 1873, to their present resting place, Washington Park extends along Myrtle avenue from Canton to Cum- berland streets ; along Washington Park (formerly Cumberland street) to DeKalb avenue, and along De- Kalb avenue to Fort Greene place ; on the west side it is flanked by the grounds of the Brooklyn Hospital, the County Jail and the Morgue, which last nestles against the steps at the north-west corner. This green heroic eminence, which is honored by the name of America's immortal patriot, in the days of Washington's own lifetime was consecrated by stirring and bloody scenes in the war he led for freedom ; and again during the war of 1812 it was the field of busy preparations for defence against the British invad- ers. Prior to the Battle of Long Island it was a thickly wooded hill belonging to John Cowenhoven, senior, his son. Rem Cowenhoven, and Caspar Wooster ; it was known as Cowenhoven boschje, or woods. In the spring of 1776, when the British forces began to move towards New York, the hill became one of the redoubts along the American lines of defence through Brooklyn. It was partially cleared of its timber, five guns were mounted, and it became known as Fort Putnam. It was from this eminence that Washington, on View from the Ramparts, Fort Greene. the memorable 27th of August, 1776, stood and witnessed the rout and slaughter of General Sullivan's troops by the British and Hessian forces on the Bedford Road, knowing that to send them succor would be to dan- gerously weaken the main line of defence ; and it is said that there General Putnam, finding the men in the redoubt wasting their ammunition, repeated the famous command of " Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," which was originally uttered on Bunker Hill. After the Revolution a road connecting Ful- ton street with the Newtown turnpike was cut through the Fort Greene hills, and in the early years of the present century part of the historic ground was occupied by the home of George McCloskey, a milkman, who was the father of the late Cardinal McCloskey. In 1814, when a descent upon New York by the English fleet was apprehended, students, societies, and all classes of citizens, not only from Brooklyn, but from New York, New Jersey and even Pennsylvania, co-operated in fashioning it into a stronghold of defence again, and it was garrisoned by troops until peace was concluded in February, 1815. It was in 1814, when the fortification was thus strengthened for defence against the second war with England that this hill was first called Fort Greene ; until then it had been Fort Putnam, and the name of Fort Greene had been applied to a redoubt situated about where Atlantic avenue and Pacific, Bond and Nevins streets now form a square. After the war of 1812 the fort was used as a storage place for ammunition until the people had the practice abolished, because of the menace to life and property. For two decades before its conversion to park purposes the hill was a tract of unused land. As a pleasure ground, it PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 549 has cost the taxpayers about $200,000, and before its transfer to the Park Commissioners and final com- pletion by them, it was lool^ed after by a board consisting of Henry C. Murphy, Seth Low, John Greenwood, A. G. Hammond, William Rockwell, N. B. Morse, Henry E. Pierrepont, J. C. Taylor, Jonathan Trotter, S. E. Johnson and C. R. Smith, to whom it is generally conceded that the city is indebted for this breathing spot. TOMPKINS PARK, A background of low verdure, a few high topped trees, an agreeable abundance of shrubs, underwood and floral display, and short but refreshing stretches of green lawn — these are the attractive features of Tompkins Park and in it constitute a pretty landscape of simple type. As far back as 1839 the property was acquired for the purpose it now serves, but no improvements were undertaken until thirty-one years later. In area the park is about seven and three-quarter acres, equal to two blocks of ground, extending from Tompkins to Marcy and from Greene to Lafayette avenues. When the park commissioners determined to make a park of the lots, which were then several feet below the street level, an appropriation of $25,000 was asked for and granted to defray the cost of filling and grading. Over two years of labor was required to convert old Tompkins Square into a presentable park, but it is now one of the prettiest and most fre- quented of the smaller enclosures. The situation and topography of the land suggested the possibility of a public ground of moderate extent which, while presenting a bright and beautiful front from without, would also offer an attractive place of recreation with shady walks, favorable to free observation, good order and enjoyment and yet possess the good quality of economy. With this idea in mind Messrs. 01m- stead and Vaux, the landscape artists in the employ of the commissioners, presented a plan which was approved and adopted, and finally carried out with but slight alterations. The central feature was a spa- cious, turfed quadrangle planted with trees, arranged symmetrically; on each of the sides of this umbrageous quadrangle was to be a strip of garden which, being unshaded, would be more bright and pleasing to the sight, with flowering shrubs and plants, and a perfect turf, equally attractive to the visitor, passer-by, or dwellers in the neighboring brown-stone houses. Four entrances were planned at the corners of the garden, furnishing direct access to the central promenade. As was calculated, the expense of construction under this plan proved to be less than the more costly results obtained in laying out Carroll Park. Many improve- ments have followed as the population and tone of the neighborhood advanced; concrete and tiled walks succeeded gravel paths, and fountains, arbors and shelters were erected for the accommodation of the visitors. The district to which Tompkins Park was once the sole ozone fount has so outgrown the capacity of this resort, that in recent years additional parks have been established near its outer borders, and Tomp- kins Park now remains a distinctive park of the elite, a favorite promenading, croquet and tennis ground. TOMF'KlNi- P\Kk'. 35° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. CITY PARK. Of all the parks perhaps none possesses fewer natural attractions or advantages for picturesque advancement than the seven and a half acres known as City Park. This park which, as has been shown, was the one first acquired by the City, has always suffered from neglect, and at present is little more than a grass-plot, and a much worn one, dotted here and there with a few ancient trees. It adjoins on the north side that portion of the Navy Yard abutting on Flushing avenue. Navy street. Park street and Park avenue form its other boundaries. Years ago City Park formed a portion of an extent of black ooze meadows with an area of about three hundred acres, covered with tall and tangled brake and salt grass, and traversed by a maze of shallow water courses emptying into the Wallabout. It was in earlier days, before parks became features of adornment to city life, a favorite resort for amateur fishermen, who bent their energies towards seducing and capturing, with a worm and bent pin, the "killy," a diminutive Carroll Park. species of silver fish. Long after its acquisition for park purposes this tract remained the same desolate and unattractive expanse, in keeping with the poverty of its surroundings, and it fell into bad repute as a resort of persons of the lowest class. Even murder was once added to the dark deeds done in this locality, and in 1868 the park commissioners, into whose charge the Common Council had given the enclosure the year before, recommended its conversion into a market place. The Common Council failed to take any action toward carrying out the plan of the commissioners, and in their next annual report the commissioners again called public attention to the need for a city market and the advantages of location offered in the City Park site. The result was the same, but the abuse of the disreputable spot proved a stimulus to the Common Council, who, in 1873, made an appropriation for its improvement. With the outlay of a few thousand dollars the green, which still bore traces of its meadow origin, was transformed into some semblance of the breathing spot intended. The surfaces were entirely removed, new and con- venient walks of concrete were established ; the grass was restored, old and unsightly trees replaced by younger ones of more desirable varieties and the general tone and appearance vastly improved. It has, however, after an outlay of $65,000, never served the true purposes of a park, although a slight boon to the denizens of the densely populated district surrounding it, who throng its democratic precincts on sultry summer nights. It is practically a thoroughfare, and its best uses are as a playground for the pupils of the contiguous public schools, Nos. 14 and 67, who resort to it during the recess periods. CARROLL PARK. When another summer's sun shall have again warmed Nature from her hibernation back to new life, the tormer frequenters of Carroll Park will hardly know the old resort. Recently its appearance has undergone PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 351 a complete alteration. The enclosure, which occupies a single square lying between Court and Smith and President and Carroll streets, was originally secured under the authority of an act passed in 1850, and three years later it was opened as a public square, having an extent of 1.81 acres. It remained one of the unimproved public domains, a quadrangular patch of green marked by bare turf paths until 1856, when a small appropriation was made for the purpose of extending and enhancing the parks. With every rain- storm the paths in the square were inundated and converted into muddy byways, and the weather-worn, wooden fence that enclosed it at this time showed a decided need of repairs. Accordingly the park was graded and connected by a drain with the Smith street sewer, and some months later the planting of trees and shrubbery inaugurated the process of beautifying the place. New walks were laid out later and mac- adamized, two lodges and an ornamental flag-staff erected, half a hundred seats scattered about and one hundred and fifty bird houses placed in the branches overhead. The old wooden fence was removed and in its place a high iron railing was erected. For the first time also it was policed and given in charge of two " post-keepers." Carroll Park has long been a playground for the children of the neighborhood, and there on any sunny afternoon may be seen the nurse maids and perambulators occupied by their infant charges on grand parade; and this despite the fact that for the past few years its attractions for the adult and artistic eye have been allowed to grow less. A radical change, however, was worked the month of October, 1892, when Park Commissioner Brower began to put into execution his plan of remodeling the park. The hideous iron fence was removed, giving place to granite curbing surmounted by a low and ornamental metal railing. Every walk is to be altered and repaved, a fountain will be another added attraction, and the once gloomy surroundings which have been a pall to the neighborhood rather than a delight, will be transformed in a few months' time to a retreat of genuine enjoyment to all. CITY HALL PARK. The smallest park in the city, excepting the few small enclosures in various localities, is the triangular expanse of greensward, scarcely a half acre in area, which lies with its base parallel to the steps of the City Hall and stretches out toward the angle formed by the junction of Fulton and Court streets, where it termi- The City Hall Park. 352 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Terrace, Fort Greene. Burial Place of Prison Ship Martyrs. nates in a rounded apex. This is City Hall Park, and at one time it constituted a portion of the old Remsen estate. None of the parks is better kept, and probably none affords more pleasure in proportion to its area and the cost of maintenance. From the windows of the City Hall and the tall business edifices by which the park is surrounded, the busy toiler, pausing for a moment in the rush of affairs, looks out upon the ever moving current of busy humanity surging through the thoroughfares and derives a restful feeling from the contrast between them and the rich green lawn with its splashing fountain, whose waters glint in the sun- shine and fall into the circular pool, where" bright colored fishes play hide-and-seek among the rare aquatic plants that spread their leaves over the surface and send their beautifully tinted and sweetly perfumed blossoms up through the spray into the air and sunshine. This pool is the feature of the park in the summer, notwithstanding the heroic statue of Henry Ward Beecher occupying a position near the base line of the triangular lawn. This memorial stands facing the City Hall, and is relieved from isolation by two large ornamental vases standing some distance away on either hand and somewhat in advance of the statue; the vases are filled with a heavy creeper popularly known as " live-for-ever," which rounds them off at the top with a mossy cap of green, from which a fringe escapes here and there and adds picturesqueness to the general effect. In addition to the aquatic plants in the pool which is within the rounded apex of the park, a handsome border of flowers lies between the granite coping and the turf; this border was formed in 1892 by a serrated design wherein triangular masses of alternanthera formed a many-pointed star of deep maroon, the points of which entered into a field formed by other triangles of house-leek. A neat coping of granite separates the park from the broad sidewalks on the sides flanked by the street and from the flagged plaza which stretches between it and the steps to the City Hall. Of all the parks in the city none have caused more vexation than this little open space, excepting only Prospect Park. Its topography and its general character have been repeatedly changed within a few years. At times it has been planted with trees and shrubs and made bright with flowers; then it has been converted into an inviting but inviolate lawn whose most conspicuous feature was the warning, "Keep off the Grass;" next it was decided to make of it one large plaza, and the entire area was reduced 'to a dead level of unin- teresting, heat-reflecting bluestone, which was such an eyesore that Commissioner George V. Brower, soon after his appointment as the executive of the Park Department, determined to restore the lawn-park and to improve upon the old features as far as possible. The result is a beautiful spot arranged with artistic modesty, whereon the worker and the wayfarer may look for a pleasurable moment and turn to his toil again or continue on his way, with the satisfying thought that there is beauty and rest even for those who are not possessed of wealth. THE CEMETERIES. Amid all the tender associations of our existence none are more subtle than those which cluster around " God's acre "—the resting place of the dead, where the perfume of the flowers is the breath of the lost child ; where the murmur of the breeze is the echo of loved voices that are silenced ; where the sunshine PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 353 is the remembrancer of loving glances from eyes that are closed forever. Even the stranger visitor in the cemetery feels an unusual influence there, for though it is the " city of the dead," it represents to him the fact of life. Here lie the ashes of the men who builded ; of the wives who encouraged ; of the mothers who nurtured new generations ; of the men who made laws and enforced them ; of those who dared death in their country's cause ; of those who taught men how to live and those who taught them what it means to die ; of those in whom hopes for the future had centered, but whose brief lives ended leaving only the com- fort that is found in the declaration, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." It is not strange that when men began to seek for a place wherein to bury their dead they sought localities where Nature was presenting her fairest pictures and singing her sweetest songs. Where the sun shines brightest through leaves that cluster thickest, and birds and flowers teach the lesson that life is unending though generations pass, there men lay the loved forms that henceforth make the place sacred to them to sleep until there shall come the awakening to immortality in the hope of which the bodies were committed to the grave — " earth to earth ; ashes to ashes ; dust to dust." Although the sentiment usually experienced in a cemetery is that of grief, yet to many these burying places fulfill the function of parks, and are sought for quiet and interesting strolls ; besides this fact the cemeteries become naturally classed with parks as beauty spots, and, although most of them are beyond the city limits, it is fitting that in this work they should find mention in connec- tion with the city's parks. Morever. it is a peculiar coincidence that in Brooklyn the idea of cemeteries was cotemporary with the park idea. GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY. To the mind of the late Henry E. Pierrepont, who conceived the first park project, there was suggested sixty years ago the idea of a rural cemetery which would, in its complete realization, afford to the contigu- ous community all the peculiar benefits in relation to the sepulture of the dead which similar facilities had A View in Green-Wood. given to the population of European capitals. The fashion of interment in churchyards within the cor- porate limits of large municipalities was even at that time beginning to grow in disfavor with the American public. The gloomy vault, or the moss-covered headstone, rising beneath the shadow of lofty buildings and within sound of the turmoil of the street, seemed to many to be profaned by such incongruous surroundings. People realized that the remains of those they loved could find more fitting entomb- ment in some spot upon which a combination of nature and art should confer a resemblance, in its leafy aisles and quiet nooks, to the " holy field " of the Italian or the " God's Acre " of the Saxon. The old Puri- tan custom which chose for the graveyard the bleakest and most barren locality, had long since vanished before the sunshine of the new world's advancing civilization ; in its stead had come the better and the 354 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Old Entrance to Green-Wood. higher thought, which decreed that the home of the dead should be beautified even as the abode of the living. The plan which Mr. Pierrepont formulated was at that time not a new one even in this country. He did not claim for his plan the merit of originality. The elm- shaded city of Cambridge in Massachu- setts was entitled to a distinction in this respect enjoyed neither by New York nor the younger community of Brooklyn, and " the wind blew chill o'er Auburn's field of God," more than a year before Green-Wood was thought of. The latter cemetery, indeed, was suggested by the existence of the for- mer, and it was while on a visit to Cambridge that Mr. Pierrepont first harbored the idea that on the wooded heights of Gowanus there could be planned a necropolis as beautiful as that which lay upon the slopes and summits of the maple-crowned hills which overlooked the current of the Charles. The plan was not destined to speedy realization. Some years were yet to pass before Green- Wood became an accomplished fact. In 1838— six years after his visit to Cambridge— Mr. Pierrepont, in whose mind the project had gradually been maturing, took the first practical steps towards its execution, and, in conjunction with Major David B. Douglass, an ex-officer of the United States Army, famous for his engineering skill, the preliminary surveys were made on the proposed site. The heights of Gowanus were historic ground ; Martense's lane on their southern boundary was the path by which the English General Grant advanced with a portion of his command before daybreak on the morning of that memorable August day whose sun set upon the first disastrous reverse sustained in open field by the American arms ; and it was near the present avenue to the cemetery, along the line of the old Gowanus road, that Sterling with his two regiments of Southerners met and engaged the British. The worst chapters in the story of that unfortunate conflict were written in crimson letters within sight of the hills now covered by the mounds of the dead ; and marble shaft and mausoleum flash among the trees where more than a century ago were concealed the sharpshooters who " picked off " the red-coated officers on the plains below. Mr. Pierrepont, together with Samuel Ward, John P. Stagg, Charles King, David B. Douglass, Rus- sell Stebbins, Joseph A. Perry and Pliny Freeman, obtained a charter of incorporation from the state legis- lature during the session of 1838, and a joint stock corporation, under the name of "The Green- Wood Cemetery," was thereby created with a capital of $300,000 and the privilege of acquiring title to two hundred acres of land. Portions of the Bennett, Bergen and Wyckoff farms were selected by the promoters as most suitable for their enterprise, and the amount of $134,675.50 was paid for one hundred and seventy-eight acres. The name was decided upon after considerable discussion. The more stilted and classical nomencla- ture suggested by some was wisely put aside and in its stead was chosen the simple verbal combination which conveys, in its sound and sense, an idea of restfulness and quietude, of peaceful hills and vales clad in wav- ing verdure. The early history of the cemetery was not one of unbroken prosperity. Its road to success and secure establishment was hewn by the efforts of energetic men from the thicket of difficulties which retarded its progress in the first era of its existence. Additional land was needed, and secured, only after the arts of persuasion had been exerted to the utmost to move the conservative spirit of the proprietors whose Dutch descent and inherited thrift almost prohibited the alienation of ancestral acres. A seal was adopted by the corporation. It symbolizes Memory scattering blossoms above the ashes of the dead. In the Spring of 1839 an official board of management was chosen, with Major Douglass as president and Mr. Pierrepont as secretary ; the cemetery was fenced in, and paths, driveways and lakes were created as the years advanced. But public interest in the work had not yet been aroused. New York people were slow to recognize the advantages of the project ; they thought that the rocky soil of Manhattan Island afforded greater advantages for interment than could be found on this shore of the East River, and the wealthy corporation of Trinity Parish, which in the second year of Green-Wood's existence evinced some desire to purchase twenty acres of ground in the heart of the new cemetery, suddenly cut short all negotiations to that end and began to rear the monuments of its dead in the fields on the eastern bank of the Hudson. On September 5, 1840, the first grave was opened in Green-Wood, near the foot of Ocean Hill, to receive the body of John Hanna. In 1841, when the corporation was under the presidency PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 355 r Monument to Joseph A. Perry. of Zebedee Cook, the trustees seriously considered the advisability of allowing the enterprise to lapse, and it was only by the exercise of the most stringent economy and by the unselfish conduct of some who were vitally interested in its success that Green-Wood Cemetery was rescued from oblivion. After this crisis had been tided over the hardest struggles of the corporation ended and thenceforth prosperity increased with every year. One of the most active contributors to this result was the late Joseph A. Perry, who for more than forty years, from the time of its incorporation until his death, filled in regard to the corporation the various posts of director, comptroller and secretary. The tide of success never ebbed afterwards. Promi- nent churches, societies and private parties made pur- chases of land, varying in extent from one lot to a hundred, according to their requirements and means ; important improvements were effected in the interior aspect of the cemetery, and the natural beauties with which it was endowed were heightened by the care and attention of those to whose control its affairs had been submitted. Entrances of imposing proportions were constructed, and in 1851 a system of local water-works was established ; in 1S60 the main entrance fronting Fifth avenue was projected and in the following year it was completed. This structure is monumental in design, and in its outlines and ornamentation savors of the Gothic architecture. The central tower rises to a height of one hundred and six feet, while the two side turrets are ninety feet high ; there is a clock with a double dial and a belfry whose iron tenant seldom rests from morning till night in his work of heralding the approach of funeral corteges. Above the double archways which pierce the structure are sculptured panels of the lightest colored sandstone, illustrating portions of the biblical narrative. This entrance, which stands a few hundred feet from the curb line of Fifth avenue, is built of New Jersey brownstone, from the Belleville quarries. Green-Wood now contains nearly five hundred acres, embracing a magnificent prospect of varied scenery. Trees of almost every species known to the forestry of the north shade the graveled walks and sway their branches above the mirrors of the quiet lakes; luxuriant shrubs and blooming flowers; the creeping ivy, overrunning shaft and vault ; the trailing vine whose twining tendrils grasp the arch of turf beneath which lies the tear-stained casket ; monument and mausoleum that have taxed the highest skill of sculptor and architect ; all are combined to form a picture whose only shadows are those of memoiy. Here, interred upon the summit of a commanding eminence, rest the bones of Morse, the modern Prometheus who stole the fabled fire of the gods and bound the nations of the world together by the girdle of the telegraphic wire ; here rises the shaft which commemorates the virtues and enterprise of DeWitt Clinton, who gave to his native state the great water highway of the Erie Canal ; here lies the dust of the great preacher whose fervid eloquence made Plymouth Church a household word, and who, " in the storm of the years that are fading," dared, alone of all men, to cross the ocean and undertake the conversion of hostile public sentiment ; within this enclosure are the graves of two of the greatest figures in the history of American journalism — fiorace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett ; one hill is crowned by the monu- ment which New York has erected in honor of her sons who, on sea and land, gave their lives in defence of national unity ; and on another slope a sorrowing city has reared the emblem of her grief above the common grave of the victims who perished in one of the most disastrous fires on record. All that wealth can command, everything that taste can suggest, all that local pride can bestow, has been freely lav- ished in the efforts to beautify this " silent city," whose inhabitants now number more than 270,000. Magnifi- cent driveways and shady paths skirt the borders of lake and meadow, or climb the hills whence the eye gazes out over the roofs of the great twin The LAk-Fc, IN GRKEN-WooD. cities, or across the shining waters of 3S6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ■ •5' » ^»'' * .v s Entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery. the haven where ride the fleets of the greatest maritime nations of the old and new worlds ; below the tree-crowned heights of Brooklyn stretch away to the four points of the compass ; yonder lies New York sheltered behind her dusky forest of mast and spar, while across the rapid current that flows between there hangs the huge span which seems even to the practical mind of the nineteenth century like some mighty work, "Piled by the hands of giants For God-like kings of old." Such is Green-Wood and such, briefly, is the story of its inception and growth. The energy which con- quered past difficulties and overcame obstacles seemingly insurmountable has not yet died out and affords to the future a guarantee of continuity and prosperity. The last published report of the corporation showed that the " Fund for the Improvement and Permanent Care of the Cemetery " amounts to $1,370,- 586.51, and that the special trust fund aggregates $322,278.91. The officers of the corporation are Jasper W. Gilbert, president ; John VV. C. Leveridge, vice-president ; Charles M. Perry, comptroller and secretary. The trustees are : Jasper W. Gilbert, John W. C. Leveridge, Abiel A. Low, Benjamin H. Field, Alexander M. White, Benjamin D. Silliman, Gerard Beekman, James R. Taylor, George Macculloch Miller, Edmund L. Baylies, John J. Pierrepont, Samuel D. Babcock, William Gary Sanger, Frederic A. Ward, Charles M. Perry. The Prospec 1- krom Green- Wood. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 357 THE EVERGREENS CEMETERY. Seemingly designed by Nature as a spot whose quietude should be disturbed only by the caroling of birds and the rustling of swaying branches which bend before the breezes from the distant ocean, The Evergreens affords to an appreciative sense the ideal of a rural cemetery. Not alone to those who, bend- ing above the last home of one they loved, have realized in the first sharpness of their grief that " Not all the preaching since" Adam Has made death other than death;" not alone to those whose sorrow has been softened as the shifting sands of time have covered the foot- prints of the past and who find a quiet satisfaction in lingering beside the graves of those who have crossed over to the other side does The Evergreens seem sacred ; but its associations carry to the minds of lighter and more careless humanity a lesson which nothing else can teach — a lesson which blends the solemnity of death with the beauty that lies beyond. Here sleep thousands who in life occupied different social stations, but all of whom are .now at rest under the turf on which the sun shines and the rain drops from an impartial sky. One shady path winds in and out among the monuments which wealth has reared above those on whom in life her favors were lavished with the freest hand, while another skirts the base of a hill whose slope is dotted with the more unobtrusive memorials, or the unmarked graves of the lowlier dead. On one of the highest points within the enclosure is the common grave of more than 20,000 sailors whose names are unrecorded on any monument, and whose nationality alone is distinguishable by the Office of "The Evergreens." granite monoliths which divide the burial place of the German from that of the Spaniard, the Italian's from the Frenchman's, and the American's from the Englishman's. There undisturbed by the storms of life and safe within their final haven, rest the mariners whose bones have been interred through the charity of the Seamen's Association of the United States Government. Upon the summit of " prospect hill," which commands a wide view over the panorama of a great city, there rises a granite shaft, plain in its outlines and the more imposing because of its very simplicity ; this stands in the centre of the iron-railed plot which has been purchased by the Actors' Fund of America. Close beside it is another enclosure where a bronze figure of an Elk and a monument crowned by a statue of the comic muse tell that those who rest within have been buried there by the fraternal organization which was designed to benefit mem- bers of the theatrical profession. At the southern extremity of the grounds " beacon hill " affords to the observer a magnificent prospect of the distant ocean glittering in the golden sunlight, or whitening in its anger under the lash of the gale ; of the luxuriant groves and fruitful fields of two fair .counties, dotted by thriving town and village, while in the immediate foreground the harsher colors of brick and stone are softened by the filmy veil of smoky mist which eternally hangs above the great centres of human population. There are wide stretches of velvet sward yet unbroken by the spade of the grave-digger; there are picturesque groves whose leafy screens owe little of their beauty to the touch of art ; there are tortuous paths which wind by copse of fir and beech and maple, where the marbles of the dead rise 35« THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. against a background of waving foliage ; there are sunny slopes where the vision sweeps out over a wil- derness of sculptured stone, and there are placid lakes whose surfaces, as they lie in the sheltered valley, are scarcely stirred into ripples by the breath of the passing wind. The crest of " mount carmel " is occu- pied by the ofifices of the cemetery corporation, which are contained in a structure modeled after the pattern of the Swiss chalet, whose walls are hidden beneath the interlacing vines of the ivy, and from whose turret the funeral bell tells in measured stroke of each new accession to the silent populace. At the junction of Conway street and Bushwick avenue is the main approach to the cemetery. Its paved roadway is flanked by lofty stone posts from which iron gates swing together when the hour for closing the grounds arrives. On the northern side is another entrance which has been opened for the benefit of the Queens County residents. The Evergreens was chartered on October 6, 1849. A site was chosen only after a deliberate and careful investigation had been made regarding the most available localities within easy reach of the metropolitan centres. Material improvement of a lasting and substantial nature began to manifest itself, and in two years the sum of $25,000 was expended in the work of beautifying and enlarging the grounds. In 1882 interments numbered more than sixty thousand, and since then the burials have annually averaged over six thousand. Since its inception the cemetery's area has been enlarged to almost double its original proportions and now embraces three hundred acres ; every year the corporation has given evidence of that care and attention necessary to foster the enterprise which has been committed to its charge, and to the efforts thus displayed the public has accorded a generous appreciation. In that long chain of silent cities which encompasses the metropolis of Long Island, from Calvary on the north to Holy Cross and Green- Wood on the south, there is no link more beautiful or richer in every natural endowment than the cemetery of The Evergreens; there, where the quiet pools reflect the quivering leaves that shade their waters; there, where birds sing and flowers bloom ; there, where the creeping plant covers with its mantle of living ver- dure the grim masonry of vault and tomb ; there, where the genius of man has wrought the symmetry of shaft and statue, the mourner may lay with reverence the ashes of the loved and feel that the dead are safe " in the arms of Nature and of God." Much has already been accomplished in the work of placing the Evergreens on a level with similar projects which within the last sixty years have been undertaken in the great cities of the United States. That much will be accomplished in the days that are to come is guaran- teed in the story of those that are past, and the corporation and the public may contemplate with satisfac- tion the prospect presented by the future. The Cemetery of the Evergreens. PARKS AND CEMETERIES. 359 Cypress Hills Cemetery. When the projectors of Cypress Hills Cemetery selected the location for that necropolis they chose a place where the dead might be left alone with Nature in some of her most charming aspects. It was out of the line of the probable advance of population and modern improvement. No more advantageous location from sanitary and aesthetic considerations could be desired. It is secluded and at the same time easily accessible ; and it is picturesque in its own variety of surface and natural beauty, as well as in its surround- ings and the great expanse of view afforded by its elevations. Three or four hundred acres of land on the elevated ridge of land on the north side of the Brooklyn and Jamaica turnpike — a tract on what is usually styled "the back-bone of Long Island" — are included in the cemetery which, under the provisions of a special charter, may be enlarged to five hundred acres. The view from the higher portions of the ground is superb ; wood and field, ocean and beach, the towers and spires of the city and the scattered farmhouses and cottages of the rural districts and the seaside are all within the range of vision ; looking southward one sees the broad Atlantic lapping the sands with its many tongues of foam and bearing upon its bosom the white-winged and the smoke-breathing messengers of commerce ; away to the southwest the bold outlines of the Highlands of Navesink rise against the horizon just beyond where the bay begins to narrow toward the shores of Long Island ; on the west the spires of Brooklyn pierce the sky and her thickly clustered buildings tell of teeming life and of bustle, the sounds of which are lost long before they have reached half way to this place of rest ; Manhattan Island, with its vast and noisy currents of human activity, stretches itself along the northern wall of vision, silenced by distance and seemingly hemmed in by the frowning Palisades that rise beyond and give no hint of the broad, deep river that rolls between them and the city of New York ; the village and farmhouses of Jamaica in their setting of green expanse and massed foliage, threaded by winding roads, form the picture in the east ; and in the northwest the blue outline of the Connecticut shore rimming the gleaming waters of Long Island Sound completes a series of landscapes that are freshened every hour by the changes of light and shade caused by the season and the hour. Art has gone hand in hand with Nature in the preparation of this beautiful region for the sacred pur- poses to which it is devoted. Within twelve months after the legislature had passed the law granting special privileges to rural cemeteries the land was secured and Cypress Hills Cemetery was dedicated in the summer of 1848. Caleb S. WoodhuU was the president of the corporation, which was composed of energetic and far-seeing men. Every natural advantage presented for enhancing the beauty of the grounds was improved, and in all that has been done there has been with a steady purpose to avoid that so-called " improvement " which is so constantly suggestive of artificiality. . Where roadways and paths have been made winding the curves have been governed by the necessities presented in the conformation of the ground, and the longer journey around a point is made simply in order to avoid the too steep climb up-hill. More than thirty-five miles of carriage-way traverse the tract, and there are three great arteries of travel through 360 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the cemetery, known respectively as the Lake Road and the Valley Road, which reveal all the internal beauties of the place as one follows them in their windings, and the Highland Way, which clings to the hill-tops where the wayfarer drinks in the clear atmosphere and revels in the cyclorama of ocean view and landscape. Part of the ground is covered by heavy forest, and in the arboriculture of the place all the forest trees of Long Island have been introduced, while choice nurseries are maintained to provide for future beautification. A number of tiny lakes mirror the sky in various directions, and on the front of the cemetery is a beautiful sloping lawn of thirty acres. The driveways and paths stretching away from the main entrance make every portion of the grounds easy of access. Shrubbery, ornamental plants and flowers abound in all directions, and not the least interesting feature is comprised in the many beautiful monuments and other examples of mortuary art, which are to be found at every turn. In planning the cemetery the corporation aimed at a plan of management that should insure to all who desired the privileges of sepulture every advantage afforded by the largest cemeteries in the country with- out the great cost incurred in burials in those large cemeteries, and this aim has been carried out. The number of interments made since the cemetery was opened, in 1843, is 133,000 ; and of this number 5,000 were soldiers of the Union army who died during the Civil war. The present officers of the Cypress Hills Cemetery are : James Rodwell, president ; Adrian M. Suydam, vice-president ; Frederick H. Way, treasurer; Alexander M. Eraser, secretary ; Richard F. Butt, superintendent ; and James Rodwell, Adrian M. Suydam, Frederick H. Way, Asa S. Button, William Miles, Charles L. Lyon and John G. Jenkins, trustees. CEMETERY OF THE HOLY CROSS. The project to establish a Roman Catholic cemetery within the limits of the town of Flatbush met with much opposition from the residents of that section, and several attempts to purchase land for this purpose, prior to 1849, were unsuccessful ; but in June of that year the Rev. J. McDonough, as agent for the Right Rev. John Hughes, Bishop of New York and Brooklyn, consummated a bargain whereby a tract, something more than seventeen acres in extent, was purchased from James Duffey. The ground was originally a part of the old Van Brunt farm. Samuel Young next consented to enlarge the cemetery by selling another section of the old Van Brunt farm, which had come into his possession, and which adjoined the ground originally bought by Bishop Hughes. Again in, 1857, the heirs of Adrian Vanderveer disposed of nineteen acres and three rods. No more purchases were made until 1869, when Leffert Cornell disposed of twenty-two acres, for which he received $18,000. After Long Island and Brooklyn were separated from the see of New York and welded into one diocese, the title to the cemetery lands was, according to the ecclesi- astical law of the Catholic church, vested in the Right Rev. John Loughlin, D. D., Bishop of Long Island, and in his episcopal successors. In the spring of 1855 Bishop Loughlin erected and dedicated a mortuary chapel in the cemetery. The superintendent of Holy Cross is William H. Curren. Since its foundation the number of interments in the cemetery has been more than 200,000. In 1849, the cholera year, 6,000 graves were opened there, and there were 278 burials in one week. CALVARY CEMETERY. Calvary Cemetery is located in Newtown, Queens County. It now occupies three hundred acres, the total number of interments being 500,000. The cemetery is the property of the trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the present board consisting of W. M. Gelsbenen, William McKenna, Joseph Doelger, Peter Doel- ger, Timothy Shea, Magdalena O'Connor, Hannah McGowan, Wm. Hildreth Field, Peter O'Donohue, Bryan Lawrence, Wm. P. Kirk, Michael Grady, Patrick Ruddy, Michael Flynn, Wm. Dollard, Mary Donnelly, J. Johnston and C. Johnston. THE LUTHERAN CEMETERY. The Lutheran Cemetery is the largest in area of any single cemetery in the township of Newtown, L. I., occupying 350 of the 1,600 acres within that locality. It is estimated that 1,250,000 dead are buried in Newtown, and of that number 240,000 sleep in the Lutheran Cemetery. The site is in the heart of Middle Village, and the entrance is on Metropolitan avenue. In 1891 there were 14,000 burials placed upon its records. Jacob A. Geissenhainer is president of the corporation ; F. W. Geissenhainer, secretary, and David Avenius, superintendent. UNION CEMETERY. Union Cemetery is one of the few remaining cemeteries within the city limits where interments are still made. It comprises about ten acres, bounded by Irving and Knickerbocker avenues. Palmetto and Jacob streets. It was opened as a burial ground in June, 185 1. The property was purchased by the congregation of the Grand Street First Protestant Methodist Church, who made no restrictions as to color, race or religion ; in 1883, seven thousand persons had been buried there. In 1890 the number of interments 362 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. were 470. The cemetery is a pretty spot, its surface being diversified with small elevations and numer- ous shade trees. Theodore Cocheu is the superintendent. HEBREW CEMETERIES. Washington Cemetery, situated about two miles beyond the city limits, just outside the village of Parkville, L. L, at Woodlawn station, on the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, is a favorite bury- ing place of the Hebrew race. Although, at its inception a decade or two ago, there were no sectarian restrictions placed upon interments, there are few persons of other religious beliefs buried there. Originally it was composed of 150 acres of cedar-dotted level land, extending from the Ocean Parkway to the railroad on the west and about a quarter of a mile in width. Within the past five years about fifty acres, west of the railroad track, have been added. Hebrew lodges, congregations, societies and individuals have purchased nearly three-fourths of its acreage. It is an incorporated body, governed by a board of six trustees. Isaac Marx is the president and Simon Binswanger superintendent. Among the other places where the Hebrew dead are buried are Ahawath Cheseds, thirteen acres in East Williamsburgh, L. I.; Sharith Israel and Temple Bethel, both in Newtown, L. I., of six and ten acres, respectively; Salem Fields, at Jamaica avenue and Market street, in the twenty-sixth ward; Mount Neboh, fifteen acres on the Fresh Pond Road, in Queens County, Macapelah, forty acres in New- town, and Maimondes, seven and a half acres, near Ridgewood. the FRIENDS' BURYING-GROUND. The Friends' Burying-Ground, known familiarly as the " Quaker Cemetery," is quaintly picturesque. Its twenty acres crown an otherwise well-wooded hill in Prospect Park, within a short distance from the West Flatbush gateway. Here for about half a century the ashes of the faithful of the sect have mould- ered amid the severely plain rural surroundings, for their principles do not permit of any ornamentation of the graves beyond a simple headstone. The sect is not a large one in Brooklyn, and the interments are consequently few. The cemetery is under the management of the Society of Friends. fresh pond crematory. Cremation, as a means of disposing of the remains of the dead, grows in popular favor, and the crema- tory bids fair to become the formidable rival of the cemetery within a few generations. The late Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, of Washington, Pa., was the pioneer of cremation in this country, and his crematory at that place was for a number of years the scene of all the incinerations that occurred in the United States, in fact, until the organization of the company operating the present crematory at Fresh Pond, L. I., in 1884. In that year it purchased thirteen city lots at Mount Olivet, near Fresh Pond, L. I., near the Mount Olivet and Lutheran cemeteries. Plans for the building and incinerating apparatus were obtained, and the corner- stone was laid on November 19, 1884. The building was not ready for use until near the end of the year 1885. On December 4, 1885, the body of Eugene Lievre was cremated, and, in spite of inclement weather and the fact that the hall was not large enough to accommodate more than the relatives and friends of the dead man, there was a large attendance of the interested and curious public. Since that occasion eight hundred and twenty-eight bodies have been incinerated at Fresh Pond. The Friends' Burying-Ground in Prospect Park. On the Lake, Prospect Park. ^H. I ■i •! 1 •1 r H ■ •- -.-■ ■ '^- L ---^ ■".«■ *^*--..<*r--*M.^** I'j' ,^* ■ ■ ■ ■ .^^■- ^.-*:^ uHirF «ifo-^..,. *■ The rrrv n m. THE CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. Brooklyn, when it was incorporated as a city in 1834, comprised two distinct organizations, wtiicli iiad existed side by side for eigliteen years — tlie old town, with which the conservative and slow-going settlers were for the most part content, and the village, which, through the efforts of the more enterprising portion of the population, was finally incorporated in 1816. It numbered at that time about 5,000 inhabitants. When, in 1834, the town and village of Brooklyn were united under one city government the population had increased to 23,310. At this point begins Brooklyn's municipal history proper. It was in the face of vigorous opposition on the part of New York that Brooklyn eventually obtained its charter. The growth of the village had been greatly hampered by absurd restrictions. It had no power, for instance, to lay out streets without securing the con- sent of property owners. In many ways the state senators, whose interests were centred in New York, managed to retard the development of the little suburb. At last Brooklyn was aroused and a great meeting was held. To a committee, of which the Hon. John Greenwood was a prominent member, was referred the task of drawing up a proper charter and of devising means to wring it from the opposition. The act grant- ing the charter, having passed both branches of the legislature, became a law on the eighth day of April, 1834. The boundaries of the old village districts were preserved, but they were renumbered as wards. There were five of these, to which were added four others from the town of Brooklyn. From each of the nine wards two aldermen were to be elected annually, and they, with the mayor, constituted the common council. Only freeholders were eligible. The legislative power was vested in the common council, and during the first six years of the city's municipal history they elected a mayor annually. They also 366 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. appointed the city officers and had power to open, light and pave the streets and to construct squares. They procured the fire engines, built the sewers, and provided street crossings. The original charter has undergone many changes. One of the first of these was made in 1836, when the firemen of Brooklyn were granted the same rights and privileges as those enjoyed by the firemen of New York. In the same year the office of comptroller was created by the legislature, and it was to be filled by appointment of the common council, which also prescribed the salary. Another amendment gave the control of the common schools to the corporation, with power to raise funds for their support. The original charter placed the maximum amount to be raised for public purposes at $30,000 annually. In 1837 this was increased to $50,000 annually, and the authority to effect a loan of $300,000 on the city's credit was con- ferred at the same time. Many minor powers, looking to the greater comfort and welfare of the citizens, were added by legislative amendment to the charter from time to time. In 1840 an important change was made. It provided that the mayor should no longer be elected by the common council, but directly by the people, and Cyrus P. Smith, who had already been appointed by the aldermen in 1839, was reelected by the people in the following year under this new provision. The appointing powers of the common council have since been still further abridged and those of the mayor increased in many particulars. In 1841 the alder- men received authority to divide the city into election districts and to fix the firemen's terms of service. Under the first charter the municipal court of the village was retained in all its essential features and was only slightly modified down to 1850, when a complete reorganization was effected. At this time, too, the boundaries of the city and of its subdivisions were defined and the corporation hitherto known as "The Mayor and Common Council of the City of Brooklyn," was henceforth to be called simply " The City of Brooklyn." This act recognized eleven wards and divided the aldermen of each ward into two classes; one of the two was to hold office for one year only and act as member of the city court. The other alderman was to hold office for two years and act as a supervisor of Kings county. The legislative powers were still vested in the common council and the administrative powers were distributed between the mayor, chief of police, comptroller, street commissioner, collector of taxes, and such other officers as should be created in ■the future. The mayor's term was extended to two years and, ex-officio, he was supervisor of the city and exercised all the powers of a justice of the peace. The power delegated to him was distinctly defined and his salary fixed at a minimum of $2,000. The comptroller was also to hold office for two years and render when required full accounts of the city's receipts and disbursements. Under this charter the street com- missioner was elected every three years and had authority to appoint a deputy for whose acts he was to be held responsible. The treasurer was to be an officer under the common council and was to make weekly returns. Provision was also made in the original charter for the election every three years of a commissioner of repairs, who likewise acted under the direction of the aldermen. Prior to 1854 the common council also appointed the corporation attorney and counsel and he was legal adviser for the city, conducting suits in its name. His term of office was three years, with a salary of $3,000. In 1849, the courts of civil and criminal jurisdiction were established by an act of the legislature. A city judge was to be elected every six years and to be subject to the same conditions and to perform the same duties as a county judge. The court over which he was to preside received the title of "the City Court of Brooklyn." On April 17, 1854, an act passed the legislature consolidating Williamsburgh and Bushwick with Brook- lyn. A committee of fifteen was appointed, consisting of seven citizens of Brooklyn, five of Williamsburgh and three from Bushwick. The plan drawn up by the committee for a consolidated municipal government was submited to the people at the general election of 1854 and was ratified. On January i, 1855, Geoi-ge Hall took office as the first mayor of the consolidated city, as he had been first mayor of the original city twenty years before. In the days before the incorporation of the city the village president and trustees held their official sessions in a retail store near Fulton ferry. In 1836 the city government established itself in the building of the apprentices' library, at the corner of Henry and Cranberry streets. It was then known as the city building, and there the mayor and common council met and transacted the public busi- ness of the young municipality. The city hall was not completed until 1849. When Williamsburgh and Bushwick were added to Brooklyn, the city passed at one step from the position of seventh city in the union to that of the third. With the year 1855, therefore, Brooklyn entered upon a new era and a larger history. The days of small things were over and numerous changes were soon perceived to be necessary in the administration and organization of the city departments to bring them into accord with the new condi- tions and the larger demands. These changes culminated in the completely revised and carefully drawn charter of 1888. The consolidated city was divided into eighteen wards, to which a nineteenth was soon added. The vari- ous city departments were reorganized and, especially the board of health and the board of education, were adapted to the new needs by express provisions in the charter of consolidation. In 1855 the fire depart- ment was incorporated by act of legislature. Two years later the board of fire commissioners was created and the then recently appointed board of water commissioners was constituted by legislative enactment CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 367 a board of sewer commissioners also. In 1862 Brooklyn received a new charter which was designated as "amendatory of the consolidation act of 1854." The legislature in 1868 created two new functions: the board of estimate and disbursement and the department for the survey and inspection of buildings. In 1870 the control of the police force was transferred to the mayor, associated with two commissioners, and in the following year the superintendents of the poor were superseded by the board of charities and correc- tions. These were some of the alterations in the municipal administration prior to 1873, when once more Brooklyn received a new charter. According to this charter the legislative power was still vested in the common council, and the administrative power in the mayor and the heads of departments then existing or to be created. The departments were: finance, audit, treasury, collection, arrears, law, assessment, police and excise, health, fire and buildings, city works, parks, public instruction, and the superintendence of the Truant Home and the Inebriates' Home. All offices were to be filled by appointment except those of mayor, comptroller and auditor, which were elective, and for terms of two years. The law of 1869 had provided further for the election of a police justice for the term of four years. In 1873 this justice was con- tinued in the corporation and six civil justices with police powers were created. Subsequent legisla- tion has reduced this number to three and increased the number of police magistrates to six. This char- ter of 1873 was frequently amended by special acts affecting individual departments, and reference to these belongs rather to the history of those departments. The confusion of all these alterations was reduced to order by the codification of all the laws in force at the time, which took shape in the new legislative act of 1888, under which the city now proceeds in its career of pros- perity and expansion. At present the legislative power of the city government is vested in a board of nineteen aldermen, called the common council. The city is divided into three aldermanic districts. Each of these is entitled to four aldermen, the remaining seven being elected at large from the entire city. The term of office is two years, and the members receive $2,000 per annum. Members of the common council at the time of elec- tion must be possessed of all the civil rights of citizens of the United States. The common council appoints a city clerk, who serves for two years. He has charge of the papers and documents of the city. Every ordinance or resolution of the common council, before it takes effect, must be presented to the mayor for his approval. In case the mayor should, in writing, disapprove of any such ordinance or resolution, within ten days after he has received it, it would fail to become a law, unless, after a full publication of the reasons given by the mayor, the same should be again passed by a vote of two-thirds of those elected to the board. The common council has power to make, modify or repeal ordinances, rules, regulations and by-laws which are not inconsistent with the charter of the city, or with the constitution or laws of the United States or of the state of New York. The more important purposes enumerated in the charter for which they may pass laws are the following : To order and direct the levy and collection of assessments and manage the property and finances of the city, except where such duties are especially delegated to the several depart- ments by law ; to supervise the affairs of all the departments and the officers of the city, and examine into any charges preferred against any officer, clerk 01 agent of the city ; regulate all matters connected with the parks and streets of the city ; enlarge the fire district ; prohibit and abate nuisances ; to regulate the The Municipal Building. 368 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. burial of the dead ; prohibit and regulate the storage and sale of dangerous materials and all noxious traffic or business ; establish and regulate public and private markets ; to fix and regulate all the salaries of city- officers, except such as are prescribed by law ; and under certain restrictions to bond the city for general improvements. Subject to the mayor's veto power, the common council is the local authority with refer- ence to all uses of the streets of the city by railroad corporations. The members of the present board of aldermen are : Michael J. Coffey, president ; Theodore Maurer, Thomas A. Beard, Robert F. MacKellar, Arthur J. Heaney, Anson Ferguson, Richard Pickering, James McGarry, Moses J. Wafer, Peter Hess, Edward P. Thomas, Daniel McGrath, William McKee, J. Jefferson Black, Andrew W. Fitzgibbon, William H. Jordan, Richard Meier, Samuel Meyers and Charles J. Volckening. The administrative power of the city is now vested in the mayor and the heads of the following depart- ments : finance, audit, treasury, collection, arrears, law, assessment, police and excise, health, fire, buildings, city works, parks, and public instruction. These heads of departments (except of the departments of finance, audit, and of public instruction), are appointed by the mayor. The head of each department has power, except in the departments of assessment, of parks and of public instruction, to appoint a deputy who may perform all the ordinary duties of the head of the department ; to appoint the clerks, assistants and other subordinates, to fix their salaries, within their appropriations, etc., and under certain restrictions to remove such appointees. The mayor may suspend any officer appointed by him. The term of office begins usually on the first of February and is for two years, or until a successor is appointed. The mayor, comptroller and auditor are elected for a term of two years. No person elected or appointed to any office can during his term hold any other public office whatever, the fees or emoluments of which are paid out of the city treasury. In case of a vacancy in any office, through resignation, death, failure to properly qualify, etc., the mayor nominates and with the consent of the common council appoints a suitable person to fill such vacancy. Elections for mayor and other city officers are held on the same day and under such regu- lations as are prescribed for state elections. For the purpose of canvassing the votes given at any election the board of aldermen constitute a board of canvassers. For this purpose they meet on the Tuesday next following the election. This board determines which person has received the highest vote and through its clerk issues a notice of his election to each person so elected. No person is eligible to the office of mayor unless he has resided in the city for at least five years, and is at least twenty-five years of age. By virtue of his office the mayor is a supervisor of the county and a city justice of the peace. Since 1840, when the power to elect the mayor was taken from the common council and conferred upon the people, his influence and powers have been considerably augmented, and the tendency has been toward a centraliza- tion of responsibility. It is his duty to communicate to the common council at least once a year a general statement of the condition of the city in relation to its government, finances and improvements, with such recommendations as he may deem proper ; appoint the heads of the various departmental boards of the city ; be vigilant and active in causing the laws and ordinances of the city to be duly executed and enforced, and to exercise a constant supervision over the conduct and affairs of all officers. In case of vacancy in the office of mayor, or whenever the mayor, by reason of absence from the city, sickness or any other cause, is prevented from attending to the duties of his office, the president of the common council, or in case of his absence or disability, the president to be elected pro tempore, acts as mayor. The office of comptroller, created in 1836, was at first appointive, the incumbent being chosen by the common council ; now it is elective. Theodore F. Jackson having declined renomination at the recent election in the fall of 1892, was succeeded by Halsey Corwin in January, 1893. The comptroller is the head of the finance department, and has the direction and management of the accounts and finances of the city, subject to the ordinances of the common council, and also the approval of all bills examined and allowed by the auditor. He is a member of the board of estimate, a commissioner of the sinking fund, and with the mayor is vested with the power to appoint the Brooklyn trustees of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. The department of audit was created April 27, 1871, and Maurice Fitzgerald was the first auditor. The present incumbent of the office is Frederick Keller. It is the duty of this official to examine all bills pre- sented against the city for payment, and no money can be drawn from the treasury unless the voucher for the same has been examined and allowed by the auditor and approved by the comptroller. The auditor is a member of the board of estimate, and a commissioner of the sinking fund. The duty of the city treasurer is to receive and care for all the money of the city, and to pay it out only on vouchers and upon warrants signed by the mayor, or acting mayor, and the comptroller and counter- signed by the city clerk. He is ex-officio the treasurer of the board of education. The collector of taxes and assessments collects all moneys that may be due under any warrant delivered to him for the collection of taxes and assessments, and it is his duty to pay the same at once to the treas- urer of the city. The head of the department of arrears is called the registrar of arrears. His duty is to collect all CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 3^9 arrears of taxes, assessments and water rates, and to psiyy the same at once to the city treasurer. He man- ages and controls all matters relating to advertising and selling property for unpaid taxes, assessments and water rates and the redemption of property sold therefor. The head of the department of law is called the corporation counsel. He has charge of all the law business of the corporation, except where such business is otherwise specially provided for by the charter. He appoints the ordinance attorney, who prosecutes all violations of the city ordinances. Previous to January, 1863, each ward elected its own assessors ; then a board of assessors for the entire city was created, and finally, in 1873, the present organization of the board was effected and it now consists of a president and twelve assessors. Thomas A. Wilson has occupied the office of president since 1886, succeeding John Truslow, the first incumbent. It is the duty of the assessors to make out the assess- ment rolls for local improvements and taxes, and to perform such other duties as may be required under the direction of the president. Eighteenth Precinct Police Station House, Fourth Avenue and Forty-third Street. There was no regularly organized police force in Brooklyn prior to 1850, but in that year a department of police was created, with John S. Folk as chief. In 1857, when the " metropolitan board of- police " was organized, with headquarters in New York, he was appointed inspector of that department for Brooklyn. In 1870 a separate police department was established in Brooklyn and it was governed by the mayor and two other persons appointed by the board of aldermen, the three constituting "The Board of Police of the City of Brooklyn." On June i, Patrick Campbell superseded John S. Folk as chief of police. In 1871 the force comprised 10 captains, 49 sergeants, 22 roundsmen, 342 patrolmen, 26 doormen and a telegraph squad, of 3 men. In May, 1872, in accordance with an act of the legislature, three police commissioners were appointed, the mayor being an additional commissioner, ex-officio. The department of police and excise, to consist of a president and two commissioners, was created under the charter of 1873, the members of which were to be appointed by the mayor with the consent of the board of aldermen. In 1880 the office of president of the board of police and excise was superseded by that of commissioner of police and excise, and two excise commissioners were appointed to act with him on all matters relating to excise. At the head of the department is the commissioner of police and excise, who in times of disorder or threatened riot is subject to the orders of the mayor. In addition to the appointment of the members of the police force it is the duty of the commissioner of police to appoint inspectors for steam engines. In 1873 John S. Folk was appointed superintendent of police to take the place of Patrick Campbell, whose office as chief had been abolished. In 1875, however, Mr. Campbell was appointed superintendent and has since held the 370 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. office. The personnel oi the department of police and excise in 1892 is as follows: Commissioner of police and excise, Henry L Hayden ; commissioners of excise, John W. Cahill and John Schlieman ; deputy com- missioner and chief clerk, Francis L. Dallon ; counsel, F. A. McCloskey ; deputy clerk, Peter P. Huberty ; property clerk, Stephen H. Powell ; accountant, Thomas Carroll, Jr.; stenographer, M. J. Connelly ; police surgeons, Charles H. Terry, M. D., William P. Morrissey, M. D., J. F. O'Connell, M. D., A. W. Ford. M. D., and J. D. Sullivan, M. D.; superintendent of steam boilers, William A. Powers ; boiler inspectors, Patrick Coffey, William O'Donnell, Jacob Rueger and John Dolan ; clerk, George A. Ridgway ; secretary of excise board, Denis Short ; excise cashier, William D. Lohmann ; excise clerks, Lawrence J. Gillick and John E. Moore. Superintendent of police, Patrick Campbell ; inspectors, John MacKellar, P. H. McLaughlin and Edward Reilly ; clerk to superintendent, Frederick L. Jenkins ; superintendent of telegraph, Frank C. Mason ; telegraph operators, William R. Gear, Thomas Williams, James Campbell, Thomas J. Cornell, James Keenan, John Malloy and Bernard F. Conklin ; telegraph linemen, Augustine Manee, William McConnell, P. J. Higgins and C. A. Wagner. Captains, James Campbell, first precinct ; John W. Eason, second ; P. H. Leavey, third ; W. J. McKelvey, fourth ; Martin Short, fifth ; James Ennis, sixth ; George R. Rhodes, seventh ; Thomas Murphy, eighth ; John Brennan, ninth ; F. A. Early, tenth ; Daniel Driscoll, eleventh ; Edwin Dyer, twelfth ; Stephen Martin, thirteenth ; James Dunn, fourteenth ; Thomas L. Druhan, fifteenth ; Henry French, sixteenth ; Hugh F. Gorman, seventeenth ; James Kenney, eighteenth ; Michael Campbell, nineteenth ; William H. Kitzer, twentieth ; Samuel Hardy, twenty-first ; Thomas Cullen, twenty-second ; James P. White, central office squad ; T. C. Humphries, sergeant commanding license squad. Two new precincts have been established recently, making twenty-two in all, which are served by a police force including 92 sergeants, 52 detectives, 44 roundsmen, 1,225 patrolmen, 47 doormen and 21 bridge keepers. There was a board of health in the village of Brooklyn as far back as 1824, and this was succeeded by the " Board of Health of the City of Brooklyn/' in 1854, which was composed of members of the board of aldermen, with the mayor as president. In 1866 the " Metropolitan Sanitary District and Board of Health " was created, and Brooklyn became a part of the district. \w 1870, however, the metropolitan system was laid aside and the Brooklyn board of health, created by the charter of 1854, was reestablished. In 1873 a department of health was established, the managment being vested in a board of health composed of the president of the board of aldermen, the president of the board of police and one physician. The office of health commissioner was created in 1880, and the presidents of the boards of aldermen and police ceased to be members of the health department. The health commissioner has power to act in a legislative capacity in regard to all matters pertaining to public health, the removal and burial of the dead, the main- tenance and operating of an ambulance service, the registration of births, marriages and deaths, the regis- tration of vital statistics in the city, and the proper sanitary regulation of all buildings. No ordinance which has been passed by the common council at the suggestion of the health commissioner in regard to matters pertaining to the office can be repealed or amended without his approval. It is the duty of the commissioner of police and excise to execute the orders of the health commissioner when so requested by him. In times of great and imminent peril to public health by reason of impending pestilence, extra- ordinary powers are conferred upon the commissioner of health. Such peril is only deemed to exist when declared by the mayor, president of the medical society of Kings county and the health commissioner. John Griffin, M. D., is the present commissioner of the department of health. Associated with him are Dr. John S. Young, deputy commissioner ; Dr. R. C. Baker, secretary and sanitary superintendent ; H. Bull- winkle, medical superintendent of the Contagious Diseases Hospital ; Dr. L. C. D'Homergue, sanitary clerk ; Dr. George Convery, shipping inspector, and a large staff of sanitary inspectors, vaccinators, etc. Of the fires that may have occurred in Breuckelen, or Brooklyn, during the first hundred and fifty years after its settlement, or of the means adopted to subdue them, there is no reliable record, and the first mention of firemen to be found is in the account of a meeting held April 7, 1772, to consider the best means for "the effectual extinguishment of fires near the ferry, in the township of Breuckelin." , The first fire company was organized in 1785, and in the same year the freeholders bought a fire engine for -£15°, which they christened Washington No. i, but it was not until three years later that a regular fire department was created. In 1795 the fire district was enlarged, and about a year afterward another engine, named Neptune No. 2, was procured. The third engine, Franklin No. 3, was purchased in 1810. The depart- ment increased in membership with the growth of the village, until in 1816 it numbered ninety-five men. In this year the first chief engineer, John Doughty, took office, being nominated by the firemen and confirmed by the village trustees. It was in 1816, too, that regular annual appropriations for the support of the fire department were begun, its expenses having been hitherto principally defrayed by the voluntary contribu- tions of the members. The first hook and ladder company was formed in 1817, and in the following year the efficiency of the department was much enhanced by the provision of increased facilities for procuring water. The first accidental death in the fire department occurred August 21, 1822, at a large fire on the CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 371 Heights, Walter McCann, a member of the hook and ladder company, receiving fatal injuries. In 1823 the village fire department was incorporated, and in 1855 a law was enacted, changing the name of the corpora- tion to the " Fire Department of the City of Brooklyn." Up to that time its affairs had been managed by the fire committee of the Common Council, but in 1857 five commissioners were elected for that purpose. The Williamsburgh fire department first took definite form in 1834, and was incorporated ten years later. By the act of consolidation it became the Fire Department of the Eastern District of Brooklyn and then, in 1869, it was • consolidated of the western district, then newly-establish- ment. This was placed four commissioners, Hugh McLaughlin, A. F. Campbell. They managed the depart- the "single-head" com- passed, and Jacob head of the depart- commissioner, John to that office by Mayor I, 1886. Associated the department are deputy commissioner ; chief engineer; Canice James H. Flynn, assis- jamin Lewis, fire mar- inspector of telegraph; H. Perry, assistant fire commissioner pos- trol of all matters re- ment, management the fire department appoints the fire mar- examine into the tions in the city. The this department, when of way in any street vehicles except those States mail. The paid Brooklyn was estab- legislature on May 5, until September 15 of went fully into opera- department, appointed sioners, were chief en- ham ; assistant chief Smith ; district engi- James Shevlin,CharIes Nevins, George Ver- ard ; superintendent Fire Department Headquarters, Jay Street. From Architect's Draivhiff. In Completed Building the Tower is on the ]^ejt Side. with the department both constituting the ed paid fire depart- under the control of Frederick S. Massey, William A. Brown and and their successors ment until 1880 when missioner act was Worth was appointed ment. The present fire Ennis, was appointed Whitney on February with him as officials of William D. Moore, Thomas F. Nevins, Cassin, inspector; tant inspector; Ben- shal ; James T. Wafer, James Dale and John chief engineers. The sesses exclusive con- lating to the govern- and maintenance of and its property. He shal, whose duty is to causes of conflagra- officers and men of on duty, have the right or avenue over all carrying the United fire department of lished by an act of the 1869, but it was not the same year that it tion. The heads of by the four commis- gineer, John Cunning- engineer, John W. neers, James Gaffney, B. Farley, Thomas F. itzan, William A. Min- of horses, Arthur Quinn ; superintendent of repair shop, Patrick Hughes; foreman of harness shop, John McGronen ; sec- retary of department, Caspian S. Sparks; messenger, Thomas Heffern; surgeon, William F. Swalm, M.D. At that time there were thirteen engine companies and six truck companies. In 1892 there were thirty engine companies, eleven truck companies, and two fire-boats; with two new engine companies and one truck com- pany in process of organization. In December, 1869, a new method of giving alarms was adopted, and in 1879 the system was still further improved and there were fifty public and sixteen private fire alarm telegraph boxes scattered through the city, connected with fire headquarters by sixty-five miles of wire. Since then improved boxes and other apparatus have been supplied, and of course the number of boxes and mileage of wire has increased in pro- portion to the needs of the growing city. An important addition recently made to the fire alarm facilities. 372 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. RiDGEWooD Pumping Station. and one which promises to revolutionize fire-alarm methods to a considerable extent, is the Home Instant- aneous Auxiliary Alarm system, adopted by the department under authorization by the common council. By this system alarm boxes are furnished to private buildings, and connected with the regular street boxes, by means of which the de- partment is notified of a fire on the instant of its occur- rence. By the pressing of a button an alarm is sent direct to the nearest engine house. This obviates a de- lay of from five to twenty minutes spent in hunting up the key to the street box and traveling to the box for the purpose of sending in the alarm. The boxes may be placed in the most conveni- ent locations in factories or dwellings, as they are small and ornamental, and any number of private boxes may be connected with the same street box. To enable the sender of an alarm to know that it has been received at the engine house, there is a small shutter in the private box which, on dropping, reveals the printed words, "alarm received." Should there be any disarrangement in the system, the return message will not be received; but even this is provided for, as the system has automatic detectors which continually show at the central office the condition of things all over the lines. With such a system in general use the danger from large fires must be reduced to a minimum. The duties of the commissioner of buildings were originally performed by officers known as fire wardens, who were at first appointed by the trustees of the village of Brooklyn. By the first city charter, however, these wardens held office in connection with the fire department. Li iS88 the supervision of buildings was given to a separate department under the control of five inspectors, and in 1890 their powers were vest(;d in a commissioner of buildings. William M. Thomas was the first appointee to this position, and he was succeeded by William H. Gaylor. The present incumbent of the office, Thomas B. Rutan, was appointed upon the death of Thomas Piatt, in 1892. The commissioner of buildings has sole management and control of all matters relat- ing to tlie regulation and supervision of erection, al- teration and repair of all buildings within the city. The present department of city works is practically the outgrowth of the water committee of the city coun- cil, which in 1834 made the first official movement hook- ing toward the provision of a regular water supply sys- tem. New water committees were appointed from time to time and the scope of their duties gradually widened, so that in 1857 the "Board of ^Vater Commissioners," by which the "water committee" was superseded, was directed to prepare MuuNT Prospect Pumping .Station, Engineers' House. CITY AND COUNTV GOVERNMENT, 37j plans for a system of sewerage for the city. In 1869 the powers hitherto held by the common council and street commissioner in connection with the repairing and cleaning streets, etc., were conferred upon the permanent water board, and in 1872 the city works department, with three commissioners, was created, superseding the water board and street commissioner. In 1880 the "single-head" office of "Commissioner of City Works" was created, John French being its first incumbent. He was suc- ceeded in 1888 by the present commissioner, John P. Adams. James A. Murtha is now deputy com- missioner ; Daniel L. Northup, secretary, and Andrew B. Martin is accountant. The commissioner of city works has charge and control, unless otherwise specially provided for, of all structures and property connected with the public water works, the supply and distribution of water and the collection of the water revenue ; of the construction and maintenance of public sewers and drainage ; opening, altering, regulating, grading, re-grading, curbing, guttering and lighting streets, flagging sidewalks and laying cross- walks ; of constructing and repairing public roads extending beyond the limits of paved streets ; the care of public buildings and of offices, and of fencing of sunken lots and the fencing of vacant lots ; of digging down lots, licensing of street vaults, cisterns and cesspools ; paving and re-paving, and repairing and clean- G.ATE HtjusE, Mount Pkospbct Reservoir. ing streets, and keeping the same clear of encroachments, obstructions and incumbrances ; digging, con- structing and repairing wells and pumps ; making and preserving all surveys, maps, plans, estimates and drawings relating to the laying out and improvements of streets, avenues, roads, sewers, the construction, altering, and repairing of public structures, buildings and offices, and all other public works under the care of this department. In this department there are several bureaus established, at the head of which are, respectively, a chief engineer, water purveyor, water registrar, superintendent of sewers, superintendent of streets, and superintendent of supplies. All contracts, with the exception of those for salaries and those made for the management and control of the board of education, the water works, the maintenance of sewers and the repairing of streets, are under the authority of the common council. All contracts other than those excepted above, exceeding in amount the sum of $2^0, must be paid in the following manner : The department of city works advertises in the corporation papers for at least ten days, invitnig bids or pro- posals under seal for the proposed work. These are publicly opened and announced, together with the names of the sureties required, and before awarding any contract all such bids or proposals are published for at least six days in the corporation papers. All contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, provided, however, that on the application of the commissioner of the department of city works or head of other department, the common council may by a two-thirds vote authorize the department of city works to execute a contract to other than the lowest bidder. The appointment by the governor in 1835 of three commissioners to lay out, among other things, squares in the city of Brooklyn, then one year old, gave official activity to efforts toward the beautifying of the city which have been continued, with brief interruptions, ever since. Not very much progress was made, however, until, in 1859, fifteen citizens were appointed as a board of park commissioners, the num- ber being subsequently reduced to seven. In 1889 the board was reduced to a membership of three and in 374 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. i8gi a "single-head" commission was created by the legislature, George V. Brower being appointed park commissioner. The results accomplished by these various boards and commissions are recorded in the chapter on parks and cemeteries. The park commissioner has the exclusive management subject to the laws of the state and to the powers of the common council in relation thereto, of all the parks, squares and public places in the city. He also has control of Ocean Parkway from Prospect Park to the ocean, and also, for the purposes of police and improvement, of the parade ground in the town of Flatbush. The history of the board of education is given in the chapter on educational institutions. This depart- ment of the city government has the entire charge and direction of all public schools of the city, and of the school moneys raised for the support of the same. The board elects its own officers, makes its own laws, defines the duties of its officers and committees, and prescribes such laws for instruction and discipline in the schools as are not inconsistent with the laws of the state. The whole city is one school district for all purposes of taxation, as well as for the purchase of school sites, and the building and repairing of school houses, and for the annual support of the schools. The board of elections consists of four members appointed by the mayor and known as commissioners of elections. The term of office is five years. Not more than two of the commissioners can be of the same political party. It is the duty of the commissioners, on or before the first of September, to alter or divide the existing election districts of the city when necessary, no district to contain more than 400 voters, and to publish the same by keeping maps for inspection in the office of the clerk of the city, and also by posting copies in at least ten of the most public places in each election district, and also to furnish copies prior to every election to the registrars and inspectors in each district. They are required also to publish in the corporation papers published in the city on the days of registration and of election, and for two days prior to each of such days, the boundaries of each election district and the places for holding the polls and for the meetings of the boards of registrars and inspectors. The board has the appointment of registrars, inspectors, canvassers, poll clerks, and ballot clerks. There are five civil service commissioners. They are appointed by the mayor, and hold office at his pleasure, though by usage the term of office is held to be two years. Under the provisions of the regula- tions of the commission all officers and employees of the city are divided into four general classes, as follows: The first class includes all officers elected by the people (such as mayor, comptroller, aldermen, etc.); the various commissioners and heads of departments ; the members of the board of education and all the employees of that board. Class second, schedule A, includes all persons who are not employed as laborers or day workmen, and who are not to be appointed upon competitive examination. This includes those holding positions such as secretaries, deputy commissioners, chief clerks, cashiers, assistant civil engineers, clerks having custody of, or handling, moneys, etc. Class third, schedule B, includes all persons who are to be appointed upon competitive examination. The regulations in regard to this prescribe that no man shall secure a place otherwise than upon an open competition held on fair notice and by a practical examination with all other citizens who wish the place ; and that the examination and the appointment shall be made absolutely without regard to political opinion. The only exceptions to this general statement are in two cases ; that of the veterans of the late war, who, upon passing an examination have a preference to appointment, and the case of promotions, which are made of men already in the service, after specified lengths of service, and according to their merit. The law and regulations, in the second place, assume that in this case no removal will take place except for cause, although an absolute power of removal is reserved to the heads of departments. Class fourth, schedule D, includes all persons employed as laborers or day workmen. For the purpose of testing weights and measures used in the city of Brooklyn there are four persons appointed by the mayor, one for each congressional district. The terra of office is two years. No sealer of weights and measures for the city of Brooklyn can receive fees from* any person for the testing of his weights, measures or scales. In each ward one constable is elected annually, whose term of office is for one year — from the first of January succeeding his election. The mayor, comptroller, city auditor, supervisor-at-large, and the county treasurer constitute a board to estimate the amount of money required to be raised by law for all city and county purposes for the year next succeeding. The common council determines how much money shall be raised for city purposes. It may reduce the amounts as reported by the board of estimate, but it cannot increase them. The city clerk certifies to the board of supervisors the amounts as they then stand, and these are raised in the next annual tax levy. As the larger portion of the territory of Kings county is included within the boundaries of Brooklyn, it is essential that this chapter upon the city's history should include an account of such county officers and departments as affect the municipal polity. Kings county occupies the entire southwest end of Long Island, and contains, besides Brooklyn, the towns of Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend and New Utrecht, It has five CITY AND COUNTY GOYERNMENT. 375 Kings County Court House. congressional, five senatorial, and eighteen assembly districts. All that portion of the county of Kings which is bounded on the north and west by the East River and Newtovm Creek ; on the west by New York Bay ; on the south by New Utrecht, Flatbush, and Flatlands and by Jamaica ]!ay, and on the east and north by the county of Queens, is known as "the City of Brooklyn," and each of its wards is considered a town of the county of Kings, and as such entitled to representation in the county government. The legis- lative power of Kings county is vested in a board of supervisors. Under a warrant made by C,en. Robert Hunter, acting colonial governor of the province of New York, the first board of supervisors of the county of Kings met at Gravesend on April i, 1714. It was composed of Martin Schank, Joost Van Isrunt, Ryck Handerson, Joris Raplya, Derick Anderson, and Samuel Gerretsen. New boards were elected each year thereafter, and held their regular annual meetings until 1775, and the records of their proceedings form entertaining reading. The meetings were as a rule harmonious, but on occasion decided differences occurred, as was the case in 17 19, when the supervisors and the justices of the peace of the county could not agree regarding the construction of a "new prison house." The quaint record states that as the "justices were unreasonable the supervisors left it," meaning, probably, the meeting. There is no record of any election or meeting of supervisors from October 3, 1776, until the first Tuesday in October, 1777. In the latter year meetings were resumed, and continued, with occasional omissions, until 1782, the date of the last meeting under the (General Provincial Assembly. On July 14, 1784, the first regular meeting of the Kings County Board of Supervisors, after the withdrawal of the British troops from Long Island, was held. This was also the first meeting of the board under the federal constitution, and the law and constitution of the state of New York. Tunis Bergen was the representative from Brooklyn. Thenceforward meetings became more frequent, and the duties of the supervisors were augmented. In 1801 they were first required to complete the assessment rolls of the various towns. At a meeting of the board, held on February 5, 1829, arrangements were made for establishing "a county poor-house, and in the following year $9,000 was appropriated for that purpose. The first meeting of the board of supervisors in lirooklyn was held on Jan- uary 12, 1833, in the Apprentices' Library, and in May of the following year tliey held tlieir first meeting, after the incorporation of Brooklyn as a city. An event of the year 1845 was the resignation of Jeremiah Lott, who had served as clerk of the board over forty-four years. It was tendered and accepted owing to Mr. Lett's ill health. Under the new constitution of 1846 power to divide the county into assembly districts and to canvass the votes for governor, congressmen, etc., was conferred upon the board of supervisors. In 1861 Edward B. Cadley, the present clerk to the board, was appointed to the office he has ever since retained. In 1859 the term of supervisors representing Brooklyn was increased to two years, but until 1864 the supervisors from the county towns served but one year. By an act passed April 2, 1864, however. 376 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. all supervisors served a two-year term thereafter. Prior to 1859 the pay of supervisors was |2 per day and mileage. This was subsequently increased to $3 per day, and by an act passed May 10, 1869, the salary of supervisors was definitely fixed at $1,000 per year. In 1871 the office of supervisor-at-large was created ; William J. Osborne, the present city court judge, being the first to occupy the position. In the same act of the legislature provision was made for the appointment of an auditor for the county of Kings. There are no such officers as supervisor-at-large and auditor in any other county in the state. Under the charter of 1873, known as the Schroeder charter, aldermen from each ward also performed the duties of super- visors, so that no separate candidate was elected to the latter office. This continued two years, when the old rule was restored and the board of supervisors and aldermen became absolutely distinct bodies. The board of supervisors is now composed of thirty-two members, who serve two years ; one elected from each ward of the city of Brooklyn, and one from each of the four towns ; a supervisor-at-large, who is president of the board, and the mayor of the city of Brooklyn, ex-officio. The even wards and county towns elect supervisors one year, the odd wards the next. The supervisor-at-large is elected by the voters of the entire county. In addition to be- ing the presiding officer of the board of super- visors, he has also special powers conferred upon him by law. Among these are the power to veto the resolutions of the board and the power of appointment of the board of charities and cor- rections. The following are the members of the board of supervisors, together with its attaches, for 1892 : George Kinkel, supervisor-at-large and ex-officio president of the board ; John Y. McKane, supervisor of the town of Gravesend, president//-^ tern, of the board ; David A. Boody, mayor and ex-officio a supervisor ; G. Cochran Broome, first ward ; Martin F. Conly, second ward ; John T. Breen, third ward ; John Mc- Keown, fourth ward ; Patrick Barry, fifth ward ; Eugene R. Judge, sixth ward ; Edwin E. Friou, seventh ward ; Robert H. Attlesey, eighth ward ; Francis H. McGuire, ninth ward ; John J. Dona- hue, tenth ward; William Hughes, eleventh ward; Robert O'Donnell, twelfth ward ; Thomas Cook, thirteenth ward ; Patrick J. Ralph, fourteenth ward ; William H. Jenkins, fifteenth ward ; Charles Juengst, sixteenth ward ; Harvey T. Lewis, seventeenth ward ; Peter P. Gangloff, eighteenth ward ; William C. Carrick, nineteenth ward ; William L. Bennem, twen- tieth ward; William P. Riggs, twenty-first ward; George H. Deitsch, twenty-second ward; Olin B. Lock- wood, twenty-third ward; William E. French, twenty-fourth ward ; William L. Extance, twenty-fifth ward; Henry Wolfert, twenty-sixth ward ; Claus Torney, twenty-seventh ward ; James Boyd, twenty-eighth ward ; Cornelius Furguson, New Utrecht; William M. Lynam, Flatbush ; John Y. McKane, Gravesend ; Richard L. Baisley, Flatlands ; E. B. Cadley, clerk of the board ; William L. Howard, secretary to the supervisor-at- large ; John B. Meyenborg, counsel. The principal executive officers of the county are the sheriff, county treasurer, county clerk, coroners, county register, auditor, commissioner of jurors, public administrator, district attorney and the commis- sioners of charities and corrections. The sheriff has the custody of the jails of the county and of their inmates. It is his duty to execute all processes, orders, etc., committed to him and to keep a record of the same. He is answerable for the safe keeping of prisoners committed to his charge by courts of record. The present sheriff is John Courtney. The first county jail building was erected on Raymond street in 1839, and six years later an addition for a female ward was built. Until 1864 the supervisors held meetings in the jail building and the county court was also held in one of the rooms for a time. In 1879 ^^^ present structure was erected. The sheriff receives twenty-eight cents a day for the maintenance of each prisoner. The jail has accommodations for 750 inmates. During 1892 the average number confined there was 350. The county morgue on Willoughby street, at the southern extremity of Canton street, was erected there in 1881, and Patrick Maguire, the present keeper, was then appointed to that oifice. The first morgue, which was also located near the county jail, was built in 1870. During the year ending August i, 1892, 319 bodies were taken to the morgue, of which 209 were identified. Of the whole number received 240 bodies were buried by the county. The Hall of Records, Fulton Street and Boerum Place. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 377 The County Jail, Raymond Street. The duties of the county treas- urer are to receive all moneys be- longing to the county, and all mon- eys of the state which by law are directed to be paid to him, and to pay out such moneys in the manner prescribed by law; to keep account of receipts and expenditures ; to transmit annually to the state comp- troller an account of state moneys that have passed through his hands, and to exhibit his books and ac- counts to the board of supervisors at such time as they may be required, or as prescribed by law. John Van- derbilt was the first treasurer of Kings County, and he held the posi- tion twenty-two years. He was ap- pointed by Kings County's second board of supervisors at their meet- ing in October, 1714. Henry H. Adams is the present incumbent of the office. The county clerk has the cus- tody of all books, records, maps and papers deposited in his office ; he must provide proper books for re- cording deeds, mortgages and other papers proved according to law, keep an account of all fees charged or received by him, and the book containing such account must be open to inspection at all times. He must make copies of any papers on file in his office upon the request of any person, and shall certify to the correctness of each copy. John Cottier fills the office at the present time. There are two coroners in Kings County. The office, aside from the ordinary duties attached to it,, is one of considerable importance, as, under mandate from the court, a coroner may arrest the sheriff, and where the latter from any cause is disqualified from discharging his duties, the coroner may assume such duties. The present coroners are Joseph A. Kene and Joseph M. Creamer. It is the duty of the county register to record conveyances, file for safe-keeping such papers as are committed to his charge and keep indexes of all records. The register now is Thomas J. Kenna. The county auditor's duty is to examine all bills against the county which have been presented for pay- ment, and his signature of approval is essential to such payment. Frederick Keller is the present county auditor. To the commissioner of jurors, at present William A. Furey, is given the power of selecting trial jurors and to decide upon their qualifications. He must prepare a list of persons liable to serve as trial jurors, to be entered in suitable books, and he must afford opportunity for such persons, according to law, to present claims for exemption from jury duty. The commissioner has discretionary power, based upon special cir- cumstances, as to causing the arrest of any person failing to obey a summons to act as a juror. In all cases where there is no legally qualified executor of an estate, the public administrator acts as such executor. His fees are similar to those allowed a relative or other person performing similar duties. David Barnett is the public administrator. The prosecution of all criminal cases is the principal duty of the district attorney. He has also to attend to the collection of the collateral inheritance tax and to prosecute upon failure of payment, as well as to collect or prosecute in cases of forfeited bail bonds. He must file an account with the county treasurer of all moneys received. The present occupant of the district attorney's office is James W. Ridgway. Prior to 1824 each town in Kings County cared for its own poor, but on November 27 of that year the board of supervisors was empowered by an act of the legislature to purchase land upon which to erect a county poor-house. It was not until five years later that a committee was appointed for the purpose of giv- ing the matter active consideration. On February 20, 1830, the first board of superintendents of the poor of the county was appointed, and they were authorized to lease the almshouse of the town of Brooklyn for one year, pending the erection of a poor-house upon the county farm land purchased in Flatbush the same 378 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. year. On April 9, 1832, the paupers were removed from the Brooklyn almshouse to the Flatbush building, which was then nearly completed. In the latter part of 1837 a hospital in connection with the poor-house was so nearly finished as to be ready for occupancy. From time to time during the next seven or eight years improvements and additions to the county farm establishment were made, and in 1845 a lunatic asylum building was completed. In 1846 a site for a penitentiary was purchased and later the land area was increased to its present dimensions — the grounds bounded by Crown and President streets and Nos- trand and Rogers avenues. On March 23, 1848, the penitentiary and workhouse were so far completed that the first prisoners, thirteen in number, were received, and in the following year the penitentiary hospital was finished, as was also the new county farm hospital erected on the site of the original building, which had been destroyed by fire. In 1850 a children's nursery was opened in a building adjacent to the poor- house, and ground for a new penitentiary was marked out, the building being completed in 1853. On June 18, 1850, the poor-house was destroyed by fire and the work of rebuilding was at once begun. In this year, too, and in 1861 the lunatic asylum was enlarged. In 1866 a dissatisfaction with the methods of caring for the poor of the county, whose numbers had been growing for several years, found expression in a proposed law for the abolishment of the office of County Buildings at Flatbush. superintendents of the poor and the substitution of a commission to be known as the board of commis- sioners of charities. The accomplishment of this change was retarded for a time by the vigorous oppo- sition it encountered from the board of supervisors and the superintendents, but finally the passage of an act superseding the latter by the creation of the commissioners of charities was secured in April, 1871. This did not end the troubles connected with the charities department, however, and they culminated in the trial and sentence on June i, 1874, of three commissioners for malfeasance in office. Each was fined $200. The troubles of the department officials did not check the enlargement of the county farm, and dur- ing these troublous times a hospital for incurables was erected, which was first occupied in 1876. In 1877 a committee appointed to investigate the condition of the poor establishment made so unfavorable a report CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 379 ON' THE County Farm at King's Park. that a public meeting was held in the Academy of Music, at which the management of the commissioners was condemned and the establishment of a new board, to be called the commissioners of charities and corrections, was urged. Nothing definite was accomplished in this direction, however, until May 13, 1880, when, after fierce opposition, the act providing for a board of charities and corrections, to consist of three members, was passed, the new board entering at once upon the duties of their office. With the purpose of providing increased accommodations for paupers, the insane and other county wards, an act was passed by the state legislature in 1884, empowering the board of supervisors to purchase a site at St. Johnland, L. I. (since called King's Park), for the location of a county farm. In 1887 insane persons were first housed there in a temporary structure, and in the year following the first permanent building was completed and occupied. Henceforward there were constant additions and improvements until, at the close of 1892, there were four large buildings and thirty cottages, either completed or nearly so. Besides this, roads and sewers had been built, electric light and steam heating apparatus supplied, and there were laundries and bake ovens and all other needed accessories to provide an effective establishment. Under the new form of government the affairs of the county institutions have been administered satisfactorily in general, build- ing and other improvements have progressed and Kings County's poor establishment, penitentiary and hos- pital will compare favorably with any in the state. During 1892 there were 2,368 persons cared for in the almshouse, 415 in the baby ward, 3,080 in the hospital, 594 in the insane asylum and 1,061 in the peni- tiary, and nearly 1,000 were received and treated during the year at King's Park. The present commis- sioners are B. Frank Gott, Francis Nolan and George H. Murphy. George Hall, First Mayor of Brooklyn. When Brooklyn received its city charter in 1834, George Hall was chosen by the board of aldermen as the first mayor, to serve for one year, and, by a singular coincidence, twenty years later, when Williams- burgh and Bushwick were consolidated with Brooklyn, it was again Mr. Hall who was chosen, this time by the people, as mayor of the new and larger city. His term began according to the new regulations on January i, 1855, and continued through the year 1856. Mr. Hall was born in New York, of Irish parents, on September 21, 1795. Not long afterwards his father removed to Flatbush, and there, at Erasmus Hall, young George received his education. He took up his father's trade when he left school and became a painter and glazier. He rapidly rose to a position of wealth and influence. Twice he was made trustee of the third ward. It is amusing to read that when he was a candidate for president of the village he met with vigorous opposition because he wished to close all unlicensed rum-shops and insisted upon banishing hogs from the streets. He was nevertheless elected, and in the following year Brooklyn became a city with Mr. Hall as mayor. Ten years later he was the candidate of the Temperance party and in 1845 of the Whig party, but was, in both cases, defeated. When he was reelected in 1854 it was as the candidate of the Know-nothing party. In 1861 he stood for the office of registrar, but failed of election and retired from politics altogether. Mr. Hall was always an enthusiastic advocate of temperance and an uncompro- mising enemy of liquor dealers. His personal example was in accord with his precepts and was carried even to the extreme of refusing a stimulant which might have prolonged his life. He was violent in his likes and dislikes and bluntly outspoken, but was correspondingly trustworthy and constant in his friend- ships. It was undoubtedly his unrelenting war upon the liquor traffic that hampered his political success. In almost every institution for the promotion of the public welfare Mr. Hall was active. Dr. A. N. Bell tells a story of his personal care of yellow fever patients during the epidemic, which illustrates both his courage and his goodness of heart. At the expiration of his term pn January i, 1857, the citizens presented him with the house at 37 Livingston street, where he died on April 18, 1868. He was buried with the highest civic honors, and the thousands who assembled in front of his residence were addressed by Henry Ward Beecher in a funeral oration of fervid eloquence. Jonathan Trotter, who was elected alderman under the new city charter, was chosen to succeed Mr. Hall as mayor and was reelected in 1836. He was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, in the year 1797 and came to this country when he had attained his majority. He established himself in New York as a morocco-dresser, and his business grew rapidly ; in 1825 he erected a dressing-factory in Brooklyn and four years later took up his residence here. He soon rose to prominence and was trustee of the ward until he became alderman in 1834. It devolved upon him during his term of office as mayor, in 1836, to lay the corner-stone of the city hall as it was then planned. In 1837 his wealth was carried away in the general financial crash, and he was never quite able to retrieve his fallen fortunes nor to regain his former prominence in politics. He returned to New York in 1840, where fifteen years later he died. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 381 General Jeremiah Johnson. General Jeremiah Johnson came of an old and distinguished Dutch family ; his great grandfather settled at Gravesend in 1657, and Jeremiah was born at the old homestead on January 23, 1766. His father was a prominent patriot during the Revolution, and was in command of the Kings County militia in 1776. Many important events of that memorable struggle took place before his eyes ; and his, too, was the privilege of witnessing the evacuation of New York by the British troops in 1783. The deep impression which these events made upon his young mind bore fruit for the generations that have succeeded him in the shape of valuable notes, reminiscences, bits of local history and the like, which all his life he was in- defatigable in collecting; scholars and historical inves- tigators have already derived great assistance from these labors. Further reference to General Johnson's work in this field will be found in the chapter on litera- ture and the fine arts. Jeremiah Johnson was always active in military affairs and it was during the war of 1812 that he was given the rank of brigadier-general. He was very successful in raising troops and proved himself an excellent disciplinarian. He was in com- mand at Fort Greene in 1814, and when peace was de- clared he was raised to the rank of major-general. He was a member of the old Dutch Reformed congregation and was clerk of the consistory for forty years. In everything that promised to advance the prosperity of the city General Johnson was actively and effectively interested. He was trustee of the town of Brooklyn for twenty years, from 1796 till 1816 ; in the latter year Brooklyn became a village and his home was out- side the limits ; he ceased to be a trustee, but continued to hold the office of supervisor until about 1840, a period of nearly forty years. When the city of Brooklyn was incorporated, its limits were so extended as to include General Johnson's residence, and in 1837 he was elected mayor and reelected in the following year. He represented Kings County in the assembly in 1808 and 1809, and again in 1840 and 1841. He was distinguished by a quiet self-reliance and a scrupulous fidelity in the execution of his public duties and the management of his private trusts. He preserved his warm sympathies and cheerful youthfulness of heart to the end, which came on October 20, 1852. From within a year after Cyrus P. Smith came to Brooklyn, then a village of 10,000 inhabitants, until his death in 1877, he was actively and prominently connected with nearly all the great enterprises that have contributed to the growth and prosperity of the city. His career as a citizen of Brooklyn covers exactly half a century. Cyrus Porter Smith was born in New Hampshire on April 5, 1800. In his eighteenth year he entered Dartmouth College, from which he was graduated with honor in 1824. He then began the study of law with Chief Justice Williams in Hartford, where he was obliged to eke out his scanty means by teaching in various singing schools. In 1827, without money or friends, he came to Brooklyn. He came into public notice for the first time during the Jack- son campaign in 1828, and soon became a power in the councils of the Whig party. The first public recognition of his services was in 1833, when he was made clerk of the village board of supervisors, which CYRUS PORTER SMITH. office hc retained until two years later he was chosen T.$,2 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. as the first corporation counsel of the new city. In the meantime he had built up a fine legal practice. In 1839 he was elected mayor by the board of aldermen. In the following year an act of the legislature made the mayoralty subject to a popular vote; and thus, while Mr. Smith was the fourth mayor of the city, he was the first to enter office by the suffrages of the people. He served till 1842. During all this period he was an active member of Dr. Cox's church, the First Presbyterian, in Henry street. To enumerate the institutions to whose success Mr. Smith devoted his energies would be to name nearly all the important enterprises of the city. For thirty years he was a member of the board of education and for twenty-one years its president. During that time the whole public school system was put into operation. He was also deeply interested in the Packer and Polytechnic Institutes. He represented the city in the state senate during 1&56 and 1857. It was to his earnest efforts that Brooklyn owed its first gas company, and as early as 1839 he founded, with the cooperation of General Nichols, the City Hospital. He was ever foremost among the promoters of any great improvement, and we find his name among the originators of Green-Wood Cemetery. Not least among the many services he rendered this city was the work he did as managing director of the Union Ferry Company. This office he held from 1855 until the day of his death. In 1869 Mr. Smith became acting president of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, and held that office when he died. Mr. Smith died at his residence in Pierrepont street on February 13, 1877, having kept pace with the nineteenth century for seventy-seven years. The various institutions with which he had been connected held meetings and passed resolutions in recognition of his eminent services, not alone in his particular official capacity, but also in all the relations of life. The obsequies were held in the church which Mr. Smith had entered as chorister half a century before, and the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs preached the sermon. Henry C. Murphy, fifth mayor of the city, was born in the village of Brooklyn on July 5, 1810. His" father's father was a physician who emigrated from Ireland in 1766 and settled in New Jersey ; his father was a mill-wright by trade and came to Brooklyn in 1808, where he was engaged, in addition to other enterprises, in the construction of the tide mills which some old residents can still remember. The name of J. G. Murphy occupies an honorable place among those of the prominent burghers of that day, and at one time he was justice of the peace. His son, Henry, was graduated at Columbia College in his twentieth year. He immediately began the study of law, and three years later was admitted to the bar. In 1834 he married Miss Amelia Greenwood of Haverstraw. It is not generally known that he practised some time for himself before he formed the famous partnership with Counselor Lott, to which Vanderbilt was soon after admitted, constituting the firm of Lott, Murphy and Vanderbilt. During the twenty years that followed this firm not only controlled nearly all the law busi- ness of the city, but also wielded immense political influence. The story of their transactions is the political history of Brooklyn during these two dec- ades. The wane of their influence marked the end of the open caucus system, and with the ascendancy of Mr. McLaughlin the system of primaries began. As Mr. Murphy's father had been instrumental in having the village incorporated, so his son was active in secur- ing the city charter. In 1842 he was elected mayor and his administration was marked by a system of retrenchments, beginning with his own salary. He was sent to congress in 1843, where he played a distin- guished part in the discussion of the leading questions of the day. In 1852 he was a candidate for nomination before the convention which finally nominated his rival, Franklin Pierce. Shortly after Buchanan became president, he made Mr. Murphy United States minister to The Hague. At the beginning of Lincoln's administration he returned to devote himself to his country at home. He was immediately elected to the United States senate, where he served for twelve suc- cessive years. There he contributed greatly to the advancement of the interests of Kings County, and his conspicuous achievements, especially in 1866 and 1867, made him a prominent candidate for the governor- ship. He was defeated through the influence of Tweed. In 1875 an attempt was made to send him back to the senate, but it failed, and so with the year 1873 when he left the senate his political career practically Henry C. Murphy. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 383 ended. Mr. Murphy's name is connected with most of the great public institutions which are to-day the chief objects of the city's pride. He was active in forming the Broolclyn Library, the Hamilton Literary Association and the Long Island Historical Society, he was one of the organizers of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and into such enterprises as the Brooklyn Bridge he threw all his energies. But throughout his life he never abandoned his scholarly pursuits in spite of the pressure of weighty affairs. Mr. Murphy's library was extensive and one of the most valuable in the city. His writings were numerous and creditable; they are referred to in the chapter on literature and the fine arts. He was a lawyer, a legislator, a scholar and a pure patriot ; the distinction which he honorably won in each of these characters has given his historic name a place among the highest in the annals of his native city. He died on December i, 1882. It was in large measure due to the efforts of Joseph Sprague that Brooklyn succeeded in obtaining its city charter. In village politics he had long been a beneiicent influence ; for seven years he was a member of the board of trustees, and for five years of that time he was its president. He purchased, with the cooperation of Colonel Alden Spooner, twenty acres of land at Fort Greene to be devoted to a home for the poor, and subsequently he was a zealous advocate for converting this site into a park. It was he who as president of the village inaugurated the street-cleaning system in spite of ridicule. His days were devoted to public affairs and it was only at night that he labored in his own behalf. Mr. Sprague was born at Leicester, Massachusetts, on July 25, 1783. He came to New York in 1809, where he gradually won his way as a commission merchant and through the sale of woolen cards, manufactured by his father and brother at Leicester. In 181 1 he married Maria De Bevoise, of the honorable old family of this city, and in 1819 he established himself permanently in Brooklyn; he built a country-seat at what is now 115 Fulton street. The energy and probity of Mr. Sprague made themselves felt in many important enterprises. He was a Democrat of the Jackson school, and as the candidate of that party he was elected mayor of Brooklyn in 1843 and again in 1844. He was an earnest advocate of the consolidation measures which resulted in the union of Williamsburgh and Bush wick with Brooklyn. He applied the business principles of economy to the administration of public affairs, and in these relations as in those of his private life he was above reproach. He died on December 12, 1854. In the political history of the city the name of Thomas Goin Talmadge is most prominently associated with the development of the eighth ward, Gowanus, in which his own farm and that of the Van Brunt family, into which he had married, were situated. He was a native of Somerset, New Jersey, where he was born on October 22, 1801. He began his mercantile career in New York city when he was only eighteen years of age, and rapidly rose to distinction. In 1823 he married a daughter of United States Senator Jacobs, of New York ; he lost his first wife after eleven years, and married again in 1835 ; his second wife was a daughter of Cornelius Van Brunt, of Brooklyn. He represented New York city in the state legislature in 1836, and was subsequently president of the board of aldermen. He came to this city in 1840, and was soon afterwards elected to the board of aldermen here. In 1845 he was the Democratic candidate for the mayor- alty and was elected ; during his term the new city hall was erected according to the altered plans. He ran for mayor a second time, but was defeated by the Whig candidate. Upon the expiration of his term the governor appointed him judge of the county court ; he had previously been made loan commissioner of the United States Deposit Fund for Kings County. He was a politician of the school of Martin Van Buren, and as new party combinations arose he gradually dropped out of public life. In 1848, five years after the death of his second wife, he married the youngest daughter of Judge Joralemon, of Brooklyn. He was a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and in 1 85 8 became president of the Broadway Railroad Company, of Brooklyn. He died on March 4, 1863. In Guy's view of Brooklyn, in 1820, may be seen the once famous market at the foot of James street, on the site now occupied by the bridge approaches In this market the father of Francis Burdett Stryker had a butcher's stand, and it was in Fulton street, near by, that on December j i, 181 1, his son, after- wards the eighth mayor of the city, was born. The boy received his education at Erasmus Hall, but he was only fourteen years of age when he left school and took up the carpenter's trade. He remained a journeyman until 1838, when he was made tax-collector. His political aifiliations were with the Whigs. In 1840 he became sheriff. At the expiration of his term he returned to his bench in his brother's shop, where he was still working in 1846, when, after an exciting canvass, he was elected mayor. He was twice reelected, and the three years of his mayoralty were eventful ones in Brooklyn's history. When the Republican party was forming, Mr. Stryker joined its ranks and was elected county clerk on that ticket. In 1856 he was their unsuccessful candidate for mayor. Four years later he was made superintendent of sewers, and held the office for fifteen years. He never married. His death occurred on January 14, 1892. Edward Copeland was one of those rare figures in politics whom the office sought ; to him official honors came unsolicited. He was born on May 30, 1793, and received a liberal education, graduating at Columbia College. He began life as a retail grocer in Brooklyn, but his name was soon brought before the public in connection with the Polish revolution and the national uprising in Greece between 1828 and g^ THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. 1830. The manly dignity of his views commanded the respect of his fellow-citizens and he was made a me^mber of the board"' of 'trustees of the village, and in 1833 became their president. In the following year he refused the nomination for congress which was tendered him. In response to the popular desire he was elected city clerk in 1844, and was reelected twice thereafter. Prior to this he had been chairman of the Whig general committee, and to him in large measure was accorded the credit of the party successes from" 1837 until 1840. In 1839 and 1840 his conduct as judge of the municipal court won the respect of the whole community. He was elected to the mayoralty in 1849. As a member of the board of education, for many years he rendered distinguished service in developing the system of public schools in this city. He was a scholarly man, and his numerous contributions to current literature bear abundant witness to his intellectual ability. The cause of education as well as that of purity in politics suffered a loss by his death, which occurred on June 18, 1859. With S.4MUEL Smith, the tenth mayor of the city, the old system came to an end, and in accordance with the amendment to the charter the term of mayoralty, as of all municipal offices, began thereafter with the civil year. Mr. Smith was thus chosen to fill the office for the last eight months of the year 1850. He was born at Huntington, L. I., on May 26, 1788. He obtained his education at the academy there, and then learned the trade of a cooper. In 1806 he removed to Brooklyn. He soon gave up his trade and took to farming, and gradually acquired for this purpose the property which was once a portion of the old Johnson farm on the Old Road, now Fulton street, and bounded by Red Hook lane, Schermerhorn street and by the street which has since borne his name. In 181 1 he had married a daughter of Judge Joralemon. Few citizens of Brooklyn have held so many offices under the village and municipal government as did Mr. Smith during his long and useful life. From being commissioner of highways and inspector of fences in 1821, he became successively assessor, justice of the peace, supervisor, county judge, and superintendent of the poor, until in 1850 he was elected to the mayoralty. "When the city charter w-ent into effect, Mr. Smith's residence fell within the si.xth ward, which he was called upon to represent for many years in the board of aldermen, of which body he was for some time presi- dent. Mr. Smith in 1830 joined the old Dutch church, which formerly stood in the middle of Fulton street, and for several years before his death he was the old- est representative of that congregation. He was one of the founders of the Nassau Insurance Company, and director in the Mechanics' and Home Life Insur- ance Companies ; in the Brooklyn and in the Atlantic Banks, of which latter institution he was for two years the president. He had a brief experience in military life, doing camp service with the Washington Fusileers at Fort Greene during the war of 1812. He after- wards became captain in the 44th Regiment. Among the official acts of Mr. Smith, it is to be remembered that he with his associates selected and purchased the site of the county buildings in Flatbush, and erected there a poor-house. The venerable form of "Judge Smith," as he was called during the latter years of his life, was well known to every citizen of Brooklyn; and the square stone mansion where he lived and in which he died on May 19, 1872, remains to this day, amid strangely altered surroundings, one of the landmarks of the old city. It is now occupied by the offices of the telephone company. In the history of the inception and execution of nearly all the important enterprises whereby Brooklyn was converted from a village into a city one meets with the name of Conklin Brush. He was born on March S, 1794, and came to Brooklyn in 1827. A sagacious man of affairs, during the twenty-three years of his business life he was at the head of no less than nine different firms, all of which enjoyed uniform pros- perity even in the time of general financial disaster. Abilities such as these Brooklyn was eager to enlist in her own service, and he was made a member of the board of trustees of the village in 1830; he was also presi- dent of the first board of aldermen, and began his term as mayor January i, 1851. But his claim upon the gratitude of Brooklyn lies not so much in his official acts as in the far-seeing and comprehensive schemes of municipal improvement which have owed either their origin or a large measure of their success to him. He Samuel Smith. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 385 CoNKLiN Brush. had public lamps placed in Hicks and Willow streets, and gradually had this system of lighting extended to other districts. That was in 1832 ; two years later he took up arms against the jealously guarded ferry monopoly of New York, and succeeded in securing the grant for the Atlantic avenue ferry. It was likewise due to the energy of Mr. Brush that the lower part of Fulton street, then little better than a cow-path, was widened. He was of the committee of citizens ap- pointed to select a site for the City Hall. In coopera- tion with Mr. Daniel Richards, Mr. Brush conceived the idea of erecting the great Atlantic docks, and secured the papers of incorporation in 1840. In con- nection with them he erected several stores and a grain elevator. From the first he was active in the move- ment to secure a proper water supply for the city, and he was subsequently appointed a member of the board of construction of the water commission. It was during his mayoralty that the Mechanics' Bank of Brooklyn was instituted, and at the close of his term he abandoned politics to accept the presidency of this bank. On July 4, 1870, he died. The figure of Edward Augustus Lambert was long a familiar one to the citizens of Brooklyn. He was a leading member of Dr. Cuyler's church ; worked actively for the cause of temperance and home mis- sions, and was a delegate to the Presbyterian Synod. He carried his kindly enthusiasm into his political office, and during his mayoralty the Truant Home was established, and Sunday laws were rigorously enforced. Edward Augustus Lambert was born on June 10, 1813, in New York city. His father perished at sea when the son was twelve years of age. Thrown thus early upon his own resources, he became a clerk in an importing house, and in 1832 he went into the stationer's business on his own account. He was success- ful and amassed a fortune. He represented the sixth ward in the board of aldermen, and was at one time its president ; he was subsequently alderman for the tenth ward, into which the sixth was split up. In 1852 he was elected mayor on the Democratic ticket, and served during 1853 and 1854. He was traveling in Europe when the riots between the Know-Nothings and the Irish broke out, but he returned just in time to suppress them with admirable energy and promptness. He called the first great war meeting at Fort Greene, and he rendered inestimable service to the cause as a member of the war-fund committee. To whatever he undertook he gave his whole devotion. Financial troubles came upon him in 1878, and on September 7, 1885, he died, broken in health and spirits. Samuel S. Powell held office for a period embracing in all six years and four months. He entered upon his duties on January i, 1857; he was reelected and his second term did not expire until May 6, 1861; he held the office again in the years 1872 and 1873. Mr. Powell was born on February 16, 1815; although he came of an old Long Island family his birthplace was New York. When he was thirteen years of age he came to Brooklyn to make his own way. He was successful, and in the course of time became prominent in the con- duct of the Nassau and Lafayette Insurance companies, in both of which he was an original director. He was also a director in the Citizens' Gas Light Company, the Brooklyn Life Insurance Company, and the Central Bank. Mr. Powell was a Democrat, but during the war he gave all the weight of his energy and influence to the support of the Union. He always had taken an active part in politics, and for one year represented the second ward, but refused to accept renomination. On February 8, 1879, Mr. Powell died and his memory is cherished with grateful respect by all who knew him. The mayoralty of Martin Kalbfleisch extended in all over a period longer than that of any other mayor of this city, surpassing the record of his predecessor by four months. He took office on May 6, 1861, and his term expired with the end of the year 1863; subsequently he held the office for four years begin- ning with January, 1868, and he was succeeded in turn by his predecessor, Mr. Powell. Mr. Kalbfleisch was born at Flushing in the Netherlands on February 8, 1804, and in his native town received an excellent edu- cation. When eighteen years of age he embarked for the coast of Sumatra on board of an American vessel; the Asiatic cholera, then prevailing there, sent him back to Antwerp; he engaged soon after in commercial operations in France, but induced by the American associations he had formed he embarked for this country in 1826, where for a time he fought his way by accepting any employment that was offered him. In less 386 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. than ten years he was able to establish a color factory at Harlem; after many vicissitudes he finally settled in Greenpoint; where, in order to supply the needs of his numerous family, he organized a school, which was the beginning of the educational system in that district. His business grew and his works became the largest of their kind in the country. He was a director in a trust company and in several banks and insur- ance companies; he was also president of the Prospect Park Fair Ground Association. He was supervisor of the town of Bushwick for three years,and was a member of the commission appointed to draw up the charter for the consolidation of Williamsburgh and Bushwick with Brooklyn. He was also the unsuccessful candidate for the mayoralty of the newly consolidated cities. For six years he represented the eighteenth ward in the board of aldermen and during half that time served as president. In 1862 he was sent to the house of representatives by his district. He was a man of culture and an accomplished linguist; his social urbanity and public virtues endeared him to all, and he died universally regretted on February 12, 1873. Alfred M. Wood was born at Hempstead, L. I., on April 19, 1828. He came to Brooklyn when he was very young and made it his permanent home; he became clerk in the drygoods house of a highly respected merchant. In 1853 he was the Democratic candidate for collector of ta.xes, and although his party was defeated he was elected. At the end of a term of three years he was reelected and so began his political career. In 1861 he was made representative of the first ward and became president of the board of alder- men. In that year began his brilliant military record. When the war broke out Col. Wood commanded the celebrated 14th Regiment, which had been organized in 1848. At the first battle of Bull Run Col. Wood was conspicuous for his intrepidity and courage; he received a severe wound just as the disastrous rout began, and during the retreat he was left behind. He managed to subsist on berries for several days until he was captured by a Virginia regiment and taken to Charlottesville. The sufferings to which he was sub- jected there and in his subsequent imprisonment at Richmond demanded even more fortitude than the trials of the field. It was rumored in Brooklyn that he had been killed in battle and the report had this foundation of truth: he was chosen to be executed in retaliation for the execution of some rebel pirates, and he was proud that the choice fell upon him, but he was released in February, 1862, and rejoined his regi- ment. His health, however, was broken and he was prevented from reentering the active service. In Brooklyn a brilliant reception awaited him; the streets were thronged with enthusiastic crowds and at the city hall he was formally received by the mayor. Soon after this Col. Wood was appointed collector of in- ternal revenue for the second district. In 1863 he was candidate for mayor and it was the esteem in which he was personally held that secured him the election, for the opposing party was in the majority. He served during the years 1864 and 1865. He was prominent subsequently in custom house and real estate matters, and once filled the position of a United States consul. He then passed from public notice and at present is living abroad. Samuel Booth, sixteenth mayor of the city, was born in England on July 4, 1818, and the date was significant, for he was only three weeks old when his parents brought him to this country to make it their permanent home. The first ten years were spent in New York ; the family then removed to Brooklyn in 1828, and resided on what was a part of the Johnson farm in the old days. The educational advantages afforded at that time were slight, and Mr. Booth was still very young when he was obliged to forego even those. He went into the wholesale grocery business and acquired a knowledge of mercantile methods. At the age of sixteen he took up the carpenter's trade and eventually achieved great success as a builder ; in 1843 he was established for himself. He earnestly endeavored to atone for his meagre educational oppor- tunities by constant reading and study, to which his tastes persuaded him. He was subsequently a member of the board of education for a time. Mr. Booth's political career began in 1851, when he became alder- man and at the same time supervisor of the fourth ward. He has ever since been prominent in public affairs. The city owes to him, in great measure, the county penitentiary, the construction of which was almost entirely in his charge. He was chairman of the committee on the erection of a new county court house Samuel booth. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 3S7 and under his immediate supervision the present building, one of the finest of its kind in the country, was erected at the cost of $550,000. Mr. Booth's most deserving labors, however, were rendered during the war as chairman of the committee on bounties ; nearly the whole of $3,800,000 was expended in bounties to volunteers, and these moneys all passed through Mr. Booth's hands. Not one act of his in the manage- ment of this often delicate matter has been impugned, nor was his perfect honesty ever questioned. The justice and discretion with which he distributed these enormous sums won him hosts of friends among the soldiers. He was elected mayor in 1865, to succeed Col. Wood, and served during the two following years, but his efficiency as mayor was greatly hampered by having a majority opposed to him in the board of alder- men. He was obliged to pursue a careful and watchful policy, and by wisdom and straightforward honesty was surprisingly successful in securing the aid of his political opponents in carrying out his measures. It is very creditable to his sagacity that no veto of his was ever overruled by the board. He concluded his term as mayor in 1867, and two years later was appointed postmaster of Brooklyn. He effected the con- solidation of the local post office, the extension of the carrier system, and the establishment of sub-stations. At this writing Mr. Booth is still living in the city and commands the admiration of his fellow-citizens. The oldest of the city's former mayors who are now living is John W. Hunter, who wears the well- earned honors of more than four-score years. His record as a public official and an officer of private cor- porations has been unimpeachable ; he has earned the respect of his fellows by conduct which in seasons of difficulty and responsibility was never attributable to any other dictates than those of conscience. In his long career he has witnessed the evolution of a great city from an insignificant village, and in all the various stages of that transformation, or at least those that have marked the passage of the last fifty years, he has been more or less prominently active. His polit- ical life has been marked by a sturdy adherence to the creed of the Democratic party. He was chosen to hold the highest office in the gift of the muni- cipality by a majority which was not necessarily con- stituted on partisan lines and he fulfilled every confi- dence. John W. Hunter was born in the village of Bedford in 1807. His father, like most of the other residents at the " Corners," was a farmer and had moved to Long Island from Monmouth County, N. J., in the early years of the present century. His mother was of Dutch descent and the blood that flowed in her veins was that of the people who first settled on Nas- sau Island. He was educated at the country schools, and when old enough was put to work in a wholesale JOHN w. HUNTER. grocery house in New York. When less than thirty years old he began to manifest an interest in public affairs and bore a share in improving the somewhat chaotic school system of the community. For many years he was a member of the board of education. He was auditor at the New York custom-house for some time. Afterwards came his entry into national politics. The death of the Hon. James Humphrey created a vacancy in the representation of the third congressional district, and Mr. Hunter was nominated by the Democrats, and although the district was normally a Republican stronghold, he was elected by a substantial majority. His term of service at Wash- ington expired in 1867, and he was called upon to contest the fifth assembly district, but he lost the election by ninety votes. President Andrew Johnson then tendered him the collectorship of internal revenue, but he declined the office. On November 4, 1873, he defeated Dwight Johnson, the Republican candidate for mayor, by a majority of 7,804 votes. After proving himself a thoroughly efficient official and receiving the commendation of all classes he was succeeded in 1876 by Frederick A. Schroeder. In the same year he was again tendered the congressional nomination in the third district, but declined. Since his retire- ment from public life Mr. Hunter has been trustee, secretary and treasurer of the Dime Savings Bank, whose interests he has promoted in every conceivable way ; he has also been a director in the Nassau Fu'e Insurance Company, the Manhattan Life Insurance Company and the Mercantile Trust Company of New York. He is president of the Society of Old Brooklynites, an office of which he received the honor of being made the first incumbent. 388 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Frederick A. Schroeder. Frederick A. Schroeder, who besides being an ex-mayor, is also an ex-state senator and an ex-comp- troller, was born in Trier, Prussia, March lo, 1833. His father was a surveyor of taxes under the Prussian government, and when the trouble which arose out of the opposition and the centralization of the govern- ment began in Baden in 1848, he with his family came to America. Young Schroeder was then fifteen years old ; he had received a good education in the schools of the fatherland, but he was compelled to work for his living when he arrived here. He began work as a cigar-maker, and succeeded so well that by the time he attained his majority he had a small factory of his own, in which he employed a dozen men ; subse- quently he formed a co-partnership with Isidore M, Bon, formerly president of the Wallabout Bank. In 1867, when the (Jermania Savings Bank was founded, Mr. Schroeder was elected its president, and he still holds that office. In 1870 he was elected comptroller on the Republican ticket. Once in office, he intro- duced a new and improved method of bookkeeping, and a system which greatly simplified the keeping of accounts and the drawing of warrants upon the city treasury. He retired into private life when his term expired. In the fall of 1875 he was nominated as the Republican candidate for mayor, and on November 2 he was elected by almost 2,000 majority over Edward Rowe. As mayor, he saw that the power exercised by the board of aldermen in confirming or rejecting his appointments sadly hampered him ; that the triple- headed commission in each department, whereby responsibility was divided, and no one could be- held to strict account, was a fraud on the city and the public ; and he vowed he would secure a new charter which would reform the system. The erection of the new municipal department building, which cost a little less than the amount appropriated for it ; the opening of Ocean Parkway from Prospect Park to Coney Island, the laying of the foundations for the first elevated railroad, and the stringing of the first wire of the Brooklyn Bridge were all incidents of Mayor Schroeder's administration. When his term expired, he declined a renomination. The same year, 1878, saw him elected state senator for the third district. One of his first undertakings in the senate was to prepare a new charter for Brooklyn, which through his efforts became a law. It gave to the mayor more absolute power than is enjoyed by the governor, and makes him directly responsible for the administration of the affairs of the city. The three-headed commissions gave place to single-headed ones, and all the departments, save the financial one, were made directly responsible to the mayor. On retiring from the senate, Mr. Schroeder spent a considerable time in Europe, and upon his return devoted himself to his business in New York and to the affairs of the Oermania Savings Bank. Since his service as senator he has held no public office, but has contented himself with the pleasures of life as a private citizen. J.a.mes Hcjwell was the nineteenth mayor of Brooklyn and his service extended through two full terms. He was born at Bradford, in Wiltshire, England, on October 16, 1829, and when six years old came to the United States with his parents, wh(j located at New Lisbon, Ohio. His early education was received in the frontier schools of that state. He came to Brooklyn in 1845, and since then this city has been his home. His business life began in a grocery store, but as the occupation was not suited to his taste he went into an iron foundry, soon mastered the details oi the trade and was made foreman of the shop. In 1855 he invested in a foundry a few hundred dollars that he had saved, out of which has grown the extensive iron trade now carried on by Howell & Saxtan. For a long time he has been a resident of the eleventh ward. For two terms, beginning with 1864, he represented the ward on the board of supervisors, and also served as an alderman. In 1877 the Democrats considered him the most available candidate to reclaim the city from Republican rule, and he was nominated as mayor against John F. Henry. The result of the election was the defeat of the Republican candidate by 3,000 majority. Mayor Howell became the official head of the local government at a time when the city had not recovered from the financial crisis of 1873 and was yet feeling the effects of a depleted treasury. Retrenchment was made the watch- word of his administration and his reward came in 1879, when he was renominated and defeated Franklin Woodruff by 12,000 majority. Among the notable events during Mayor Howell's administration was the CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 3S9 W^/^^Z^^^ adoption by seventeen of the aldermen of a resolution granting an elevated railway franchise over his veto and in defiance of an injunction of the supreme court, for which they were sentenced to imprisonment in the jail. In opposition to the sentiments of many of his constituents Mr, Howell in iSSi accepted the nomina- tion for a third term. The Independent Democrats nominated General Slocum and the Republicans made Seth Low their candidate. The campaign was one of the most exciting in the history of the city, and through the strenuous efforts of his party Mr. Low was elected by nearly 3,000 majority. Upon the death of Henry C. Murphy, Mr. Howell was elected a bridge trustee, in which capacity he served continuously for six years. When James S. T. Stranahan failed to re- ceive appointment in 1SS5 Mr. Howell was made presi- dent at a salary of $5,000. He was deposed for one term but regained the office at the ne.xt election. Mr. Howell is connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church and is a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity. Seth Low, who succeeded James Howell as mayor, was born at 165 (now 189) Washington street, in this city, on January 18, 1850. He began his education at the Juvenile High School on Washington street, and when twelve years old entered Polytechnic Institute ; he became a student in Columbia College in 1866, and was graduated from there four years later. After / leaving college he traveled in Europe, and on his return occupied a desk in his father's office. He was admitted as a partner in 1875. While still a very young man he became interested in opposing the corrupt practices of those in whose charge the city and county funds for the relief of the poor had been placed. To counteract abuses and to supply wants which the board of charities failed to provide for, Mr. Low, in conjunction with Alfred T. White, estab- lished the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. Mr. Low was its first president and Mr. White its first secre- tary. While laboring in the cause of this reform and yet closely attending to the business of his firm, he received in 1881 the Republican nomination for the mayoralty and was elected. How wisely, faithfully and successfully he fulfilled the onerous duties of the office is in the city's records and the people's memory. He was a wise, careful and economic chief executive carrymg into his public life the sound business princi- ples and strict integrity of character that had made his private career successful and respected. He re- deemed every pledge that he had given to his constitu- ents ; he improved every department in the municipal administration and did away with many abuses. He held every departmental head in the civil government rigorously to the performance of his duty, and parti- sanship was for a time banished from the management of public affairs. In 1883 he was renominated, and a fight, even fiercer than that waged during his first can- vass, was entered upon. Both parties put forth unpre- cedented efforts, and the struggle became one of the most memorable in the history of Brooklyn. It re- sulted in Mayor Low's reelection, and he held the oflice until 1885. His conduct during his second term, Seth Low. 39° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. because of its independent character, made him political enemies, but added to the esteem in which the people held him. On his retirement into private life, Mr. Low devoted himself for a time to literary work, and became a contributor to the leading magazines. On October 7, 1889, he accepted a call to the president's chair of Columbia College. He removed his residence to New York, and Brooklyn lost one of her most respected and popular citizens. Daniel D. Whitney was born at Oyster Bay, L. L, in the year 1820, of a sturdy family of Long Island farmers. Ten years later the family moved to Brooklyn, and young Whitney found employment in the grocery store of Thomas J. Gerald, then the political leader of the second ward. He soon fitted himself for a better position and became clerk in a wholesale grocery store on Fulton street. By industry and economy he was enabled, with his brother, to buy out the firm, and from 1843 until 1885 conducted a wholesale grocery and flour business. He represented the first ward in the board of aldermen for four terms, and was once president of that body. Under Mayor Hunter he was registrar of arrears, performing his ofificial duties with the same care and integrity that made him successful in private business. He was elected mayor in 1885, and took his seat on January i, 1886. His administration was marked by many public improvements. At the time of his election he was president of the Hamilton Fire Insurance Company, of the Mechanics' Bank and some other institutions. He was a member of the New York Produce Ex- change and was intimately connected with Sands Street M. E. Church. After vacating the administrative office he resumed the financial and commercial activity that had been interrupted and again took his station in the ranks of the responsible citizens that form the conservative element of Brooklyn's population. Alfred C. Chapin has long been counted by Brooklyn as among the most distinguished of her adopted sons. Seven times has he been a candidate for popular suffrage, and, although facing opposition which often degenerated from the broader questions of public policy and carried with its alleged arguments the sting of bitter personalities, he has invariably tri- umphed, even in seasons of Democratic defeat. Alfred Clark Chapin is the son of Ephraim A. Chapin, and was born at South Hadley, Mass., on March 8, 1848. His is the eighth generation in descent from Deacon Samuel Chapin, who left the old world prior to 1636 and settled in 1641 at Agawam, now Springfield, Mass. He entered Williams College in 1865, was graduated at that institution four years later and at Harvard Law School in 187 i. The following year he was admitted to the New York bar, and since 1873 he has been a resident of Brooklyn. He was chosen to be the first president of the Brooklyn Young Men's Democratic Club, and in 1881 was elected to the assembly from the eleventh district. In Albany, Assemblyman Chapin actively championed home rule for Brooklyn ; the Chapin Primary Law was drafted and passed through his efforts ; he brought all his energy to the sup- port of the constitutional amendment limiting the power of civic corporations to create indebtedness; opposed bills which, under some thin veil of vision- ary benefits for the future, laid heavy burdens upon ta.xpayers; and, as chairman of a special committee, he investigated the receiverships of insolvent insur- ance companies. Renominated for the assembly in 1882, he was warmly endorsed by the Brooklyn Young Republican Club and by a number of prominent labor organizations. His majority at the polls was 3,650. In 1883 his colleagues in the lower branch of the state legislature elected him speaker, and in the autumn of the same year he was placed on the Democratic state ticket as a candidate for the office of comptroller. He was elected, and subsequently administered the new duties devolved upon him with a success that had seldom waited upon the efforts of any of his predecessors. At the conclusion of his first term he was reelected. Mr. Chapin declined a third nomination for comptroller, and in 1887 he was nominated for mayor of Brooklyn. He was victorious, and his first term as chief executive of the city was marked by the institution of plans that looked towards the material benefit of the community. He gave the city better police protection, an increased water supply, an augmented park acreage, and inaugurated that work which gave to Brooklyn the great monument whose lofty arch, reared in front of the entrance to Prospect Park, AlFRKD C. CllAl'lN, CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 391 shall tell to succeeding ages the story of the sons who went forth from the city of homes to preserve inviolate, even at the price of their blood, the imperilled Union of the American states. In 1889 Mayor Chapin was nominated for a second term, and after an exciting canvass carried the election by a majority of more than 9,000. In the autumn of 1891 he received the united support of the Kings County delega- tion as one of the two candidates presented to the state convention for the governorship. Soon after- wards he was elected to congress from the second district. In xMarch, 1892, Governor Flower appointed him state railroad commissioner. Mr. Chapin is a member of several social and political organizations among the former being the Montauk Club, which stands almost directly opposite the home of the ex-mayor on Eighth avenue. David A. Boody, Mayor. Mayor David A. Boody, elected in 1891 to serve for the years 1892 and 1893, took his place in the line of mayors as the twenty-third individual occupant of that office. At this writing he has served one year, and has given so far a business-like and effective administration. He has shown an appreciation of the needs of the community and a desire to supply them. Mayor Boody's first message to the board of aldermen, transmitted on January 4, 1892, was an earnest of what was to be expected of his comprehensive knowledge of affairs and the marked executive ability which he had exhibited in other public positions. His recommendations were moderate and practical, and of a character to commend them to the people. Among the more noteworthy suggestions of the message was the necessity of a large increase of the fire- limit area, the increase of the police force and an amendment to the city charter to provide for the col- lection of the tax upon personal property. He suggested a reduction of the number of bridge trustees with the view of concentrating responsibility and promoting effectiveness, and he recommended the acquisition of the plant of the Long Island water supply company by right of eminent domain. The message, further, had something to say favorable to the annexation of outlying towns and urged prompt action upon the pro- ject fot another bridge over the East river. Another important recommendation was that a free library be established in connection with the Brooklyn Institute of arts and sciences now in course of erection, and 392 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the message also commended the civil service system and urged the purchase of additional school and small park sites. David A. Boody was born on August 13, 1837,10 the town of Jackson, Waldo County, Me. David Boody, his father, was a farmer and one of the representative men of the locality. The son was sent to the public schools of the town and afterwards to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Subsequently he studied law in the office of Charles M. Brown, of Bangor, Me., and then completed his legal course under the guidance of Jeremiah Abbott, a distinguished lawyer of Belfast, Me., where Mr. Boody was admitted to the bar. After practicing law in Camden and Thomaston, Me., he entered the banking ofiBce of his uncle, the Hon. H. H. Boody, of the firm of Boody & McClellen, as clerk. His pro- gress was rapid, and within a year he had entered into partnership with his uncle and bought a seat in the New York Stock E.xchange, of which he continued an active member for nearly twenty years, being one of its governors for a long period. Mr. Boody is president of the City Savings Bank, the Berkeley Institute and the Thomas Jefferson Association, vice-president of the Long Island Free Library, a director in the People's Trust Company, the Sprague National Bank, the Brooklyn Institute and other similar institutions. He was one of the founders of the Montauk Club. He has a family of one daughter and four sons, and his home on Berkeley place is one of the recognized social centres of Prospect Heights. In politics Mr. Boody has always been a Democrat. Previous to his election as mayor he was chosen to but one public office, having been elected in 1890 to represent the second congressional district in the fifty-second congress. This position he resigned on his nomination for the office of mayor. Michael J. Coffey, president of the common council, succeeded John McCarty in that position in 1891, when Mr. McCarty was elected to the state senate. Alderman Coffey is from the first aldermanic district, and is one of the important factors in local politics. The sketch of his career will be found in the chapter on Political Life. MosES J. Wafer, alderman from the first district, has had a long and varied career as a public official and lawmaker, and is one of the veterans in local politics. He was born in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1850, but has lived in this country since his infancy, having accompanied his parents to the United States when only a year old. His father settled in the sixth ward of Brooklyn, and there the legislator still makes his home. He was educated at the public schools and at St. Peter's parochial school. He began life as a clerk in a grocery, and afterward learned the trade of a carpenter. His first public office was that of inspector of the fire department. He was appointed fire commissioner in 1879, but, together with Hugh McLaughlin and Philip Brennan, was afterwards legislated out of office by the Republican representa- tives at Albany. In 1884 he was elected a member of the assembly and served during 1885, 1886, 1887 and 1888. He was then appointed to the board of aldermen to fill out the unexpired term of Register-elect James Kane. He has been reelected since by some of the largest majorities ever given on the Democratic city ticket, and has continued to serve on important aldermanic committees. Theodore Maurer, alderman-at-large, was first elected a member of the board of aldermen in 1884, and is, at this writing, serving his third term. His political life began when he was only twenty-three years of age, through his election to the Democratic General Committee of Kings County, of which he has been a member ever since, under both its old and new organization. In 1883 he was elected a supervisor from the sixteenth ward and served as such four years. Alderman Maurer was born in 1853, at Baden, Germany, and came here when he was only eight years old, with his parents, who settled in the sixteenth ward, in which locality he has since resided. He first attended school at Oberhausen, Germany, and on coming to this country finished his education in Holy Trinity parochial school. Leaving there, he was employed for a number of years by a glass manufacturing concern, and became an expert glass blower. In 1879 he engaged in the soda water business with his brother, in which he is still interested. Edward P. Thomas, of the second district, is a leader in the Republican contingent which constitutes a portion of the common council. He is still quite a young man, and never held any political position until elected to his present office. He is now serving his second term at the city hall. He was born in New York on May 21, 1851, but has lived in Brooklyn since infancy, his parents having moved here when he was a few months old. He was educated at public school No. 25. He is now engaged in conducting a real estate and building business, and has won an advanced position among the enterprising men of the community. He has always evinced an active interest in politics and is prominent among the younger members of the Union League Club. He belongs to the masonic brotherhood. William McKee, from the third district, is now serving his fourth term as a member of the board of aldermen, and has held a prominent place in local Democratic councils ever since he first began to actively participate in politics. In connection with his official position he has successfully transacted many duties of grave responsibility, and during the entire period of his service at the city hall has been chairman of the fire department committee. He is secretary of the Fifteenth Ward Democratic Association, is president of the David B. Hill Club and the David B. Hill Battery of the fifteenth ward, and is associated with other Andrew W. Fitzgibbcin, Robert F. MacKellar, Theodore Maurer, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN. Arthur J. Heane'.', Michael J. Coffey, F?-esidcii/, William McKee, Samuel Mveks, Charles J Volckening, Edward P. Thomas, Daniel McGrath. 394 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. social and political organizations. He is a member of Progressive Lodge, No. 354, Free and Accepted Masons, and was master of the lodge in 1886; he is a member of De Witt Clinton Chapter, Royal Arch Masons; De Witt Clinton Commandery, No. 27, Knights Templars ; Mecca Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine; De Witt Clinton Lodge, Knights of Honor; St. John's Lodge, Knights of Pythias; Dakin Post, Grand Army of the Republic ; Wykoff Lodge, Ancient Order of United Workmen, and the loth Regiment Veteran Association. William McKee was born in New York on March 4, 1843, but has lived in Williamsburgh ever since he was six months old. He was educated in the public schools, afterward learning the trade of a gun- smith. On April 14, i86i, he enlisted as a private in the loth N. Y. Volunteers (National Zouaves). He was wounded at Fredericksburg, but returned to his regiment and was mustered out of service on May 6, 1863. He was reenlisted in the 193d N. Y. Volunteers and served until the close of the war. For a short time he sailed as steward on a steamer running to Savannah, and then engaged in his present business as a manu- facturer of horse clothing. Peter Hess, a second district alderman, was born on a farm on Leihgestern, near Giesen, in the province of Oberhessen and the Grand Duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt. In his boyhood he attended college at Giesen. A military life being unsuited to his tastes, young Hess, instead of waiting to attain his majority and entering the service under state compulsion, embarked at the age of twenty for America and located in the Eastern District of this city. Later he became identified with the politics of the thirteenth ward, allying himself with the Republican party. He was foremost among those who during the Garfield-Han- cock presidential contest organized the first German Republican-American campaign club in the district in which he has resided for a quarter of a century. Mr. Hess was elected to the common council in 1889, and has served continuously ever since. He is a member of several organizations, including Copernicus Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, the Arion and Cecilia singing societies and the Republican General Com- mittee. Daniel McGrath, from the third district, has, with one slight intermission, occupied a seat in the common council from 1883 until the present time, and for the last three decades has made himself more or less prominent in politics of the fourteenth ward. His first official station was that of keeper of public baths in the Eastern District. Alderman McGrath was born in Brooklyn forty-four years ago. He was educated at public school No. 17, which he left to learn the trade of a printer in the American Tract Society's establishment. He next became a coppersmith. In 1861 he enlisted in the 14th Regiment, United States Infantry, and was honorably discharged from the service in 1864. He is a member of Mans- field Post, G. A. R., the Exempt Firemen's Association (E. D.), and the Seymour Club. For several years he has been a delegate to the Democratic General Committee. Arthur J. Heaney, one of the aldermen-at-large, has proved himself one of the most active members of the common council. He was elected as the Democratic candidate in 1889, and was reelected in 1891. He was born in County Down, Ireland, on July 7, 1847, but has lived since infancy in the United States. When the civil war had been in progress about twelve months he enlisted in Company K, 69th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers. He saw active service from 1863 until August, 1864, and was taken prisoner and incar- cerated at Libby, Belle Isle and Salisbury. He was rescued by General Stoneman's cavalry early in 1865. After the close of the war he engaged in business in New York and this city. He has been influential in local Democratic circles, and for fifteen years was a member of the Democratic General Committee. He resigned from that body when he removed, in 1892, from the third to the sixth ward. He belongs to St. Patrick's Society, the Columbian Club, the Union Democratic Club, and is a life member of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum Society. J. Jefferson Black, of the third district, although less than forty years of age, has been a member of the common council for twelve years. He was born in the Eastern District of the city, and in his boyhood attended old public school No. 24 and the parish school of St. Mary's, afterward finishing his education at St. Francis' College at the age of sixteen. In the same year he began to learn the trade of a stereotyper in the office of the New York Herald, where he has ever since been employed. Politics first engaged his attention about a year before he was sent to the board of aldermen to represent the old eighteenth ward. He has seen that section grow under his leadership from a small bailiwick to three populous wards, and during his public career the city itself has expanded from nine to fifty-five election districts. Alderman Black is a progressive man of more than average attainments and has been an advocate of and worked on behalf of all the great public improvements for more than a decade. His Democracy is of the staunchest order. In 1893 he was chairman of the grading and paving and assessment committees, two of the most important in the common council. He is president of the Twenty-seventh Ward Democratic Association, a member of Leonard Council, of the Catholic Benevolent Legion, and of the Dodworth Democratic Club. Since attaining his majority Samuel Myers, who is from the second district, has been identified with the Republican party. In 1881 he was elected to the board of aldermen as the representative from the twenty-first ward, and during his short terni of service hag been identified with many improvements in p/ Richard Meier, Moses J. Wafer, J. Jefferson Black, MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF ALDERMEN. E. W. Price, Chief Clerk of Comniitlees, James McGarry, Thomas A. Beard, Peter Hess, William H. Jordan, Richard Pickering. 396 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. municipal affairs, particularly in the matter of grading, paving and lighting streets. He is one of the most energetic members of the board and is associated with the work of more than one important committee. Alderman Myers was born in England in 1834, but was brought to New York city in his infancy. In 1849 he became a resident of Williamsburgh. There Mr. Myers lived until ten years ago, when he moved to the twenty-first ward. After leaving school he engaged for a time in the tobacco business, but in 1876 turned his attention to managing a hotel at Rockaway Beach. He is a member of the Republican Association, of the Republican Battery, Republican Battalion, and Harmony Club of the twenty-first ward. He was a member of No. i truck in the days of the Williamsburgh volunteer fire department. Andrew W. Fitzgibbon was elected in 1891 to serve as alderman-at-large, and has exerted consider- able influence in civic legislative affairs. He is vice-president of the Kings County Democratic General Committee, and is influential in the discussions of the executive committee connected with that organiza- tion. Andrew W. Fitzgibbon was born in the seventeenth ward of Brooklyn on February 4, 1857, and was educated at public school No. 22, and at a business college. As a manufacturer and wholesale and retail dealer he engaged in the hat business with his father, the late School Commissioner Fitzgibbon. Robert F. Mackellar, alderman-at-large, has been identified for many years with Democratic politics in this city and is now serving his second term in the common council. Before his election, the eighth ward, which comprises a portion of his constituency, presented the appearance of a suburban rather than an urban community, and its present possession of well-lighted streets and good sewerage facilities is attributable mainly to his energetic supervision of its interests. He was also largely instrumental in securing for this ward a park, which will become one of the most attractive in the city. The aristocratic residents on Pros- pect Slope are also indebted to him for the conveniences afforded by the erection of the water tower at the park reservoir. Alderman Mackellar has lived in the eighth ward since infancy. He was educated at public school No. 2, and in his early manhood served in the volunteer fire department as a member of Put- nam Engine No. 21. At the beginning of the Civil war he enlisted in a Brooklyn regiment, the 13th, and afterward in the 48th Regiment, another organization recruited exclusively in this city. He returned from the front as first lieutenant commanding a company. He served one term, by appointment from Mayor Howell, as a member of the board of education, and for some time has been a delegate to the Democratic General Committee. He is a member of Minerva Lodge, F. and A. M.; Gowanus Lodge, L O. O. F.; the Legion of Honor, Royal Arcanum, U. S. Grant Post, G. A. R.,and the Putnam Club. Richard Meier was elected a member of the board of aldermen from the second district in 1891. He was born in 1861 in New York city. Soon after his birth his parents removed to Brooklyn, where young Meier attended public school No. 19. He was graduated from there in 1876. The three succeeding years were spent on his father's dairy farm in Westchester, after which he engaged in business as a butcher. Upon attaining his majority he began to take an active part in the politics of the Seventh Ward Republican Association (of which he was president for some time) and the Seventh Ward Tippecanoe Association. For six years he has been a member of the Republican General Committee. He has proved himself astute and ready in debate, and prompt in looking after the interests of his constituents. William H. Jordan, of the first district, began to take an active interest in politics in 1870, and since that time has had a varied experience in public affairs. He left the custom house brokerage business to accept a position in the city works department, and subsequently became a clerk in the bureau of engineer- ing. Later he was engaged in compiling the arrearages of taxes, and afterward he became an attache of the comptroller's office. In 1884 he was appointed license clerk by City Clerk Shanley, and when Alderman (now Senator) McCarty resigned from the board Mr. Jordan was chosen to fill the vacancy. Mr. Jordan was born in New York city forty nine years ago, but has lived in this city since he was four years old. He has resided in the fifth ward forty years and attended public schools Nos. 5 and 7. He is a veteran volunteer fireman and was a member of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth regiments in 1861-62, serving with the former during the "hundred days." Mr. Jordan is one of the trustees of the Volunteer Fireman's Widows and Orphans' Fund, and is a member of the Constitution Club, the Democratic General Committee and the Fifth Ward Democratic Association. Of the last-named organization he was secretary for ten years. Charles J. Volckening, the youngest member of the board of aldermen, is one of the representatives from the third aldermanic district. He was born in the seventh ward of this city, but during the greater part of his life has been a resident of the twenty-fifth ward. After being graduated from public school No. 28, he engaged in the building business with his father, who was at the time an extensive dealer in real estate. Early in his career Alderman Volckening took an interest in politics, and in recognition of his excellent work for the party he was elected a member of the Democratic General Committee when he was but twenty-two years of age. Later he was prominently mentioned as a desirable candidate for the assem- bly from the twelfth district, but he declined the nomination. When twenty-four years of age he was elected a member of the board of aldermen. He has been notably prosperous in business and has so invested his surplus as to become a large owner of local real estate. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 397 Alderman James McGarry, of the first district, has served in the common council since 1884, and has wielded a powerful influence. His biography is given in the chapter on Political Life. Richard Pickering was the first representative of the twenty-sixth ward on the board of aldermen. He was elected alderman-at-large in 1887, and was reelected at the two succeeding elections of 1889 and 1891. In 1891 and 1892 he was president /ri? tempore of the board, and he has been acting mayor during the terms of Mayors Chapin and Boody. He was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1842, and came to America during his boyhood. After learning the printer's trade in Fall River, Mass., he came to New York in i860, and worked as a printer, establishing the Long Island Record \n 1870. He was appointed school trustee for district No. i in 1868, and was treasurer of the board many years. Appointed justice of the peace in 1869, he served one term. ' In 1874 he was appointed police commissioner of New Lots, and was treasurer of the department five or six years. He is engaged in the job printing business, in addition to publishing the Brooklyn Advance &r\& the Long Idand Record. Anson Ferguson has been prominently identified with Democratic politics in Brooklyn many years, He became a resident of the city in 1848, and has lived in the thirteenth ward since 1857. Born in Ulster County, N. Y., in 1835, he received his early education in Paterson, N. J. His first business experience was in the commission trade, and since i860 he has been a dealer in flour, feed, etc., in Brooklyn. Mayor Whit- ney appointed him park commissioner, and since 1887 he has been repeatedly elected alderman, being, at this writing, alderman-at-large. For many years he has served on the general committee. In freemasonry he is affiliated with Cornerstone Lodge, and he is a member of the American Legion of Honor. Thomas A. Beard, alderman-at-large, is a native of Georgia, and was born in 1842. He was educated in South Carolina, and entered the drug business in New York city in 1865. Subsequently he established a drug-store in Brooklyn, and made his home here. He is a Democrat, and has served in the common council since 1888. One of the most important positions in the city government is held by Dr. Edward W. Price, secre- tary of the board of estimate, and also chief clerk to the committees of the common council. It is he who compiles that mass of figures known as the city budget, and for months during each year he is busily engaged in figuring up and tabulating the city expenses. Dr. Price is an expert mathematician, and has been a public employee sixteen years, his position being a permanency. He was born in the seventh ward of Brooklyn, and is prominent in social, political and club life. During three years of the civil war he was clerk to Naval Constructor Faiganza, of the Mississippi flotilla. He is fond of out-door sports, and was at one time noted as a ball player, having been a member of the leading local clubs. He played with the " Eckfords" and the " Atlantics " in 1869, and subsequently declined a professional offer from the "White Stockings," Chicago's champion club. Dr. Price is prominent in Democratic political circles and ranks among the men of local influence in the party. The record of Health Commissioner John Griffin in the public service is one of exceptional efficiency and purity. He first appeared in public life as a member of the board of education, to which he was appointed in 1882 by Mayor Low. In this position, serving without emolument, he manifested marked ability and energy, and during ten years, through every change of political administration, was reappointed by each succeeding mayor. In the office of health commissioner the same tribute has been awarded to his ability and he has received two successive reappointments. He served on the most important committees of the board of education and was active in every line of progress and improvement. His counsel was invariably sought and his judgment valued highly. It was chiefly due to his determined efforts that the system of furnishing school books free was introduced. He was instrumental, too, in bringing about the erection of the boys' high school building and gave much thought and care to the sanitary condi- tion of the schools generally. He was appointed health commissioner by Mayor Chapin in 1888, and during the four succeeding years he discharged the duties of that office and continued to serve in the board of education. In the summer of 1892, the increasing duties of the health department led him to resign from the board of education. In testimony of their esteem and of the loss sustained by the board, his fellow members on this occasion unanimously joined in tendering him a complimentary dinner. As the head of a municipal department which is of vital importance to the entire public. Dr. Griffin now occupies a par- ticularly conspicuous position in the community, and the thorough and efi:ective manner in which he has promoted the sanitary well-being of the city affords ample testimony to his peculiar fitness for the position. How promptly and successfully he has met all situations has been matter for flattering comment on the part of press and public. He has been the author of several much needed ordinances concerning the city's sani- tation, and in times when epidemics have threatened the public health the wisdom of his precautionary methods have won the praise of the medical profession, while his executive competency has earned the plaudits of the public. After years of endeavor by previous commissioners he succeeded, despite local prejudices and much opposition, in establishing an exclusive hospital for patients having contagious diseases. When, in 1892, the city was threatened with a visitation of Asiatic cholera. Commissioner Griffin called into 398 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. consultation the prominent practitioners in both schools of medicine and then put into execution such com- prehensive and rigid protective plans that no voice was raised except in approval, and the Kings County Medi- cal Society, at an unusually large meeting, passed unanimously a resolution declaring perfect confidence in Commissioner Griffin and a hearty commendation of his methods. Dr. Griffin was born in Ireland in 1845, and came to Brooklyn in 1868. He was graduated at the Queen's University in Dublin, and subsequently studied and practiced at Bellevue Hospital, New York. For several years he combined journalistic work with the practice of medicine, and was a writer for the New York Times and Sun and other publications. In 1872 he began practice in Brooklyn, and has since then risen to the front rank of his profession. He is a member of several leading local clubs. He is a charter member of the New York Press Club, and was one of its first vice-presidents. The office of deputy commissioner of the department of health has been held since 1888 by Dr. John S. Young, who had previously occupied the position of secretary to the board of health for two years. His special duty in the department is the compilation of the vital statistics of the city. Dr. Young was born in Brooklyn on November 27, 1832. He was educated at the parochial schools, and in 1846 became a student at St. John's College, Fordham. There he received the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in 1851 and Master of Arts in 1854. He attended lectures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, in New York city, and was graduated in 1854. Since then he has been engaged in the practice of his profession in this city. He has been for a number of years one of the staff of St. Mary's Female Hospital on Dean street. He is a member of the Emerald and St. Patrick's societies, and is prominently identified with the Union Democratic Club. When, in 1876, Dr. R. C. Baker first became connected with the board of health, he brought to the dis- charge of his duties a thorough medical and surgical training and a wide experience gained in the hospitals of New York and Brooklyn. His services were found to be so valuable that he was appointed secretary and sanitary superintendent of the reorganized health department in 1887, and has since held those offices continuously. The fact that his is one of the most I effectively conducted of the municipal departments is sufficient endorsement of his efficiency as a public officer. Dr. Baker was born at Margaretville, Dela- ware County, N. Y., on August 27, 1850. He was educated at the Stamford Academy, the Fort Edward Collegiate Institute and the University of the City of New York. After serving in several of the New York hospitals, he came to Brooklyn in 1876, and subse- quently formed a connection with the Eastern District Hospital and Dispensary and St. Catharine's Hospital, and shortly after taking up his residence in this city, he actively interested himself in local politics and be- came prominent in Democratic circles. He is a mem- ber of the Alfred C. Chapin Club of the thirteenth ward, of the Nineteenth Ward Tilden Club, the Bush- wick Democratic Club and the Thirteenth Ward Demo- cratic Association. He is also identified with the Aurora Grata Club and other masonic bodies. Dr. Baker is a man of cordial and courteous manners, is popular in social circles, and is held in high esteem by his professional associates. Corporation Counsel Almet F. Jenks is the eldest of the three sons of the late Grenville T. Jenks, one of the best known lawyers who ever practised at the Kings County bar, and is a native of Brooklyn, having been born here on May 21, 1853. Mr. Jenks, in his earlier years, was a student at the Adelphi Academy, and was noted for the aptness he displayed in acquiring knowledge and the rapid progress he made in all lines of study. Upon the completion of his course there he entered Phillips' Academy, Andover, Mass., from which institution he was graduated in 187 1 with the highest honors. He was graduated at Yale in 1875, and at the Columbia Law School in 1877, being admitted to the bar in the same year. He imme- diately formed a partnership with Frederick A. Ward, and opened an office in Brooklyn. Here he soon attained an extensive practice. Upon the appointment of James W. Ridgway as district attorney in 1884, he was made assistant, and remained in that office until February i, 1886, when he was made corporation R. C. Baker, M. D. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 399 counsel by Mayor Whitney. He was reappointed to the same office in 1888 and 1890 by Mayor Chapin, and also by Mayor Boody in 1892. In 1891 Governor Hill made him judge-advocate general of the state of New York, and he was reappointed by Governor Flower in 1892. In social circles Mr. Jenks is also prominent, and is one of the leading members of the Brooklyn Club. Politically Mr. Jenks is a Democrat, and has taken quite an active part in the councils of his party. He has been a delegate to numerous conventions, notably to the state convention of 1891, and he was also largely instrumental, in conjunction with the Hon. David A. Boody, in shaping the " hard money" plank of the Democratic platform of that year, William T. Gilbert, son of ex-Judge Jasper W. Gilbert, was made first assistant corporation counsel on February i, 1886, and since that time has been reappointed every two years. Mr. Gilbert was one of those who founded the Crescent Athletic Club and has been a governor of that organization and chairman of its house committee ; he also belongs to the Brooklyn and Hamilton clubs, the Union Democratic Club, and the University Club of New York. Since 1882 has held a seat in the Demo- cratic General Committee of Kings County. Mr. Gilbert was born in Brooklyn, on July 6, 1857, and was prepared for college at Professor J. C. Overheiser's school ; he entered Yale in June, 1874, and was graduated four years later with the degree of A. B. He became a student in the law school of Columbia College in 1878 and was graduated in May, 1880, with the degree of LL. B. He was immediately admitted to the bar and accepted a clerkship in the office of Butler, Stillman & Hub- bard. He subsequently became a partner in the firm of Gilbert & Cameron, and afterwards associated himself in practice with his father. One to whom Brooklyn is much indebted for that well-directed effort which has enhanced the natural beauty of Prospect Park is George V. Brower, in whom is now vested the entire control of the parks, which were formerly under the management of the tripartite commission. Born at Paterson, N. J., on Octo- ber 17, 1842, George V. Brower is the descendant of a family that had been connected for generations with the history of Long Island. His ancestors, Abraham and Jeremiah Brower, owned the old "Tide Mill," on Gowanus creek, which the Americans destroyed during the revolutionary war to prevent the British from seizing the valuable stores which it contained. Jeremiah Brower wore an officer's sword in the Continental army, and his brother Abraham likewise offered his services to the patriot forces, and fought under Wash- ington until the recognition of colonial independence by the mother country brought peace to the states. George V. Brower was a student at Princeton when the beginning of hostilities between the north and south interrupted his education. He became a law student in the office of Judge Charles P. Waller at Honesdale, Pa., and was admitted to the bar of Wayne County in 1866. From Pennsylvania he moved to Brooklyn, and has continuously practiced his profession in this city ever since. In July, 1885, President Cleveland appointed him general appraiser of the port of New York ; he resigned when the national administration changed in 1889. In July, 1889, he was made one of the three Brooklyn park commissioners ; he was elect- ed president of the board, and continued to hold that office until his duties and responsibilities were merged in those of his present position. He has been secretary and is now chairman of the executive committee of the Tree Planting and Fountain Society of Brooklyn, and evinces an ardent interest in arboriculture. He is socially prominent, and belongs to the Brooklyn, Constitution, Royal Arcanum and Rembrandt clubs, the Atlantic Yacht and Brandt Island clubs. He is an enthusiastic yachtsman, and enjoys a good breeze as well as any amateur sailor. Comptroller Halsey Corwin has held more than one position involving responsibility to the people both direct and indirect. Mr. Corwin has lived in this city since 1867. He was elected an alderman-at-large in 1883 and was reelected in 1885. Three years later Mayor Alfred C. Chapin appointed him successor to A. D. Wheelock, who retired from the office of city treasurer, and in 1890 he was reappointed by the same execu- tive. When Mayor David A. Boody assumed his station at the head of the municipal government in January, 1892, he continued Mr. Corwin in office, and in the autumn of the same year the Democrats unanimously nominated him as a candidate for the position of city comptroller, which office he assumed in 1893 as successor to Comptroller Jackson, who refused a renomination. Halsey Corwin was born in New York in 1835, was graduated in 1851 from the Mechanics' Society School in that city, and became a clerk in the wholesale grocery firm of Oliver Corwin & Co., which was established on Front street. He continued in their employ and in that of their successors, Corwin & Co., until 1856, when he advanced to the junior partnership in the firm of Westerwell & Corwin, successors in turn to Corwin •& Co. In 186 1 Mr. Corwin became sole proprietor of the business and remained in control until he retired from commercial life, on 400 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Michael J, Cl'simings. assuming the duties of a public official. Mr. Corwin is a trustee of the Brevoort Savings Bank, and was for years a director of the New England Association in New York city. He is also a member of the Lincoln and the Thomas A. Hendricks clubs. The office of city clerk of Brooklyn has been held since 1890 by iMich.4el J. Cu^rMINGS, and his reelection by the common council to this responsi- ble office gave universal satisfaction. Entering the city clerk's office in 1S77, Mr. Cummings rose steadily through every grade until in 1884, after retirement of two years from the office through a change in the politics of the administration, he was made deputy by City Clerk John Shanley. On the death of Mr. Slianley, in 1S90, Mr. Cummings was elected to suc- ceed him. Michael J. Cummings was born in Kings Count\-, Ireland, in 1846. He came to Brooklyn with his parents when he was three years old. They took up their residence in the sixth ward. Young Cum- mings obtained a good education in the public schools and left his class room at the age of sixteen to enlist in the 48th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers (known as " Perry's Saints "). Twenty days afterwards he was shot in the wrist at the battle of Olustee, Fla., but, notwithstanding, he served with his regiment during the war, rising to the rank of acting sergeant-major. During the Fenian raid on Canada he joined the army of invasion as captain of Company B, of the 4th Regiment of the Irish republican army, and with it marched from St. Albans, A'ermont, across the border to share in the mishaps and sufferings of those gal- lant, reckless enthusiasts. Shortly after his return to Brooklyn he began his career as an office holder in the lowest grade in the city clerk's office. Mr. Cummings is a member of the Knights of St. John of Malta, the Fort Greene Council of the Royal Arcanum, the Central Council of the Catholic Benevolent Legion, of the National Benevolent Legion and of the Order of the ^Vorld. He is past commander of Devin Post, No. 148, G. A. R., and has served as department inspector G. A. R. He is also chairman of the memorial committee of Kings County and with Mayor Boody and the president of the board of aldermen a member of the memorial arch commission. He has been for eight years a member of the executive committee of the Kings County Democratic General Committee and for ten years he has been a delegate to this body. He married Sarah E. Lawlor, by whom he has had nine children, six of whom are living. Since 1888 the office of commissioner of city works has been occupied continuously by John P. Adams, and during that period many of the existing extensive municipal improvements have been either made or perfected. To enumerate the public work accomplished during his administration would require more space than is here available, but it is due him to say that he has discharged the duties of his office with marked effectiveness and with results that have been of incalculable benefit to the community. Among the more important of the improvements he has carried out is the Greene avenue sewer (which is the third largest m the world), the extension of the water works, and the paving of over seventy-five miles of streets. One of his favorite projects has been the establishment of a large market which should equal, if not surpass, anything of the kind in this country. In the line of this effort he has secured the enlargement and improvement of the Wallabout market, has practically brought about the purchase of the land necessary for his purpose, and his elaborate but thoroughly feasible plans for the erection of a magnificent mart in Brooklyn are on the road toward accomplishment. His designs show commodious structures adapted to the diversified market requirements, and ample means for the receipt of foreign products are provided for in a system of docks at which numerous vessels will be enabled to simultaneously unload. The success of the present Wallabout market, the nucleus of Mr. Adams' proposed establishment, has earned very general support for his scheme, and the grand new market maybe spoken of as an accomplishment of the near future. iSIr. Adams was born in 1839 on a farm in Newbury, Essex County, Mass. After his school days had ended he studied law, was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Massachusetts. He commenced practice in Brooklyn and New York in 1875. From the first he took an active interest in local politics, and in January, 1885, was elected president of the Kings County General Democratic Committee, which oftice he held until 1892. John P. Adams. Robert Van Buren. That body never had a more earnest and energetic presiding officer, and in retiring he left a monument to his untiring zeal for the party in " The Thomas Jefferson," the inception of which handsome structure was due to his enterprise and persisting enthusiasm. Robert Van Buren, who holds the position of chief engineer of the department of city works, has given nearly twenty-seven years to the service of the city of Brooklyn. Since he has been chief engineer the capacity of the water works has been extended from twenty millions of gallons to more than seventy millions. The sewerage system has grown from three hundred miles to five hundred ; the street improve- ments include all kinds of pavement, and, in addition to these principal features of the work of the office, there are many minor undertakings which in the growth of a large city are multiplying continually. In the autumn of 1865 Mr. Van Buren, who had been recently graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. Y., with the degree of civil engineer, was appointed as a rod-man in the service of the old water board of Brooklyn, and after a series of promotions he was advanced, in 1877, to his present position. He was born in New York city on March 25, 1843, and is the son of the late Colonel John D. Van Buren, who was a prominent New York lawyer and was a leader in the Democratic party. Robert Van Buren married the eldest daughter of Benjamin Aymar, an old time New York merchant, whose place of business was on South street for many years. Van Brunt Bergen, son of the late Teunis G. Bergen, is a civil engineer whose services have been engaged by the city of Brooklyn for nearly thirty years, and whose present position of principal assistant engineer of the department of city works has been attained through a series of promotions earned by faith- ful and efficient performance of duty. He entered the employ of the city in a minor capacity, having been appointed in 1864 as a rod-man on the Brooklyn water works. He was appointed to his present position in 1883. Mr. Bergen was born in Bay Ridge, L. I., in 1841, and received a thorough academic education. At the age of nineteen years he was graduated, in 1859, from the Brobklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Insti- tute, and then entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N. Y., to fit himself for his chosen pro- fession. He was graduated in 1863 with the degree of civil engineer. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Engineers' Club of New York, Holland Society, Long Island Historical Society, Crescent Athletic Club and other organizations. He inherits the sterling character that made his father a man of mark, and is popular both in business and social circles. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 403 Anthony Weber. Brooklyn has an excellent representative of the higher class of her adopted citizens in Anthony Weber, who now holds the office of city auditor. He has been on more than one occasion entrusted with posts of political responsibility and, besides sitting as a delegate in the county convention which norninated Jerome Ryerson for sheriff, he has represented the fourth and ninth wards at the sessions of the Demo- cratic General Committee. Mr. Weber was born on November 18, 1834, at Weinheim, in the province of Rhenish Hesse. His father was burgomaster of his native town. In 1847 Anthony Weber came to the United States in company with his mother and en- gaged in the cracker and biscuit business. Mr. Weber was prominent among the members of the old volun- teer fire department. He afterwards became foreman and trustee of his company. He now belongs to nearly all the associations that perpetuate the memory of the old volunteer days and is also connected with numer- ous prominent German organizations. He is past master of Lessing Lodge, No. 608, F. & A. M., and is still affiliated with the Brooklyn Saengerbund, over whose affairs he presided for several years. In i860 he married Miss Mary Lambert, of Brooklyn. Deputy City Auditor William Duryea Cornell was appointed to his present position on January i, 1881. He is a veteran of the national guard of this state and for nine years faithfully fulfilled every duty that fell to his lot as a citizen soldier. In 1862 he joined the 47th Regiment, and in 1871 he resigned the captaincy of Company E. In 1863 he become a member of the masonic fraternity; he now belongs to Stella Lodge, No. 485, and to Aurora Grata Consistory. The paternal ancestry of Mr. Cornell is of Eng- lish extraction, while on his mother's side he inherits the blood of the Duryeas, who settled in the American colonies in 1640. He was born at Flushing, L. I., on August 4, 1841, and was a pupil at the Flushing Institute until he was fifteen years old, when he came to Brooklyn and engaged in the fire insurance busi- ness, which occupied his attention for the next twenty- five years. He married Miss Vandewater, of Hemp- stead, L. I. They have six children. Adding to the natural brilliancy of the Celtic temperament those refinements which only a liberal education and literary tastes can bestow, and bringing to every ofiScial duty the qualifications of methodical business habits and legal acumen, John C. McGuire, as registrar of arrears, is an exemplary servitor. As a public speaker Registrar McGuire is possessed of that polished earnestness of diction which marks the most impressive style of oratorical effort. When Charles Stewart Parnell was about to recross the Atlantic, after the expiration of his visit to America, Mr. McGuire was present at the national conference held with the great Home Ruler at the New York Hotel in February, 1880, and was one of the committee of six appointed to draft a plan and summon a convention to organize the Irish National Land League in this country. During a period of three years he was president of the Land League in this city, and was a notable and influential delegate to all the great national conventions of that organization. He was one of the projectors and an incorporator of the Catholic Benevolent Legion, which William D. CORNELL. was organized in Brooklyn in September, 1881. He 404 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. John C i1( (tUirk. has ever since been its su- preme president. Jolin C. McGuire was born in Ireland about forty years ago, in tlie village of Ruskey-on- Shannon, which nestles on the bank of the beautiful stream that separates the counties of Roscommon and Leitrim and continues its picturesque course between the boundaries of Con- naught and Munster, thence through the placid waters of Lough Ree and Lough Derg, until it widens to the sea below the city whose walls were so heroically de- fended by the immortal Sarsfield in the days when the waning star of the Stu- arts paled before the cres- cent splendor of the house of Orange-Nassau. Born of wealthy parents, he was prepared for college by private tuition and by attendance at a classical school in his native village. He entered the College of the Liimaculate Conception, at Athlone, at an early age, and before he was fourteen successfully passed the examination in Latin, Greek and French com- position and higher mathematics, which qualified him for admission to the Catholic University at Dublin. He subsequently studied for five years at St. Patrick's College, at IMaynooth. He came to Brooklyn in 1868 and practiced law here for twenty years. He is a life member of the pjrooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences and belongs to the Brooklyn, Montauk, Columbia and Crescent Athletic clubs of this city, the Catholic Club of New York, and the Marine and Field Club of Bath Beach. Thomas A. Wilson, president of the board of assessors, was appointed to that office in 1S86, having been previously connected with the department as an assessor for six years. He was for several years superintendent of the Brooklyn Arms Company, has been identified with several other manufacturing con- cerns and was at one time United States inspector of arms. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1835, and has resided in Brooklyn since 1850. City Treasurer Robert Black is well known in Brooklyn in connection with political affairs as an active and effective worker in the Democratic party ; he was elected alderman from the fourth ward in 1875 and served for seven years, filling the office of president of the board during the last two years of his ser- vice. When the local Democracy was reorganized he was chairman of the committee of one hundred and fifty which had the matter in charge. President Cleveland appointed him to the office of collector of internal revenue, which office he retained .,-,„.,„,„,,„ „,..,_ „„,.. .. ., until the Cleveland administration ended. Mr. Black has had the honor of an election to the office of grand commander of Knights Templars of '■ the state of New York and is one of the representative Freemasons of - - Brooklyn, being identified with both the York and Scottish rites. He is the oldest living charter member of Adytum Lodge, F. & A. M., and is a past master of that body ; he is a past high priest of Nassau Chapter, R. A. M.; a past commander of Clinton Commander)^, K. T.; a past dis- trict deputy grand master of Blue Lodge masonry of the state of New York, as well as past grand commander of Knights Templars ; and he is a member of all the Aurora Grata bodies. Robert Black is a native of Ireland and was born in 1831; his education was obtained at a private college in Enniskillen. He came to America in 184S and his home was in Troy until 1850, when he moved to New York city ; in 1853 he married Miss McMullen, a native of Ireland who came to America when she was five years old. The year after his marriage Mr. Black came to Brooklyn to live and established a drug store. Robert black. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 405 Thomas B. Rutan. ' Commissioner of Buildings Thomas B, Rutan was born in Newark, N. J., on February 10, 1S37. He removed to Broolclyn in 1845, wliere lie received his education at the public schools. He afterwards be- came a mason and builder and was doing a success- ful business when the war began and he joined the Union army. He enlisted for three years in Company A, 139th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers, in September, 1862, and participated in a number of important engagements. He was mustered out with his regi- ment, as sergeant, on June 19, 1865, and was finally discharged at Hart's Island on July i following. He returned to Brooklyn and resumed his former business, and some of the finest buildings in the city were con- structed under his supervision. He was appointed superintendent of construction of the Federal build- ing on April i, 1885, and served in that capacity until January, 1887, when he took up the duties of city auditor, having been chosen to that position at the preceding election ; he was reelected and served until January i, 1891, On June 18, 1892, he was appointed commissioner of buildings, in place of Joseph Piatt, deceased. Mr. Rutan is ex-president of the Mechan- ics' and Traders' Exchange, and ex-president of the Master Masons' Association of Kings County. He is past master of Cornerstone Lodge, No, 367, F. & A. M., of Brooklyn, and Constellation Chapter, R. A. M., and Clinton Commandery, No. 14, K. T. He is also a member of Enterprise Lodge, Knights of Honor, and of the Democratic General Committee of Kings County. He is ex-president of the 139th Regiment Veteran Association of New York Volunteers. He was elected commander of Rankin Post, No. 10, G, A. R., in 1884, after having been but eight months a mem- ber, and was chairman of the Memorial and Executive Committee, G. A. R., of Kings County in 1888, and also in 1890. He helped to organize Moses F. Odell Post in 18S8, was elected its first commander, and was reelected in 1889. He is also a member of the Constitution Club and Cceur de Lion Encampment, Knights of St. John and Malta. Alden S. Swan was appointed tax collector bv !Mayor Whitney, and was continued in that office during Mayor Chapin's two terms, and reappointed for the fourth time by Mayor Boody in 1892. Mr. Swan has been notably successful in politics as well as in business affairs, and holds undisputed leadership among the Democrats of the first ward. For several years he was a member and treasurer of the board of trustees of the New York and Brooklyn bridge. He is prominently identified with the Brooklyn, Hamilton and Crescent Athletic clubs, and is in every respect a public spirited and representative man. The application of strict business principles to the achievement of success in political life has no better exemplification than in the career of Water Registrar Edward J. O'Flyn. He has filled the position since 1886. Mr. O'Flyn's supervision of the office has been characterized by many changes that have brought about an economy of labor, and, while the business of the office has doubled, the clerical force has not been correspondingly increased. Through a system of management based upon sound business precepts the immense volume of business attendant upon the collection of the revenue derived from the city water rates is promptly and efficiently conducted by the limited force of eighteen clerks. The genial disposition and invariable courtesy of the chief influences every attache, and in no department of the city government is the public more thoughtfully treated when in search of information or in the transaction of business. Mr. O'Flyn was born in New York city on January 9, 1845. He began his studies in the metropolis and com- pleted them in Brooklyn, to which city his parents moved in 1857. At the age of fourteen he entered the employ of J. R. Jaffray & Co., the predecessors of the present firm of E. S. Jaffray & Sons. With this house he remained for seven years and during that time rose from the humblest position to one in which he had the entire charge of a department. In 1866 Mr. O'Flyn was tendered an appointment in the register's office under Register Hugh McLaughlin. He was assigned to the duty of copyist and subseciuently to that of a searcher of records. In 187 1 he was made map clerk in the office of the department of streets under Street Commissioner Robert Furey, where he remained until 1873, when the consolidation of that depart- ment with the department of city works was effected under an act of the legislature. He then retired from public service and engaged in the business of searcher of taxes, assessments and water rates, but was again Edward J. O'Flyn. called into official life by his appointment to his present position. Aside from the arduous duties that have occupied his attention, Mr. O'Flyn has been connected with many social organizations, and he looks back to exciting scenes when, with W. A. Fowler, Frederick S. Massey and Smith C. Bayliss, he helped pilot Pacific Engine, No. 14, of the volunteer fire department, from its house in Pierrepont street to many fires. He is also a member of the Constitution and Carlton clubs, and vice-president of the Parkway Driving Club of Brooklyn. In February, 1876, he married Mary L. Powers, daughter of George A. Powers, who is prominent in real estate circles and one of the oldest residents of Brooklyn. Henry I. Hayden, police commissioner of Brooklyn, was born in New Haven, Conn., on July 29, 1836. Before the war his father was chief of police of New Haven, and as clerk in his office Commissioner Hayden received his first training in police administration. He was also at one time a member of the New Haven fire department. When the war broke out Mr. Hayden was appointed an officer in the navy, and served during the entire conflict. During a large portion of his service he was with Admiral Farragut in the " Ports- mouth." He was at the capture of New Orleans, in which famous fight he distinguished himself. When peace was proclaimed. Captain Hayden resigned and came to live in Brooklyn. He soon joined the 7th Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y. In this organization he served twelve years, resigning from active service as captain of Company A, after holding all the positions from private up to that rank. In his history of the Seventh of New York, Colonel Emmons Clark says that Captain Hayden "served with distinction in the United States navy during the war, and, after his discharge, enlisted in the 7th Regiment. He served for twelve years in the various grades with great distinction, having, during the two years of his captaincy, secured a high position as an officer. He was a man of sterling worth and commanded the undivided respect of his comrades." Mr. Hayden retains his connection with the service through his membership in the Veteran and the War Veteran associations of the regiment. His first appointment as police commissioner of Brooklyn was made by Mayor Chapin on February i, 1890, and he was reappointed by Mayor Boody in 1892. Previous to this service Mr. Hayden had been a park commissioner. He is an active member of the Lincoln Club, of which he was at one time president. He is a member of Dewitt Council of the Royal Arcanum, a comrade of Noah L. Farnham Post, No. 458, G. A. R., of New York city, and Hiram Lodge No. I, F. & A. M., of New Haven, the oldest masonic lodge in the United States, also claim him as a brother. Amid all the public and other calls upon his time, Mr. Hayden manages to conduct a successful business as a sailmaker. Henry I. Havden. Although Francis L. Dallon, deputy commissioner of police, is a native of New York city, his entire business and official career has been within the limits of Brooklyn. He was born in the sixth ward of New York on July 29, 1832. He came to Brooklyn in 1850, and he entered upon the study of law in the office of Crooke & Campbell. He was admitted to the bar in July, 1855. In the spring of 1857 he was elected a justice of the peace for Kmgs County, an office which he occupied for two successive terms, and until his voluntary resignation. From 1861 until 1S63 he held a position in the sheriff's office under Anthony F. Campbell, and until 1865 served in a similar capacity during the shrievalty of John McNamee. In 1865 he resigned to accept the post of United States deputy marshal of the eastern district of New York, the office being established for the first time in March of that year, with Anthony F. Campbell as marshal. In 1867 Mr. Campbell resigned, and President Johnson, acting on the petition of many well-known residents of New York, Brooklyn and Kings County, gave the vacant office to Mr. Dallon, who occupied it until 1S71. In 1879 Mr. Dallon was invited by Sheriff Thomas M. Riley to take charge of the equity department in the latter's office. He accepted, and some time afterwards he also undertook the additional responsibilities of under-sheriff. When Mayor Low appointed Colonel John N. Partridge to the office of police and excise commissioner, Mr. Dallon was made his assistant. In 1884 Colonel Partridge appointed Mr. Dallon deputy police commissioner, and he held the position until the administration of commissioner James D. Bell, by whom he was retired in 1888; but on February i, 1890, when Henry I. Hayden became commissioner, he reappointed Mi. Dallon as deputy commissioner. Mr. Dallon has considerable musical talent and possesses a strong, rich voice. He has sung at various times in the choirs of well-known Catholic churches in Brooklyn. He is a member of the Hoadley Society, and of several fraternal and social organizations. He has been married twice ; first on November 2, 1857, and again on October 19, 1874, and has three sons living. John Schlieman, excise commissioner, is a native of Oldenburg, Prussia, and is forty-four years of age. He came to America when sixteen years of age, and began mercantile life in the grocery trade. In 1866 he began business on his own account at the corner of Grand and Myrtle avenues, later removing to his present location on Myrtle avenue. He is an active member of the Retail Grocers' Association and of Zeradatha Lodge, F. & A. M. He has been an excise commissioner seven years. He resides in the seventh ward, and is active in Democratic politics. Excise Commissioner John W. Cahill was appointed at tlie death of Commissioner John Cunningham 4o8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. in 1888. He never held an official position in Brooklyn prior to his present one, but was for a time in charge of a department in the New York public stores. He resides in the sixth ward. One of the youngest soldiers in the Union army during the civil war was Denis Short, who is secretary to the board of excise, and it is probable that he was actually the youngest Brooklynite who shouldered a musket in those days of strife. He was only twelve years old when he enlisted as a private in the 52d Regi- ment, N. Y. S. M., and went to the front. In 1864 he reenlisted in the 56th Regiment, when Lee invaded Pennsylvania. After the war he became interested in the movement for securing the independence of Ire- land, his native land, and studied military tactics under the tuition of General John O'Neil and Colonel J. W. Byron. Four years were passed in this way, and during the Feiiian invasion of Canada in 1870 he with eighty men held an English regiment at bay in the battle of Pigeon Hill, until the withdrawal of the Fenians. Mr, Short was born in 1852, and was brought to America when he was an infant. He studied at the public schools in Brooklyn, and also attended three business colleges. The earlier years of his business life were occupied in various ways, and for a long period he was foreman of repairs in the department of city works. From 1878 until 1882 he was chief clerk to Mayor Howell. On February i, 1888, Mayor Chapin appointed him to the office which he now holds. He is an earnest worker for the Democracy, and wields consider- able influence. In the Twenty-third Ward Democratic Association he is one of the most active members, and previous to becoming a resident of that ward he was for several years a delegate to the general commit- tee from the fourteenth v/ard. In 1879 he was a delegate to the state convention from the old seventh assembly district. He is a member of Mansfield Post, No. 35, G. A. R. The position of cashier to the department of excise has been held by William D. Lohmann during the last seven years. He has resided in Brooklyn since 1877, and is prominent in political, social and musical circles, being a member of the Bushwick Democratic Club, the Twenty-second Ward Democratic Associa- tion, the Masonic fraternity, the Knights of Honor, and president of the Brooklyn Saengerbund. He is also president of the Saengerbund of the northeastern states, and honorary president of the United Singers of Brooklyn. Mr. Lohmann was born in New York city on April 11, 1845, ^-nd received his education in the publfc schools there. Patrick Campbell, superintendent of the Brooklyn police, was born on January 12, 1827, in the city of Charleston, S. C. While he was still very young his parents came to Brooklyn. He attended the public schools and subsequently entered the printing office of the Eagle. He began work when young and from an humble beginning worked his way to the foreman's desk. His con- nection with the Eagle covered a period of twenty years, or until he left the printing business to assume a political office. President Pierce re- warded his loyalty to the Democratic party by appointing him to a cus- toms inspectorship. He remained in office under the administration of Buchanan, and also during a portion of Lincoln's first term. In 1866 he was elected on the Democratic ticket to the office of sheriff of Kings County. When, in 1870, the old system of the metropolitan police was abolished by legislative enactment, and the constitution of the Brook- lyn force as it now stands was provided for, Mr. Campbell was appointed chief of police. In 1873 the office of the chief was abolished by an act of the legislature, and on August 12, 1875, he was made superintendent of police and has retained the position until the present. In his management of the police force Mr. Campbell has evinced a strict regard for duty and a desire to enforce discipline at any cost. He was the first to suggest to the pub- lic the idea of leaving unoccupied houses in care of the police during the summer. By this method the operations of burglars and sneak thieves were considerably checked. He has kept a strict watch on every form of vice, and disorderly houses, gambling dens and policy shops find the official atmosphere of Brooklyn exceedingly uncongenial. During his career as a police official Superintendent Campbell has been chiefly instrumental in the detection and subsequent conviction of many famous criminals. Of these may be noted the arrest of Pesach N. Rubenstein, who murdered his cousin, Sara Alexander, in December, 1875 ; the arrest, in the succeeding year, of Andreas Fuchs, the slayer of AVilliam W. Sim- mons, and the extraordinary capture of Kate Stoddard, who murdered Charles Goodrich, Patrick H. McLaughun. John MacKellar. Patrick Campbell John Mackellar, senior inspector on the Brooklyn police force, is an official whose career has been marked by many valuable services rendered to the public. Somewhat reserved in demeanor, but possess- ing an acute understanding and an intuitive perception of the proper course of action to pursue under trying circumstances, Inspector Mackellar deservedly enjoys the confidence of his superiors and the respect of his subordinates. He was born in New York of Scottish parents, on May 4, 1S43. Within two years of his birth his father and mother moved to Brooklyn. Here he was educated, and here, as a young man, he joined the volunteer fire department. In July, 1863, he enlisted in the special force of armed police organ- ized to quell the famous draft riots, and during that week of bitter fighting with the mob he encountered much rough work and received numerous wounds from flying missiles. After this experience he was appointed to the Atlantic Dock squad, which was organized for the purpose of protecting the warehouse property along the water front of Brooklyn. In June, 1864, he was appointed patrolman of the metropoli- tan police force and assigned to duty in the forty-eighth, now the eighth, precinct. Half a year elapsed and he was promoted to the rank of acting sergeant. During 1871 and 1872 he was connected with the internal revenue department. In June, 1872, he received his captaincy, and six years later he was placed in com- mand of the tenth precinct, where he served five years. At the end of that time he was given the inspector's badge. Inspector Mackellar is not an active politician, and devotes his time solely to the duties of his office. When illness or any other cause incapacitates Superintendent Campbell, Inspector Mackellar becomes acting chief of police, and in this capacity he was brought into especial prominence during the excitement succeeding the murders of Lyman \\'eeks and Christian W. Luca. Inspector Mackellar married in 1868, and has two daughters, aged respectively fifteen and twelve. One of the most efficient police officers who ever donned a uniform is Inspector Patrick Henry McLaughlin. He was born in Ireland on August 8, 1842 ; came to Brooklyn in 1850, and was educated in the public schools of this city and Connecticut. He learned the trade of an iron moulder at the Brooklyn navy yard, and remained there until the beginning of the Civil war. 'Jlien he enlisted in the 173d N. Y. Volunteers and went forth to active service. He fought under Sheridan in the historic valley of the Shenan- doah, and it was for bravery displayed under the great northern cavalry commander that the young Brooklyn recruit received the shoulder straps of a first lieutenant. When peace was concluded, Lieutenant McLaugh- lin returned to Brooklyn, and was mustered out of the United States service on October 5, 1865. On January II, 1866, he was appoiiited to the metropolitan police and assigned to patrolman's duty in the fifth precinct, 4IO THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Three years after receiving the shield he was elevated to the rank of roundsman and, in a few weeks more, to that of sergeant. In July of the same year, 1869, Sergeant McLaughlin was transferred from the desk of the third sub-precinct, where he had been stationed since his relief from patrolman's duty, and assigned to the captaincy of the eighth precinct. In November following he was transferred to the ninth precinct, which he commanded until July, 1886, when he was appointed inspector. In that office he has served with distinction, his special branch of the executive work being the drilling of the force and the inspection of the uniforms. In politics Inspector McLaughlin is a Democrat. He has given much of his leisure time to athle- tics, and his chief diversion is rowing. He acquired a good record with the Seawanhaka and Varuna boat clubs, and he is still an active and prominent member of the latter organization. Inspector McLaughlin is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and he belongs to Moses F. Odell Post, No. 443. He was married in 1887 and has one child. From his childhood Inspector Edward Reilly has been a Brooklynite, although New York was the place of his birth, which event occurred on June 9, 1842. He was not quite nineteen years old when on May 9, 1861, he enlisted in Hawkins' Zouaves, which went to the seat of war in the south as Company G, 9th N. Y. Volunteers. His company v/as Burnside's body guard previous to and during the battle of Freder- icksburg. After this battle the regiment went to Suffolk, was mustered out and returned home, where it reorganized and Mr. Reilly was commissioned as second lieutenant. The regiment aided in suppressing the New York riots, and he resigned his commission a short time afterward. Mr. Reilly was appointed patrol- man on June 9, 1867. Three years later, on June 11, 1870, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant and during 187 1 and the two following years he was acting captain of the third sub-precinct, which was after- wards made the eleventh precinct. On September 4, 1875, Sergeant Reilly was promoted to a captaincy, and the eleventh precinct having previously been established he was placed in command of it. He was appointed to his present rank on July 7, 1886, and the special duty assigned to him is the command of the central office detective squad. Much of the important business transacted through the office of superintendent of police falls under the personal supervision of Clerk Frederick L. Jenkins. It is his pen that has prepared for the last twenty years and more the annual report of the Brooklyn police department. Frederick L. Jenkins, whose father, James Jenkins, was a prominent member of the Society of Friends, was born in the tenth ward of New York, on July 8, 1844. The family from which he is descended claims an honored and distinguished ancestry, of which the more noticeable members were Sir Lionel Jenkins and Judge Jenkins, who achieved considerable fame as a jurist. The mother of Frederick Jenkins was left a widow when he was three months old. When he was ten years old he began work, for which brief study in the public schools of New York had in some measure qualified him. The civil war attracted him from peaceful pursuits. He became a supercargo in the transport service of the Federal government and assisted in carrying the necessaries of war to Union forces operating along the southern coast. He was an officer on the schooner "Sam Colt," which was the first vessel to reach Richmond after peace had been re- stored. Mr. Jenkins moved to Brooklyn in 1866. On December 5, 1870, he was appointed clerk to Superin- tendent of Police Patrick Campbell, and has retained his post through all the changes in the management of the police department. In 1885 he assumed his present duties as treasurer of the newly organized Po- lice Mutual Aid Society and has become so thoroughly conversant with the work of the association that his advice has frequently been asked in modeling similar institutions in other cities. He was the first to suggest that the criminal census of the country be taken and General Walker, inspector of the tenth United States census, acted upon his advice. Subsequently he ap- pointed Mr. Jenkins census special agent for the indigent classes of Kings County. Mr. Jenkins is thoroughly versed in statistics and is an agreeable writer on subjects connected with his calling. The Eagle has published his articles on " Sociology," "Excise Statistics and Comparative Tables," "Our Moral Status," "Juvenile Crime " and " On a Juvenile Frederick l. Jenkins. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 411 Reformatory." His other contributions to various publications are: "An Introduction to Criminal Sta- tistics in the Tenth United States Census," " Statistics of Indigency in Kings County," " History of the Census," two articles on " Police and Criminal Statistics," and the statistics embodied by Prof. Colby in an essay entitled the " Disfranchisement of Crime," which was published in the Princeton Review. When the eleventh annual meeting of the national conference of charities and corrections was held in 1884, at St. Louis, Mr. Jenkins was appointed chairman of the committee on the police system and administration. He was the organizer and is now treasurer of the Model Building and Loan Association of Brooklyn. For twenty-three years he has been a prominent Mason and served during seven years as the chief officer of Stella Lodge, No. 485; he is secretary of the Brooklyn Masonic Veterans and a member of the Deming Literary Club. He married Miss Mary A. Cochrane. Holding office as superintendent of the telegraph system of the Brooklyn police department since March IT, 1884, Frank C. Mason has become one of the most popular officials in the employ of the city. At the age of eighteen he began to learn telegraphy, and soon became manager of the office at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.; afterwards he became successively superintend- ent of the Northern Mutual Telegraph Company and superintendent of the Long Island Telephone Com- pany, which has been merged in the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company. He remained in the employ of the latter corporation until called to his present duties. He has greatly improved the police signal box system, and has otherwise enhanced the usefulness of his department. Frank C. Mason was born at Washington Mills, Oneida County, N. Y., on October 14, 1854, and was educated in the public schools at Utica and in Whitestown Seminary, at Whitestown. He is a descendant of an old New Eng- land family, and related to the late Lowell Mason, of Boston, and to the late R. B. Mason, ex-mayor of Chi- cago. Mr. Mason is a member of Commonwealth Lodge, No. 409, F. & A. M., and of Aurora Grata Con- sistory, 32°, Scottish Rite ; he is senior warden of Aurora Grata Council, Princes of Jerusalem ; he be- longs to Kismet Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, and is a prominent member of Brooklyn Council, No. 72, Royal Arcanum. He is also a member of the Electric Club of New York. In 1876 Mr. Mason married Miss Medora Cole, of Sanquoit, Oneida County, N. Y. ; they have one son. Homer B. Mason, now fifteen years old. Captain James Campbell, commander of the first police precinct, was appointed a patrolman in the twenty-eighth precinct, under the old metropolitan system, on December 10, 1853, After several changes he was transferred to the forty-first precinct (now the first precinct, Brooklyn) in 1867. A year later he became a roundsman in what is now the eighth precinct, and in 1869 was promoted to the rank of sergeant and assigned to the fourth precinct. In 1873 hie was appointed captain of the tenth precinct, and finally, in 1879, he was assigned to his present command. Captain Campbell is now about fifty-four years of age. With a long stretch of water front within its limits, the second police precinct has always been one of the busiest in Brooklyn. The notorious "chain gang" that once terrorized the neighborhood long ago became nothing save a tradition, but the presence of squalid tenements, huge factories, big warehouses and a good sized Italian colony, combine to furnish ample occupation for the police. Captain John Washing- ton Eason is the man upon whom rests the responsibility of preserving the peace in this section of the city. He was born in New York on February 22, 1844. His parents, Stewart and Mary Eason, were natives of Ireland. In 1848 they left New York and brought their family to Brooklyn. Mr. Eason's education, which he acquired at public schools No. 8 and No. 13, was concluded in 1858, when he entered the drygoods business. He afterward found employment at the trade of a brass finisher, but abandoned his occupation when the civil war began. On April 18, 1861, he enlisted in the 14th Regiment, New York State Militia, and fought with bravery and distinction in almost every engagement in which the famous "Fighting Four- teenth " participated. He was wounded at the first battle of Bull Run, at Antietam, and again on the last of the three days of Gettysburg. He was made third corporal of Company G on July 8, 1861, and was at Frank C. Mason. John W. Eason. once appointed to the color guard. On April i, of the same year, after the earliest pitched battle of the war had been fought and lost by the t'ederal forces, he was promoted to the rank of first corporal. He was made a sergeant on January i, 1864, and was honorably discharged at the expiration of his term of service in June following, after sharing the vicissitudes of war with his regiment on every field of battle where it made an appearance, with the exception of the two days at Manassas. Within three weeks after his return from the front Sergeant Eason was assigned as a patrolman, under the old metropolitan police regime, to the fifty-first precinct, now the first precinct of Brooklyn. One June i, 1870, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant, and fifteen years later, on May 23, he received a captain's shield. His record, in the different grades of public service through which he has passed, has been unexceptionable and he has earned commen- dation on many occasions from his superiors and from the press. In manner Captain Eason is plain and straightforward, and he possesses a clear conception of official duties and an idea of discipline which he unflincliingly, though not unkindly, enforces. He is a member of Rankin Post, No. 10, G. A. R., which he joined in 1878. He served on the staff of State Commander Curtis in the same year, and belonged to the memorial commitLee of Kings County in 1887. On February 22, 1876, he married Mrs. Abbie Louise Stanley, of PJrooklyn. Patrick H. Le.-wey, captain of the third police precinct, was born in 1843. He was appointed a patrolman in the fourth precinct on May 7, 1866. On October 12, 1869, he became a roundsman in the third precinct, and was made a sergeant on June 17, 187 1. He was acting captain of the ninth " sub " (now the fourteenth) precinct in 1872, and the following year was transferred to the third precinct as sergeant, being promoted to the captaincy on November 13, 1876. The fourth police precinct comprises a stretch of city territory which embraces streets and wards that are among the most fashionable, and others that are among the most disreputable, in Brooklyn, and on more than one occasion have the residents testified to the appreciation in which the services of Captain \Vn,T.i,\ii J. McIvELVEY are held. Born at Providence, R. I., on March 12, 1843, William J. Mclvelvey when quite young was brought to New York by his parents. The boy had scarcely finished his education at the public schools and turned his hand to the machinist's trade, when the excitement of the Civil war kindled within him a desire to serve the Union. He joined the loth New York Volunteers, one of the Zouave re.giments, and went to the front in response to the call for "two years" men. He served gallantly with his re.giment and in the "Seven Days" fight was wounded and taken prisoner; but he eluded his CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 4>: William J. McKelvey. captors and regained the Union lines. In June, 1863, the regiment was mustered out of service and Mr. McKelvey returned home with the rank of sergeant. He at once began to organize a company to go to the front, but while his volunteers were awaiting equipments the draft riots broke out in New York and he and his men offered their aid toward the preser- vation of order. His good work on this occasion attracted the notice of Police Commissioner Thomas C. Acton, who appointed Mr. McKelvey to a post on the metropolitan police force. After rising to the rank of roundsman, and having served in several of the New York precincts, he resigned in September, 1870, and entered the oil business. In 1872 he returned to police work, this time in Brooklyn, where he served in the tenth precinct under an appointment from Commissioner Jourdan. In 1876 he was detailed as a telegraph operator at police headquarters. Five years later he was promoted to the post of drill captain, and in 1885 he took command of the fourth precinct. In 1887 the citizens of his pre- cinct presented him with a handsome chronometer, and on his forty- ninth birthday, March 13, 1892, a public dinner was tendered him at the Pouch mansion on Clinton avenue. This occasion was signalized by the presentation to the captain of a diamond badge. Captain McKelvey served eight years as a commissioned officer of the 13th Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y. He is prominent among the members of Grant Post, G. A. R., and formed one of the guard of honor that escorted the remains of the greatest of the Union commanders from the cottage at Mount McGregor to the vault at Riverside Park. He is also well known in masonic circles. He belongs to Commonwealth Lodge, Zerubbabel Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, Clinton Commandery of Knights Tem- plars and Kismet Temple of the Order of the Mystic Shrine. He has taken all the degrees in the Scot- tish Rites order, up to and including the thirty-second degree. In 1870 he married Miss Annie Burgess, of Providence, R. I. The commander of the fifth precinct. Captain Martin Short, was appointed to the police force on January ig, 1868. From October, 1870, until May, 1888, he served as a detective, being appointed to his present position in the last named year. He was born in Ireland on November 24, 1844. James Ennis was appointed captain of police in January, 1887, being at that time placed in command of the ninth precinct, from which he was subsequently transferred to the sixth. His first appearance on the force was made on August 8, 1870, as a patrolman in the sixth precinct. In November, 1875, he was made a detective. Captain Ennis was born on March i, 1847. The seventh precinct is under the command of Captain George R. Rhodes, who was born on February 3, 1825. He was appointed to the old metropolitan police force on December i, 1857, made a sergeant on January i of the following year, and on December 31, 1862, was promoted to the captaincy of the third precinct. On July 9, 1869, he was transferred to his present command. Thomas Murphy, captain of the eighth precinct, became a member of the police force on December 23, 1867, when he was appointed patrolman in the fourth precinct. In 1870 he was made a roundsman, was assigned to the detective force in 1873, and was promoted to a sergeantcy in 1878 and transferred to the twelfth precinct, later becoming captain of the eighth. He was born on July 9, 1844. John Brennan, commanding the ninth precinct, was appointed captain on July 15, 1885. He joined the force as a patrolman on November 18, 1862, being made a roundsman four years later, and a sergeant in 1867. The captain was born on November 10, 1834. Captain Francis A. Early, of the tenth precinct, was born on September 3, 1850. He was appointed patrolman in 1872, roundsman in 1883, and sergeant in 1884. On April 8, 1889, he was made a captain. Denis Drfscoll was appointed captain of the eleventh precinct on April 9, 1892. He was born on August 9, 1847. He became a member of the police force in January, 187 1, and subsequently passed through the various grades up to his present rank. The captain of the twelfth precinct, Edwin Dyer, was appointed to that post on April 9, 1892. On February 18, 1863, he joined the force as a patrolman, and was made sergeant on January 10, 1870. He was born on September 9, 1837. Stephen Martin commands the thirteenth police precinct. He was born in 1844. On January 20, 1868, he was appointed patrolman, was made sergeant on July 16, 1875, and attained to the rank of captain on May 18, 1888. Police Captain James Dunn was born on May 3, 1838, and has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn. He was appointed patrolman in the second precinct on August 23, 1866, and on June 11, 1870, was made ser- geant and transferred to the fourteenth precinct, then known as the ninth " sub." He became acting cap- tain in July, 1875, and shortly afterwards was given his present rank. 414 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The commander of the fifteenth precinct, Thomas L. Druhan, was appointed on the force October lo, 1S70. He was made a roundsman in August, 1S75, was assigned to detective duty in March of the follow- ing year, and shortly afterward rose to the captaincy of the thirteenth precinct, whence he was subse- quently transferred to his present command. Captain Druhan was born on May 18, 1844. During the war he served in the 69th N. Y. Volunteers and in the i6th N. Y. Heavy Artillery. John Ennis. Henry French, now captain of the si.xteenth precinct, joined the police force of Brooklyn on June 28, 1S76. His first service was rendered in New Lots, now the twenty-si.xth ward. When that territory was annexed to the city Mr. French was appointed acting captain and then captain of what was numbered as the seventeenth precinct. In 1S92 he was transferred to his present command. He was born on October 31, 1849. Hugh F. Gorman, captain of the seventeenth precinct, was born on September 24, 1849. He was appointed patrolman on December 7, 1870, nnnnlsman in 1879, sergeant in 1887, and captain on January 3, 1889. Captain James Kennev, of the eighteenth precinct, was born in Ireland on April 5, 1844. Prior to and during the civil war he held a position in the(jrdnance department on Governor's Island. He was appointed to the Atlantic Dock police squad on August 15, 1865. In June of the following year he became a member of the metropolitan police force. He was made sergeant in 1870, and captain on September i, 1887. The nineteenth precinct is commanded by Michael J. Campbell, who was appointed patrolman on September 13, 1872, was then transferred to the detective force, and promoted to his captaincy on October 27, 1888, He was born on January 30, 1837. Captain \Villiam H. Kitzer, of the twentieth precinct, was appointed to that position on November 9, 1S91. He joined the force as a patrolman on December 9, 1874, was promoted to roundsman February 9, 1S7S, and became sergeant on May 8, 1879. He was born on July 6, 1846. Sa.muel Hardy was appointed captain of the twenty-first precinct on April 9, 1892. He was born on October 10, 1842, and joined the police force when twenty-four years of age. On September 23, 1883, he was made a roundsman, and received a sergeant's shield on October 12, 1S85. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 4'S On June 29, 1892, Thomas Cullen was appointed to the captaincy of tlie twenty-second precinct. He joined tlie force on December 28, 1876 was made roundsman on June 7, 1881, and sergeant on July 16, 1882. Captain Cullen was born in Ireland on October 27, 1850. The central office squad of patrolmen is commanded by Sergeant James P. White, who has been serv- ing in the department since January, 1876, when he was appointed a patrolman. He was made a roundsman in 1884, and in 1887 was given his present command. Fire Commissioner John Ennis is a representative of that class of public men who have attained to positions of honor and responsibility through force of individual character and natural ability. He was born in the County Westmeath, Ireland, early on the morning of January i, 1838. As a lad he attended a private school near his home, but his subsequent education was acquired at night school and in the odd hours he could spare from the work by wdiich he gained a livelihood. While he was an infant his father came to America and was killed in a railroad accident some time after his arrival. The family remained in Ireland until 1850, when John Ennis, his mother, a sister and three brothers came to the United States. They settled in Brooklyn, locating in the fifteenth ward, where Mr. Ennis has resided ever since. The present fire commissioner began his business career in a rope-walk in the seventeenth ward. When sixteen years old he was bound apprentice to a manufacturer of ladies' fine shoes. He served out his term and then for eight years worked as a journeyman. He accumulated sufficient money to establish a shoe factory at the corner of Lorimer and Withers streets, where his business has grown to large proportions. Shortly after attaining his majority he began to take an interest in politics, but his active political career did not begin until about the time of the passage of what is known as the Chapin primary election bill. Mr. Ennis Vi'as an earnest worker in the reorganization of the Democratic party in Kings County, which fol- lowed the passage of the bill, and was prominent in the formation of the Fifteenth Ward Democratic Asso- ciation, of which he was the first and has been the only president. For several years past, too, he has been one of the' most active members of the Democratic General Committee. Mr. Ennis was appointed fire commissioner by Mayor Whitney on February i, 1886, Commissioner Richard H. Poillon's term of office expiring on that date. The best history of Mr. Ennis' career since that time is to be found in the condition of the fire department to-day and its records during his administration of its affairs. He has been quick to discern the necessary means for efficient service by his department and prompt to supply them by intelli- gent changes and improvements. He has increased and perfected the equipment and force of the depart- ment systematically and judiciously, and the erection of the handsome new fire headquarters building on Jay street was largely due to his efforts. About thirty years ago Mr. Ennis married Miss Elizabeth Gallagher, an Eastern District belle of that day. He has the respect and esteem of his men, who appreci- ate the strict discipline and just discrimination with which he conducts the department. Mr. Ennis gives close personal attention to the workings of the depart- ment and has not the time to devote to clubs or other organizations. His only memberships of the kind are in the David B. Hill Club of the fifteenth ward, and the Bushwick Loan and Building Association, of which he is a charter member. William D. Moore, deputy fire commissioner, was born in Ireland in 1844. While yet an infant he became an orphan, and was placed under the care of a guardian who, in 1850, brought hin; to the United States, and ultimately to Brooklyn. He was sent to the public schools and then to the Polytechnic Insti- tute, where he completed his studies. When fifteen years of age he began the study of law in the office of Philip S. Crooke, but at the outbreak of the war he enlisted in the 13th Regiment of Brooklyn, with which he served three months. He then served nine months in the 71st New York, after which he returned to Brooklyn, and was appointed shortly afterwards to the position of chief clerk in the United States marshal's office, under Anthony F. Campbell. Subsequently Mr. Campbell was appointed fire commissioner, and in 187 1 Mr. Moore accepted the position of bookkeeper in his office. He was advanced to the desk of the chief clerk and accountant, and in Februaiy, 1884, William d. Moore. 4i6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. received the appointment of deputy commissioner under Fire Commissioner Poillon. Tliis position he has held ever since. Deputy Commissioner Moore is one of the busiest of pubUc officials. He is familiar with the minutest details of the work of the department, and his duties in connection with them are varied and important. He is prominent in Grand Army circles, being a member of Ricard Post, No. 362, and he is also activelv connected with the Eleventh Ward Democratic Club, .yC^r^^^^ The only influence to which Chief Engineer Thomas' F. Nevins owes his position in the Brooklyn fire department has been that e.xerted by his own sturdy work. With the exception of the first year of its existence, he has been continuously the executive head of the paid fire department of Brooklyn. As an instance of his ability as applied to fires, it may be mentioned that but eight firemen have lost their lives while performing their duty, since the organization of the paid department. Thomas F. Nevins was born in Ireland in 1S43. It has been said that he was also born a fireman. He was brought to Brooklyn when yet a child, was educated at public school No. 13, and afterward learned steam engineering. When but eighteen years of age he joined the volunteer department, having been one of the organizers of Hope Hose Company No. 9, of which he was made foreman. Subsetjuentty this became Engine Company No. 9, he continuing foreman until the establishment of the paid department in 1869. Then he was appointed a dis- trict engineer and one year later he succeeded Chief Engineer Cunningham as the head of the department. He devoted himself to improving the discipline of the men and the effectiveness of the apparatus com- mitted to his charge. The effect was almost immediate, and the appi'eciation of his work, too, was prompt. The local newspapers, firemen's journals and public officials had words of warm praise for the chief. In 1873 he visited Europe and inspected the leading fire departments abroad. He came to the conclusion that to the construction of the buildings rather than to the efficiency of the fire service was due the comparative infrecjuency of serious conflagrations. He is a leading member of the National Association of Fire En- gineers, having been one of its original organizers in 1873 and its first treasurer. He was also chairman of the committee appointed to consider the adoption of a uniform size and pattern of hydrant and hose couplings to facilitate the work of engines when giving aid at fires in neighboring cities and towns. Chief Nevins is a working Democrat, but, except in 1875, when at the solicitation of his friends he was the CITY AND COUiNTY GOVERNMENT. 417 so narrow a candidate for sheriff, he never has sought office. On that occasion he was defeated, but by sc majority that a recount of the votes was necessary. Senior Assistant Chief Engineer James Dale, of the fire department, was connected with the New York department when, in 1S64, he was tendered the position of engineer of Pacific Engine Company No. 14, of Brooklyn. He took charge on January i, 1865. When the new department was organized, he was mlde foreman of No. 5, and in January, 1872, he was given the position of district engineer. He was promoted to his present post on August i, 1890. He is a native of South Amboy, N. J., and was born on June 11, 1841. Assistant Chief Engineer John H. Perry has been a fireman about forty years. He is a native of this city and was born in 1832. He was a member of the Williamsburgh fire department before consoUda- Niion. In 1864 he was elected fire commissioner, which office he resigned and became one of the bell-ringers. \Vhen the paid department of Williamsburgh was or- ganized, he was displaced. He received a new ap- pointment in 1882, and later was appointed district engineer. He was appointed second assistant chief engineer on February i, 1892. Inspector Canice C.\ssin was a volunteer fireman in Brooklyn from 1S62 until 1869, and has been con- nected with the present dei^artment since March 3, 1 386, when he was detaileil as secretary at head- quarters. He was made the first inspector of the uniformed force on October 4, 1S88, and ranks as a ilistrict engineer. His service in the department has been efficient. He has instituted desirable reforms in the matter of furnishing uniforms; and to his executive ability is added the qualities of a first-ckiss fire-fighter. He was born in County Kilkenny, Ire- land, on May 4, 1842, and was brought to x^merica by his widowed mother in 1850, coming to Brooklyn six months after his arrival. From 1868 until 1873 he was a kee|3er in the Kings County penitentiary. Prior to his appointment to the fire department he was in the sewing machine business with his brother. Fire Marshal Benjajiin Lewis was appointed to the position he now occupies under the mayoralty administration of James Howell. At that time the office was under the control of Commissioners Jourdan, Pyburn and Leach, who constituted the board to which the police system of the city was then subject. A vear later he was legislated out of office, but in 1885 reappointment came through the medium of Police Commissioner Carroll, Daniel Whitney being mayor at the time. An act was passed at Albany some three years ago by which a radical change was effected in the relations which the post of fire marshal sus- tained towards the civic government, and the office was transferred from the control of the police commis- sioner to that of the fire department. In 1891 and 1892 this law was amended in two important respects ; Mr. Lewis' salary was increased from f 2,500 to $3,500 per annum and his tenure of office was limited only by his life. Mr. Lewis has rendered efficient service to the public, and it was mainly through his instrumen- tality that Miller the perpetrator of the numerous incendiary fires in the lower part of the city, includ- ing the Sands street tenement fire in which three lives were lost, was arrested and convicted. Daring 1891 he secured ten convictions through the confessions of prisoners, and the convictions obtained during his term of office have been in excess of those which have occurred under the administration of all his prede- cessors. Mr. Lewis was born at Cardiff, Wales, on February 12, 1839. His father, who was a sea captain, died when Benjamin was twelve years old. The latter conceived the idea of making his own living in America, and he finally came to Brooklyn in June, 1853. He found employment with John Murray, who owned a stone-cutting yard in South Brooklyn, and attended evening school No. 6. At the conclusion of his apprenticeship he left Brooklyn and found employment in South Carolina. While there he was com- pelled, through the operation of certain local laws, to enlist in some military company, and he became a member of the "Carolina Blues" shortly before the secession movement culminated in open hostilities. In 1862 he visited California. When he returned from the west he received an appointment from the New York city government, and for si.\teen months he superintended the enrolhnent and drafting of soldiers in New York. Subseciuently he engaged in business at Coney Island, and became a holder of considerable Canice Cassin. property. Transferring his interests to Brooklyn he opened an insurance office on Montague street in 1867, and the business was continued until the summer of 1890, when it passed into the control of his successors, Benjamin Lewis' Son & Frear. Mr. Lewis built and, until its sale to Hyde & Behman, owned the Grand Opera House on Elm place. During the presidency of General Grant Mr. Lewis performed a remarkable ser- vice in the interest of Alfred Foster, a prominent Brooklynite, who had been convicted in the United States Court of some infringement of the internal revenue laws. Several influential men had sought executive clemency, but failed in their mission, and it was reserved for Mr. Lewis to impress upon the president, during a personal interview, that the convicted man had been held responsible for the carelessness of his workmen, and not for any dereliction of his own. Fire Marshal Lewis is well known among Brooklyn Masons, and was master of Delta Lodge for five years. During two terms he held the presidency of the Masonic Mutual Relief Association. He is a member of the Kings County Democratic and the Constitution clubs, and vice- president of the Long Island Throat and Lung Hospital. He married Miss Helena Day, whose mother was a granddaughter of one of Great Britain's most distinguished Indian viceroys. Mrs. Lewis has literary talent, and devotes the proceeds of her writing to charitable purposes. She has originated and established numerous one-cent coffee stands throughout the city for the benefit of the poor. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis have three children. To the affairs connected with the management of county finances and institutions the supervisor-at- large sustains the same relation as that borne by the mayor of Brooklyn to matters which peculiarly affect the municipality under his control. If he is true to the obligations which he assumes on taking his official oath, he can protect the taxpayers from the rapacity of those whose only aim is to enrich themselves at the expense of the public. Within the last few years Kings County has been peculiarly fortunate in the possession of supervisors-at-large who have been unhesitatingly conscientious in discharging their official obligations. In John A. Quintard, Paul H. Kretzschmar and George Kinkel the electors of this county have thrice successively reposed a confidence which has not been abused. The last of these, who now holds the office to which he was called by the popular voice in the autumn of 1891, has maintained an independ- ence which has been in marked contrast to the subserviency that has too often characterized men in official station. He has not been content on all occasions with the reports furnished by subordinates, but has made personal investigations and remedied abuses which had long been suspected as existent in the management of the county institutions. George Kinkel was born in the town of Hoechst, in the German province of CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 4") George Kinkel. Hessen-Nassau, in 1832. Until lie was fourteen years old he attended the public schools. Then he began to learn the trade of a butcher. At the age of twenty- two he came to New York, and a year later moved to Brooklyn, where he gradually rose to eminence in social and political circles. His ability and worth as a consistent Democrat were recognized in 1891, when he received the nomination for supervisor-at-large, and the choice of the party was afterward handsomely endorsed by the people. Mr. Kinkel has lent his in- fluence to further the success of many worthy enter- prises and some of the most important financial, social and military organizations of this city have profited by the advantages arising from his identification with their projects. For more than thirty years Edward ?,. Cadley has held the position of clerk to the board of super- visors, and through all the changes which in that time have varied the political complexion of the county legislature he has retained the confidence of those in power. Mr. Cadley abandoned business, though per- fectly solvent, during the great panic of 1S57 and ac- cepted an appointment as a clerk in the court of one of the district justices. He afterwards served three years as assistant to William G. Bishop, city clerk. It was while occupying this latter position that Mr. Cadley was elected to represent the fifth ward in the board of supervisors. He held his seat for one year and vacated it on May i, i860. Twelve months later he received his present appointment. In his official capacity Mr. Cadley is called upon to perform labors that are at once varied and arduous, and his unusual efficiency has made him personally popular even with those members of the board of supervisors who differ with him politically. It is his duty to prepare voluminous reports, which necessitate a thorough acquaintance with legal terms and technicalities. He takes particular interest in apportioning the city and county taxes and is considered a most expert and reliable accountant. Edward B. Cadley was born in the second ward of Brooklyn on December 23, 1832. His father was Henry Cadley, a man whose sterling worth and high moral character were recognized and appreciated by all acquaintances; he was one of the first to fall a victim to the ravages of cholera in 1849. Clerk Cadley's mother lived to attain a very old age. Edward B. Cadley was educated at old public school No. 7 and was graduated there when sixteen years old. He embarked in business while still a youth and served some time learning the trade of a gas fitter. He is domestic in his tastes and lives with his six children in a comfortable residence on St. Felix street. He has been a widower for some time. He is an amateur musician of marked talent. An important office connected with the county government is that of secretary to the supervisor-at- large. Since 1886 Willia.m L. Howard has filled the place and his repeated reappointment is the best proof of the ability he has brought to the discharge of his duties. He was born in this city in 1852 and is the son of William Howard, president of the Howard & Fuller Brewing Company. William L. Howard received his education at a military academy in Stamford, Conn., after which he embarked in the grain commission business, and was for ten years a member of the New York Produce Exchange. Subsequently he became active in Brooklyn politics and attained to considerable influence in the twenty-third ward. He is a member of the Royal Arcanum, the Home Circle, the Society of Chosen Friends and the Knights of Honor, and is generally interested in public and social affairs. John Cottier, county clerk, was born on the Isle of Man in 1843, and was brought to the United States when four years of age. His parents settled in Brooklyn in 1849 and he received his education in the Brooklyn public schools. Subsequently he entered the retail drygoods house of Journeay & Burnham, continuing there in various capacities for twenty-eight years. He afterwards engaged in an importing business, with which he was actively identified until chosen to his present office, on January i, 1S92. Prior to his election as county clerk Mr. Cottier was prominently identified with the educational interests of Brooklyn He served for six years as a member of the board of education, during five of which he was chairman of the committee on teachers, and he has been vice-president of the hoaril and a member of the finance committee for eveniii"- schools and various other committees. He has alwavs been a Democrat in John Cottier. politics and has been president of the- Eighteenth Ward Democratic Association since 1876 and for years a member of the executive committee of the Democratic General Committee. For ten years he has been a member, also, of the Democratic state committee, and for fourteen years has been a delegate to the Demo- cratic state convention. Mr. Cottier is an enthusiastic yachtsman and owner of the sloop yacht Alice. He is a member and vice-commodore of the Brooklyn Yacht Club and is also prominently identified with the National, Crescent and Long Island Athletic clubs, the New Utrecht Club and the Bushwick Democratic Club. His wife was formerly Miss Alice Haugh. Thomas J. Kenna, register of the county of Kings, has the distinction of having been elected by a larger majority than that of any other successful candidate for the office. A man of shrewd political judgment, a convincing and ready public speaker, affable in demeanor, with a record that lies beyond the reach of calumny, and possessing qualities that distinguish those who are leaders among men, Register Kenna's popularity is unconfined by the bounds of party or any line of caste. His father was born in Ireland, near Dublin, and emigrating to the United States in 1835, settled near Bordentown, N. J. Eventu- ally he came to New York and worked there as a ship builder. His wife, whom he married in this country, was of English birth and good parentage. Their son, Thomas J., was born in New York on September 13, 1844, and when he was nine years old his parents moved to Williamsburgh. He was educated at private and public schools, until the time came for him to begin work, which he did as a tally-boy and slate picker in the yards of the old Pennsylvania Coal Company. He was so employed during the larger portion of the next eleven years, but there occurred intervals when he assisted his father in the ship yards. In 1865 he returned to the employ of the coal company as a day laborer. He was placed in the engineering depart- ment and familiarized himself with the details of machinery to such a degree that he was enabled in a short time to pass a creditable e.Kamination and to qualify for the post of chief engineer, which he obtained in 1867. In 1870 the Pennsylvania Coal Company lost his services owing to his acceptance of a clerkship in the department of excise. Within the space of eighteen months he was made secretary and chief clerk, and held that position until its abolition in 1873. That year saw him a successful independent candidate for alderman and supervisor of the fourteenth ward, but two years later, having received a renomination, he was defeated at the polls. In July, 1876, he was appointed to a bookkeeper's position in the police department, but resigned in the succeeding autumn to again enter the arena of civic politics as an aldermanic candidate, and this time he was elected. Having studied law at intervals in the events of 422 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. his busy career, he eventually connected himself, in 1878, with the law firm of Barrett & Patterson. Four years later he was admitted to the bar. He was elected to a civil justiceship in 1879, and for some time afterwards was associated in legal practice with Charles J. Patterson. In 1884 he was appointed police justice and succeeded Frederick S. Massey on the bench of the second district court. He was reappointed in 1888 and served until he was unanimously demanded by the Democratic party as its candidate for register, in the fall of 1891. Register Kenna is a member of the Brooklyn, the Crescent Athletic, the Constitution, the Original Fourteen, the Thomas A. Hendricks, the Young Men's ])emocratic, the Bushwick Democratic, the Braden Tally-Ho, and the Connolly Court Club, and also belongs to the Arion Society and the Fred- erick Gluck Quartette, He is prominent in the councils of the Thomas Jefferson Association, and from 1875 until 1882 he repiesented the fourteenth ward in the Democratic General Committee, being one of those who compassed the reorganization of that body. He was vice-president of the reconstructed com- mittee in the election of 1882 and has held the post ever since. During the last twenty years he has attended nearly all the state and national conventions of his party, and has gained the respect and confi- dence of prominent men with whom circumstances associated him on such occasions. He is married and has one child, a daughter. Daniel Ryan. Daniel Ryan has risen to prominence steadily and surely ; his career has been one of constant pro- gress. He was born about forty-two years ago in South Brooklyn, and is now a Democratic party leader in the eighth ward. Long ago he took his place in the front rank of Brooklyn builders, many of the most notable structures in the city having been erected under his supervision. Daniel Ryan had scarcely reached his tenth year when he began to earn his own living. When twenty years old he was enabled to begm busmess for himself, and he had secured a material status in the community before he turned his attention toward politics. He had been active in the Democratic party for some time when, in 1876, he was persuaded to run for supervisor of the eighth ward. The outcome of the contest demonstrated his strength, and thenceforth he became the controlling element in the local affairs of the district. Two years later he was reelected supervisor. At the conclusion of his second term as supervisor he was appointed to his present post as county superintendent of construction. Mr. Ryan has the esteem of both political and social acquaintances, in evidence of which he possesses several valuable testimonial gifts. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 423 Joseph Alphonsus Kene, M. D., coroner of the Western District, received the regular Deniocratic nomination to that office in the fail of 1892, and was elected by the enormous plurality of 29,000 votes. Dr. Kene was born in New Rochelle, N. Y., on July 4, 1857, and at the age of twelve was sent to St. James' (German) School at Baltimore. After the lapse of several years he entered Villanova College, in Dela- ware County, Pa., where he spent four years as a stu- dent in the classical course. He then passed three years in the University Medical College of New York, and was graduated there in February, 1878, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He received an ap- pointment as assistant physician in the Kings County insane asylum, and remained there until he began ■ practice as a private physician in Brooklyn. In 1879 he was appointed assistant physician on the staff of the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, and in 1883 he became associate visiting physician at St. Mary's Hos- pital. He held this latter post for several years, but resigned on becoming attending physician at St. Peter's Hospital. Dr. Kene belongs to most of the local medical societies, and is well known in the social life of the city, being prominent in the Columbia, Juanita and Constitution clubs. He is a director of the Emerald Association and the Orphan Asylum Society, and is vice-president of St. Patrick's Society. In November, 1891, Dr. Kene married Miss Mary Cecile Daly, daughter of Daniel Daly, a retired merchant of Brooklyn. Joseph M. Creamer, M. D., coroner of the Eastern District, is a son of the late Dr. Joseph Creamer, who came from Halifax, N. S., and settled in Williamsburgh in 1850 ; he became noted as a surgeon ; was the first police surgeon appointed in the city ; served as autopsy surgeon to the Eastern District coroner for a number of years, and was for many years county physician. Coroner Creamer's grandfather, Alexander Tuttle, was the first tax gatherer in the village of Williamsburgh, and his (Tuttle's) mother was a Miss Burr, and first cousin to Aaron Burr. Coroner Creamer was born in South Second street, in the thirteenth ward, in 1852. He received early education at the Niagara Falls Seminary, but graduated from the medi- cal department of the University of New York in 1872. As he was not yet of age his diploma was withheld until the following year, when he began practice. He has lived in the fourteenth ward for ten years past. For many years he has been active in political affairs. Prior to his election he served six years as physician coroner to George H. Lindsay, whom he succeeded in office. Dr. Creamer was nominated for the office of coroner by the Democratic county convention held in October, 1892, and was elected for a term of three years. Frederick Keller, auditor of Kings County, be- gan to take an active interest in politics as soon as he reached his majority, at which time he joined the Twenty-first Ward Democratic Association, and two years later, in 1884, he was elected secretary of that Joseph M. Creamer m, d, body. In 1885 he received the party nomination for 424 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Frederick Keller. supervisor for the twenty-first ward, and tlie nomina- tion was ratified at the polls. His renomination in 1887 was followed by his reelection and the expression of that popular approval which an increased majority indicates. His first nomination for county auditor was in 1889, and not only was he elected but the vote cast for him was the largest received by any candidate for any county office at that election. He is a popular oificial and in the discharge of his duties displays a faithfulness that wins general confidence. A number of local societies include Mr. Keller in their member- ship, these being the Arion Society, Frederick Gluck Quartette Club, Atlas Council of American Legion of Honor, Court Gorringe of the Ancient Order of For- esters, Bushwick Democratic Club, Constitution Club, Young Men's Democratic Club of the twenty-first ward, Horatio Seymour Club, of the same ward, and the Twenty-first Ward Democratic Benevolent Association. He is also a member of the Democratic General Com- mittee from the twenty-first ward. Mr. Keller was born in New York city on April 27, 1857, and came to Brook- lyn with his parents in 1861. After acquiring his edu- cation at grammar school No. 18, on Maujer street, he was apprenticed to an engraver at the age of fourteen years, and became a thorough workman in that trade. He is married and has two sons and a daughter. The president of the board of commissioners of the department of charities and corrections, Colonel B. Frank Gott, is the son of Benjamin G. Gott and Eliza Holmes Gott, and was born in Newark, N. J., in 1834. He was educated at Professor Rand's private school, in New York city, and subsequently embarked in the jewelry business. At the opening of the war Colonel Gott responded to the first call for volunteers. He accepted the position of captain in the 5 7th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers, and served in it with the army of the Potomac under McClellan until the close of the peninsula campaign. He resigned to accept the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 174th New York regiment, which was ordered to form part of the 19th Army ' ' Corps under General Banks. Resigning from the army in 1864, Colonel Gott engaged in commercial pursuits in New York city, retiring from business in 1880. He was appointed to the board of charities and correc- tions in 1886 and reappointed in 1891. He has been president of the board since i8go. He is a member of the Constitution Club of Brooklyn, Mansfield Post, No. 35, G. A. R., the Military Order of the Loyal Le- gion, the Jackson Club, the Knights of Honor and the Society of the Army of the Potomac. He is also a member of the 19th Army Corps Association and of the Association of Surviving Members of the 57th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers. He married, in 1862, Julia D. Sharp, of Brooklyn. Francis Nolan, commissioner of charities and corrections, has for years been an important factor in the political councils of the fourteenth ward, where he is recognized as a leader of the Democratic forces. He was born in Ireland in 1835. Three years later his parents emigrated to America and settled in the first ward of New York, where they lived until 1846. In that year they removed to the portion of Williams- burgh now known as the fourteenth ward of Brook- lyn, where Mr. Nolan has resided ever since. After acquiring a good education at the public schools, Francis Nolan, CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 4-'5 Francis Nolan began the active business of life as an employee in Affleck's cooperage. Eventually he became foreman cooper at the the Oleophene oil works, where he served until 1868, when political honors were conferred upon him. He was one of the organizers of Coopers' Union No. i, and served four years as its president. Mr. Nolan early displayed great interest in public affairs and, identifying himself with the Democratic party, became one of its most active champions in the fourteenth ward. In 1868 he was called upon by the residents of the ward to represent them in the board of aldermen, and he was reelected in 1870, and again in 1872. Before the expiration of his term as alderman, in 1874, he was tendered the Democratic nomination for coroner, which he accepted and was elected. After three years of service he was reelected. Upon the expiration of his term of office in December, 1880, he turned his attention to business pursuits, but continued his active interest in matters of public concern. He held no public office between 1880 and 1890, although he was a member of the Democratic State Committee. In 1890 he was appointed commissioner of charities and corrections for a term of five years. He is married and has several children. The only one of the three commissioners of charities and corrections whose indulgence in literary pur- suits has ever led him into an editorial chair is Commissioner George H. Murphy, the treasurer of the board, who was one of the founders and for some time one of the editors of the Mystic (Conn.) Pioneer, the first weekly newspaper published in his native town. He has never wholly abandoned his early interest in literary affairs, and has been for many years identified with the Franklin Literary Society, of which he yet remains an active member. Commissioner Murphy is of New England st(.ick, and was born in Mystic, Conn., on December 30, 1833. His father and grand- father were natives of the same place, and his ances- tors have resided in that vicinity for over two hundred years. He received a common school education and at the age of sixteen began to earn his living. At the opening of the civil war he was a member of a ma- chinery manufacturing company in Mystic, doing a large southern business. All its facilities were imme- diately turned to government work, but in 1864, un- able to stand up under its southern losses, it was forced into liquidation. Mr. Murphy came to New York on New Year's day, 1865, and since then has been in commercial and manufacturing business. In 1868 he moved his family to Brooklyn. He identified himself with politics on the Democratic side, and be- came a member of the Jefferson Hall committee. He resigned his membership in the Young Men's Demo- cratic Club when he accepted his present office, to which he was appointed in 1889. Since January i, GEORGE H. MURPHY. ^g^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^ member of the Democratic Gen- eral Committee, and has been a member of the Third Ward Democratic Association since i88i. Mr. Murphy married in 1857 j\Iiss Jane E. Bridgham, of Mystic. Bernard Lamb, secretary to the commissioners of charities and corrections, is to be numbered among the more successful members of the young Democracy of Kings County. He has been a resident of the seventeenth ward for over thirty years and is prominent as a political leader in that section of the city. He was selected supervisor in 1885 and reelected in 18S7, continuing in that position until 1889, when he was appointed to his present office. Mr. Lamb is president of the Seventeenth Ward Democratic Association, is a member of the Democratic General Committee, and is identified with several other political and social organizations. He was born in Rochester, N. Y., in 1858, and after receiving a liberal schooling, began his business life, which has proved as successful as has his political career. As secretary to the board of chari- ties his repeated reappointments constitute the best proof of his efficiency. William A. Furey, who has held the office of commissioner of jurors since 1880, has been prominently identified with local aft'airs for many years. He was a contemporary of ex-Register Hugh jNIcLaughlin and ex-Senator Jacob Worth in government employ at the navy yard, and he ran with Engine No. 7 of the volunteer fire department, of whose veteran association he is now a member. He was an active member of the committee of one hundred appointed in connection with the reorganization of the Democratic party in 426 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Kings County in 1883, and in tliat year he was elected secretary of the general committee, a position he has held continuously ever since. He was also elected president of the Kings County Democratic Club when it was organized on the occasion of Grover Cleveland's first election to the presidency of the United States. Mr. Furey was born in Brooklyn and resides in the ninth ward. Henry H. Adams. Henry H. Adams has been chosen to the office of treasurer of Kings County at four successive elec- tions and had previously served a term of three years as highway commissioner. To the discharge of his official duties he has always given a conscientious attention that, together with his known business ability, has inspired the confidence of the people in his thorough fitness to be entrusted with the duty of caring for important public interests. He is a practical man of affairs and is successfully engaged, outside of his pub- lic position, in the management of two coal yards and a saw and planing mill. Mr. Adams has lived in the twenty-sixth ward for twenty years, having come to Brooklyn with his mother in 1857 when he was twelve years old. The family settled in the old Bedford district and Mr. Adams has lived in that vicinity ever since. He was born in Londonderry, Ireland, on October 23, 1845. His parents came to America in 1847 and settled in Buffalo, N. Y., where he attended the public schools. After coming to Brooklyn he con- tinued his studies until he was thirteen years old and then began to work for his living. He is president of the Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach Railroad Company and is a director of the Citizens' Gas Company, the Hamilton Trust Company and the Long Island Safe Deposit Company. There is a variety of elements in the character of Mr. Adams that makes him popular in the several circles wherein he moves. He is agree- able in society and takes an active interest in social organizations. He is a member of the Brooklyn, Oxford, Crescent Athletic, Bushwick Democratic, Glenmore and Fountain Gun clubs, and is identified as well with the Prospect Gun Club of Freeport, L. I., and the Accomac Club, of Accomac, Va. Hunting and fishing are his favorite sports, and his liking for these explains his membership in out-of-town clubs. James W. Ridgway, who has been district attorney of Kings County since January i, 1883, was born at North Branch, Somerset County, New Jersey, on September 6, 1851, but since his early infancy has lived in this city, his home having been always in the seventh ward. He attended the local public schools and James W. Ridgway. 428 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the Moravian school in Nazareth, Penn., after which he studied law in the office of his father, Joseph S. Ridgway. In September, 1872, young Ridgway was admitted to the bar and soon attained prominence as a criminal lawyer, appearing as counsel for the defence in nearly every capital case for several years previous to his election as district attorney. During that time he had a clear record of acquittals, never losing a case. Mr. Ridgway has been active in politics since arriving at his majority. He has been a member of the Democratic State Committee since 1883, has been identified with the Democratic General Committee of Kings County since 1877, was a delegate to the national conventions of 1884, 1888 and 1892, and has been a political speaker for the national and various state committees. His social proclivities find scope in numerous club memberships, which include the Brooklyn, Oxford, Lincoln, Crescent Athletic and Sayville Yacht clubs. He is also a member of Long Island Council, Royal Arcanum, and of the Brooklyn Bar Association. He is a member of the firm of J. W. & C. W. Ridgway, his brother, the junior member, being also assistant corporation counsel of New York city. John U. Shorter, first assistant district attorney of Kings County, has held that office since 1883. He had previously attained to prominence as a member of the bar, and as a public officer has since made an enviable reputation. He was born in Russell County, Ala., on January 9, 1844, and is of distinguished southern lineage. His grandfather was the late Judge Eli S. Shorter, of Georgia. At the outbreak of the civil war John U. Shorter joined the army of Virginia, serving later in an Alabama regiment. He was taken prisoner at the battle of Baker's Creek, and removed to the prison for officers at Sandusky, O., where he passed a long confinement in study. After the war had ended he taught school at Bainbridge, Ga., while pursuing his law studies, and later he read law in the office of Governor Shorter, at Eufaula, Ala., where he was admitted to the bar. He removed to Brooklyn in 1870. As second assistant district attorney, John F. Clarke has succeeded in winning a reputation as a shrewd, clever and eloquent member of the legal profession. He was born in the city of New York in the month of February, 1859, but his parents settled, when he was quite young, in the Eastern District of Brooklyn. There at a private school he received his early education, subsequently attending a public school. He afterward entered St. Lawrence College, Montreal, Canada, and was graduated at that institution. Returning home, he began the study of law in the office of General Roger A. Pryor. At the same time he attended the law school of Columbia College, and being graduated when twenty-one years of age, was at once admitted to the bar. In company with Roger A. Pryor, Jr., he began the practice of law in Brooklyn. When James W. Ridgway was elected district attorney he appointed Mr. Clarke his third assistant. Upon the retirement of Almet F. Jenks to fill the office of corporation counsel, Mr. Clarke was advanced to the position of second assistant. Mr. Clarke is a member of the Brooklyn and Seawanhaka boat clubs, the Royal Arcanum, Legion of Honor, Tilden Club, Sixteenth Ward Democratic Association and several minor organizations. Patrick E. Callahan has held the position of third assistant district attorney since May 9, 1891. He has become popular as a political speaker, too, and has " stumped " the county for the Democracy dur- ing several campaigns. Mr. Callahan was born in the seventh ward of this city in 1862, and that section of the city has since continued to be his place of residence. He was educated at the public schools, St. Patrick's Academy and St. John's College, having been graduated from the last named institution in 1880 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which was supplemented two years later with the degree of Master of Arts. In 1883 he was graduated from the Columbia Law School and admitted to the bar at Poughkeepsie in May of the same year. Mr. Callahan has been a member of the Democratic General Com- mittee from the seventh ward for years, and is now vice-president of the Andrew Jackson Club, of that ward. He is president of St. John's College Alumni Association, and is a member of the Columbian Club, the Connolly Court Club, St. Patrick's Society and other organizations. John Maguire, fourth assistant district attorney, is a lawyer for whom a roseate future has often been predicted. He has erudition, practical judgment, decison, and is gifted with a power of eloquence which has earned him the sobriquet of "Young Demosthenes." He was born on March 31, 1862, and was gradu- ated at St. John's College in 1881. He studied law in a New York office, was graduated at Columbia Col- lege Law School in 1883 and admitted to the bar in the same year. He was appointed assistant district attorney in February, 1885. He is a member of the Constitution, the Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Democratic and the Jefferson club of the twenty-sixth ward. Arthur H. Walkley, chief clerk in the district attorney's office, was born in New York city on Christ- mas day, 1849. In 1862 his family moved to Brooklyn and shortly afterwards he entered Adelphi Academy. Later he completed his studies in New Milford, Conn. Returning to this city, Mr. Walkley began his busi- ness career, and on January i, 1872, was appointed assistant clerk by District Attorney Winchester Britton. On the removal of the latter from office by Governor Dix, in 1874, Mr. Walkley was continued in office by District Attorney Thomas H. Rodman. When he resigned, later in the same year, John Winslow, his suc- cessor, removed Mr. Walkley, but on the reelection of Winchester Britton in 1876, he again selected Mr. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 429 Walkley for the position of assistant clerk. Mr. Walkley subsequently succeeded Levi Faron, who died in 1877, as chief clerk and remained in that position until retired by General Isaac S. Catlin on January i, 1878. When James W. Ridgway first took office as district attorney on January i, 1884, Mr. Walkley was made chief clerk and has ever since held that position. He is a member of numerous associations, includ- ing the Algonquin Club, the Prospect Gun Club, the Union Democratic Club, Kings County Democratic Club, the Royal Arcanum and the Order of United Friends. John Courtney, who was elected sheriff of Kings County in 1890, is a native of Brooklyn. After attending the public schools he learned the printing trade and subsequently was employed on the New York Independent and the Brooklyn Eagle. During this period he devoted his spare time to the study of law and in 1866 was appointed administrative clerk under Surrogate Veeder. In 1877 he became clerk to Police Justice Riley, but was removed by Justice Fisher. In 1879 he ran against the latter and defeated him for the office of civil justice, which he continued to hold until his election to the shrievalty. He was a member of Washington Hose Company No. 6, of the old fire department, and is president of the Volun- teer Firemen's Association and of the board of trustees of the widows and orphans' fund of that organiza- tion. He is also a director of the Firemen's Home at Hudson, N. Y. Mr. Courtney has always retained his membership in Typographical Union No. 98, is a member of the Catholic Benevolent Legion, the Varuna Boat Club, the Constitution Club, and of St. Patrick's Society. He is a member of the Democratic General Committee and also president of the Twen- tieth Ward Democratic Association. William B. Davenport, public administrator of Kings County, is a descendant of John Davenport, founder of the New Haven Colony, of Connecticut, and for many years pastor of its first church. Mr. Davenport's mother was descended from Joris Van Alst, who settled in 1636 at Flushing Bay, Long Island. Mr. Davenport was born in the city of New York, on March 10, 1847. In the succeeding year his father came to Brooklyn, where the son has since resided and where he was prepared for college at the Polytechnic Institute. He was a member of the class of 1867 in Yale College. In 1887 that university conferred upon him the honorary degree of Master of Arts. Mr. Davenport has retained a strong affection for the insti- tution where his education was completed and is one of the most active members of the Yale Alumni Asso- ciation of Brooklyn, of which he was one of the or- ganizers. Upon leaving college he was appointed register, and afterwards cashier, of the New York Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, a line of work which he abandoned for the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1870. Mr. Davenport's pro- fessional attention has been given principally to real estate law, and to practice in the surrogate's court. He is an ardent and active advocate of the political principles of the Democratic party. On February 20, 1889, he was appointed public administrator, an office the duties of which in no way interfere with his private practice. He is a member of the Brooklyn, Crescent Athletic and Hamilton clubs of this city, and the Manhattan Club of New York. On September 9, 1874, he married Miss Charlotte C. Shepherd, of Philadelphia. UNITED STATES INTERESTS IN BROOKLYN. The magnificent Federal building, fronting on Washington, Johnson and Adams streets, is the outcome of a bitter controversy that had its inception as far back as 1868 ; that continued and grew in intensity for nearly sixteen years, and interested a large number of the citizens of Brooklyn, many of whom were active participants in the quarrel. The trouble all grew out of the choice of a site, a number of which were suggested when Secretary Folger sought a location for a United States building in this city. Among those offered was the old Dutch Church property, on Joralemon street; the corner of Fulton and Flatbush avenues. 430 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the corner of Myrtle avenue and Washington street, and the site upon which the Federal building now stands. That the latter was selected is due to the pertinacity, shrewd management and delicate manipu- lation of a prominent real estate dealer, and the keen business sense of one of Brooklyn's leading merchants, which induced him to promptly furnish the financial aid necessary to the purchase of the land to be trans- ferred to the government. Secretary Folger had power to pay $450,000 for a site. The merchant bought the Washington street property agreeing to turn it over to the government through the real estate dealer at that price. But the land cost the merchant more than he was to receive, owing to the fact that his pur- pose leaked out before all the lots had been purchased, and the government finally acquired the site as now occupied for $408,500, which was $55,000 less than it had cost the merchant who secured it. It had required fourteen days' hard talking for the real estate man to finally induce Secretary Folger to select the Washington street property, and it took four or five months for him to fight down the charges of collusion and fraud that were made by those whose sites had been rejected. There had been one or two sites offered, especially one at the corner of Boerum place and Fulton street, that were regarded by Secretary Folger as being more desirable than the present Washington street location, but the prices asked for them amounted to more than the secretary could pay under the appropriation and have sufficient money remaining for building purposes. The Washington street site was regarded as the best to be obtained for the money available, but its purchase raised a hue and cry and corruption was freely charged. The result of a con- gressional investigation was the exoneration of all parties to the purchase, and showed that it had been an honorable and legitimate business transaction. Building operations were begun in 1884, and the structure was occupied in April, 1892 ; the various federal offices in Brooklyn, of which some account follows, being at last gathered under one roof. The total expenditure for site and building to the end of 1892 was $1,886,115.25. In 1819, when Joel Bunce, Brooklyn's first postmaster, was succeeded by Thomas W. Birdsall, the post office was located in a store at the corner of Fulton and Front streets. The third postmaster, Erastus Worthington, removed the office to Fulton street, opposite Hicks, and subsequently its location was repeatedly changed until, in 1848, it was burned while situated on Fulton street, between High and Nassau. It was at No. 6 Court street until 1853, and for some years it was on Montague street, near the Mechanics Bank. George B. Lincoln was appointed postmaster in 1861, and it was during his five years' incumbency that the money-order office was opened. In 1867 the post office was removed to Washington street, between Myrtle avenue and Johnson street, where it remained until finally located in the new Federal building in April, 1892. In 1854, the year of the consolidation of Brooklyn and Williamsburgh, the office employed five or six clerks and about twenty carriers ; now there are four hundred and twenty-five carriers, fifty-four sub- carriers, one hundred and seventy-seven clerks and three sub-clerks. Under Postmaster George J. Collins and Assistant-Postmaster Samuel Smith there are the following heads of departments and stations : A. T. Sullivan, cashier; J. R. Gewecke, superintendent money-order division; C. H. Lyon, superintendent of mails; Charles Milligan, inquiry office ; E. Mclntyre, superintendent registry division ; W. A. Smith, superintendent city delivery; station B — A. H. Frost; station W — W. B. Hopkins; station S — J. H. McCooey; station G — Edward Brooks; station V — B. F. Conlin; station E — G. A. F. North; sub-station A — F. N. Bliss; sub-station C — J. R. Martin; sub-station D — Henry Bohling; sub-station F — F. H. Newcomb; sub-station H — John. R. Crossley; sub-station J — Charles J. Hazzard; sub-station K — Henry Asher; sub-station M — R. C. Knipe; sub- station R — William G. Hoyt; sub-station X — Louis G. Martin. In March, 187 1, Kings, Queens, Suffolk and Richmond counties were constituted the first internal revenue district of the state of New York, and from May, 1873, the entire local business centred in the office of the collector, the previously existing office of assessor being abolished. The internal revenue offices were located on Court street until their recent removal to the Federal building. Ernst Nathan, the present collector, is assisted by Allan P. Nichols, chief deputy collector ; John A. Strachan, chief of spirit department ; William H. Manning, cashier, and a staff of division deputies, clerks, storekeepers and gaugers. In accordance with an act of congress, passed on February 25, 1865, the counties of Kings, Queens, Richmond and Suffolk, together with the waters of the city and coujity of New York, extending from the Narrows into Long Island Sound, were taken from under the jurisdiction of the United States courts of the southern district of New York, in the second circuit of the United States, and placed under that of the circuit and district courts for the eastern district in the same circuit, both of which courts were created by the same act. These new courts were organized on March 22, 1865, and court opened in the county court house, Brooklyn. Judge Charles L. Benedict, who had been appointed to the bench by President Abraham Lincoln on March 9, 1865, presided at the organization. The business of the circuit court is very large, and consists principally of patent cases and actions at law wherein some of the parties are residents of other states than New York. Until the organization of the United States courts of appeals, which was created by an act of congress on March 13, 1891, the circuit court, in addition to its other powers, had appellate juris- diction in cases tried before the United States district court. When the circuit court was organized, Charles CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 431 The Federal Building, Washington and Johnson Streets W. Newton was appointed to the office of clerk, and at the same time was appointed as one of the United States commissioners, the other appointee being Samuel T. Jones. Mr. Newton died on February 7, 187 1, and was succeeded by Mr. Jones, who held the position of clerk until removed by death on December 24, 1873. His deputy clerk, Edwin B. Husted, acted as clerk until the latter part of 1874, when B. Lincoln Benedict, the present incumbent of the office, was appointed. Mr. Husted held the office of deputy clerk under Mr. Benedict, and continued in that capacity until 1879, when he resigned and Richard P. Mode was appointed to fill the vacancy. The present commissioners are : John J. Allen, Richard P. Morle, B. Lincoln Benedict and Henry S. Bellows. The United States district court was opened at the same date and place as the circuit court. Judge Benedict presiding, and Samuel T. Jones was appointed as clerk. The business of the United States district court includes admiralty, common law and criminal cases, and formerly included bankruptcy cases. The admiralty jurisdiction of the United States courts in Brooklyn is co-exten- sive with that of the New York courts, and a large portion of the maritime cases which centre at New York through the large shipping interests of this port are brought to Brooklyn for trial. The volume of business brought before these courts is large ; one-fourth of all the admiralty suits brought in the entire United States are disposed of here, and in other important branches of law the causes tried here are numerous. Criminal cases for violation of United States laws are tried both in the district and circuit courts, as also are offenses committed on the high seas in all parts of the world and on land ceded to the United States, such as Forts Wadsworth and Hamilton and the Navy Yard. Lands required by the United States for its use or defense are obtained by condemnation on proceedings in this court. Customs, internal revenue and postal cases are tried here. By an act of Congress, passed in March, 1867, jurisdiction in bankruptcy pro- ceedings was conferred upon the district court, and from that time until the repeal of the bankruptcy law in 1878, a large number of cases arising under it were adjudicated here. The extent and progress of business transacted in the United States courts in Brooklyn is shown by a few references to the dockets at the com- mencement of different fiscal years. The number of cases between individuals, to which the United States was not a party, pending in July, 1883, was 1,227, in 1885 it was 1,676, in t888 it was 1,885, ^"^d in i8go it was 2,116; somewhat more than one-half of these were admiralty cases. This shows a constant increase in business due to an extent to the growth of the commercial relations in this city with others. The compara- tive volume of business done in this district alone will appear by contrast with the aggregate of all the courts in one of the large western circuits, that containing Chicago for example, and comprising the States 432 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin, in which the cases reported on the docket at the periods named were less in number than stated above. The United States circuit court is held by Justice Samuel Blatchford, associate- justice of the United States supreme court at "Washington ; Judges William J. Wallace, E. Henry Lacombe, of New York, and Charles L. Benedict, of Brooklyn, who presides over the court the greater portion of the time. Judge Benedict also holds the United States district court in Brooklyn,' The United States judges of Connecticut and Vermont are also from time to time assigned to assist in disposing of the business of the Brooklyn courts. Under the bankruptcy act of 1867, D. C. Winslow and E. O. Mills and George H. Fisher were appointed as registers in bankruptcy. Mr. Mills was subsequently president of the Brooklyn Trust Company, and died by drowning at Coney Island. He was succeeded in the position of register in brankruptcy by Augustus M. Cunningham, and Messrs. Winslow and Fisher were both in office until legislated out by the repeal of the bankruptcy act in 1878. The first district attorney appointed was Benjamin D. Silliman, who held office from the organization of the court until June 6, 1867. General Benjamin F. Tracy was the next incumbent of the office and held it until his resignation in 1873, his successor being Asa W. Tenney, who was appointed on February 9, in that year. Mr. Tenney served until the inauguration of President Cleveland's administration, and then resigned. Mark D. Wilber succeeded to the office, and at the end of his term of four years resigned and was succeeded by Jesse Johnston, the present district attorney. His assistant is John Oakey, whose pre- decessors have been, in order of their succession, John J. Allen, Joel E. Erhardt, Isaac S. Catlin, Frank Angel and John L. Devenney. In the office of United States marshal there have been a number of changes ; the first person to hold the position being Anthony F. Campbell, who served from 1865 until 1867, when he resigned. Deputy Marshal Francis L. Dallon was promoted to the vacant position and was succeeded, in 1870, by Samuel P. Harlow, and held office four years. Charles M. Stafford was the next appointee, taking office under president Cleveland. President Harrison's administration made the next change in the office by appointing Daniel Lake as marshal, in 1889, and he remained in charge until his death, which resulted on June 4, 1891, from an accident which occurred in the Bath Beach Sn West End Railway tunnel. He was succeeded by the present marshal, Alexander Walker. George J. Collins, postmaster of Brooklyn, was born in New York city fifty-two years ago. He was brought to Brooklyn while still in his early youth, and received a good common school education in this city. On April 19, 1861, he enlisted as a private in Company E, 12th New York State Militia ; and when, some sixteen months later, the regiment was mustered out of service, his name again went down as aprivate on the rolls of Company G, 127th New York Volunteers. His promotion was rapid. In September, 1862, he was made a sergeant-major, and two months later became a second lieutenant. His elevation to the first lieutenancy occurred in March, 1864. For a time he held the post of acting adjutant and also served with distinction in the department of the south, as acting assistant inspector-general. Lieutenant Collins took part in many of the principal engagements in the famous Shenandoah valley campaign. He fought at the national lines of defence drawn around the national capitol in 1861-62, was present at the siege of Suffolk, and engaged in the pursuit of Longstreet. When General Keyes began his attack upon Richmond in the spring and early summer of 1863, Lieu- tenant Collins served under him as an officer of General Gordon's division. In August, 1863, General Gordon's division was sent to South Carolina, and Lieutenant Collins was stationed with the command at Morris Island. On June 30, 1865, he was mustered out, after participating in thirty-nine months of continuous service. Mr. Collins was one of the twelve repre- sentatives of the then newly formed U. S. Grant Post, of this city, who formed a guard of honor to the body of General Grant from Mount Mc- Gregor to the mausoleum in Riverside Park. In 1890 he was elected commander of Grant Post, and also he belongs to a number of local mili- tary, social and charitable organizations. He is a trustee of the Brooklyn Savings Bank and trustee and treasurer of the Throop Avenue Presbyte- rian Church. In 1865 Mr. Collins began business in New York as head of the firm of Collins & Sesnon, blank book manufacturers and binders. Since his partner's death, in 1887, Mr. Collins has continued the business George j. coluns. under the title of George J. Collins & Company. Postmaster Collins has served in the common council as an alderman from the twenty-first ward and also in the same capacity from the second district. He has been president of the Twenty-first Ward Republican Association and has been sent as a delegate to the gen- eral committee. He was appointed postmaster during the administration of President Harrison on July i, 1890, and his management of the postoffice has been signally successful. .Postmaster Collins' wife was Miss Susan E. Rapelyea. While this volume is in press, Mr. Collins' death has occurred — on April 13, 1893. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 433 Charles L. Benedict, United States district judge, was born at Newburg, N. Y., March 2, 1824. He was the eldest son of the Hon. George W. Benedict, who was for many years a member of the faculty of the University of Vermont, at Burlington, Vt., where Judge Benedict was educated, graduating in 1844. After leaving college he came to New York and entered upon the study of law. After his admission to the bar, he was for several years engaged in the active practice of his profession as a member of the firm of Burr & Benedict, in New York. In 1861 and 1862 he was chosen a member of the Assembly, and served in that body with Henry J. Raymond and Benjamin F. Tracy. In March, 1865, he was appointed by President Lincoln the first United States district judge of the Eastern District of New York, comprising Long Island and Staten Island, and having co-ordinate jurisdiction on the seas with the United States courts of New York, and has continued to hold that position until the present time. In 1873 he was assigned by act of congress to preside at certain stated terms of the United States circuit court in New York, and has since continued to do so in addition to the discharge of his judicial duties in Brooklyn. He is also the designated judge assigned to hold the United States district court in New York, in the absence of the judge of that district. He is regarded by both the bench and the bar as especially eminent in admiralty law, and his opinions in Benedict's Reports and other publications are recognized as leading authority upon the questions treated. Jesse Johnson was born in Bradford, Vt., on February 20, 1842. He is the eldest son of Elliott Payson and Sarah Taylor Johnson, whose ancestors were among the earlier settlers of New England. The name Jesse Johnson has been handed down in the family for nearly two hundred years. His boyhood was spent on a farm in the valley of the Connecticut, in the state of New Hampshire, to which his parents had removed in the year 1856. He was graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1863, and thereafter from Albany College Law School. In 1864 he was admitted to the bar of the state of New York and until 1866 was the managing clerk in a law office in New York city. In that year he opened an office in Brooklyn, where he has since resided. In 1869, under the administration of William C. DeWitt, he became the first assistant corpo- ration counsel of the city, and for nine years performed the duties of that office. During this period of public service he devoted himself to the study of municipal law, on which subject he is now regarded by his professional brethren as an authority. In 1877 he resigned his position as assistant corporation counsel and returned to the general practice of the law. In 1881 he formed a copartnership with Albert E. Lamb and his brother, Alvan R. Johnson, under the firm name of Johnson & Lamb. The name of the firm has remained unchanged until the present time, although in 1889 Alfred E. Rudge became a partner. In politics Mr. Johnson is a Republican, and in 1883 he was nom- inated by his party in the second judicial district of the state as a candidate for justice of the supreme court. Although he was defeated by Willard Bartlett, he secured the full party vote. He became a mem- ber of the Republican General Committee of Kings I County in 1886, and has participated actively in the councils, labors and conventions of his party. He was a delegate in 1888 to the Republican national con- I vention, where he supported General Harrison for the nomination for the presidency. When commissioners were first appointed to organize a system of rapid transit for Brooklyn Mr. Johnson was made their attor- ney and counsel. He assisted in organizing the Ivings County Elevated Railroad Company, the East River Bridge and Coney Island Transit Company and the South Brooklyn Railroad and Terminal Company. In July, 1889, President Harrison appointed Jesse John- son to succeed Mark D. Wilber as United States dis- trict attorney for the eastern district of New York. At the local bar Mr. Johnson, by reason of his intel- lectual gifts and the' fullness of his legal attainments, is regarded as a formidable opponent. He was mar- ried on November 12, 1868, to Sarah Ellen Russell. United States Marshal Alexander Walker came to Brooklyn in his youth and began to be active in local affairs when he was eighteen years old. At that age he became a member of the volunteer fire depart- ment by joining Brooklyn Engine Company No. 17, with which organization he remained until the paid *...y^Klt.jLC>Ot^^^:c£yU Z^J-et^O/Ccyi-^ 434 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. fire department was established. During the four years from 1877 till 1880 he represented the twentieth ward in the board of supervisors and in 1881 he was ap- pointed chief clerk in the coroners' office; he held that position for a number of years. On July 6, 1891, Mr. Walker took charge of the United States marshal's office under appointment of President Harrison. Mr. Walker is well known in New York as well as Brooklyn for his sound judgment in business matters ; his advice is frequently sought by those who know of his intimate acquaintance with public affairs and the business world. In the discharge of his official duties he is energetic, but considerate, and as a citizen he is greatly re- spected. In almost every department of the federal govern- ment there will be found some officials whose tenure of position depends upon their full and complete knowl- edge of the duties which they are called upon to per- form and not upon the influence of political friends or upon personal services as partisans. Such an offi- cial is James Biggart, who is now chief United States deputy marshal, and who, for twenty years, has been connected with this branch of the local federal ad- ministration. Mr. Biggart was born in the fifth ward of this city in 1848. He was educated at public school No. 7 and spent his early manhood in acquiring the trade of a cooper. Having served his apprenticeship he became a deputy in the United States dis- trict court under Marshal Harlow ; he resigned within a short time and during 1872 and 1873 held an assistant assessorship under General James Jourdan. Toward the close of 1873 he was reappointed to his former post by Marshal Harlow, remaining under that official for twelve years and being retained in the same capacity by Marshals Tate, Stafford, Lake and Walker. During his term of service Mr. Biggart has assumed charge of many celebrated counterfeiting, admiralty, and illicit distilling cases. James Biggart. THE NAVY YARD. A little over ninety years ago the site of what is now the Brooklyn navy yard was a ship yard owned by John Jackson, the builder of the United States frigate " John Adams," which, after having done good service in the war of 1812, was burned off the coast of Maine to prevent her capture by the enemy. The United States government purchased the property for a naval station in 1801 for the sum of $40,000. Lieutenant Jonathan Thorne was placed in charge. In 1824 an addition was made to the property of thirty acres of land bought from Martin Schenck for $7,650. By these two purchases the government became possessed of land on the east and west side of Wallabout bay, and needed only the intervening plot of ground, owned by Frederick Griffin, to make the yard complete. This plot was purchased from Griffin in 1848 for $285,000, and in 1867 the government bought from William Ruggles a piece of land on the northerly corner of the yard for $90,000, thus completing the yard as it stands to-day. Excepting the site of the commandant's house and the hospital, the property then was but a waste of mud flats, swamps and creeks. Succeeding Lieutenant Jonathan Thorne, the first commandant of the yard. Captain Isaac Chauncey was placed in command. In 1812 he was succeeded by Captain Samuel Evans, who commanded the yard dur- ing the war of j 812-14. During that war there were more than one hundred vessels fitted out with stores and munitions from the Brooklyn station. The frigate " Fulton," a vessel of 2,000 tons burden, and the first steam war vessel ever built by any nation, was constructed there, during the year 1815, after plans sub- mitted by Robert Fulton. Her trial trip was made under the command of Captain David Porter, father of Admiral Porter. Gradually improvements were made in the yard. It was enclosed by a fence in 1827. In 1841 the construction of a stone dry-dock was begun. This was finished ten years later, and was for a time the largest in the world ; but now it has been surpassed by the new Simpson timber dock, constructed a year ago. Prior to 1858 ten vessels were launched at the yard. During the civil war the Brooklyn yard was the practical headquarters of naval construction and supply. From 1861 until 1865 Rear Admiral Hiram Paulding was in command. During this time 416 vessels were purchased by the government from the merchant marine and fitted out as cruisers. During those years there were, on an average, nearly 5,500 people employed, and the yearly pay roll reached something like $5,735,000. Within the yellow brick CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 435 walls inclosing ttie navy yard are the various machine shops required for building or repairing vessels, two large and costly dry-docks, several marine railways and immense stocks oi stores and munitions of war. Ammunition is not kept at the navy yard, except for saluting purposes and for defense. On the Flushing avenue side are the marine barracks, fronting upon a parade ground. Upon an eminence a little to the eastward of the yard proper, is the United States Naval Hospital, for the care of the sick, disabled or aged seamen belonging to the United States navy. It occupies the hill portion (56 feet above tide water) of the Schenck farm, purchased by the government in 1824. The hospital is appointed to accommodate one hun- dred and twenty-five patients, though during the civil war the lists ran up as high as four hundred and fifty ; but many of these were billeted in a wooden annex, which was torn down after hostilities ceased. Con- nected with the grounds is a naval cemetery, where many officers, sailors and marines, and members of their families have been buried. In 1892 there had been registered 1,187 interments. The naval I^yceum, an institution established by officers of the navy in 1833, and comprising a library and a museum, was until 1891 an interesting feature of the yard ; but in that year it was donated to the Naval Academy, at Annapo- lis, Md. Another noteworthy institution is the naval clothing factory, which was established in 1879 by The Navy Hospital in 1863. Drawn by G. Havward. Paymaster General George F. Cutter. Since its organization this bureau has been the means of a great advance in the grade of garments furnished the navy, with a corresponding reduction in price, as compared with the old contract system. Within a few years a portion of the navy yard has been sold to the city of Brooklyn, and is now occupied by the Wallabout market. This sale in no way crippled the yard, sufficient room yet remaining for all practical purposes. It is at present well supplied with guns, and the progressive impulse of recent years is rapidly converting the yard into one of the finest naval stations in the world. The present commandant of the navy yard. Commodore Henry Erbb;n, was born in New York sixty years ago. In June, 1848, he was appointed a midshipman and ordered to the old " St. Lawrence," a frigate of fifty guns. In 1854 he was assigned to a coast survey schooner f(jr a time, and then sent to the Naval Academy, where he won his promotion to passed midshipman, and was ordered in the same yard to the frigate "Potomac," of the home squadron. A few months later he attained the rank of master, and was detailed to the prize bark "Amelia," captured from the filibusters at Port-au-Prince, Hayti. The next year young Erben spent on the store ship "Supply." In 1S56 he was promoted to a lieutenancy. Just prior to the civil war he was assigned to the store ship " Supply " on the gulf station. He was present, in January, 1861, when the Pensacola navy yard was surrendered to the confederates, and from that time on performed active service. In 1862 he joined the Mississippi fleet, and commanded the ironclad "St. Louis." In July, 1862, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-commander, and was ordered to join the naval howitzer battery serving under General McClellan in Maryland. He took part in numerous engagements before being sent to the Brooklyn navy yard in 1S65. He was promoted to the rank of commander in 1864. From 1878 until 1882 he commanded the schoolship "St. Mary." In :May, 1891, he took command of the Brooklyn navy yard on the retirement of Reai -Admiral I). L. Braine, and a year later, Aprl 3, 1892, was commissioned commodore, and continues in command of the Brooklyn navy yard. Henry Walke, rear-admiral, U. S. N., retired, has passed all his active life in the naval service of his country and was a participant in the great civil war. He was born in Virginia on December 24, 1808, and was appointed as midshipman from Ohio on February i, 1827. Early in his career he exhibited exemplary qualities in contests with the elements, and when the civil war began he distinguished himself by his brave and effective service under the old flag. He had attained the rank of commander, and wherever placed was ready to act to the full limit of his powers. He prevented the capture of Fort Pickens by the confederates, thus enabling the federals to maintain control of the bay waters on the coast of Florida. His action, taken largely on his own responsibility, not only rescued a large number of loyal servants of the government 436 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. REAR-A|)MIRAL Henrv "Walke. from want and imprisonment, but also secured the state of Florida to the Union, and prevented the imminent recognition of the southern con- federac}' by the government of Great Britain. Throughout the time of war, sometimes in the unexciting work of lighthouse inspection and then amid the din of battle, he was an active and capable officer. He began the battle of Fort Donelson on February 13, 1863, as commander of the gunboat " Carondelet," and was the last to retire after a battle of two days. He captured Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, on April 7, 1862, and on the same vessel he participated with great honor in several other important engagements. Later in the war he commanded other vessels, and rendered distinguished service. He was made captain on July 16, 1862 ; commodore on July 25, 1866 ; rear-admiral on July 13, 1870, and with that rank retired voluntarily on April 26, 1871. As a fighter he was always ready to get into close quarters when there was a chance for victory, and it is one of the noteworthy features of his career that, while always ready for duty, his command was held to the observance of the Sabbath whenever no exigency required the observance to be ignored. Rear- Admiral D.^niel Lawrence Braine, now on the retired list of the United States navy, was one of the most popular officers in the service. He was born in New York city on May iS, 1829, and enjoyed the usual educational advantages provided by the people. On May 30, 1846, he was appointed to the navy as a midshipman from Texas ; but he considers himself a Brooklynite, as he has resided in this city with his family whenever the nature of his duties would permit. The shore duty of the admiral has been compar- atively brief, while his sea service covers a period of over twenty-one years. During the Mexican war he was present at the actions of Alvarado, Tabasco, Laguna, Tuspan, Tampico and Vera Cruz. He was made passed midshipman on June 8, 1852, and master in 1855. On September 15, 1S58, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. At the outbreak of the civil war he was selected by the Union defence committee to command the " Monticello," fitted out by him in forty-eight hours, to clear Chesapeake Bay and the coast of privateers and join the U. S. ship " Cumberland " at Fortress Monroe. For " cool performance of duty " during the war he was recommended for promotion, and on July 25, 1866, was commissioned commander. On December 1 i, 1874, he was commissioned captain, and took command of the U. S. ship " Colorado," then at the Brooklyn navy yard. On March 2, 1885, he was made commodore and assigned as president of the board of inspection at New York. He was appointed acting rear-admiral on August 12, 1886, and ordered to the command of the South Atlantic Squadron. On September 4, 18S7, he was made rear-admiral. On November 14, 1889, he took command of the Brooklyn navy yard. On May 18, i8gi, he retired from active service and has since resided in Brooklyn, enjoying his well-earned rest. Delavan Bloodgood, M. D., medical director in the United States navy and director of the labora- tory at the navy yard, is a direct descendant of Frans Hansen Bloodgood, who emigrated from Holland in 1658, and settled at Flushing, L. L Dr. Bloodgood was born at Springville. Erie County, N. Y., on August 20, 1831. After graduating from Madison, now Colgate Univer- sity, at Hamilton in this state, he began his professional studies in the medical school of Michigan University and continued them in similar institutions at Buffalo, N. Y., Pittsfield, Mass., at Colum- bia College in New York and at Jefferson College in Philadel- phia, from which he received his degree. On March 13, 1857, he entered the naval service of the United States as assistant surgeon. With the years 1861, 1862, 1875 and 1884 came his pro- motions to the rank of passed assistant surgeon, surgeon medical inspector and, finally, medical director. Dr. Bloodgood was in active service throughout the entire period of the civil conflict. Li a naval career of thirty-five years his cruisings have extended up and down the coasts of North and South America, from Lab- rador to Alaska, through the West and East Indian islands, along the shores of India, China and Japan, through European and African seas and upon the great lakes of North America. He is a member of the American Medical Association and other profes- sional and technical organizations. He is a Freemason, and a member of the Holland Society of New York, the St. Nicholas Society of Nassau Island, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, the University and St. Nicholas clubs of medical Director Delavan Bloodgood. CITY AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT. 437 New York and the Hamilton Club of Brooklyn. In 1857 he married Jennie, daughter of the late Honor- able John Ruger, of Onondaga County, N. Y. Samuel Loring Percival Ayres, chief engineer United States navy, was born in the village of Stam- ford, Connecticut, on July 29, 1835. He was educated a civil engineer, but on July 21, 1858, he was appointed from his native state to the post of third assistant engineer on the steam frigate "Roanoke," then the flag-ship of the home squad- ron. He remained with the " Roanoke " until i860, when he was detailed for special duty at the Brooklyn navy yard. He was promoted to the rank of second assistant engineer in 1861. At the outbreak of the civil war he applied for service at the front, and, on August 9, 1861, was ordered to the "Pensacola," then fitting out at Washington for a passage down the Potomac, which was blocked by secessionist batteries for nine miles. The " Pensacola " made the passage safely, although under a continuous fire. She was then ordered to join the west gulf squadron, with which she participated in the bombardment of forts Jackson and St. Philip, the passage of the Chalmette batteries and the capture of New Orleans. Mr. Ayres was made a first assistant engineer in April, 1863, and ordered to join the "Nipsic " of the south Atlantic blockading squadron, off Charleston. The "Nipsic" made a topographical survey of the approaches to Fort White and George- town, S. C. He was promoted to chief engineer with the relative rank of lieutenant-commander in 1870. During the years 1874-6 he was a member of the examining board of engineers. He was again a member of the examinhig board during 1880-4, and on June i, 1886, he was promoted to chief engineer with the relative rank of commander. For the third time he was a member of the board of examining engineers from 1889 until 1891, and in January of the latter year, he was assigned to duty in his present position as chief engineer of the Brooklyn navy yard. Chief Engineer S. L. P. Ayres. Commandant's House, Navy Yard. The "Thomas Jefferson." Hugh McLaughlin's Original "White House, Ja\ and Concord Streets. POLITICAL LIFE. Q INCE 1856 the political history of Brooklyn has been the history of the Democratic and Republican parties. Prior to 1856 there was a Whig party, an American party and a Know-nothing party. All of these parties are now simply memories. As long ago as 1822 a branch of the Columbian order, or Tammany society, of New York, was estab- lished in the village of Brooklyn. With the incorporation of the village of Brooklyn as a city the individuality of the present Democratic organization may be said to have had its inception, although it was not until eight years later, in 1842, when Henry C. Murphy was elected mayor, that it became the dominant political party of the city, a position it has maintained with few lapses until this day. From 1834 until 1855 Henry C. Murphy was the master spirit of the local Demo- cratic organization. Together with his law partners. Judge John A. Lott and John Vanderbilt, he ruled the destinies of the party with as undisputed a sway as Hugh McLaughlin does to-day. For twenty years No. 3 Front street, where the firm of Lott, Murphy & Vanderbilt had its office, was the Mecca toward which all the Democratic politicians of the time turned their faces. Mr. McLaughlin has very distinct recollections of No. 3 Front street. As early as the year 1849 he was active in local Democratic politics and assisted in carrying the primaries. Already in 1853 he had secured the nomination of George Taylor for congress, and had gone to the Syracuse convention of that year to help Henry C. Murphy have his law partner, John 440 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Vanderbilt, nominated for lieutenant-governor on tiie Democratic ticket. About the year 1855 Mr. McLaughlin was made master foreman of laborers in the Navy Yard and began to be known as " Boss McLaughlin." He has held the title until the present time and with it the undisputed leadership of the local Democratic party. The beginnings of the Republican organization in Brooklyn were coincident with the birth of that party in 1856. There never has been a " Boss " of the Republican party, although various men have aspired to leadership. James S. T. Stranahan and ex-Charities Commissioner Joseph H. Reeve were active factors in the early years of the Republican party. " Ned " Webster, General Tracy, Silas B. Dutcher and General James Jourdan were powerful leaders at a later date. In the seventies ex- Sheriff Albert Daggett came nearer to realizing the prevailing idea of a " Boss " than any other Repub- can before or since his time. Although the Prohibition party succeeded in electing its candidate, George Hall, to the mayoralty, it never has exerted any decisive or permanent influence on the politics of the city. The same may be said of the Socialistic-labor party, which first began to nominate candidates for all the city offices in 1878. Neither of these parties has a permanent habitation, and neither of them has a permanent general or county committee. Their aggregate vote at a general election never exceeds 3,000. The only principle for which the Prohibition party contends is the abolishment of the liquor traffic. The doctrine of the Socialistic-labor party is that every man should reap the fruits of his toil. The issues of the tariff and the currency which divide the Democratic and Republican parties have no bearing on the agitation carried on by the minor political parties. Practically, then, the political history of the city is contained within the histories of the two great national parties. The unit of power in both the Democratic and Republican parties in this city, is the ward association, but the basis of representation in the respective general or county committees differs materially. In the Democratic General Committee each ward association is entitled to the same number of delegates, namely, twelve. In the Republican General Committee the basis of representation from each ward association is one delegate, and in addition thereto one delegate for each two hundred Republican votes and moiety thereof cast for the Republican candidate for governor at the next preceding election. In the Democratic General Committee the twenty-third ward, which gives the largest Republican majorities, and the tenth ward, which gives the largest Democratic majorities, meet on equal terms. In the Republican General Committee the Republican wards have a preponderating representation over the Democratic wards. The number of delegates to the Democratic General Committee never changes, unless the legislature creates a new ward. The number of delegates to the Republican General Committee changes with each recurring gubernatorial election. In the month of January, in each year, the delegates from the ward and town associations who compose the general committees of both parties elect the officers of these bodies. In the case of the Democratic General Committee the officers consist of a president, three vice-presidents, three secretaries, a treasurer and a collector. The Republican General Committee delegates elect a presi- dent, four vice-presidents, three secretaries, a treasurer and two sergeants-at-arms. The standing com- mittees of the Democratic General Committee consist of an executive committee, a discipline committee, a finance committee, an auditing committee, a printing committee and a naturalization committee. The standing committees of the Republican General Committee consist of rules and orders, legislative, city and county affairs, and naturalization. The president of the Democratic General Committee appoints all of the standing committees except the executive and printing committees. The executive committee is com- posed of two members from each ward association, who are selected from their own number by the votes of a majority of the members of the General Committee. The executive committee of the Republican General Committee consists of one member from each ward, who is chosen by a majority vote of the ward dele- gation to the General Committee. The functions of both of these executive committees are similar. They have practically the full management and control of the business of the respective general committees, and sixty days prior to any general election they appoint from among the members of the general committees the campaign committees, which have full management of the campaign interests of the respective parties. The general committees call all primary elections for delegates to the committees and officers of the ward associations ; also elections for delegates to all conventions. Under the constitution of the Democratic General Committee each ward is entitled to an equal number of delegates to any convention. Under the Republican constitution each ward is entitled to a number of delegates to conventions corresponding to its qualified members in the general committee. All ward associations are under the jurisdiction of the general committees, and subject to such provisions and regulations as the committees may prescribe. The general committees have power to disband any association which shall act in hostility to them. For the purpose of maintaining unity of action, the general committees recognize but one Democratic or Repub- lican association in each ward as regular. These ward associations are formed under the rules prescribed by the general committees. The officers of a Democratic ward association consist of a president, three vice-presidents, a secretary, an assistant secretary, a treasurer, a finance committee and three inspectors of election. The officers of a Republican ward association consist of a president, one or more vice-presidents, POLITICAL LIFE. 441 BusHwicK Democratic Club, a secretary and two inspectors of election. Tliese officers are cliosen annually at the time and place designated by tlie general committees for tlie elec- tion of delegates to these bodies. These ward asso- ciations are required to hold one regular meeting each month, excepting in the months of July and August. Any person is entitled to enrollment as a member of any association who is a Democrat or a Republican as the case may be, a resident and a voter of the ward where he wishes to be enrolled. The unit of power in each of the political parties being the ward association, it is at the primary that each member most thoroughly realizes his individual importance. There, if he is in good standing with his association, he is entitled to cast one vote, and rarely on any other occasion of his exercising the franchise is his vote possessed of more apparent and immediate value and potency. Not infrequently it may actually 'i^^^". decide a contest. Each ward, either by direct ballot at the primary, or through delegates elected to a ward convention, nominates candidates for supervisor and constable. Delegates are elected in the wards to the city convention, county convention, assembly district convention, senatorial district convention, con- gressional convention and aldermanic district convention. The city convention, composed of delegates from each of the twenty-eight wards, nominates candidates for the offices of mayor, comptroller, city auditor, aldermen-at-Iarge, justices of the peace and judges of the city court. The county convention, which con- sists of delegates from the city wards and the towns of Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend and New Utrecht, nominates candidates for the offices of register, county clerk, supervisor-at-large, coroner, auditor, treasurer, sheriff, district attorney, county judge, justices of the sessions and surrogate. Assembly district conven- tions, besides nominating assembly candidates, also elect delegates to the state and judicial conventions. The senatorial and congressional conventions consist of delegates from each of the wards in the respective districts. The aldermanic district convention nominates the district aldermen, and the judicial convention, composed of delegates from each of the assembly districts in the judicial district, nominates the candidates for justices of the supreme court. The state convention is composed of delegates from each assembly district. The state convention nominates candidates for the offices of governor, lieutenant-governor, secre- tary of state, comptroller, treasurer, attorney general, state engineer and surveyor, and justices of the court of appeals. In the national convention each state's representation is double the number of electoral votes to which the state is entitled in the electoral college. Delegates to Democratic national conventions are chosen at the state conventions, but to national Republican conventions delegates-at-large are chosen at the state conventions and the district delegates by the congressional districts. The national convention nominates candidates for the office of president and vice-president. These nominations are made by a two- thirds vote in Democratic conventions, but in Republican conventions a majority suffices. Presidential electors in the various states are nominated by state conventions or committees. The various congressional, senatorial, assembly and aldermanic districts in the city of Brooklyn are as follows : Congressional — Second district; ist, 2d, 5th, 6th, 7th, iith and 20th wards. Third district: 3d, 4th, 9th and loth wards ; the 22d ward (excepting election districts 29 to 2^, inclusive), 23d ward (excepting election districts 26 to 40, inclusive), and Flatbush. Fourth district: 8th, 12th, 24th, 25th and 26th wards. New Utrecht, Gravesend, Flatlands, election districts 26 to 40, inclusive, of the 23d ward, and election districts 29 to 23, inclusive, of the 22d ward. P'ifth district: i8th ward, 19th (except the 29th election district), 21st, 27th and 28th wards, and the 19th election district of the 13th ward. Sixth district : 13th ward (except the 19th election district), 14th, 15th, i6th, 17th wards, and the 29th election district of the 19th ward. Senatorial — Second district : 7th, 9th, loth, 12th and 22d wards. Third district : 13th, 19th, 21st, 23d and 25th wards. Fourth district: 14th, 15th, i6th, 17th, 18th and 27th wards. Fifth district: ist, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, nth and 20th wards. Sixth district : 8th, 24th, 26th and 28th wards, Flatbush, Flatlands, New Utrecht, Gravesend and Richmond County. Assembly — First district : ist and 2d wards. Second district : 3d and 4th wards. Third district : 5th and nth wards. Fourth district : 6th ward. Fifth district : 7th, 19th and 20th wards. Sixth district : 8th ward. Seventh district : 9th ward. Eighth district : loth ward. Ninth district : 12th ward. Tenth district: 13th and 14th wards. Eleventh district: 15th and i8th wards, Twelfth district : i6th ward. 442 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Thirteenth district ; 17th ward. Fourteenth district : 21st and 27th wards. Fifteenth district: 22d ward. Sixteenth district : 23d and 25th wards Seventeenth district : 24th ward, Flatbush and New Utrecht. Eighteenth district : 26th and 28th wards, Flatlands and Gravesend. Aldermanic— First district: ist, 2d, 5th, 6th, 8th, loth, 12th and 22d wards. Second district: 3d, 4th, 7th, nth, 13th, 19th, 20th, 2ist and 23d wards. Third district : 9th, 14th, 15th, i6th, 17th, i8th, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th and 28th wards. Since 1855 there has been but one recognized leader of the Democratic party in this city, Mr. Hugh McLaughlin. In the whole history of parties in this country there is no similar record. Mr. McLaughlin has maintained his leadership against all comers, and for at least ten years there has been no attempt made to question his right to be regarded as the arbiter of Democratic party politics in this town. Powerful as some of the ward leaders are in their respective bailiwicks, they all bow to the will of the supreme leader. No nomination is made by a Democratic convention unless with the assent of Mr. McLaughlin. It must not, however, be supposed that the leader, or the " Boss," as he is commonly called, decides who shall be the candidate without previously ascertaining party sentiment. Invariably before making a decision he consults the leaders of the different wards and influential Democrats not engaged in ward politics. In this way he feels the party pulse and the public pulse at the same time, and in rare instances does it happen that the man selected by the "Boss" as the candidate is not also the choice of the rank and file of the party. Appointments by Democratic incumbents of local public offices follow the same course. They are suggested by the " Boss " after full and thorough consultation with his lieutenants. In one thing, however, the " Boss " uses his own judgment, and rarely solicits the opinions of others. This is in reference to the attitude of the local organi- zation in the domain of state and national politics. As the recognized leader of a well-disciplined and obedient machine, the " Boss " manoeuvres the local delegation to a state or national convention as he sees fit, the object in view, of course, being to attain some benefit for the organization. He makes the same use of the Democratic congressmen, senators and assemblymen. The result of this power has been to make the "Boss" something more than a mere county leader and to give this city, at least in the Democratic party, a voice in state and national politics. Mr. McLaughlin is universally recognized as one of the five men who wiLLouGHBY ST. DEMOCRATIC HEADQUARTERS. domiuatc thc Democratic politics in this state and control the party organization. These five men — the other four are Senator Hill, Richard Croker, Edward Murphy, Jr., and Lieutenant-Governor Sheehan — acting together, can nominate anybody they please for a state office, from governor down, on the Democratic ticket. They can also, if there is a Democratic majority on joint ballot in the legislature, elect a United States senator. If the President happens to be a Democrat, their influence is felt at Washington as well as Albany. It will thus be seen that this city is a potent factor in Democratic state and national politics. On the other hand the city plays a comparatively unimportant part in Repub- lican state or national politics. This is due largely to the absence of a recognized leader of the local Republican organization. There seems to be an inherent dislike among Republicans to a "Boss," and efforts made by ambitious men to attain to undisputed leadership have generally resulted in disrupting the party. General Tracy, Collector of Internal Revenue Ernst Nathan, Naval Officer Willis, Elections Com- missioner Jacob Worth, Quarantine Commissioner John A. Nichols and District Attorney Jesse Johnson, not to mention numerous others, are all leaders, but none of them is really a leader in the sense that Mr. McLaughlin is. They are really divisional leaders, dictating perhaps the nomination for certain offices, but never naming a whole city or county ticket. The Republican party in this city, instead of being a compact, well-disciplined machine like the Democratic party, is split up by the spirit of faction which has given rise to innumerable cliques bent on destroying one another. An outgrowth of a well-disciplined machine like the Democratic organization is the ward leader. His authority is supreme within the confines of his ward, or bailiwick, as the politicians term it. Nothing can be done in his ward from the erection of an electric light to the paving of a street without his knowledge and consent. The supervisor from the ward, the alderman, if the ward has one and he is not himself the leader, the assemblyman, if the ward happens to be a separate assembly district, all of these officials are expected to consult the ward leader in all matters and to be guided by his wishes. Failure to observe the etiquette of the organization in these respects often results in the "turning down," as the politicians say, of the official who has the temerity to run counter to the ward leader. " 'I'urning down " means the relegation to private life of the recalcitrant and independent official. On the other hand the organization, by which in the Democratic party is meant the "Boss," POLITICAL LIFE. 443 The Original " Kerrigan's." expects the ward leader to be able to control the delegates from his ward to all party conventions. By "control" is meant that the "Boss" decides upon the nomination of a certain man for a cer- tain office; in order to effect his purpose, he must be sure of the votes of the delegates to a con- vention; he issues his orders to the respective ward leaders, who, in turn, are expected to influ- ence the votes of the delegates from their wards in the direction indicated by the "Boss." The ward leader who cannot control his delegation is very soon deprived of his leadership. It is sometimes the work of years to attain to ward leadership. The process in nearly every in- stance is the same. In the days of the old volun- teer fire department, when every fireman was a politician, men had to fight their way to leader- ship. A more peaceful era has since set in and the old methods of carrying a primary by force are eschewed. In order to attain to ward leader- ship a man must give up his entire time to politics. He must make it his business to get acquainted with the people in his ward. He must attend every wedding, wake, funeral, picnic and chowder party that takes place, or has its origin, in the ward. He must induce his friends to name a club, battery or association in the ward after him. He must stand at the polls all day on election day. He must be an adept at carrying a primary. When he feels that he is strong enough to make a fight against the existing leader, he must precipitate a row which will range all the dissatisfied elements in the ward on his side. The next step is to run a ticket of his own at the primary called by the general committee for the election of ward officers and delegates to the committee. If his ticket wins he is duly installed as the recognized leader of the ward. The fall of a ward leader is a much swifter process than his rise. Any one of a hundred causes can bring it about. The slightest sign of independence of the "Boss" will accomplish his ruin. The political graveyard of the Democratic organi- zation is marked by the tombs of innumerable ward leaders who thought they could afford to fight the " Boss." If his ward makes a poor showing on election day, or there is a palpable difference in the votes recorded for the several candidates on the regular ticket, the ward leader's head not infrequently pays the penalty. If he permits the impression to get abroad that his leadership is a close corporation, the spirit of revolt raises its head, and often results in his overthrow. In addition to the general committees and the regular ward associations, there are scores of clubs of a semi-political and semi-social character. Of late years there has been a tendency among both the Democratic and Republican ward leaders to encourage the formation of clubs of this description in the hope of attracting the younger voters and fostering their interest in politics. The result has been that there is scarcely a ward in this city which has not its Seymour club, its Hendricks club, its James G. Blaine club or its Charles Sumner club. The members are invariably young men, and when their leisure is not engaged in political work they give themselves up to social relaxation. Some of these clubs are housed in elegant quarters and their annual balls and outings are among the social features of city life. Then, besides these ward clubs, there are others not localized which are powerful factors in determining party policy and party nominations. The meeting place of the Democratic General Committee and the official home of the county organi- zation and its committeemen in campaign times is " The Thomas Jefferson," on Court square, a build- ing which is one of the architectural adornments of the city. For a long time prior to 1888, the year in which an active effort was first made toward the erection of this structure, the Democratic leaders had been impressed with the desirability of having a permanent central headquarters. John P. Adams, then president of the Democratic General Committee, was the most energetic of those who realized this need, and urged upon the representative men of the party the feasibility of supplying it. Believing that if a properly digested plan for the establishment of such a headquarters was presented to the leaders of the party they would interest themselves in carrying it to fruition, he caused designs to be prepared at his own expense. Next a meeting of prominent Democrats was called, and held in the mayor's office on March 24, 1888. There the proposition to organize and build was carefully considered, and an organization was effected with David A. Boody as president, John P. Adams, secretary, and William J. Coombs, treasurer. The present site, a refusal of which had been obtained from the owners, was selected and the amount of money necessary for the purchase was pledged. At a subsequent meeting $75,000 of the $150,000 required 444 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. for the erection of the building was also pledged. On November 13, 1889, the corner-stone was laid, and on September 23, 1890, "The Thomas Jefferson" was formally opened. The structure, which is Roman- esque in style of architecture, is seven stories in height, with a frontage of 55 feet on Court square (formerly part of Boerum place) and a depth of 110 feet. The first story is of Gatelaw Bridge stone, rock-faced, while the upper portion of the front is of moulded brick and handsomely designed terra cotta. A steep Spanish tiled roof, with a massive tower flanked by large dormers, is the crowning effect. The upper stories and basement are rented for offices and business purposes. On the first floor is a beautifully decorated hall, having a large platform and a commodious gallery. This is designed for meeting purposes. There are store rooms for documents over the stage and handsome reception and committee rooms on the first and second floors. The principal Democratic centre, however, and the true Mecca of the Democratic politicians at all times, has been for years wherever Hugh McLaughlin has chosen to make his headquarters, and for a very long time that has been in the auction rooms of Thomas A. Kerrigan. Before 1892 they were at 35, and for a few months at 13, Willoughby street, and seated beside an old, almost shabby, desk in the office there, the Democratic chieftain spent a considerable portion of the day. He was rarely alone. Politicians, great and small, were constantly coming and going, and Mr. McLaughlin's time was fully occupied in hearing reports and giving advice or directions. In 1892 Colonel Kerrigan removed to 9 Willoughby street, and Mr. McLaughlin continued his headquarters in the office of the auction rooms. The building is a plain brick structure, and the rooms are very plainly appointed, and Mr. McLaughlin still sticks to his old-fashioned desk. There never has been for Republican politicians any single place of rendezvous, recognized by all, and this for the reason that the party never has had a "Boss," but has at all times been more or less split into factions. For each faction there perhaps have been temporary trysting spots where the faction leader was to be found with his lieutenants, but these have shifted with the whirligig of political favor and supremacy, so that in the survey of the Republican political field there is to be found no place of historic hue like the Willoughby street auction rooms. In the days of the Tracy-Dutcher-Jourdan combination, one or another of the residences of these gentlemen was ordinarily the meeting place of the leaders. Later the offices of Albert Daggett, in the insurance building at the corner of Montague and Court streets, became a headquar- ters for those who directed local Republican destinies at the time. The Nichols-Goodrich faction, which caused the Tracy-Dutcher people to pass many an uncomfortable quarter of an hour, also held their meet- ings on the " house-to-house " plan ; and the rival Nathan and Willis factions do most of their important deliberating behind the closed doors of private houses. True, the respective clans hover to some extent around the Nathan cigar store, on Fulton street, and the Willis hardware store, on Court street, but these places bear no resemblance in political importance to Kerrigan's auction rooms. The headquarters of the Republican General Committee are at 157 Lawrence street, where a three- story-and-basement brick house, formerly a dwelling, is held under a lease. The first floor is devoted to meeting purposes, and on the second are the committee rooms. The third floor and basement are used by the janitor. The meetings of the Republican General Committee are not held in this house, however, but in one or another of the public halls in the city. For several years prior to 1892 the Athenaeum was gener- ally hired for the purpose, but the Criterion, on Fulton street, near Grand avenue, has since been the scene of the larger gathering of the Kings County Republicans. Although the Republican party is not the dominant factor in the political life of Brooklyn, the chief political club of the city, the Union League Club, surpasses in many ways any similar organization of the party in power. The Union League since its organization has been essentially a political club. At the present time it has the largest and best appointed club house in the city. It has over 1,000 members and its social complexion vies with the most exclusive. While strict Republicanism is an essential qualification for membership in the Union League, and while it is a patent factor in party policy, its constituents are not in the main "practical politicians," and the club has become such an important element in social life that for these reasons and for other editorial considerations the full account of the institution is given in the chapter on Social Clubs and Social Life. Besides the Union League, there are more than a score of Republican clubs and many of them have club houses of their own, though none of great pretensions. In many respects, the Brooklyn Young Republican Club is the most effective as a political factor, and its members are active workers during campaign times. On the membership rolls are over 1,200 names, many of them those of prominent citizens, and the club is thoroughly prosperous. The headquarters are in the Johnston building on Flatbush avenue, and the officers are : Charles A. Schieren, president ; Stephen M. Griswold, vice-president ; J. G. Wall, secretary ; Anthony H. Creagh, treasurer. In a foremost place among the Republican political clubs which are also of social caste is the Invincible Club in the " banner " Republican ward of the city, the twenty- third. It occupies a commodious frame house at 343 Gates avenue which, by reason of additions made from time to time, affords a spacious and well appointed club home. The officers are : C. H. Luengene, president ; H. A. Stearns, secretary ; G. B. Van Wart, treasurer. POLITICAL LIFE 44S Twenty-third Ward Invincible Club (Republican). The Lafayette Clue of the twentieth ward takes a ver)' positive part in political work for the Republi can part)' and has considerable social activity. W. H Thornton is its president and James W. Quinn its secretary. Another very energetic Republican organization is the Harrison Association, with headquarters at 71 Woodbine street. It was organized in 188S and, besides being of good standing among social organi- zations, it has been notably active in political affairs. Its club house is a two-story-and-basement frame house. On the first floor are large double parlors and an ante room, the second floor is devoted to card and committee rooms, and in the basement are a billiard room, kitchen, etc. Among the interesting functions of the association are its annual dinners, in which prominent people from all sections of the city partici- pate as guests. During political campaigns both in- door and outdoor meetings are frequent at the club house. Bigelow Meeker is president and George F. Bell secretary of the association. The Brooklyn Republican Club, of which Franklin Woodruff is president, has its headquarters at 141 Pierrepont street, and this is a resort for many representative men of the party. There is a federation of local Republican clubs known as the Brooklyn Republican League. Nearly all the clubs are represented in it by delegates and it plays an important part in local politics. This asso- ciation meets once a month, but has no social activity. Its president is Robert D. Benedict. Among Democratic clubs, the finest club house is that of the Bushwick Democratic Club, which was organized in October, 1890. Shortly before that a few Democrats met to consider the feasibility of organ- izing a permanent Democratic social club in the eastern part of the city. The result of this preliminary meeting was that a committee was appointed to draught a constitution, and a call was issued for a meeting of representative Democrats at Arion Hall for the purpose of organizing the proposed club. The second meeting was held on October 14, 1890. A constitution was adopted, and the club was organized by the election of Adolph H. Goetting, president ; Henry Claus, vice-president; August C. Scharmann, secretary; Gottfried Westernacher, treasurer ; Julius Muth, financial secretary ; and Andrew Beck, sergeant-at-arms. A board of trustees was also elected. Articles of association were prepared, signed and filed in the office of the secretary of state at Albany. The club entered vigorously into the campaign work of 1890. After the election the club set about providing permanent quarters for its members, and the trustees decided to purchase a site and build a club house at a cost not to exceed sixty thousand dollars. An option to purchase land at the northeast corner of Bushwick avenue and Hart street was obtained, and in due course the club house was built. It is a beautiful structure, Romanesque in style, slightly modernized. The ex- terior trimmings are of light terra cotta and red sand- stone which, with the old gold mottled brick of which the walls are composed, produce a fine effect. There is a court yard of twenty-five feet in front of the build- ing, arid the main entrance is reached by a series of steps and landings, on which are handsomely wrought bronze lamps with incandescent electric lights. The furniture, including buffet, billiard and pool tables, is of quartered, figured oak, the carpets are of velvet ; the draperies are of soft, warm-colored figured silk, and the decorations on the walls and ceilings are in delicate tints, harmonizing perfectly with the other ap- pointments. The basement is occupied by the bowl- ing alleys. The cafe and billiard room are on the first floor, making practically one apartment with vaulted ceilings twenty-five feet high. On the mezzanine Harrison Association, Woodbine Street. 446 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. floor are the officers' rooms and the ladies' rooms. On the third floor are the banquet hall and card rooms, and on the top floor is the gymnasium. The steward's apartments and the club kitchen are above the main building at the rear. The club house was formally dedicated on September 28, 1892, by Lieutenant-Governor William F. Sheehan ; Mayor David A. Boody, ex-Postmaster Joseph C. Hendrix and others delivered congratulatory addresses. The membership is about four hundred. The officers elected for 1892-93 were: Samuel S. Whitehouse, president ; George Straub, vice-president ; Peter P. Huberty, sec- retary ; Gottfried Westernacher, treasurer ; Julius Muth, financial secretary, and Diedrich Michelsen, ser- geant-at-arms. The membership is not limited to any locality. It is neither a ward nor a sectional organ- ization. A number of the members reside in New York city, and every ward in Brooklyn from the first to the twenty-eighth is represented in the membership. Next to the home of the Bushwick Club the building at 899 Kent avenue, erected by the Andrew Jackson Club of the seventh ward, is the handsomest of what may be styled the strictly political club houses of the city. It is 120x30 feet in ground dimensions, is three stories in height and is built of brick, brownstone and terra cotta. A large bust of Andrew Jackson ornaments the front of the building. On the first floor is a hall which, with its balcony, accommodates one thousand persons. It is the meeting place of the seventh ward association. On the second floor are parlors, committee rooms and card, pool and billiard rooms. The third floor is devoted to the janitor's use, and in an annex there are well appointed bowling alleys. The club was organized in 1885 and incorporated three years later. In 1892 it had a membership of over three hundred. Its first headquarters were at the corner of Myrtle avenue and Gra- ham street, and Colonel Francis Murray was its first president. The officers elected for 1892 and 1893 were Thomas A. Kerrigan, president; Patrick E. Callahan, vice-president ; Michael F. Reilly, treasurer ; George R. Holahan, financial secretary ; John F. Dwyer, corresponding secretary ; Edward Crofton, recording secretary ; Thomas Kane, sergeant-at-arms. James W. Ridgway, John P. Adams, Edward Freel, James B. Bouck and Thomas Tracy are among the trustees. The Brooklyn Democratic Club, at 201 Montague street, and of which George Foster Peabody is president, is another important political organization, as is also the Kings County Democratic Club, of which William A. Furey is president, the meetings of which are held in Jefferson Hall. The Kings County Association of Democratic Clubs, with headquarters at 44 Court street, is of the importance which its name implies, and the Tenth Ward Young Men's Democratic Association, John J. McGarry, president, has come mto special prominence as being a representative organization of the "banner" Democratic ward of the city. The Young Men's Democratic Club, A. L. Sessions, president, is among the most promi- nent of the associations of the dominant party ; its rooms are at 44 Court street. Other of the more important political organizations are : the Brooklyn Ballot Reform League, Rev. Dr. Charles H. Hall, president; Brooklyn Revenue Reform Club, Thomas G. Shearman, president; Brooklyn Young Men's Prohibition Club, F. R. Boocock, president ; Single Tax Club, W. E. Young, president ; Woman's Single Tax Club, Miss Eva J. Turner, president ; Nationalist Club, George Cos- grove, president ; County Committee of the Prohibition Party, James E. Ramsay, president; and the Single Tax League of Kings County, John Filmer, president. The general recognition of ex-Register Hugh McLaughlin as a Democratic leader was almost coinci- dent with his first active participation in local politics. He came upon the field at a time when the labor element of the party, owing to the famine in Ireland and the European uprisings of 1848, had been largely augmented by immigration, and his avocations had brought him into intimate relations with the working population, among whom he had a wide acquaintance. His universally acknowledged industry, ability and integrity, together with the reputation of "always keeping his promises," constituted a very important factor of that representative position to which he so quickly attained. The old leaders saw in him a valuable agent through whom to influence the labor vote, and he was solicited to participate in the work of the organization ; but when he made his first appearance in a convention he found that it was himself, not his seniors, whom his friends desired to support and serve. Rivals among the old leaders solicited his coopera- tion, and the fact of his influence was forced upon him ; but this did not turn his head, and to his sagacity in equally balancing contending claims, and treating all comers with equal courtesy and honesty, his attain- ment and long-continued occupancy of the position of commander-in-chief of the Kings County Democracy is due. Mr. McLaughlin is a man of very few words ; he listens, observes, thinks, and then acts. He rarely adopts any course until he has heard all that can be said on all sides of a question. Well intended advice always receives courteous attention from him, in fact, he welcomes it from those whom he deems informed upon what they speak, and in the councils of his party there is no better listener nor a more silent man than he. Despite the warring of factions, petty local dissensions, national or state party differences, he maintains his place— a trusted leader ; the structure of whose reputation and position is based upon the belief of both opponents and allies that "his word is as good as his bond." In private life Mr. McLaughlin is retiring and unassuming, but is an interesting person to meet. He is a man of domestic tastes ; temperate in all things. POLITICAL LIFE. 447 Hugh MlLaugiilin. His benefactions to tiie poor and to religious and otlier institutions are liberally but unostentatiously be- stowed, and not a few have cause to gratefully remember his private charities, Hugh McLaughlin was born in 1825, on Furman street (then called Everett street), this city. His father, who came to the United States prior to 1813, was a lighterman and through his industry and thrift owned the home in which the family lived, at the foot of the Heights. Subsequently the elder JMcLaughlin purchased property at the corner of jay and Concord streets, upon which he erected a new home — the building long known as the " White House," which was for many years locally prominent as a political headquarters. In this house the father died in 1835, and shortly afterwards Hugh, who was then only ten years of age, began to earn his own living by work- ing on his brother's lighter-boat. When seventeen years of age he was apprenticed to Thursby & Co., rope manufacturers in Bushwick. Four years later Mr. McLaughlin and one of his elder brothers became partners in the fish business in the old market on Atlantic avenue, and when the new Atlantic market was built they opened a stand in it. On the death of his brother, Mr. McLaughlin continued the business, and it was not long before he was the principal dealer in the market. There Mr. McLaughlin remained until about 1854, when, shortly after the consolidation of Brooklyn, Williamsburgh and Bushwick, he retired from the business, with a bank account of over ten thousand dollars. He had for some time been constantly importuned by his numer- ous friends and associates to take a deeper interest in the management of the political affairs of the city. The leadership of the Democratic party was then largely in control of Messrs. Lott, Murphy and Vanderbilt, a legal firm prominent in party management. Mr. McLaughlin then being young, vigorous and popular with the young men of that day, was urged to the front by them to look after their interests and obtain for them that recognition of their services to which they believed they were entitled. Some time elapsed before he consented, but he finally acceded to their requests. In 1856 and 1857 there were two factions in the party; one was styled the " Vanderbilt faction," composed of the old timers of that day; the other was the " liradley faction," which took its name from Daniel Bradley, who was president. The latter faction worked in sym- pathy with Hugh McLaughlin, and was according to usage the regular organization of the party. The rivalry 448 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. between the factions resulted in a contested delegation from Kings County to the state convention of 1857. The Bradley (or McLaughlin) delegation, having been admitted to the convention, was designated as the regular delegation of the county. Previous to this, in 1855, George Taylor was elected to congress, and Mr. McLaughlin was one of his main supporters. Mr. McLaughlin, through Mr. Taylor's influence, was ap- pointed "Boss Laborer" at the Brooklyn navy yard. In 1858 Mr. Taylor came up for reelection, but the Vanderbilt wing of the party nominated E. C. Litchfield against him, which resulted in another split, and James Humphrey, the Republican candidate, was elected. Mr. McLaughlin was selected in i860 as one of the delegates to the national Democratic convention which met at Charleston, S. C. He was subsequently nominated in the same year for the office of sheriff. The Vanderbilt wing of the Democratic party nominated John McNamee as candidate against him, causing a split in the party, whereby Anthony F. Campbell, a Republican, was elected. Then the civil war began and party lines were not so tightly drawn as before. Previous to the election of 1861 a call was issued from prominent citizens of the city, without respect to party affiliations, for a union ticket. A meeting was held on Fort Greene to further the object in question, and Mr. McLaughlin was unanimously nominated for the office of register of Kings County, and was triumphantly elected. He was reelected in 1864. In 1867 he was renominated for the third time, but was defeated by Charles Schurig by a small majority. In 1870 Mr. McLaughlin was again nomin- ated for the office of register and was elected over Benjamin Wilson, Republican, by more than 12,000 majority. At the end o^ this term Mr. McLaughlin retired to private life and has never since been a candidate for office. James Shevlin is the chief lieutenant of Hugh McLaughlin, and while his duties in that capacity have necessarily subjected him to adverse criticism he has had the good fortune to command the confidence and the warm personal friendship of the various ward and township leaders of the organization. Mr. Shevlin was born in the county Monahan in 1842, where his father had been well-to-do. The father's death led the widow, with James and three other sons, to come to this side of the Atlantic. James was set to work, and the force of habit has kept him an example of industry ever since, though prudence and application long ago placed him above the necessity of toil. When the civil war began, he enlisted in the navy from this city and was forwarded to Norfolk with a company of blue jackets designed for service aboard the frigate _" Pensacola." Some delay in the getting ready of this vessel enabled young Shevlin to pass through a thrill- ing experience. He and his companions were sent aboard the frigate "Congress," then lying in Hampton roads and anticipating the opening of the conflict on the water with the forces of the confederacy. The story of the sinking of the "Congress" by the rebel iron-clad " Merrimac " is familiar enough. Shevlin was one of the crew that preferred to go down with their ship rather than surrender. Although the "Con- gress " went to the bottom with her flag flying, not all of her men were drowned or otherwise killed. Not a few made their way into the open water through the port holes before she finally settled. Shevlin was one of these, and being a powerful swimmer he succeeded in reaching the beach. In due time Shevlin secured his discharge from the navy and returned to Brooklyn, where his lines of active life have lain ever since. He resolved to learn a trade, and with this end in view entered the boilermaking shop in the navy yard, where he remained until the close of the civil war found him in a condition to make some little business ventures on his own account. He bought two or three horses and carts, and proceeded to carry goods for whoever cared to employ him, and he prospered at the work. At the end of less than three years he found himself to be a well-to-do citizen. In the meantime he had secured the honor of being elected foreman of No. 7 engine, and in this relation he began to take what may fairly be called an active interest in politics. In 1869, when the volunteer fire department was abolished and the paid department established, he became identified with the latter as a district engineer, and there he continued to serve till 1872, when he was appointed warden of the penitentiary. He remained warden for ten years. Since 1882 Mr. Shevlin has neither held nor sought office. In these later years his informal relationship to politics has made very heavy demands on his time. Local, state and national conventions are left, in their details at least, to be looked after by the chief lieutenant. He is a director in the chief electric lighting company of the city; he has heavy real estate investments to look after, and he combines thrift with diversion by holding an advisory relation to the Brooklyn Jockey Club. He has a particular fondness for horses. He does not keep a stable, nor does it appear that he ever paid a fancy price for an animal, but he likes to know that when he chooses to do his utmost few can compel him to ride in the dust. John Delmar has been one of the most active members of the Democratic party in Brooklyn ever since attaining his majority, and early in his political career he became recognized as a leader in his ward. His influence extended rapidly, and at the present time he is one of the most influential and best trusted aides of Hugh McLaughlin. Mr. Delmar was born in Ireland on September 6, 1838, and came to Brooklyn in 1849. After obtaining an education and some business experience, he went into the milk trade in i860, and was engaged therein three years. In the meantime he had been particularly attentive to municipal affairs, and, obtaining an appointment as chief clerk to the superintendent of the poor, he held that position four years. Michael J. Coffey. He was elected justice of the peace in 1867 to serve an unexpired term and subsequently was reelected twice. In 1876 he was elected county clerk of Kings County, and served until the end of the term. Since 1881 he has been engaged in the real estate business. In the days of the volunteer fire department he was a member of Eureka Hose Company No. 14, and was for two years its foreman, a position he resigned in 1867. Michael J. Coffey, president of the common council, is one of America's adopted sons, and first landed on her shores with no other capital than an honest name, indomitable pluck and an ambition which his native environment could not bound. It was in a lowly cabin near Limerick that the twelfth ward leader was born. He was only five years old when he crossed the Atlantic to make a home in the new world, and in Chicago he spent his first five years on the American continent. He was still quite a youth when he came to Brooklyn and settled in the twelfth ward, where he began his education at public school No. 13, on Degraw street. On leaving school he learned the trade of ship-caulking, which he followed until the out- break of the war, when he enlisted in the navy, serving on board the United States ships " Monticello " and " Morse " during engagements at Newport News, Sewall's Point, Hampton Roads, Port Hatteras and Fort Clark. After the reestablishment of peace Mr. Coffey returned home with an honorable discharge. Politics soon after began to absorb his attention and he became a successful candidate for the office of alderman. Each ward at that time sent its own representative to the common council, and Mr. Coffey was elected to represent the twelfth ward. He was reelected, and at the conclusion of his second term he was sent to the state legislature from the then second assembly district. Again and again he was reelected. After serving five terms he retired from active politics and became a member of the dock building firm of O'Connell & Coffey. His retirement was only temporary, however, for in 1885 he was again elected to the common council, where he is now serving his fourth consecutive term. Upon the retirement of President John McCarty to receive the nomination for a state senatorship, in the fall of 1891, Alderman Coffey was the unanimous choice as his successor. In 1892 he was a delegate to the Democratic national convention held at Chicago. Mr. Coffey is a member of the Democratic General Committee, the Constitution Club, Union Democratic Club, Twelfth Ward Young Men's Democratic Club, Brooklyn Jockey Club and Rankin Post, G. A. R. He is married, and is the father of several children. As a political leader whose influence, becoming paramount in one section of the city, has more or less permeated surrounding interests, Alderman James McGarry has few compeers, His grasp upon the reins of power in the tenth ward is maintained by the most perfect organization known to that famous system of political mechanism which has so long kept Brooklyn in the column of Democratic cities, and in the matter of majorities he has succeeded in placing his ward ahead of any other in the municipality. This situation of affairs is due, in great measure, to the able generalship and masterly comprehension which Alderman McGarry displays at opportune moments. It might be said of him that he begins a new campaign imme- diately after election. Drifting into politics naturally, he has attained prominence by certain self-assertive qualities which render retrogression almost an impossibility. In politics, as in all other relations, it may be said of him, as of few others, that "his word is his bond " and his friendship is of that character which no variation of fortune can affect. When Winchester Britton assumed the duties of district attorney, Mr. McGarry was made an attache of his office. When the superior was removed from his post the subordinate was likewise officially decapitated. When Mr. Britton returned to the court house, triumphantly vindicated, the future alderman was one of those who shared in his good fortune and resumed under him the duties which he had previously relinquished. His next appointment was that of superintendent of streets and supplies in the department of city works, and he remained in office until Mayor Schroeder obtained alterations in the city charter which abolished the triple commission presiding over that portion of the municipal government and substituted in its stead a single official. Mr. McGarry was elected to the common council in 1884 and has since been reelected at the expiration of every term. In his owm ward ht. is known to all classes and conditions, and has exercised a paternal care over the interests of his constituents. He has perhaps fathered more local improvements in the matter of street repairing, lighting and paving than any other of his col- leagues who legislate in the city hall. The house where James McGarry was born, in 1842, stood on the south- east corner ot Smith and Wyckoff streets. His father, John McGarry, was a prosperous contractor and well- known Democrat, who held office in the New York custom house under the presidential administrations of Pierce and Buchanan. James McGarry was educated at the Sisters' school attached to St. Paul's Church and afterward at the institution of the Christian Brothers, on Jay street. He left school when sixteen and became a clerk for Scranton & Co., a grocery firm on Atlantic avenue. Four years later, under his father's auspices, he began business foi himself. He opened a grocery store at the corner of Nevins and Warren streets and conducted a successful trade in that location for many years. In addition thereto he has POLITICAL LIFE. 451 busied himself with real estate dealings and speculations, and still finds time to devote to his political interests and responsibilities. None worked harder than he for the success of the national ticket in 1892, and his efforts resulted in the tenth ward's giving Mr. Cleveland a majority of 3,297, thus distancing its rival Democratic stronghold, the sixth ward. Alderman McGarry belongs to the Democratic General Commit- tee and is a member of the Constitution Club. He lives at 176 Nevins street; he is domestic in his tastes and spends most of his leisure time in the society of his family. He was married about twenty-five years ago and has two sons. John J., the elder of the boys, is president of the Young Men's Democratic Club of the tenth ward and has contributed in no insignificant measure to the success of the Democracy in that section of the city. He is married. Joseph A., a bright young man verging on his majority, is his father's amanuensis and business lieutenant. Alderman McGarry is active in the church of St. Agnes, and his charities are liberal and numerous. Possessed of a strong individuality and with talents developed by self education, Ernst Nathan, collector of internal revenue, has for many years been among the leaders of the Republican party in Brooklyn and the county of Ivings. He was born at Calbe-on-the- Main, in the Province of Brandenburgh, Prussia, on April 8, 1842, and in 1850 was brought to America by his parents, who settled in New York. Not long after the family's arrival on this side of the Atlantic they moved to Williamsburgh. Ernst, after the death of an older brother the only surviving son, was the sole support of his father and mother, and at the age of nine he began to earn a sum sufficient to provide his parents with the necessaries of life. In the meantime he had contrived to educate himself and succeeded in attaining proficiency in Hebrew, German and English. When not quite twenty-two Mr. Nathan married Miss Johanna Schloss, of Williamsburgh, and not long after- ward he became foreman of a large cigarette manu- factory in New York. A year later he engaged in the wholesale tobacco trade, and eventually opened a store on Myrtle avenue, where he conducted a jobbing business, both wholesale and retail. Within twelve months he disposed of his establishment at a profitable price, and during the succeeding two years devoted his attention to the wholesale tobacco business. In 1S69 he bought a brownstone house on Fulton street, near Albany avenue, in the centre of a district which was then suburban in every sense, and here he continued to reside and prosecute his business. He rapidly amassed money, which enabled him to still further extend his enterprises and to purchase another building adjoining his own. His influence in political circles had been gradually increasing, and in 1875 he was elected to the board of supervisors from the twenty-third ward. In 1878 he was reelected by an increased majority. In 1886 he came before the public as a candidate for the Republican nomination in the third senatorial district. He was opposed in the convention by William H. Waring and Eugene O'Connor. The fight was a hot one, and half a dozen ballots were cast without the attainment of a decisive result. Fifty-seven votes were requisite to secure the nomination, and fifty-four delegates gave their sup- port to Mr. Nathan until the seventh ballot, when, to the surprise of most of those interested in the struggle, he cast his influence into the scale in favor of O'Connor, who was afterwards elected. In 1889 Mr. Nathan was appointed collector of internal revenue. F'or many years he has prominently associated himself with the more important Hebrew charities, and fourteen years ago bore the principal share in founding the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. He was elected as the first president of this institution, and for eleven years received the honor of an annual reelection. On the last occasion he declined to serve and retired in favor of another candidate. He is still a member of the board of trustees, Mr. Nathan retired from active business some time ago and transferred his interests to his sons. John Y. McKane comes of Scotch-Irish parentage, and was born on August 10, 1841, in the County Antrim, Ireland. When fifteen months old he was brought by his mother to Gravesencl, to which place his father had preceded them. His early education was gained at a Gravesend district school, and when sixteen POLITICAL LIFE. 453 years old he began work at the carpentry trade in Flatbush. In iS66 he commenced as a carpenter and builder on his own account in Sheepshead Bay. Here it was that he first became a public officer. He was made constable, and held the office for one year. Then he was elected commissioner of common lands, for a term of seven years. He was next chosen supervisor, and from its present organization in 1SS3 until his defection from the Democracy in 1887, he was president/;'^) tern of the county board. He is also police commissioner, and president of the town, health, police and water boards of Gravesend. He is, by election of the police board, the chief of police. It is Mr. McKane's political influence which has contributed more than anything else to make him a conspicuous figure in Brooklyn and Kings County. It is a well-known fact that he personally controls the majority vote in Gravesend for the candidate whose cause he chooses to espouse, and his power extends through New Utrecht and into the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth wards of this city. His entire career in the town of his adoption has revealed him to be a man of thoroughly demo- cratic instincts, a literal believer in the equal rights of men and in fair play for all. It has shown him, too, as one whose nature brims over with human sympathy and who in all private and official acts has been a practical friend to the poor. Throughout Gravesend and Coney Island, hundreds esteem him as a personal friend and benefactor, and all place implicit confidence in his judgment. In 18S7 arose his celebrated quarrel with the Democratic party in Kings County. iVIr. McKane had always, until then, staunchly sup- ported the candidates of that political faith. Just prior to the assembly conventions in that year, D. W. Tallmadge, of Bensonhurst, was recognized as the probable champion of the Republican party in the twelfth assembly district. The Democrats would, it was understood, nominate E. D. Benedict, of the twenty-sixth ward. Cornelius Ferguson, supervisor from New Utrecht, had an interview with Hugh Mc- Laughlin and suggested that the Democratic candidate should be a county man. Mr. McLaughlin demurred and finally refused. Mr. Ferguson announced that John Y. McKane had promised to support his (Fer- guson's) candidacy and the supervisor from New Utrecht declared himself for Mr. Tallmadge. Mr. McKane was true to his pledge to Mr. Ferguson, and Mr. Benedict was beaten at the polls. The Demo- cratic General Committee expelled Messrs. McKane and Ferguson from the organization. The former, however, still remained in the board of supervisors, but he no longer sat as president /rt? tern. At the presi- dential election of 1888, Mr. McKane threw his influence on the Republican side of the scale and con- tributed largely to Cleveland's defeat. Having made his power felt, he was frequently approached by Democratic politicians with overtures of reconciliation from the party managers, but Mr. McKane declared that when he went back to the Democratic organization it would be upon his own terms. At the election of 1891 he opposed the Democratic candidates for governor and lieutenant-governor, and supported the entire Democratic county ticket with but one exception — the Democratic candidate for assembly in the twelfth district — whose defeat he accomplished. After the election the Democratic General Committee rein- stated him in his forme.v offices, and now he is again president pro tcm of the board of supervisors, and a delegate to the general committee. In addition to performing the duties of his numerous offices, Mr. Mc- Kane carries on an extensive business as a builder and contractor, having erected nearly all the hotels and two-thirds of all the other buildings at Coney Island, as well as in the town of Gravesend. For over twenty years, too, he was superintendent of the Sunday-school connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church of Sheepshead Bay. He is a member of Franklin Lodge, I. O. O. F., and has held all the offices within its gift. In 1865 he was married to Fanny, daughter of Cap- tain Cornelius B, and Marie Nostrand, of Gravesend. Not many men in Brooklyn who still count their years on the sunny side of forty have mingled so actively in local and general politics as Theodore B. Willis, naval officer of the port of New York. He became an indefatigable, aggressive worker in the Republican column during the Hancock-Garfield cam- paign of 1880, and was at the head of the Garfield Legion of the first ward. The following year he was elected to the board of supervisors as the represent- ative from the first ward. He remained four terms in the ranks of the county legislators. Having risen Theodore e. wilus. 454 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. to prominence in party councils he succeeded, in 1885, in defeating John Y. McKane for the presidency of the board of supervisors. He was the youngest man who ever held that position. In 1887 he was chairman of the local campaign committee which brought Andrew D. Baird within eight hundred votes of the mayoralty. Mr. Willis has been a delegate to many state and national conventions, and in 1888 and in 1892 represented the fourth congressional district of Brooklyn at the conventions held in Chicago and Minneapolis. During the deliberations of the Chicago convention Mr. Willis was among the first to advocate the nomination of Benjamin Harrison as the Republican candidate for the presidency. In the ensuing election he was chosen as the best man to control the work of the Republican general campaign committee, and succeeded in keeping the Democratic majority in Brooklyn and the county towns down to twelve thousand, a most remarkable achievement. On October i, 1889, Mr. Willis was appointed by President Harrison to his present position as naval officer, which after the collectorship of the port is the most important office in the customs department of New York. He succeeded Colonel Silas W. Burt. Theodore B. Willis was born in Brooklyn in 1856. His father conducted the oldest estab- lished hardware store on Long Island, at the corner of Court and Schermerhorn streets, and Theodore, who had been educated in the Polytechnic Institute and Browne's Business College, joined him in business and succeeded to the senior partnership of the firm in 1875. Mr. Willis belongs to the Brooklyn, Hamilton, Montauk, Union League, Brooklyn Young Republican, Brooklyn Saengerbund and the Parkway Driving clubs. He is a member of the executive committee of the Republic General Committee and belongs to the Builders' and Mechanics' Exchange. He is married and lives on Brooklyn Heights. Few men have been more prominently identified with local affairs during the last forty years than has Franklin Woodruff, who began his residence here in 1853. He was at that time engaged in a confidential capacity with the New York firm of A. Woodruff & Robinson, and five years later he became senior member of the warehousing and importing house of Woodruff & Robinson. In 1875 this partnership was dissolved, and — excepting from 1880 until 1883, when he had Samuel McLean as a partner — Mr. Woodruff thence- forward conducted the business alone until the enterprise came under the control of the Empire Warehouse Company, Mr. Woodruff becoming one of the principal stockholders. In 1870 he began to take an active interest in politics, and for twelve years thereafter he was one of the leading Republicans of Kings County. Then for a time he relaxed his efforts for the party, but on the occasion of President Harrison's first nomination, Mr. Woodruff again buckled on his armor and came to the front as a leader. During the years 1889 and 1890 he was president of the Republican General Committee, and is still influentially identified with that organization as well as with the First Ward Republican Association. He was president of the Brooklyn Library Association four years, during which period the money for the site and building was raised and the structure was carried to completion, and is still a member of the board of trustees of the institution. He is also a member of the Union League and the Brooklyn Republican Club. Mr. Woodruff was born in Farmington, Conn., in 1832. He was sent to the district school, and subsequently to private schools in New Britain and East Hartford, Conn. He became a resident of New York city in 1850, and there began his business career as a clerk in the firm of which he subsequently became the head. The man who for years has been generally recognized as Mr. Nathan's associate in the leadership of one wing of the Republican party in Kings County is David A. Baldwin. His political activity in Brook- lyn began with his arrival here in i860, and he has ever since been among the most active and ardent of politicians. His skill as a leader is undeniable. He has voted the Republican ticket ever since the Fremont- Buchanan campaign. During the years 1863, 1864 and 1865 he was a delegate from the sixth ward to the Republican General Committee. In 1872 he moved to the eighth ward, and for two years was the official head of the ward association in that section. From the eighth ward he moved to the twenty-third, where he has lived ever since and which for fifteen years he has represented in the councils of the general com- mittee. He has belonged to the ward association for eighteen years, and has been its presiding officer for three terms. He served as chairman of the general committee from 1884 until 1888, a longer period of service than that of any other man who ever wielded the gavel. In 1889 he was again a candidate for reelection, and was opposed in a memorable contest by Franklin Woodruff. In 1888 Mr. Baldwin opposed James Kane in the fight for the office of register. David A. Baldwin was born on April 25, 1832, in Sus- quehanna County, Pa., but came to New York with his father in 1835. He was educated in the public schools of New York, and for a time was a bookkeeper and salesman in that City. From i860 until 1870 he was a liquidator in the New York custom house ; in the latter year he entered the employ of the Bowery Savings Bank, where he now holds a position of trust and responsibility. In 1858 he married Miss Mary K.Acheson, of New York ; they have one child, a son. William W. Goodrich has won a reputation at the bar as an admiralty lawyer, and in the conventions and campaigns of the Republican party his name has figured conspicuously for years. Mr. Goodrich was born at Havana, in New York state, about fifty-six years ago, and for more than thirty years past he has resided in Brooklyn. After graduating from Amherst College in 1852 he transferred his residence to Albany Michael J. Dady. and entered a law office. He also studied at the Albany Law School until his admission to the bar in 1853, and then began practice in New York. Mr. Goodrich has been a Republican from the days of the Fremont- Buchanan presidential campaign. In 1866 he was sent to Albany as assemblyman from the district which then comprised the seventh, ninth and eleventh wards of Brooklyn. In 1868 he failed to secure a nomination as state senator, and in the next year was defeated by a narrow margin while seeking reelection to the assembly. In 187 1 he regained his seat in the lower branch of the legislature. In 1867 Mayor Schroeder appointed Mr. Goodrich to the board of education. He subsequently served with distinction as one of the United States delegates to the international marine conference, which met at Washington on October 16, 1889. He is a director of the Philharmonic Society and the Apollo Club, is president of the Homoeopathic Hospital's board of trustees, and has an interest in the Kings County Bank. For a long time he was presi- dent of the Amherst College Alumni Association, and also belonged to Amherst Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity. In 1890 he was elected chairman of the Republican General Committee. Michael J. Dady stands in the foremost rank of the men who are credited with leading the forces of the local Republicans, and his influence is unconfined by the limits of any particular section of the city. During fifteen years he held the important post of chairman of the executive committee of the Republican General Committee. He is a member of the Third Ward Republican Association and the Federal Battery, and has been a delegate to two national conventions. Mr. Dady was born in the fifth ward of Brooklyn on April 24, 1850, and was educated at public schools Nos. 7 and 14. He began work as an office boy in the employ of the Standard, and then spent some time with the late William C. Kingsley, the prominent con- tractor. His next move was to apprentice himself to Edward Griffin with the idea of becoming a mason. Mr. Dady began work as a mechanic in 1870 on the New York post office, and in 1875 he became assistant superintendent of all the federal buildings then in course of construction in New York city. Shortly after- ward he was given the superintendency of the new municipal building, which was then about to be erected in this city. He was dismissed within a short time, owing to his refusal to bolt the nomination of Frederick A. Schroeder for senator. He then began business for himself and formed a partnership with Charles Hart, which lasted five years. He next became a member of the firm of John Cox & Company and subsequently associated himself with John H. O'Rourke. This partnership was dissolved in 1893. Mr. Dady married Miss Goff, of New York. They reside at 192 Dean street and have two sons, who, respectively, bear the names of President Chester A, Arthur and his secretary of state, James G. Blaine. 45 6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Joseph C. Hendrix was born at Fayette, Howard County, Mo., on May 25, 1853. He is the son of the late Adam Hendrix, who journeyed to the west in his early days, as a teacher, and later became the leading banker of that town. Mr. Hendrix was graduated from Central College, in his native place, but he left his home to pursue a course of studies at Cornell Univer- sity, Ithaca, N. Y. He helped to support himself at college by work in a printing office, newspaper corres- pondence and by conducting a small Democratic daily at Ithaca. In 1873 he borrowed $10 from W. O. VVyckoff, now head of the Remington typewriter firm, and started to make his way to New York. He went to the Sun ofifice, and explained to "Doc." Wood, then managing editor, that he was a green college student with a notion that he could do newspaper work. He was tried for two days, then put on a small salary, which was increased twice within six months, and event- ually he became night city editor. He was subsequent- ly assigned to Brooklyn work, and at once began a close study of affairs in this city. In 1880 he was active in the reform movement in local Democratic politics, and represented the Jefferson Hall Democracy as chairman of the conference committee, which devised a plan of reorganization for the party on the basis of Joseph c. Hendrix. enrolled primaries. In 1881 he was appointed a mem- ber of the board of education. He undertook the settlement of an intricate problem, involving some arrearages of teachers' salaries, which was successfully solved by the committee of which he was chairman. In 1883, when thirty years old, he received the Democratic nomination for the mayoralty, having for his opponent Mayor Low, when the latter was a candidate for his second term. Both candidates conducted a spirited canvass which attracted national attention. Mayor Low was reelected by a reduced majority. Mr. Hendrix succeeded General Henry W. Slocum as trustee of the New York and Brooklyn bridge, and in 1885 became secretary of the board. In 1886 he was appointed by Grover Cleveland to be postmaster of Brooklyn, and during the four years he held that office he reorganized the service and instituted so many im- provements that he was pronounced by ex-Postmaster General Thomas L. James, in an article in the Forum, to be " the ideal postmaster of the present day." In 1887 Mr. Hendrix was elected president of the board of education, and he has since been reelected, annually, to that office. He was named as a rapid transit com- missioner in 1890, but declined the appointment because of the pressure of other business. In 1889 he organized the Kings County Trust Company, and was elected its president, J. S. T. Stranahan being vice- president. Bishop Eugene R. Hendrix, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose home is in Kansas City, is a brother of Joseph C. Hendrix. In 1892 Mr. Hendrix received the Democratic nomination for congress in the third congressional district, and was elected by between five and six thousand majority. WiLLTA.M J. CooMBS was first an aspirant for congressional honors in a district which nearly always had returned a Republican candidate by majorities ranging from 6,000 to 4,000. In 1888, a year disastrous to Democratic prospects, Mr. Coombs was nominated as a candidate for the third district representation. He ■ conducted his canvass as an independent Democrat and was defeated by William Copeland Wallace. Two years passed and the convention of 1890 placed the same candidates in the field for a second trial of strength. The result was that the third district returned a Democrat and Mr. Coombs defeated Mr. Wallace by a narrow margin. In 1892 Congressman Coombs was reelected to congress, but this time from the fourth district. He distinguished himself by an active interest in the subject of American com- mercial relations with foreign countries. William J. Coombs was the youngest of three children. He was born at Jordan, Onondaga County, New York, on December 24, 1833. When he was ten years old he began to earn his own living, but he contrived in the intervals of his youthful labors to qualify himself for admission to Union College. He proved himself sufficiently proficient for matriculation when in his four- teenth year, but his age prevented the consummation of his educational ideas. After serving for a time in the employ of Arnold Woodward, drygoods merchant of Syracuse, he came to New York when sixteen and soon controlled the branch house which Mr. Woodward had established. Subsequently he turned his atten- tion to the work of introducing American goods into foreign markets, and in this field he was among the pioneers. He became a member of the firm of Joseph H. Adams & Coombs, and in 1870 he founded the firm of Coombs, Crosby & Eddy, of New York, in which he is now the senior partner. POLITICAL LIFE. 457 Thomas F. Magner, the congressional representative from the fifth district of Kings County, is among the youngest of our national legislators. He was born in this city on March 8, i860. His experience in political life began about six years ago, when he made an effort to obtain the Democratic nomination to the assembly from the district composed of the fourteenth and fifteenth wards. He failed to get it the first time, but when twelve months had passed and a new assembly convention was called he secured the nomina- tion. Paths of higher distinction soon opened before him. He was selected to rescue the Democracy from the peril which had threatened it in the two preceding elections in the congressional district compris- ing the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth wards. Mr. Magner was elected over his opponent by a majority of nearly 2,200 votes. He was reelected in 1890 and 1892. Mr. Magner was educated at the Brooklyn public schools and received his professional training for the career of a lawyer at Columbia Law School. John M. Clancy. Representing in the national legislature a district that comprises some of the more important sections of Brooklyn, Congressman John M. Clancy has given evidence on every occasion of his qualification for the responsibilities of a public official. He was born in Ireland on May 7, 1837, and while still in his boy- hood emigrated to America in company with his parents. He was educated in the common schools of Brooklyn, and afterward engaged in his present occupation as a dealer in real estate. Early in life he began to manifest an interest in the political affairs of the city, and he at last openly entered the field as an aspir- ant for office. In 1868 he received the Democratic nomination to a seat in the common council. He was elected, and continued to represent the fifth ward in the civic legislature until 1875. In 1874 he served as president of the common council. Shortly after his retirement from the board of aldermen Mr. Clancy was elected to the assembly. He was reelected by increased majorities, served four terms and declined a fifth. In 1888 he was pitted against the late "Richelieu " Robinson in the race for congressional honors. Both candidates were Democrats and contested the fourth district, an overwhelming Democratic strong- hold. When the votes were counted, it was found that John M. Clancy had been elected by a plurality of nearly six thousand. He was reelected in 1890 from the fourth district and in 1892 from the second dis- trict. Congressman Clancy is a veteran of the old volunteer fire department. He is a member of the Co- lumbian, Union, Democratic and Constitution clubs, and has served one terra as president of the last named. 45 S THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. John H. Graham. One of the greatest Democratic statesmen of later years announced in the national house of represent- atives on a certain occasion that practical business men were more needful to the federal legislature than any other class. In electing John H. Graham to con- gress the voters of the fifth district seemed to have coupled a substantiation of this statement with an endorsement of Democratic principles and a tribute to personal worth. Congressman Graham is essentially a man whose success in life is due to natural capabili- ties rightly du-ected and energetically e.xercised. He has prospered in private enterprises, and is associated with more than one financial institution of note. He was the representative of the hardware board of trade in the World's Fair commission of one hundred, and was named as one of the incorporators in both the state and national bills. He is a trustee in the East Brook- lyn Savings Bank and a director in the National Shoe and Leather Bank, of New York. He served for seven- teen years on the Democratic General Committee, and during 1857, 1858 and 1859 was deputy commis- sioner of repairs and supplies under the municipal government of this city. He was born on April i, 1835, and is the son of General Samuel Graham, who came to the United States from Belfast, Ireland, in 1835, and occupied a prominent position in relation to business and public affairs in this city until his death in 1884. John H. Graham studied in public school No. 4, on Classon avenue, under the late Samuel C. Barnes, and for five years was an apprentice to an architect and builder. Abandoning this occupation he engaged in the hardware trade, which has since engaged his attention. He served seven years in the New York State Militia, and when the Civil war began he organized Company A, 5th N. Y. Heavy Artillery Volunteers, and served as its captain under the com- mand of his father. He was promoted to the rank of major in due time, and was brevetted lieutenant-colonel ■' for gallant and meritorious conduct " at Harper's Ferry and in the famous Shenandoah campaign. He was taken prisoner in 1862, but was paroled, and later, in the autumn of the same year, was exchanged. Just before the close of the war he was employed by B. B. Hotch- kiss, the inventor of the famous machine gun bearing his name. On January i, 1870, he embarked in the wholesale hardware business on his own account. In the autumn of 1892 Mr. Graham was the recipient of double honors from the Democratic party. He was nom- inated as a presidential elector, but resigned owing to doubts as to his eligibility, -which arose from his holding a directorship in a national bank. He was also nomin- ated for congress in his own district, normally a Repub- lican stronghold, and won by a gratifying majority. Congressman Graham lives in the twenty-first ward, and is the representative from that section in the ad- visory committee of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. On June 2, 1S58, he married Annie Oliver, daughter of John Oliver, of this city. WiLLiA.M CoPELAND WALLACE was bom in this city, the son of William H. Wallace, an iron and steel merchant. He was prepared for college at the Adelphi Academy, and entered the Wesleyan University, at POLITICAL LIFE. 459 Middletown, Conn., in the class of 1876, with which he was graduated, talcing high honors. He began the study of law at Columbia College, and after his admission to the bar he entered the office of LJ". S. District Attorney Woodford. Mr. Wallace served as clerk of the United States court, and in 1S80 acted as assist- ant district attorney. On the retirement of Gen. Woodford from office Mr. Wallace became his partner, and has conducted many important cases. Mr. Wallace was largely instrumental in organizing the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, and was president for some time of the Twentieth Ward Republican Association. In 1888 Mr. Wallace received the nomination for congress from the third district. He resigned from the Young Republican Club, and accepted the offered honor. An active campaign resulted in his election by 3,000 majority over his opponent, William J. Coombs. Mr. Wallace won for himself an enviable reputation in congress, and rendered Brooklyn services of great value. In 1890 Mr. Wallace stood for reelection on the Republican ticket, being opposed, as in his former campaign, by Wm. J. Coombs. In this campaign Mr. Coombs was successful, and Mr. Wallace returned to the practice of law at the expiration of his term of office. He is a member of the Oxford Club, and was its first president. In viewing retrospectively the legislative record of Senator Patrick H. McCarren, the dweller in the greater Brooklyn of the future wril gratefully contemplate the effort which bridged the East River for a second tune and established another bond of union between the mighty twin cities of the Atlantic sea- board. It was due to his unwavering championship, m the face of hostile influences, that the project which will culminate in throwing another "rainbow of commerce" across the outlet of the sound, was legally sanctioned at Albany and placed upon a basis from which its completion may be safely assured. Patrick Henry McCarren was born at East Cambridge, Mass., on July 18, 1849. When he was three years old his parents moved to Brooklyn and settled in the fourteenth ward. The future legislator was educated for a time at private schools m the Eastern District and eventually completed his studies at public school No. 17. When sixteen years of age he was apprenticed to a cooper and worked at his trade until 1868, when he became a journeyman. After a short period of independent labor, Mr. McCarren entered the oil and cooperage inspection business as an employee of I. H. Archer & Co., of New York. Meanwhile he became an 46o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. active worker in the fourteenth ward, where he has always lived, and in the nominating conventions of 1881 he received the Democratic endorsement as candidate for the assembly from the sixth district, comprising the fourteenth and fifteenth wards. He was elected by a substantial majority, and was reelected the following year. In 1885 the Democracy selected him as the candidate to contest the fourth senatorial district with Jacob Worth, the nominee of the Republicans. This time certain influences of the opposition party proved too strong and Mr. McCarren was defeated. He remained in private life until 1888, when he was again elected to the assembly by his old constituency. In 1889 he repeated the senatorial venture he had made four years previously, with more fortunate results. He was reelected in i8qi. When Lieutenant-Governor Sheehan named Senator McCarren as chairman of the committee on commerce and navigation it was in the very teeth of the opposition from important sources. Previous bills authorizing the construction of the new East River bridge had been smothered in their infancy, but the energetic senator from the fourth district was determined ultimately to wrest success from the wreck of former attempts, and before the session of 1892 closed "the McCarren bridge bill" became law. In the national Democratic convention, which met at Chicago in June, 1892, Senator McCarren sat as a delegate from the fifth congressional district of Brooklyn. Senator Joseph Aspinall has been a life-long resident of Brooklyn. He is of English descent, and is a nephew of the Rev. George Hollis, who came to Brooklyn from England some seventy years ago. Mr. Aspinall attended the public schools and also a private school, from which he was graduated at the age of eighteen. He found employment with William Wall's Sons, rope manufacturers, but his desire to follow a pro- fessional career induced him a little later to enter the office of his cousin, William H. Hollis, as a student of law, at the same time attending lectures at Columbia College with the class of 1875. On the death of William Hollis, in 1881, Mr. Aspinall succeeded to the firm's business, which consisted largely of surrogate's, civil and real estate practice. He is counsel for the National City Bank of Brooklyn, and is custodian of many important interests. As a Republican worker he was frequently a delegate to city and state conventions. In 1888, 1889 and 1890 he was elected to the assembly from the eleventh district of Kings County. In 1891 he was elected to the senate ; his opponent being Charles Sutherland, formerly a member of the assembly. Senator Aspinall is prominent in masonry, having taken the thirty-second degree in the Scottish Rite, is a member of Kismet Temple of the Mystic Shrine, of the Aurora Grata Club, and of several social organi- zations, such as the Union League Club, the Garfield Club and the Brooklyn Club, of which he was president for two years. He is also a member of the Lake Mahopac Yacht Club, the Adriance Club and the Adelphi Riding Club. He was for many years secretary of the Irving Literary Society. In various situations in the field of politics Senator John McCarty, representative in the upper branch of the New York state legislature from the second district, has won the approval of his constituents. He was born in Westchester County, N. Y., on July 13, 1844. His father was of Irish birth, but came to America when twelve years old and worked his way through life until he amassed considerable property, and finally he purchased real estate on Fulton street and built several stores, in one of which it was decided that his son John should begin his career as a groceryman. Imbued with this idea the young man came to Brooklyn in 1863, but circumstances prevented the consummation of the design and he entered the employ of the city as chief clerk in the board of health. This position he held for some years and in 1877 became clerk to the late Police Justice Andrew Walsh. Mr. McCarty resigned in 1878 and soon afterwards became the Democractic candidate for alderman of the fifth ward and was elected by a handsome majority. His services to the city in this capacity lasted until the summer of 1891, when he retired from the presidency of the board of aldermen. When he resigned he was honored as the guest at one of the most elaborate banquets ever given to commemorate the worth and services of a Brooklyn official. Some time before his retirement from the common council, it became generally known in political circles that he would succeed Senator Jacobs in the second district, and his nomination and election followed in the ensuing autumn. For eighteen years Senator McCarty was a delegate to the Democratic General Committee, and during most of that time lived in the fifth ward. He belongs to the Carleton, Constitution and Columbian clubs, to the Catholic Ben- evolent Legion and to Fort Greene Council, Royal Arcanum. He has acquired wealth, and has devoted much of his capital and enterprise toward developing the suburban district of New Utrecht. Assemblyman Thomas F. Byrnes is noted for his close attention to legislative duty and for his assid- uity as a committee worker. He now represents the seventh district, but for three years he went to Albany as assemblyman from the old tenth district. He is now serving his fourth consecutive term and has been returned each time with increased pluralities. He was born in Brooklyn, of Irish parentage, on May 2, 1859, and was educated at the public schools. He has always been a Democrat, but prior to entering the political arena as a candidate for legislative honors he was prominently identified with labor matters. He was a delegate to District Assembly No. 75, Knights of Labor ; member of the Central Labor Union and, for two terms, president of the National Association of Journeymen Horseshoers. Mr. Byrnes formerly pur- sued the trade of a horseshoer, and for some time held the position of foreman in the employ of the Brook- lyn City Railroad Company. For the last few years he has conducted a successful business as a contractor. ^/^ J^^^- 462 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Assemblyman John Kelly is now serving his fifth term as a member of the legislature, having been first elected in 1888 as the Democratic representative from the fifth assembly district. He was born in New York city thirty-seven years ago, but his family removed to Brooklyn when he was only five years old. He first attended public school No. 30, and afterward became a pupil at Villa Nova, Delaware County, Pa., where he was graduated in due course with the degree of Bachelor of Science. He then engaged in the building trade with his father, in which he has since remained. He is an active member of the Twelfth Ward Democratic Association and is also a delegate to the Democratic General Committee of Kings County, John D. Cooney has won honors both as a lawyer and legislator, and, like many other prominent figures in public life, stepped from the ranks of journalism to grasp success and achieve triumphs in other fields. He has always been a sturdy Democrat. His championship of party principles has been fearless, constant and unflinching. He was a political enthusiast in the presidential campaign of 1856, when the man who had found a pathway to the Golden Gate tried in vain to follow the beaten track to the White House. He held office in this city as assistant corporation counsel under John T. Schumaker, and in 1889 he was elected to represent at Albany the third assembly district of Brooklyn. He has been annually reelected by increasing majorities ever since. In the state legislature he has rendered much valuable service other than that which the local demands of his constituency of necessity entailed. John Cooney was born in Albany in June, 1836. He was graduated from the Albany Academy and, after a term of study in the law office of James T. Brady, of New York, was admitted to the bar in this city in 1857. When quite a young man he became the leading paragrapher on the staff of the Albany Knickerbocker and was also editorially associated with the work of the Brooklyn Weekly Standard, which flourished during the civil war. Mr. Cooney lives in the third ward and is a member of the Young Men's Democratic Club of that section. Hubert G. Taylor, the assemblyman from the fifth district, is one of twelve children born to William Taylor, who was in 1870 a trustee of the Brooklyn Bridge. He was born in this city on July 9, 1847, and was educated in the public schools and at the Polytechnic Institute. Just before the outbreak of the Civil war he organized, in imitation of the Ellsworth Zouaves, a company of boys, who called themselves the " Brooklyn Gray Cadets." This company afterwards became the nucleus of the 47th Regiment. When Mayor Kalbfleisch was elected to congress he offered Mr. Taylor an appointment as a cadet at West Point, but in the winter of 1862 an event occurred which changed the current of his life, and prevented his acceptance of the offer. He had agreed to go to California with William O. Mills, who had been offered a position in the banking house of his uncle, D. O. Mills, in the city of San Francisco. His parents would have opposed the scheme, so he de- cided to leave Brooklyn without their knowledge. He failed to secure passage in the same steamer with his friend, and was forced to take a berth on board the clipper ship " Snow Squall," then ready to sail for the Pacific coast. Though but sixteen years old, he shipped as one of the crew and sailed from New York on January 2, 1863. The voyage of ~ ~" ' the "Snow Squall " was extremely unfortunate ; in attempting the pas- sage of the Straits of Magellan the vessel was driven on the rocks. The crew abandoned her, and made the best of their way along the coast to the Falkland Islands; there young Taylor entered his name on the book of an English ship, in which he reached San Francisco on July 18, 1863, with seventy-five cents in his pocket. He went at once to the office of Messrs. Dibble & Hyde, to whom the ill-fated "Snow Squall" had been consigned, and they, after hearing his story, gave him money for his necessities. Within two weeks he left for Sacramento, where his friend. Mills, had made his home, and there he found employment as junior bookkeeper. Mr. Taylor formed an acquaintance with Edward B. Partridge, and the two young men became so impressed with the prospects of acquiring a fortune in China, that they left California and shipped as seamen on the bark " Rival," bound for Hong Kong. Both carried letters of recommendation, but owing to the depression in the American trade incident to the civil war, their applications for employment in Hong Kong were unsuccessful. As the last resort they made an effort to enlist in the British army, but found the period of service longer than either cared to undergo. They eventually returned to the " Rival," which was still in port. After a long voyage the " Rival " dropped anchor in Queenstown harbor. Cork was the next port made, and here Mr. Taylor found that the American Consul had received letters from his parents asking that provision be made for their son's passage home. The opportunity to return to America was extremely welcome, and Mr. Taylor accepted it. Three weeks after his return he obtained a situation in the First National Bank of Brooklyn, where he soon rose to the post of teller. Failing health at last rendered Mr. Taylor's resignation imperative, and in 1869 he embarked, with two others, in the cotton seed oil business at Vicksburg, Miss. They also owned a Ime of freight steamers. In POLITICAL LIFE. 463 1874 fire destroyed the property, and Mr. Taylor returned to New York. In 1878 Isaac S. Catlin, then district attorney, appointed him to a position in his office, where he remained as managing and chief clerk until Gen. Catlin's retirement, six years later. For two years after this he was receiving teller of the Manufac- turers' National Bank, but resigned when an opportunity to engage in the real estate business presented itself. In conjunction with Charles Fox he founded the Taylor & Fox Realty Company, Limited, of which he is now president. He is a trustee of the Kings County Savings Institution, and is a member of several clubs and societies. Mr. Taylor has lived in the nineteenth ward for about forty years, and has always shown an active interest in the success of the Republican party in Brooklyn and Kings County. In 1892 he was the only successful candidate of his party on the assembly ticket in this county, being returned from the fifth district by a good majority. A. Augustus Healy was born in Brooklyn in 1850. He attended the high school, and later studied at the Polytechnic Institute. Upon the completion of his education he turned his attention to the leather trade, and for the past twenty years has been a member of the firm of A. Healy & Sons, his father, Aaron Healy, having been for many years the head of that firm. From boyhood Mr. Healy has been a regular attend- ant at Plymouth Church, and was an ardent admirer and steadfast supporter of the late Henry Ward Beecher. In politics he has been always a Democrat, a strong tariff reformer, and an enthusiastic admirer of Grover Cleveland. From the organization of the Young Men's Democratic Club until the time the rup- ture occurred in that association, he was one of its most active members. When the split came, he was one of the founders of the Brooklyn Democratic Club, of which he became president. Mr. Healy has always taken a lively interest in all public affairs, and for some years past has held positions under the city gov- ernment. In 1884 Mayor Low appointed him a mem- ber of the first Brooklyn civil service commission, a position which he held until the inauguration of Mayor Whitney. In January, 1892, Mayor Boody appointed Mr. Healy a member of the board of education, and the public school system finds in him a deeply interested supporter. Mr. Healy inherits from his father a pro- nounced taste for art, and he is the possessor of a valuable collection of art treasures. He is one of the trustees of the Reform Club of New York, a director in the Hide & Leather National Bank of New York, vice-president of the Rembrandt Club and a member the Hamilton Club, of Brooklyn. When, after the presidential election in 1892, the Republican party in Kings County bethought itself of reorganization, it was suggested that a young man be chosen for president of the general committee, and among those mentioned for the position was Joseph Benjamin, the leader of the Republican organization of the sixteenth ward. From his twenty-first year he had been active in politics ; he had been a member of the general committee, and representative in its councils ; and had been a delegate to the state conven- tion three times and once represented Kings County in the national convention. Later, when called upon to preside over the county convention in 1892, he developed notable ability as a chairman and speaker. These qualifications, together with the fact that it was Mr. Benjamin who, in the early part of 1892, first introduced a resolution providing for reorganization, placed him prominently before his party. Mr. Ben- jamin was born in the Eastern District of Brooklyn in 1859. After being graduated from the public schools, he embarked in the real estate business, and soon attained to a prosperous position. His first public office was that of deputy, under Coroner Hess. Later he became deputy county clerk under Mr. Kaiser, whose election campaign Mr. Benjamin had successfully conducted. As an appraiser of Wallabout market lands Mr. Benjamin also served efficiently, and he was reappointed to the position in January, 1893. He is prominent in secret society circles, being a member of Harmonia Lodge, I. O. O. F., and Oltmans' Lodge, No. 446, F. & A. M. In 1889 he was a candidate for justice of the peace, and carried his judicial district by a substantial majority, but lost in the entire city by 500 votes. Mr. Benjamin's political progress has been rapid, but it has also been made upon a substantial basis of ability, and this is recognized by his party. A. Augustus Healy. 464 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Frederic W Hinrichs was bora in Brooklyn on September 12, 1851. He is the son of Charles F. A. Hinrichs, who came to Brooklyn from Germany more than half a century ago His mother was bora m Brooklyn and her father's house is yet standing on the coraer of Middagh and Wdlow streets. Mr Hmnchs obtained his primary education in the city of Dresden, Germany, where his parents l.ved for a time. He afterwards continued his education at Professor Deghuee's German-Amencan Academy, rom which he was graduated at the head of his class. He then entered Bryant & Stratton's Business College, where he obtafned a business education. At the age of sixteen he became a clerk m his father s office, remammg ,„ that position for three years. Dissatisfied with commercial life, he entered Columbia Co lege, with the aim of becoming a lawyer, and after completing his course of law studies there he read civil law in Germany. Mr Hinrichs began early to interest himself in public affairs. He was among the organizers of the Young Men's Democratic Club, of which Alfred C. Chapin was the first president. Although an ardent Democrat, Mr Hinrichs strongly advocated the separation of party politics from municipal affairs. This led to his advocacy of Ripley Ropes for mayor and, subsequently, his work in behalf of Seth Low. Mayor Low appointed Mr Hinrichs to the board of education, in which he served for two years and a half, most of the time as chairman of the teachers' committee. He resigned before the expiration of his term and refused a reappointment tendered him. This was the only public office ever held by Mr. Hinrichs. During the election after the close of Mayor Low's administration, Mr. Hinrichs was very active in the Citizens League and was chairman of General Woodward's campaign committee. Notwithstanding the stand taken by Mr Hinrichs with regard to city affairs, he was elected president of the Young Men's Democratic Club in the three successive elections of 1889, 1890 and 1891. As secretary of the Brooklyn Reform Club, of which the late Henry Ward Beecher was president, he was often heard in public. Mr. Hinrichs suggested to the Eagle and to Mr. J. Q. A. Ward the fitness of rearing in Brooklyn a statue to Mr. Beecher. The result of this suggestion and his work in connection with the citizens' committee appears in the city's chief square. Arnold Harris Wagner was born at Palatine Bridge, New York, in 1831. In the seventeenth cen- tury the ancestors of Mr. Wagner settled at Palatine, where they were the owners of a large tract of land. Johann Peter Wagner was a colonel and Johann Peter Wagner, Jr., a lieutenant-colonel in the Revolution- ary army and both were in the battle of Oriskany under General Herkimer. Webster Wagner, of palace car fame, is a member of this family. What is now known as Fort Plain was originally Wagner's Village. When nineteen years of age Arnold Harris Wagner came to New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. For a short time he was clerk in the general term of the supreme court, after which he began prac- tice. In 1870 he removed to Brooklyn. He became popular in social and political circles. In 1891 he filled the position of chairman of the Republican cam- paign committee. He also represented the third dis- trict of New York in the national convention. His practice in recent years has been devoted to real estate and the examination of titles and he is considered an authority on all matters relating to titles and wills. He is a member of the Union League Club, and served on its executive committee. In 1858 he married Miss Cecilia Gerard, of New York. Henry A. Meyer was born in this city on May 12, i860. His father was Christopher H. Meyer, who at the time of his son's birth lived on Wythe avenue, on the spot where the latter now resides. Mr. Meyer's education was gained in the Brooklyn public schools and in a business college. In 1876 he determined to qualify himself for the German Lutheran ministry, and went to the Concordia Theological Seminary, at Fort Wayne, Ind. There he studied so hard that his eyes became affected, but by untiring industry he was enabled to complete in two years what is usually a three years' course. Upon leaving the seminary in 1878 he gave up all idea of becoming a minister in consequence of his impaired eye-sight, and entered into partnership with his father in the retail grocery business. In 1885 Mr. Meyer started in the same line of business for himself, and successfully conducted for several years two establishments in Brooklyn. On August Arnold Harris Wagner. POLITICAL LIFE. 465 26, 1S86, Mr. Meyer was elected president of the Retail Merchants' Association, over which he presided for three terms. Mr. Meyer was instrumental in effect- ing the union of the two grocers' associations in the city. He retired from the grocery trade and resigned his presidency in the United Grocers' Association on April 26, 1892, to enter the wholesale wood and willow ware business, and to form an agency for manufac- tured specialties for the grocery trade. In business he amassed considerable money, and has it invested largely in city property. Mr. Meyer's staunch Republican- ism was the cause of his being made the candidate of his party for mayor of Brooklyn in the municipal election of 1891. He made a vigorous and able can- vass, but was defeated after polling a handsome vote, running many thousands ahead of his ticket. He is a member of the Aurora Grata Lodge, No. 756, F. & A. M., an active member of the Legion of Honor, the Brooklyn Athletic Club, the Cecelia Singing Society, the Germania Hospital Society, the Brooklyn Insti- tute and the Union League Club. He is president of the Germania Real Estate and Improvement Com- pany, and he also belongs to various other social organizations. Walter L. Durack, of the law firm of Judge & Durack, was born in New York city on July 8, 1857, of Irish parents, and since he was ten years old he has Ijeen a resident of Brooklyn. He was educated in the public schools, being graduated from No. 16, and in 1873 he entered the drygoods house of Lord & Taylor, where he remained till 1878, when he became a traveling salesman in the wholesale drygoods line. In was in 1882, while engaged in this pursuit, that Mr. Durack began to study law, and in July of the same year he married Miss Selina Augusta Williamson, of Brooklyn. Mr. Durack was admitted to the bar in 1885, and began the practice of law in New York. He became interested in the building loan association movement in which he has become very prominent and influential. He was chosen attorney for the East Brooklyn Cooperative Building Association and his firm now holds a similar relation with eight of these organizations in New York and Brooklyn. He was instrumental in organizing the State League of Building Associations, was vice-president of that organization and at the present time is a mem- ber of the executive committee for New York in the United States League of Local Building and Loan Associations. iSIr. Durack is connected with the great e.\hibition at Chicago as one of the advisory board of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian E.xhibition. In 1892 his friends prevailed on him to accept the Democratic nomination for the assembly in the si.xteenth district. This district, having a normal Republican majority of about four thousand, was generally considered so strongly Republican as to pre- clude the possibility of Mr. Durack's election. Besides the regular Republican, an independent Repub- lican candidate appeared in the field. The friends of Mr. Durack were encouraged to work enthusiastically in his behalf, and his election resulted by a plurality of one hundred and thirty-five. Ever since attaining his majority John M. Ranken has been engaged as an active champion of the aggressive Democracy of Kings County. In 1885 he was chosen as a candidate for the office of county clerk. The honor was not of his own seeking and was conferred by the convention almost without the knowledge of the prospective recipient. He was elected by a majority of ten thousand votes. Mr. Ranken has served twenty-three years in the National Guard, enlisting as a drummer boy in Company C, 47th Regi- ment, in 1864, and being honorably discharged as captain of Company A, of the same regiment, in 1867. He is a member of the Constitution Club and has been one of its directors f(jr the last three years. He aided in establishing the Tilden Club and has been its president since the date of organization. He has served three terms as president of the Seawanhaka Boat Club, which he joined in 1873 and of which he is now a trustee, and has been the club's delegate to the national convention of amateur oarsmen for nineteen consecutive years, and in that time has attended all tlie national regattas held in various parts of the United States. Mr. Ranken was prominent in organizing the Long Island Amateur Rowing Association, which embraces all the amateur boating clubs on Long Island ; he was its president for three years and finally declined the honor of a reelection. John M. Ranken was born in New York on October 5, 1S47. John M. Ranken. His father, Henry Ranken, was born in Germany, near the city of Bremen, on December i, 1812, and came to America when fourteen years old. He conducted a grocery business in the Eastern District of this city for more than twenty years and died on October i, 1882. The maiden name of Mr. Ranken's mother was Lydia W. Benton. She was a native of Guilford, Conn., and was descended from the Scottish refugees who fled to the New England province early in the seventeenth century to escape religious persecution. Mr. Ranken's education was obtained at public school No. 19, in Brooklyn, and in a private institution in New York. Having previously spent a brief period in his father's employ, young Ranken, after completing his studies, secured a situation in the hardware establishment of J. E. Halsey & Co., with whom he remained until the dissolution of the firm. He then engaged in business with his father, and since the latter's death has devoted his time to managing the extensive real estate interests committed to his charge. George W. Leete, who for many years has been associated as naturalization clerk with the Demo- cratic General Committee, was born in the fourth ward of this city on November 4, 1849. He was edu- cated in the public schools of Brooklyn and was afterwards graduated from Robinson's Institute. For some time he held the position of assistant accountant in the department of city works, under Commissioner George R. Conner. For the last ten years Mr. Leete has been the efficient secretary of the Twenty-fifth Ward Democratic Association. Calvin E. Pratt. THE BENCH AND BAR. 'N Washington Irving's Knickerbocker liistory, the story of the first judicial decis- ion in the colony of New Netherland, when the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, after duly weighing and counting the pages of the account books of the warring parties, decided that each should render the other a receipt, and that the con- stable should pay the costs, would, if true, serve as an excellent background against which to display the learned and honorable decisions of the various courts which sat in Kings County during the two centuries that have elapsed since that time. The legal fraternity is always looked to for legislative initia- tive, and often for forming and voicing public opinion, but to the jurists of Brooklyn must be accredited an unusual proportion of the movements which have advanced the city's interests in material directions. They have been among the foremost in outlining its internal policy, in extending its physical limits, in developing its resources, in advancing the value of its real estate and in founding its institutions — educational, industrial, philanthropic, commercial and financial. The bench of the county of Kings has traditions that connect it with some of the most famous names in America. Its courts have been presided over by John jVIarshall, John Jay, Joseph Story, Oliver Ellsworth, Bushrod Washington, Samuel Nel- son and other justices of the United States supreme court, and by distinguished judges of the supreme court of the state, whose names will always live in the history of its jurisprudence, among them Brockholst Living- stone, John Sloss Hobert, James Kent, Ambrose Spencer, William L. Marcy, Eseck Cowan and John W. Edmonds. At this bar Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr appeared to plead, and Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Daniel Lord, Ogden Hoffman, James T. Brady and William Curtis Noyes were advocates. The formation 468 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. of the bar of Kings County followed immediately upon the act of the colonial assembly, passed in 1683, dividing the province into counties. Previous to that the Dutch ministers combined civil with religious duties, and acted as justices of the peace by common consent. The first court house in Kings County was built at Gravesend in 1668 on the present site of the Dutch Reformed Church. Here courts were held at regular intervals until 1685, when the court house was removed to Flatbush, as being a more central loca- tion. The court continued to sit in that town until 1832, occupying three different buildings erected for the purpose, all on the site of the residence of the late Abraham A. Lott. In November, 1832, the Flatbush court house was destroyed by fire, and the court moved to Brooklyn, where it occupied quarters in the building of the Apprentices' Library, on the corner of Henry and Cranberry streets, afterward used as a city hall. In 1833 Brooklyn became the recognized county seat. This, the first court in Brooklyn, was presided over by Judge John Dikeman, and Abraham Vanderveer, the county clerk, was ex officio clerk of the court. The court continued to be held there until 1839, although the municipal court, which corresponds to the city court of to-day, continued to sit in that building for ten years later. Early Brooklyn courts acted under three different judicial systems. The first, which existed from 1665 till 1683, was organized under a code promulgated by an assembly that met at Hempstead in 1665. This provided for a court of assizes, a court of sessions and a town court. The Dutch courts of the burgomasters in New York were changed to the mayor's court. The governor was also empowered by a commission to establish a court of admiralty. The second system, which prevailed from 1683 till 1691, provided for town or justices' courts, courts of session, a chancery court and a court of oyer and terminer. The third system, inaugurated in 1691, continued until the Revolution. It added a court of common pleas and a supreme court, the latter absorbing the court of oyer and terminer, previously established. After the formation of the national and state governments, these courts were continued until 182 1, when material changes were made in the mode of procedure. By the constitution of 1846 still greater changes were made. The court of chancery, the court of common pleas and the old court of sessions were abolished, the supreme court was reorganized, a county court and a new court of sessions instituted, and the court of oyer and terminer retained as a part of the supreme and circuit courts. The court of appeals was also organized at this time. In Brooklyn there existed from the beginning town and justices' courts, presided over by the high constable and over- seers of the town. Justices of the peace were empowered to try minor causes, assisted by the freeholders. Subsequently three justices were empowered to try without a jury any offender who could not find bail within twenty-four hours and whose offence was less than grand larceny. These justices had also capital power in the trial of slaves. None of these courts has left any records. The first court of records in Kings County was held at Gravesend on March 17, 1668. Several cases were tried that are of importance to the student of our legal methods, but much of the interest lies in the peculiar phraseology of the court papers. The supreme court of New York state was originally established by act of the legislature on May 6, 1691, and continued by various acts until 1698, when, the acts having expired by limitation, it was continued by the governor's proclamation of January 19, 1699, and finally by an order of the governor and the council of May 15, 1699. This court consisted at first of five judges, two of whom, with the chief justice, constituted a quorum. From 1701 until 1758 it was composed of a chief justice and two associate justices. Attorneys were admitted to practice by the governor, on the recommendation of the chief justice, after having served seven years under an attorney, and having subscribed to the usual oaths, including an oath never to be concerned in any duel. The court of common pleas was established in every county of the state in 1691. At first it was composed of a judge and three associates, but after 1702 it was ordered that there should be a judge and two or more associates. This court took cognizance of all cases involv- ing interests of ;^s or over. These courts were continued without great change, except that after 182 1 there were five judges in each county, one of whom was styled " first judge." The first circuit court and court of oyer and terminer held in the county after the organization of the government began its sittings at Flatbush on June 6, 1800, the Honorable Egbert Benson, one of the justices of the supreme court, presi- ding. His famous charge to the grand jury during this session fixed a standard steadily maintained by the bench and bar of Brooklyn. He said: "Your county, gentlemen, over which the smoke of battlefields has but recently floated, has before it a magnificent future. Upon grand juries, upon courts of justice, upon all officers of courts and upon all persons connected with the administration of the laws, rest solemn respon- sibilities which are to tell on that future ; for now is the seed time ; now is the ground fallow which is to yield fruit for generations to come. See to it, then, gentlemen, that the responsibility with which the law clothes you is properly executed and directed." The clerk of this court was Leffert Lefferts, Jr., appointed on April 5, 1800. The sheriff was Cornelius Bergen, appointed on February 17, 1800. The Kings County bar in 1800 comprised only fifteen members. So late as 1836 the number had increased to only twenty-one members, and the list includes some who were associated with the life of the city down to very recent times —James B. Clark, Richard D. Covert, George C. Dixon, John Dikeman, Theodore Eames, Gabriel Furman, William A. Green, Nathan B. Morse, Henry C. Murphy, Nathaniel Porter, Alpheus P. Rolph, Gilbert Reed, THE BENCH AND BAR. 469 Wililam Rockwell, John Smalley, Cyrus P. Smith, William B.Waldo and Nathaniel F. Waring. Other names that occur in the early history of the bar are Grenville T. Jenks (father of the present corporation counsel), John A. Lott, George M. Wood, Charles J. Lowrey, Alden J. Spooner, John Greenwood, John Vanderbilt, Henry A. Moore, Philip S. Crooke, Harmanus B. Duryea, Richard C. Underhill, Jesse C. Smith, Moses F. Odell, James Humphrey, William E. Robinson, Joshua M. "Van Cott and many others, some of whom have served on the bench and in other conspicuous public stations, and all of whom have been identified with important interests of the city outside of their professional careers. Some of them are yet living in the community in the maturity of their powers. The courts of the present day which have jurisdiction in the city of Brooklyn and Kings County are the supreme court, the county court, the court of sessions, the city court, the surrogate's court, the police courts and the courts of the civil justices, besides the United States court— which is treated of under the head of United States Interests. The supreme court possesses, under the provisions of the constitution, all the jurisdiction in law and equity which was possessed and exercised by the supreme court of the colony of New York, and by the court of chancery in England, on the fourth day of July, 1776, with the exceptions, additions and limita- tions created and imposed by the constitution and laws of the state. Subject to those exceptions and limita- tions, the supreme court of the state has all the powers and authority of each of those courts, and exer- cises the same in like manner. Kings County is in the second judicial district of the supreme court, which includes Long Island, Staten Island, and Rockland, Orange, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties. The county court has jurisdiction of all actions for partition of real property, for dower, foreclosure' of a mortgage, etc.; for specific performance of a contract relating to real property where the real property is situated in the county ; in an action to foreclose a lien on a chattel, not exceeding $1,000, when the lien is foun^ in the county, in favor of the executor, administrator or assignee of a judgment creditor, etc. ; for any other cause where the defendant or all the defendants are residents of the county at the time of begin- ning the action ; when the judgment is demanded for money only, not exceeding $1,000, or to recpver chat- tel or chattels not exceeding in value f 1,000; for the custody of the person and care of the property con- currently with the supreme court, if the person is a resident of the county, etc. The court of sessions has jurisdiction over all criminal cases, including those punishable by death or imprisonment for life. Its jurisdiction is coextensive with that of the oyer and terminer, which is the crim- inal branch of the supreme court, and the highest court of criminal jurisdiction in this county. The county judge presides in this court. The surrogate's court has jurisdiction in all matters appertaining to the estates of deceased persons who were at demise residents of the county of Kings, and also of deceased personswho were residents of this state, leaving real or personal estate within this county. It has power likewise to appoint guardians for all infants interested in such property as above, and to control and settle accounts of all executors, adminis- trators and guardians within the like limits. Generally the city court has civil jurisdiction concurrent with that of the supreme court, where the cause of action arose in Brooklyn or the defendant resides therein, or is personally served therein, or the action is brought by a resident against a person non-resident of the state. Within the limits of the city it has the other powers similar to those of the supreme court over civil matters, and in criminal matters when a bill of indictment has been transmitted to the court by the court of sessions or the court of oyer and terminer. A chief judge and two judges constitute the court. The city is divided into three judicial districts, for each of which is a justice of the peace, whose term is four years, and who must at the time of his election be a resident and elector in the city. Vacancies for the unexpired term are filled by the mayor. There are six police justices. The term of office is four years. They are appointed by the mayor, comptroller and auditor. In case of disagreement as to the appointment, each of the last above named officers appoints one police justice and a majority of them the others. In case of vacancy in the office of police justice it is filled by the above named board, or a majority of its members. The justices of the second judicial district of the supreme court residing in Brooklyn are Calvin E. Pratt, Edgar M. Cullen and Willard Bartlett. With honors gained at the bar, on the bench and upon the field of battle, Judge Calvin E. Pratt is the possessor of an enviable record. He is the son of Edward A. Pratt, of Princeton, Mass., and his wife Marianne ; was born in Princeton on January 23, 1828. On the removal of his parents to Sutton, in the same state, he was placed while very young in the district school, where he remained until nearly sixteen years old. From the district school at Sutton to a collegiate academy at Wilbraham was his next step in the line of education, and while here his studies were varied by the acquirement of some experience as a practical surveyor on the route of the Providence and Worcester railroad. He spent several seasons teach- ing school at Uxbridge, Sutton and Worcester, until his training at the Wilbraham Academy and, subse- quently, at that of Worcester had fully prepared him for college. Early in 1849 he began to study law, and 470 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. the next year was made clerk of the criminal court. In 1852 he was admitted as a practicing barrister. He at once entered upon an extensive and lucrative business, being retained in a number of noteworthy cases. For eight years, from 1851 until 1859, he studied medicine and anatomy in their relation to jurisprudence. During this period of early manhood, Judge Pratt became actively identified with the State Militia of Slassachusetts, serving successively as private, orderly sergeant, and second and first lieutenant in the Worcester Light Infantry. He afterwards became major of the loth Mass. Infantry, and then accepted a commission in the same rank, on the staff of Major-General Hobbs. In 1853 he was made a justice of the peace in AVorcester, Mass., and held the office until he left for New York six years later. He also had a seat in the Democratic state central committee, and was for years chairman of the county committee, besides attending as a delegate all the state conventions of his party until 1859. With the opening of the Civil war in 1861 Judge Pratt served this state by recruiting, in conjunction with William H. Browne, a regi- ment that was afterward known as the 31st N. Y. Volunteers. Governor Seymour appointed Judge Pratt colonel and Mr. Browne lieutenant-colonel in recognition of their patriotism in recruiting the regiment at their own expense. At the battle of Bull Run Colonel Pratt was so gallant that he was recommended for promotion. On January 29, 1862, during the fighting around Mechanicsville, while supporting General Fitz John Porter, he was shot through the left cheek just below the eye, the bullet lodging behind the bone and remaining there until 1891, when it was removed by a Brooklyn surgeon. Colonel Pratt was recom- mended by General McClellan for promotion to the rank of brigadier-general, and the suggestion was acted upon by President Lincoln on September 10, 1862. General Pratt became General Hancock's successor in command of a brigade in the old 6th Army Corps. On his return to Brooklyn General Pratt resumed the practice of law with the late Grenville T. Jenks as a partner. Ex-Judges James Emott and Joshua M. Van Cott afterwards entered the firm. From the summer of 1865 until the spring of 1866 General Pratt held the office of collector of internal revenue, and in 1869 he was elevated to the supreme court bench by the united votes of both Democrats and Republicans. On the expiration of his term in 1877 he was re- elected for another term of fourteen years, an honor which was again conferred in 1891. In 1882 Judge Pratt was assigned to the general term by Governor Cornell. Edgar M. Cullen was invested with the ermine while still in the early period of a brilliant profes- sional career. He was nominated for one of the justiceships of the supreme court in its second judicial district on October 5, 1880, and his first term of office began with the succeeding new year. He has since been reelected. He has always been a Democrat, and stands high in the estimation of the best element of his party. He acquired his professional training in the office of his uncle, Judge Alexander McCue, and in 1867 he was admitted to the bar, entering at once upon a successful and remunerative practice. Before engaging in the duties of his present office he served on Governor Samuel J. Tilden's staff as engmeer-in chief, with the rank of brigadier-general. Edgar M. Cullen is a son of Dr. Henry J. Cullen, and was born in Brooklyn in 1843. He was prepared for a univer- sity course at Kinderhook Academy, and eventually entered Columbia College, where he was graduated in i86o.' Having a bent toward civil engineering he sought to acquire that profession at the close of his collegiate career, and to that end became a student at the Troy Polytechnic Institute. Called from his studies by the first thunders of the Civil war he offered his services in behalf of the Union, and early in 1862 was commissioned a second lieutenant in the ist U. S. Infantry. His regiment was attached to the depart- ment of the Mississippi, and the young officer bore his share in the conflicts at Corinth and F'armington, and served under Grant at the memorable siege of Vicks- burg. In 1862, although he was only nineteen years old. Governor Morgan commissioned him colonel in the 96th N. Y. State Volunteers. His new command was attached to the i8th Army Corps, and he and his men performed good work in the campaign of which the capture of Petersburg and the fall of Richmond were the ultimate consequences. While so engaged Colonel Cullen was severely wounded, being com- pelled to return home, and afterwards resigned his Edgar m. cullen. THE BENCH AND BAR. 471 WiLLAkD BARTLETT. commission. When he had fully recovered from his injury he spent a year in civil engineering, and then entered upon the first stage of his professional life- work. He is a member of the Hamilton and Brooklyn clubs, and of the University Club of New York. WiLLARD Bartlett, junior j usticc of the supreme court in the second judicial district, was elected in the autumn of 1883, and took office on June i, 1884. He is the eldest son of the late William O. Bartlett, and was born in Uxbridge, Mass., on October 14, 1846. Judge Bartlett became a resident of this judicial dis- trict in 1859, when his father purchased a farm in Brookhaven, Suffolk County, which formed the nucleus of an estate of about 1,000 acres there. He was pre- pared for college at the Columbia College Grammar School and the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and was graduated at Columbia College in 1869, having in the meantime studied law and been admitted to the bar a year earlier. In association with Mr. Elihu Root he began a practice which became large and lucrative, extending not only to the trial of cases in almost every county in the second judicial district, but to the con- duct of litigations in many different parts of the state and the United States. When the general term of the supreme court in the first judicial district, which consists only of the city and county of New York, was reorganized in January, 1887, by reason of the retirement of presiding Justice Davis, Judge Bartlett was appointed one of the associate justices of that tribunal, and he performed service as such in addition to discharging all the duties assigned to him in the second district until January, 1891, when his appointment was revoked by the governor at his own request, on account of the increased pressure of judicial work requiring his attention in Brooklyn. Judge Bartlett, who has been a resident of Brooklyn since 1868, still retains his father's farm in Suffolk County, and takes much interest in agricultural pursuits. He is a member of the Brooklyn, Hamilton, and Riding and Driving clubs of this city, and of the University Club of New York, and one of the directors of the New England Society of Brooklyn, of which he was presi- dent for two years. There are three other supreme court judges in the second judicial district, but excepting at General Term they rarely sit in Brooklyn. They are Justice Joseph F. Barnard, the presiding justice, who holds court in Poughkeepsie ; Justice Jackson O. Dvkman, who presides over the court in White Plains ; and Justice Charles F. Brown, of Newburgh. An effort is being made to secure two additional supreme court judges for this district, as the present number is ad- mittedly insufficient to cope with the constantly in- creasing business of the circuit and general term. Among the men occupying seats on the bench of this city and county, none stands higher in the esti- mation of his fellow citizens than County Judge Henry A. Moore, who was born in Brooklyn on March 23, 1826. His family has long been known and respected in Kings County. He attended school until he was between twelve and thirteen years of age, subsequently studied law in the office of Lott, Murphy & Vander- bilt, and was admitted to the bar. He entered upon the practice of his profession in 1848. In 1845 he joined the old volunteer fire department, and served Henry A, Moore. 472 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. until 1851, being for a considerable portion of that time assistant foreman and foreman of Engine No. 17. When he was only twenty-five years of age, he was nom- inated for the office of county judge and was elected. After serving four years — which was then the full term of office — he reengaged in the practice of the law, which he continued for sixteen years. He was again elected to the bench of the county court in the autumn of 1871. He took his seat on January i, 1872, and by successive reelections has held that judgeship ever since. When his present tenure of office expires he will have served for the period of twenty-four years continuously, making twenty-eight years in all. Though always a Democrat, for the last three terms he was nominated by both Republicans and Democrats. George B. Abbott, surrogate of Kings County, was born in Brookfield, Vt., on September 27, 1850. His parents removed to Brooklyn in his early youth, and he was prepared for college at the Polytechnic Institute of this city. His academic education was com- pleted at AVilliams College, where he was graduated in 1872. He then traveled in Europe; on returning to New York he began the study of law in the office of Abra- ham R. Lawrence and at the law school of Columbia College, from which he was graduated in 1874. He at once began the active practice of his profession, and in 1881, upon the retirement of the late Henry J. Cul- len, Jr., from the office of public administrator in Kings County, he became his successor, and was reappointed in 1886. On February 9, 1889, he was appointed by Governor Hill to the office of surrogate of Kings County to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Surrogate Abraham Lott; and at the general election in November of the same year he was elected as surrogate for a full term of six years, beginning on January i, 1890. Speaking of Judge Abbott's character as a judicial officer, the Surrogate, a monthly journal devoted to subjects connected with probate law, has said : "Even the limited time which has elapsed since Mr. Abbott's promotion to the bench has been sufficient to demon- strate his exceptional fitness for the high post he occu- pies. We have already spoken of his mastery of the peculiar practice and procedure of courts of probate. This gives him an ease and facility in disposing of routine business not easily acquired except by years of experience on the bench. In the higher qualities of the judicial office he has manifested a vigorous industry, a degree of painstaking care, a perfect fair- ness and a knowledge of legal principles and how to apply them, which has already won for him the confi- dence and approbation of lawyers, litigants, and the public, and assure him a career of the most honorable distinction among the surrogates of this state." Sur- rogate Abbott owns, in addition to his city residence, a fine cottage at Shelter Island, where he spends his summer vacation ; and he is a prominent figure in the social life of Brooklyn, being a member of the Brook- lyn, Excelsior and Germania clubs. He is also a mem- ber of the University Club, of New York. Nathaniel H. Clement, chief judge of the city court, was born in Tilton, N. H., on March 23, 1844. Nathaniel H. Clement. THE BENCH AND BAR. 473 His father, Zenas Clement, was treasurer of the state of New Hampshire from 1836 till 1843, and was an intimate friend of President Pierce. Judge Clement, after a course of preparatory study at the Portsmouth, N. H., high school, entered Dartmouth College in 1859, and was graduated there in 1863. While a stu- dent he became a member of a cavalry company, com- posed mostly of undergraduates of Dartmouth, enlisted in the service of the United States in 1862. This com- pany formed part of the body which, under Col. Davis, escaped from Harper's Ferry through the enemy's lines the night before the surrender by Col. Miles, on September 14, 1862. Mr. Clement was a clerk in the treasury and war departments at Washington from 1863 until 1866, after which he came to Brooklyn and was epgaged by the law firm of Crooke, Bergen & Pratt. On the election of Calvin E. Pratt as a judge of the supreme court, he succeeded him as junior part- ner in the firm and remained until its dissolution in 1873. Thereafter he continued in practice until 1882, when he was elected to succeed Judge Neilson in the city court. On January i, 1887, on the retirement of Judge McCue, he was appointed by his associates as chief judge. The term for which he was elected will expire on December 31, 1896. Judge Clement is a member of Mansfield Post, G. A. E.., and of the Brook- lyn, Carleton and Constitution clubs, and is a stock- holder in the Thomas Jefferson. Augustus Van Wyck, who is one of the justices of the city court, is a native of this state and is forty- six years of age. He is the son of William and Lydia Maverick Van Wyck. Captain Abraham Van Wyck, of New York city, a soldier in the revolutionary army, was one of his ancestors. Judge Van Wyck is a graduate of Phillips Academy, Exeter, N. H., and of the University of North Carolina, where he received the degree of Master of Arts. After a successful legal practice he was elected to his present position in 1884. In politics he is a Democrat and he was influential in reorganizing the Democracy in this city. He was elected president of the Democratic General Commit- tee of Kings County, and was twice reelected, serving in that capacity until 1885. He was also a member of the New York Democratic state central committee, and has frequently been a delegate to the national, state, city and county conventions of his party, presid- ing over some of them. He has been grand master of the Zeta Psi fraternity and is a member of the New York Holland Society, in which he has held a number of important positions. Plis religious affiliations are with the Episcopal Church, and he is a member of the standing committee and the committee on canons of the diocese of Long Island. Aside from his profes- sional and official duties he has delivered a number of addresses before college and other societies and assem- blies. He married Miss Leila Gordon Wilkins, a daughter of Dr. William W. "Wilkins, of Richmond, Va. William James Osborne, one of the city court judges, was born in New York city on June 9, 1836. His early education was obtained at the Columbia College grammar school, where he made such rapid progress in his studies that he entered Columbia Col- lege when he was only thirteen years old. He was William j. osborne. Augustus Van Wyck. 474 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. graduated in 1853 and began the study of law in the office of the late James W. Gerard. When twenty- one years of age he was admitted to the bar, and entered upon practice in New York city. In 1848 he came to Brooklyn and was soon prominent in political and public matters generally. He was elected supervisor from the sixth ward in 1861, serving five consecutive terms, and being chairman of the board during the greater portion of the time. When the office of supervisor-at-large was created, he was appointed to fill the position, and in the following year was elected by ballot. In 1887 he was nominated and elected judge of the city court. He is a Democrat, and has always been active and energetic in for- warding the interests of his party. He was at one time a member of the Democratic state central com- mittee. For a number of years he was chairman of the Sixth Ward Democratic Association. For the last twenty-five years he has filled the office of secretary to the board of regents of the Long Island Hospital. He is a member of the Brooklyn, Hamilton and other clubs. In this country it is not often, even in large cities, that an office of public trust descends in the same family from one generation to another, and still less frequently, in the event of such occurrences, does the mantle of a worthy sire fall upon an equally worthy son. John J. Walsh was appointed at the age of twenty-four to succeed his father, the late Justice Andrew Walsh, on the bench of the city hall district police court. There were many adverse criticisms, but equipped with an acquaintance with legal ways and the good sense that was his heritage, the young magistrate entered upon his duties and administered the office with such impartiality and such discriminating judgment that all criticism was changed to compliment. When he had served the unexpired term of his father he was reappointed for a full term of five years, beginning in November, 1892. John J. Walsh is the eldest son of the late Judge Andrew Walsh, and was born in Brooklyn on May 22, 1865. Early in life he turned his attention to mercantile pursuits, but having determined to become a lawyer, he subsequently studied in the office of Almet F. Jenks, and later in that of Bergen & Dykman. He then took the regular course at Columbia College law school and was graduated in 1888. After his graduation he formed a law partnership with AVilliam J. Carr, and already had begun to make his name heard in the courts when he was appointed to serve out the unexpired term of his father. His appointment was made on November 27, 1889, and he entered immediately upon the dis- charge of his duties. He retained his interest in the practice established by Mr. Carr and himself, but devoted himself zealously to his official responsibilities. He was one of the organizers of the Fourteen Club, was elected its first president, and has been reelected to that office each successive year. He is a member of the Fifth Ward Democratic Association, and is a delegate to the general committee. In January, 1891, he married Miss Margaret A. Cook, daughter of Thomas Cook, of this city. James G. Tighe, who since 1888 has been justice of the first district police court, has been prominent in the political, legal and club circles of Brooklyn for a good many years. He was born in New York city on December 31, 1843, ^nd after a course of study in the public schools he followed a seafaring life for several years, finally settling in Brooklyn. He was admitted to the bar in 187 1, after having studied law under Judge Troy, and in the practice of law, especially in the criminal branches, he achieved marked suc- cess. From 1877 until 1882 he was a member of the state legislature, and ever since coming to Brooklyn has been active in politics, being in 1892, and for several years previous, president of the Tenth Ward Demo- ctatic Association. Justice Tighe has a decided social bent and also devotes much of his spare time to athletic sports, especially boating, being one of the Varuna Boat Club's officers and most proficient oarsman. As a judge he has won reputation for his sagacious and comprehensive grasp of the matters brought before him, and for just and impartial decisions, tempered with such mercy as is consistent with the demands of justice. Robert Emmett Connelly, justice of the second district police court, was born in Watertown, Jeffer- son County, N. Y., on December 12, 1859. During the Civil war his father was captain of the 20th Regiment, N. Y. Cavalry. At the conclusion of the war he came with his parents to Brooklyn. He was educated at St. Teresa's school. New York ; St. Francis College, this city ; the College of St. John the Baptist ; the Grand Seminary at Montreal, and the law school at Columbia College. Then he read law in the office of Burrill, Davison & Burrill. Two days after attaining his majority he was admitted to the bar, and at once began to practice in this city. He made his first political speech in the fall of 1879, i" favor of the election of Governor Robinson. The following year, at the request of the Democratic National Committee, he stumped the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut for General Hancock. This was before he was twenty-one years of age. In the fall of 1882 he received his first nomination for the state legislature in the eighth assembly district. After a sharp battle David Lindsay, a Republican, defeated him by one vote. The following year he was renominated by the eighth assembly district Democrats, and defeated Lee Nutting by a plurality of 1,197. Speaker Erwin appointed him a member of the committee on special codes and the revision of statutes. He made a speech advocating the code compiled by David Dudley Field, which secured for him the thanks of the famous lawyer, and resulted in its adoption. At this time Justice Connelly was the second youngest meiriber of the legislature. The following year he defeated George H, THE BENCH AND BAR. 475 Robert E. Connelly. Nason, an old legislator, by a majority of 700. Speaker Husted appointed him to the judiciary committee, the most important committee of the year 1885. Upon his retirement from the legislature he practiced law in this city until his appointment on January 2, 1892, to the justiceship to fill out the unexpired term of Jus- tice Thomas J. Kenna, who had been elected register. In July of the same year he was appointed to the office for four years. Justice Connelly is a member of the Robert E. Connelly Battery of the twenty-seventh ward, the Connelly Court Club, the Bushwick Demo- cratic Club and the Leonard Council, Catholic Benev- olent Legion. Adolph H. Goetting, justice of the third district police court, is one of the representative men in the Democratic party of Kings County. He is a prominent member of the Bushwick Democratic Club and is a leader in the political organization of the sixteenth ward. Justice Goetting was born in Coblentz, Ger- many, and was brought to this country when he was five years old. After being educated in the public schools, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in New York city in 1872. Shortly afterward he became a resident of this city. He interested himself in politics and soon obtained recognition as an active Democratic worker. He was twice nominated for the assembly from the seventh district, but, though he made an excellent run on each occasion, the Republican majority was too great to be overcome, and he was defeated. Mr. Goetting was, until its disbandment, a member of the 28th Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y., and rose from the ranks to a lieutenancy. As a lawyer he has made a reputa- tion for painstaking thoroughness and as a justice his methods have been distinguished for judicial correct- ness and impartiality. Police Justice Henry F. Haggerty began his active life in commercial fields. He engaged in several enterprises and met with fair success in all, but event- ually settled into the business of manufacturing a plumbing specialty. He is a Democrat and in 1884 was elected to the assembly from the fourth district. He so acquitted himself that he was returned five times, serving in the lower branch of the state legislature until 1890. He was a strenuous advocate of the bridge extension bill which was passed in 1885, and he figured as a supporter of several railroad bills for Long Island. In the fall of 1889 he declined another nomination and turned his attention exclusively to his manufacturing business. But he was not allowed to continue long out of public service, for in November, 1891, he was appointed a police justice. His parents were natives of Ulster County, Ireland. They came to this country many years ago and settled in the fifth ward of Brook- lyn, where the son was born in 1858. His education was obtained at St. Patrick's Academy. He has been president of the Eleventh Ward Democratic Associ- ation for seven years, and his counsels in the Demo- cratic General Committee are highly valued. He is a member of the Juniata and Washington clubs, and is active in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. In 1890 he married Miss Rose McCall. 476 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Police Justice William Watson is a lawyer, and has been successful in politics. Among the veterans of the late war he has a high standing, and is commander of Louis M. Hamilton Post, 152, G. A. R. He was born in New York on April 4, 1847, of Scotch and Irish parentage, and attended public and private schools in his native city and in Montreal, Canada. In April, 1862, he returned from Montreal to New York, and two months afterwards entered the navy as a boy on the "New Ironsides." He took part in Farragut's operations at New Orleans, and after participating in the bombardment of Fort Fisher he was transferred to the gunboat " Sonoma," on board of which he served until the close of the war, in 1865. He subsequently studied law at the University of New York, where he was graduated in 1876. He has held several public offices, to which he was elected as a Republican, and was appointed to his present position on November 12, 1891, to serve until May i, 1896. He is a member of the Brooklyn Jockey Club, Canarsie Yacht Club, Concordia Singing Society, Liberty Hose Association and Twenty-sixth Ward Republican Association,' and is a charter member of Fort Greene Council, Royal Arcanum. On April 28, 1867, he married Miss Florence Near, of New Lots. Jacob Neu, civil justice of the first district, is widely known to the people of the city. His prominence among the younger element in the Democracy of Brooklyn merited an early recognition at the hands of his party, and when John Courtney, civil justice in the city hall court, was elected to the shrievalty in the autumn of 1890, Jacob Neu was chosen to fill the office until the next election. He took his seat on the bench on January i, 1891, and in November of that year was chosen to complete the remainder of Mr. Courtney's unexpired term and also for the succeeding full term of four years, which terminates in May, 1896. He was born in New York city, on April 7, 1855, and attended the public schools. In 1864 he came to Brooklyn with his parents, who were both natives of Germany, and continued his studies in the public schools of this city until he reached the age of .fourteen, when he became clerk in a law office. He next began to study law in the office of John Warren Lawton, in New York, and on his admission to the bar, in 1879, he formed a part- nership with Mr. Lawton, under the firm name of Lawton & Neu. He continued to practice his profes- sion until called to his present duties. As a public . speaker he has proved himself graceful and felicitous. He is a Mason and a member of the Royal Arcanum,- Knights of Honor, the Seventh Ward Cleveland Club, the Bushwick Democratic Club, the Union Democratic Jacob eu. Club, the Arion Singing Society, the Frederick Gliick Quartette Club, the Beethoven Liederkranz, the Twenty-third Ward Young Men's Democratic Club, the Connelly Court Club, the Pin Knight Bowling Club and the New York Fifth Street School Association. He is a delegate from the twenty-third ward to the general committee. John Petterson, justice of the peace in the second district, was born at Offenbach-on-the-Main, Ger- many, in 1834. When fifteen years of age he came to America and began his career in New York city as a grocery clerk. In 1855 he came to this city and obtained employment as a driver for the Brooklyn City Railroad Company. In this employ he remained seven years. Later he became assistant deputy sheriff under Patrick Campbell. About this time he began the study of law, and in the spring of 1872 he was admitted to the bar. He soon secured an extensive practice in the police courts, and his selection for the office of justice followed. Justice Petterson is a representative member of the Twenty-first Ward Demo- cratic Association, and has served several years in the Democratic General Committee. He is also prominent in secret society circles, being a member of Atlas Council, American Legion of Honor, and Ridgewood Council, Royal Arcanum, and he is also actively identified with the Kings County Club. Edward C. Murphy, justice of third district civil court, has achieved a substantial popularity in this city, where political advancement and social esteem have come to him. For seventeen years he has been a delegate to the Democratic General Committee from the ninth ward. He has been a representative from his assembly district to many state conventions, and was a delegate to the national convention at Chicago in 1884. He was nominated and elected supervisor by the ninth ward democracv in 1879, serving one term, THE BENCH AND BAR. 477 after which he gave his entire attention to his mercan- tile business in New Yorlc until 1887, when he was placed in nomination for alderman by the Democrats of the third aldermanic district and was elected by a flattering majority. He was elected to his present office in the fall of 189 1 by a large majority. Justice Murphy was an active member of the volunteer fire department, and now holds the office of vice-president of the Volunteer Firemen's Association ; he is also a life member of the New York State Firemen's Associ- ation, as well as director of the Order of American Firemen. He is a member of the Emerald Society, Royal Arcanum, Ancient Order of United Workmen, New England Benevolent Society, Order of Tonti, Committee of Polytechnic Reunion and numerous other well-known social, political and benevolent organiza- tions. He was born in the city of New York in 1850, but has lived in Brooklyn since he was three years of age. His education was begun in the old Jay street school, and was continued at the Polytechnic Insti- tute. At an early age he left school and engaged in the cotton business in New York. On the death of his father, which occurred some years ago, Mr. Mur- phy assumed charge of his trucking and forwarding business. Edw.\kd C. MuitPiiY. The reminiscences which are measured by the milestones in the life of one individual are rarely more numerous or diversified than in the case of Benjamin D. Silliman, who can recall personal associations with Aaron Burr, the great Chancellor Kent, the polished and scholarly Judge John Duer, Chief Justice Ambrose Spencer, and Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Mr. Silliman's professional career began while the present century was still young and when the events connected with the birth and early struggles of a new nation were something more than mere traditions in the minds of men. Mr. Silliman's domestic life has always identified him with Brooklyn. The Silliman family is of distinguished ancestry. Judge Ebenesier Silliman was for seven years speaker of the Connecticut assembly, and for twenty-eight years belonged to the legislative council of the colony, an organization which occupied a relation to the assembly now held by the state senate. Judge Silliman, who died in 1775, was annually elected for twenty-three successive terms to the bench of the superior court. His son, General Gold S. Silliman, was king's attorney in Fairfield County, Conn., but when the revolutionary war began he threw his influence on the side of the struggling colonists. The general's son, also named Gold S., who died in Brooklyn in 1868 at an advanced age, married the daughter of the Rev. David Ely, D. D., of Huntington, Conn., who for twenty-one years was a trustee of Yale College. This second Gold S. Silliman was the father of Benjamin D. Silliman, who was born at New- port, R. I., on September 14, 1805, and came to New York while yet in his early childhood, and in 1823 to Brooklyn. Through his father's maternal ancestors Mr. Silliman can trace a lineal descent from the famous Puritan lovers, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. For generations the Sillimans had been graduated at Yale, and in 1824 Benjamin D. Silliman completed his education there. In choosing a profession he determined upon the study of law, and entered the office of Chancellor Kent and his son William Kent (after- wards a judge of the supreme court). Under the direction of those eminent jurists, Mr. Silliman was prepared for his admission to the bar, which occurred at the May term of the supreme court in 1829. In his earlier days Mr. Silliman was a Whig. He was a delegate in 1839 to the Harrisburg Convention which placed General William Henry Harrison in nomination for the presidency. In this assemblage Mr. Silliman was the delegate from the congressional district composed of the counties of Kings, Richmond and Rockland. In 1843 he was nominated as the Whig candidate for congress in the second district. He polled a larger vote than any of his colleagues, but a general victory was won all along the line by the Democrats. Ten years later, having previously represented Kings County in the assembly, he was nominated as state senator, but declined to accept the honor. He was the first United States district attorney appointed by President Lincoln for service in the eastern district of New York, but the demands of his private practice necessitated the resignation of his commission in 1866. In 1872 he was appointed a member of the commission which assembled at Albany for the purpose of proposing amendments to the state constitution, and a year later he was the Republican candidate for attorney-general. In 1873 Columbia College conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL. D., and in 1874 a similar recognition emanated from his ahna inater. In 1838, as a member of the legislature, he secured the passage of the bill incorporating Green-Wood Cemetery. For more than twenty years he was president of the Brooklyn Club ; he has been president of the Yale Alumni Association of Long Island, and held the same office in connection with the New England Society of this city from the date of its organization until 1886, when he refused reelection. For the space of nearly two decades he was one of the managers of the House of Refuge for Juvenile Delinquents, in New York, and was vice-president and one of the founders of the Bar Association in that city. He is now a director of the I-ong Island Historical Society and one of the board of trustees of Green-Wood Cemetery, besides occu- pying official positions in several benevolent and literary institutions. Mr. Silliman's professional standing has always been of the highest, and when he closed his long term of sixty years at the bar his legal friends in New York and Brooklyn combined to do him honor, their tribute of admiration and love finding expres- sion in a banquet, held at Delmonico's on May 24, 1889. The toast list on that occasion was graced by the names of men who are counted among the foremost Americans of their age. Benjamin F. Tracy has done much "to bring Brooklyn into prominence in connection with national affairs, and is distinguished not only as a lawyer and an impartial and conscientious judge, but also as an independent and large-minded statesman. He was a soldier during the Civil war and has been a fearless prosecuting officer for the government. He was born in Owego, Tioga County, N. Y., on April 26, 1830. His education was obtained at the common school of his native town and at the Owego Academy. Hav- ing decided to become a lawyer, he was placed in the office of Nathaniel W. Davis, of Owego, and when he had reached his majority he successfully passed examination and was admitted to the bar in May, 185 1, beginning to practice in Owego. At twenty-three years of age he was elected district attorney for Tioga County, and was reelected when his first term expired. The nomination for a third term was offered to him but he declined. In the autumn of 1861 he was nominated and elected a member of the assembly by the Republican and war Democrats of Tioga County, taking his seat on January 7, 1862. His readiness in debate quickly gained him distinction. In the spring of 1862 new levies were found to be imperatively needed for the army of the Union, and Governor Morgan appointed a committee in each senatorial district ^8o THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. to organize a general recruiting effort. Mr. Tracy was one of the committee for Broome, Tioga and Tompkins counties, and besides performing his duties on that committee, he requested and was granted a commission bv the Governor. He made his headquarters at Binghamton and recruited two regiments — the 109th and the 137th, completing the active work in thirty days. Being appointed colonel of the 109th he reported to General Wool at Baltimore, in which department the regiment remained until transferred to Washington. In the spring of 1864, the regimentwas ordered to join the 9th (Burnside's) Corps, which was then a part of General Grant's advance. At the battle of the Wilderness, Colonel Tracy distinguished him- self by great gallantry, brilliantly heading the charge on May 6, 1864, seizing the flag from the color bearer and leading his command into the enemy's works. Toward the close of the day Colonel Tracy fell exhausted on the field and was taken to the rear. Although urged to go to the hospital he resumed com- mand of his regiment, holding it during three days of the fighting at Spottsylvania, where he broke down completely. The effect upon his system was such that he was obliged to, tender his resignation, and he returned home after having been brevetted brigadier-general for his conduct at the battle of the Wilderness. In September of the same year he was tendered the command of the 127th United States colored troops by Secretary Stanton. He accepted, and was shortly afterv/ards ordered to the command of the military post at Elmira, where there was a large prison camp of Confederate soldiers. When peace was restored he asso- ciated himself with the law firm of Benedict, Burr & Benedict of New York, and remained in the private practice of his profession until October, 1866, when he was appointed United States dis"trict attorney for the eastern district of New York, in place of Benjamin D. Silliman, resigned. In 1873 he resigned his posi- tion under the government to resume the practice of law in Brooklyn, and was engaged in many important trials in the Kings County courts. He was nominated as the Republican candidate for mayor of Brooklyn in the autumn of 1881, but retired in favor of Seth Low. In December, 1881, he was appointed by Governor Cornell an associate justice of the court of appeals, in place of Justice Charles Andrews, who was promoted to be chief justice. Judge Tracy's written opinions are really the best history of his judicial career and are marked by research, clearness of expression, compactness and pointed illustrations. After his retire- ment from the bench, which occurred'in 18S2, he formed a partnership with William C. DeWitt and F. B. Tracy, his son, and opened an office in Brooklyn. His influence in the Republican party of the city was almost supreme during a number of years when he and General Jourdan and Silas B. Dutcher were the local party leaders. In 1888 he was an unsuccessful contestant for the office of district attorney of Kings County. With the incommg of President Harrison's administration in the spring of 1889, General Tracy received a seat in the cabinet as secretary of the navy, and in that capacity he has accomplished important work in the building up of what is known to-day as the " new navy." On March 3, 1890, he was visited by an afflic- tion that made him an object of world-wide sympathy. On that day his house in Washington was burned and his wife and youngest daughter. Miss Mary Tracy, together with a female servant, perished. Secre- tary Tracy himself was rescued while unconscious, but remained for some days in a critical condition. His wife was a sister of General Isaac S. Catlin. General Tracy has always been fond of agricultural pursuits, and in the intervals of professional and official duty he has spent much time in the cultivation of a delight- ful farm near Owego, N. Y. The career of one who has gained equal distinction by learning and ability at the bar, and by laborious and satisfactory service in administering the duties of the highest judicature in the state, must necessarily possess an interest of considerable moment. The life-work of Jasper W. Gilbert has been long and event- ful. Peculiarly fitted by his talents and education for the legal profession, he won his way, by industry and probity, to professional eminence. He is a lineal descendant of Jonathan Gilbert, who died at Hartford, Conn., in 1682, who had been conspicuous in the affairs of that colony as marshal, delegate to the general court, and interpreter between the government and the Indians. Judge Gilbert's grandfather, Thomas Gilbert, served in the Continental army during the revolutionary war, and fought at the siege of Fort Stanwix. His father, Marinus Willett Gilbert, was born in New Lebanon, bred to mercantile life in Rome, Oneida County, and in 1812 settled in Watertown, Jefferson County. Judge Gilbeit was born in Rome, N. Y., on January 15, 1812. He was educated in the common schools and in the academies of Lowville and Watertown. He pursued his legal studies, first in the office of Abraham Varick, of Utica, and afterward in the office of Vice- Chancellor Whittlesey of Pvochester. He was admitted to the bar at the term of the supreme court held in Utica on July 11, 1835, and is the sole survivor of his class of seventy members. He immediately began practice in Rochester, and on the incorporation of that city, in 1839, he was appointed corporation counsel. From 1840 until 1845 he was the district attorney of Monroe County, by appointment of the court of common pleas of that county. In 1847 he removed to the city of New York, and in April, .1851, became a resident of Brooklyn. Among the cases of interest to the people of Brooklyn which he conducted were the suit of "The People against the City of New York," in which the right of governmental control over the ferries between New York and Brooklyn was established; the suit involving the constitutionality of the legislation providing for the acquisition of Prospect Park ; that involving the validity of the laws under which the use A ^^«-, of steam power by the railroad on Atlantic avenue was abolished, and the owners of lands abutting thereon were assessed for the sum awarded to the railroad as compensation ; and that m which the city was made liable for losses amounting- to $114,000, sustained by the owners of the elevator destroyed by rioters in 1863. Although never an active partisan, and never a candidate for an elective office except that of justice of the supreme court, he is a Democrat of the Henry Clay stripe, and he always claimed that in following that great leader he kept in the true Democratic path. In 1836 Judge Crilbert was a delegate from Monroe County to the state convention which nominated Mr. Buell for governijr. In July, 183S, he was a delegate from that county to the \Vhig young men's convention, anil to him was assigned the duty of preparing the address to the people of the state. The address was rancorously assailed by that poi'tioii of the \Vhig press in this and other states which was controlled by old Federalists, led by Col. Stone of the New York Commercial Advertiser, and was warmly vindicated by that portion of the press which was governed by men of the Democratic wing of the Whig party, of whom Mr. Seward was one of the most distinguished. On the formation of the Repub- lican party in 1856, Judge Gilbert, in a letter published in the E.^^gle, resumed his natural position in the Democratic party. Nevertheless, throughout the civil war he was a firm and out-spoken supporter of the government. In 1865 he was nominated for the office of justice of the supreme court by conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties, and was elected by an overwhelming majority. He was reelected in 1873, and continued in office until January i, 1883. Judge Gilbert was retired from tlie bench in 1882 by a provision of the constitution limiting the services of judges to seventy years of age. After his retirement he practiced law for a time with his sons, James H. and William T. Gilbert, and Alexander Cameron ; and still, at the age of eighty and over, he is kept busy as a counsellor and referee, and by his duties as a trus- tee and vice-chancellor of the Cathedral of the Incarnation, as a member of the standing committee of the diocese of Long Island, and trustee of the diocesan estate, of which bodies he has been a memlier since the organization of the diocese in 1868; as president of (rreen-Wood Cemetery, and by his connection with other local institutions. John \Vinslow was born some sixty years a,go near Boston, Mass., and traces his linea.i^re back to the earliest of his name in New England. In 1850 he began the study of law in Harvard, and tw(j years later 482 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. he was graduated. In 1853, a year after his admission to the Kings County bar, he was appointed assistant district attorney, under Harmanus B. Duryea, and in 1S55 lie was appointed corporation attorney. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate for the office of district attorney, and was elected by a large majority. In 1873 he was placed in nomination on the Republican ticket for justice of the supreme court, but was not elected. The following year District Attorney Thomas H. Rodman resigned, and Mr. Winslow was ap- pointed by Governor Dix to fill the vacancy. Mr. Winslow was one of the five men who signed the first call for a meeting to found the Long Island Historical Society, of which organization he has been corres- ponding secretary, and also a director. He was prominent in the incorporation of the New England Society, of which he was president for three years. He was also one of the original members of the Hamilton Club. He was a projector of the Franklin Trust Company, and is a director and its counsel. He is president of the Harvard University Club, of Brooklyn, an honorary member of the Massachusetts Club and a life mem- ber of the Brooklyn Institute. THOiiAS G. She.-vrman, who has been a resident of Brooklyn for thirty-five years, was born in Birming- ^» ham, England, on November 25, T834. He was brought to New York when nine years old, and in his early years was carefully educated by his mother, but before he was thirteen years old he began to earn his own living. In 1857 he left New York and settled in Brook- lyn, where he was admitted to the bar in 1859. For the ne.Kt seven years he devoted his attention mainly to writing law books and editing law journals, but since 1866 he has been so actively engaged in regular practice as to have very little time to spare for liter- ary work, although very partial to it. In i860 David Dudley Field engaged him as secretary to the code commission, and in 1868 Mr. Field and his son, Dudley Field, took him and John W . Sterling into partner- ship. In 1873 the firm of Field iV' Shearman was dis- S(jlved, and Mr. Shearman and Mr. Sterling, the two junior partners, established the new law firm of Shear- man &: Sterling. In 1874, when attacks were made upon his pastor and friend, Henry Ward Beecher, both in and out of court the entire responsibility of his defence was entrusted by Mr. Beecher to Mr. Shear- man. The selection of other counsel was placed in his hands. For several years Mr. Shearman was largely engaged in C(jurt practice, but the business of his firm has latterly tended to the management of large estates and the affairs of trustees and of great cor- porations, especially railway companies, thus occupying them more in office work than in the trial of cases. F'or some years past Mr. Shearman has sought to withdraw from very active practice, in order to give more time and attention to great public questions in which he has hing taken a deep interest. Although unable to disengage himself from professional duties, he has still given nearlv as much time, in the last ten years, to public services as to professional practice. The chief subject of his interest is free trade, by which he seeks not merely a reduction of the tariff on imports, but the total abolition ol all indirect ta.xation. He has taken a very active part in every organized effort made in almost every part of the United States with these objects in view. He was one of the original members of the Repulilican ])arty, and during the first twelve years of its history was actively engaged in political work, althougli never holding or seeking any office. He continued to vote the Republican ticket until 1884, when he voted for Grover Cleveland. Since then he has acted with the Democratic party on the tariff issue. He founded the Brooklvn Revenue Reform Club, and was one of the original members of the New Y(jrk Refijrm Club, which carries on the same work upon a larger scale. His home is a plain, old-fashiijned house, which has decided historical interest, not (jnly as the oldest house upon the Heights, but as the residence of the late judge Radcliff, whose long continued struggle to recover damages from the city of Brooklyn for injuries to these premises resulted in one of the most famous and imijortant judgments of the New ^'ork court of appeals, settling the principle that municipalities are not liable for consequential damages resulting from their legalized invasions of private property. Although Judge Radcliff fiercely resented this decision as unjust, it has been accepted as the rule of law all over the United Stales. 'Q^^^PTftx^ ^. <^to3^/<^C>rQ.J3^ O- o^i^^v/^^Cy^ 492 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN, Christian Union, to which last he was called by Mr. Beecher personally, who warmly complimented his work upon his resignation to resume his law practice. During this period he was an active contributor of articles, both in prose and verse, to the Aldi/ie, the Military Service Journal, the United Service Magazine and other publications. He was for many years a director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society and chairman of the music committee ; was for two years major of the 13th Regiment, N. G., S. N, Y.; then major and judge-advocate on the staff of (General E. L. Molineu.x, then commanding the eleventh brigade N. (}. ; and he was chosen by Governor Cleveland, in 1883, as judge-advocate general, with the rank of brigadier- general. Lfpon JMr. Cleveland's election to the presidency, Creneral King continued with (lovernor Hill one year, to the end of his three years' term. General King has always been in demand in political campaigns, and in the memorable struggle which resulted in the restoration of the Democracy to power Jerry a. Werneerg. in the national government he rendered the party conspicuous service in confirming to Mr. Cleveland the support of Henry Ward Beecher. For several years Creneral King was counsel to the Musical Mutual I^rotective Union. His activity in grand army circles has been conspicuous. He was an early member of Rankin Post, No. 10, and subse(iuently a charter member of Charles R. Doane Post, No. 499, of which he was commander for two terms. He was also judge-advocate of the department of New York when General N. U. Curtis was commander. As a military lawyer he is considered a high authority, having made military law a special study and served as both judge-advocate and counsel for the accused in many notable military, naval and grand army c(jurts. In 1884 he was appointed a member of the board of education, was twice reappointed, and is still an active and influential member of that body. Since 1S77 he has been recording secretary of the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and has edited a series of reports of the annual reunions of the most interesting and valuable character. His published works are the "Silver Wedding Anniversary of Plymouth Church" [1872], the great "Congregational Council" in that church {1876], "King's Guide to Regimental Court Martials " [1882J, and a "History of the Visit of the Thirteenth Regiment to Montreal" [1885]. He is an excellent musician and composer, and has published nearly a hundred vocal and instrumental compositions, of which a part have been reissued in book form. He varies the monotony of law practice by journeys into the lecture field, where he is popular. THE BENCH AND BAR. 493 In the local history of criminal and civil jurisprudence no name figures more conspicuously than that of Jerry A. Wernherg, whose position at the Brooklyn bar has been attanied by innumerable successes along those lines which offer the greatest distinction to the legal practitioner. His career has been one of continuous triumph, the result of a marked natural ability for the profession to which he is devoted. Few criminal cases of note occupy the attention of the courts in this citv in the direction of which he is not associated either as chief counsel or in the role of a consulting lawyer, while his clientele among civil liti- gants is of the largest proportions and the most remunerative character. He owes no portion of his success to those methods of exaction which are sometimes exercised by his professional brethren, irrespective of their clients' pecuniary resources, and his hand has always been extended to assist those in trouble from whom no adequate remuneration could reasonably be expected. He was born in New York city in 1846. After receiving his preliminary education in the public schools he was gratluated from the College of the City of New York and then entered the University of Pennsylvania. Thence he went to the Columbia Col- lege law school, where he received his degree when he was twenty-one years of age. Shortly afterwards he began the practice of law in New York city, with I^hilip Reilly as a partner, and in 1872 moved his offices to Brooklyn. He rose rapidly in the ranks of his profession and, especially as a criminal la\v'yer, attained to a representative position among the leaders of the Kings County bar. In 1879 he was appointed assist- ant district attorney under General Isaac S. Catlin, and continued in that position until 18S2, when he resumed private practice. He defended George W. Stewart, a former secretary of the board of education, who was accused of embezzling $250,000 from the funds of that body, and secured his discharge, and he also obtained the acquittal of Harry O. Jones, who was charged with having been an accomplice of Secre- tary Stewart. He defended John Kenny, who killed a car driver and subsequently committed suicide, and he secured the acquittal of three of the four men who were accused of murdering Police Officer Scott. The Lockwood-Edsall slander case was another of his triumphs, in which he secured $13,000 damages for his client, this being one of the largest verdicts ever obtained in a suit of the kind. Socially he occupies a prominent place and he is identified with a number of the leading local clubs, the members of which have on several occasions made him their chief guest at testimonial banquets. He was formerly a member of the Twentieth Ward Democratic Association, but is no longer actively identified with politics. He is inter- ested in national guaril affairs and holds the position of commissary on the staff of the 13th Regiment. He is fond of driving and is almost as much in his element spinning down the boulevard behind a pair of fas', horses as he is when battling in court against a legal adversary. He married Miss Mary E. Reilly. As an able lawyer, a skillful politician, a writer, and an authority on subjects connected with his pro- fession, Hugo Hirsh is well known to the public. He has attained eminence at the bar as head of one of the most successful law firms in Brooklyn, that of Hirsh & Rasquin ; he has commanded respect and con- fidence from his political associates in the manage- ment of the Republican party in Kings County, and he has produced works on professional questions, besides contributing papers to various magazines. He was born in Germany on December 22, 1848, and came to this country with his parents when he was seven years old. The family made their home in New York, where Hugo attended the public schools until he reached the age of thirteen. He then engaged in vari- ous mercantile pursuits, which he abandoned in a few years to satisfy a natural predilection for a professional career. Study in the office of Anthony Barrett pre- pared him for his admission to the bar, which occurred in December, 1873. His practice, which he began at once and pursued independently, rapidly became ex- tensive and lucrative. Henry S. Rasquin entered into partnership with him, and the business of the firm in- creased constantly. In 1876 INIr. Hirsh undertook the authorship of a work on the jury system, which occu- pied a great portion of his time for the ensuing three years, and which, upon its publication in the fall of 1879, received general commendation from both pro- fessional and non-professional sources. " Hirsh on 494 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Juries " has established itself on a firm basis as an authority upon phases of legal procedure which, until its appearance, had not succeeded in attracting much attention from authors or commentators. His success in this instance was repeated in 1888, when he published " Hirsh's Tabulated Digest of the Divorce Laws of the United States," a volume which presented for the first time a mass of exhaustive information in comprehensive form. He has always been an active participant in the councils of the Republican party, and was the chairman of the executive committee of the Republican General Committee of Kings County for the year 1891. The only public office he ever held was that of counsel to the board of police and excise. MiRABEAU L. Towns, who is one of Brooklyn's best known lawyers, was born in Oswichee, Russell County, Ala., on January 6, 1852. His father was David Towns, a planter in Russell County, and his mother was Miss Sarah Rose, daughter of David Rose, a large planter and a man of much influence and wide reputation in the early history of the state. When Mirabeau was six years old his parents took him to Atlanta to attend school. In August, 1866, he was sent to Berlin, Germany, to attend Friederick Wilhelm's Gymnasium, which was presided over by a brother of the famous historian, Leopold von Ranke. There he remained until he passed his university examination, and then began to study law at the University of Berlin. In 1869 he was given his degree as Doctor of Laws at the University of Tubingen. Then to acquire a speaking knowledge of French and Italian he took up his residence at Vevey, Switzerland, remaining there until December, 1871, when he returned home. On his arrival he was admitted to the Georgia bar, and began the practice of law in that state. Not having been a member of the Georgia bar for three years prior to his arrival in New York he was compelled to undertake the study of law anew. He entered the law school of the University of New York, and after two years' study was graduated from that institution. As soon as he was duly admitted as a member of the bar he began to practice in Brooklyn, forming a partnership with Justice Ludwig Semler, under the name of Semler & Towns. He remained in partnership with Justice Semler until the latter was elected to the office of comptroller of the city of Brooklyn, when Mr. THE BENCH AND BAR. 495 Towns continued the business in his own name. In the course of his practice he has had many cases that have attracted wide notice, and he claims the distinction of being the first lawyer to conceive that a woman had a cause of action against another woman for alienating her husband's affections. Mr. Towns has been known to sum up cases in verse, and has so often interspersed poetry and rhyme in the trial of his cases, that he has come to be known in the profession as the "Lawyer poet." His muse is highly practical and he claims to have received more per line for his rhyming speeches to jurors in actions for damages than any other versifier known to history. In February, 1881, he was married to Miss Christine Gross, of Brooklyn. Mr. Towns is a member of the Brooklyn, Atlantic Yacht, Germania, Arion, Montauk and Hanover clubs. He is prominent in Royal Arcanum circles, and is actively connected with various charitable organizations. He is fond of outdoor sports, especially riding and driving, and is a member of the Brooklyn Rod and Gun Club, at Smithtown, L. I. Timothy C. Cronin was born of Irish ancestry in Washington County, New York, and received his education at various local academies. From the Burr and Burton Seminary at Manchester, Vt., Mr. Cronui went to Salem, N. Y., where he entered the law office of Cornelius L. Allen, and practiced there until before his removal to this state. While residing in Salem he was elected president of the village and presi- dent of the board of education and served five years in each capacity. He was one of the original dele- gates who organized the Republican party, and during the war he ardently advocated the cause of the Union with tongue and pen. Coming to New York in 1863, he cooperated with others in founding the war Demo- cratic organization for the presidential contest of 1S64. He was active in the work of recruiting and in assisting the Sanitary Commission. The war Democratic party was finally organized at the house of Judge Edwards Pierrepont, and for his share in this work Mr. Cronin received the personal acknowledg- ments of President Lincoln. By this organization Mr. Cronin was, without his knowledge, nominated for office of district attorney of New York. He proposed to Mr. Stafford, the nominee of the Republican organi- zation, that they both decline and have all Union men unite on one candidate, and this was accomplished. In 1865 the war Democrats nominated Mr. Cronin for counsel to the corporation of the city of New York, 496 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. but this honor was declined, as he intended to remove to Brooklyn, which he did in that year and built his home in Carlton avenue, where he now resides. He belongs to the Oxford and the Union League clubs. He was also a member of the old Kings County Club. For many years he was chairman of the executive committee of the State Bar Association for the second judicial district. In 1876 he was selected at the Saratoga state convention as an elector on the Republican presidential ticket for Hayes and Wheeler, and was intimately connected with that memorable struggle for the presidency. He was at one time a member of the committee of one hundred and fifty organized to devise some method for the reform of existing poli- tical abuses in this city. He was an active member of the New England Society of New York; was a mem- ber of the old Hamilton Literary Society of this city, and is a member of the Brooklyn Art Association and the Vermont Society. As the chairman of the board of examiners of the candidates for admission to the bar in the second judicial district of this state Mr. Cronin has shown marked ability. Henry S. Rasquin was born in Cologne, on August 3, 185 1. When he was two years old his parents brought him to New York, and six years later, to this city. Until the age of thirteen he was a pupil in private institutions and in the public schools. Upon leaving school he worked for some time in a news- paper office, fitting himself at the same time for a business career by attending the night sessions of a commercial college. In 1869 Mr. Rasquin was appointed a copyist in the county clerk's office, subse- quently becoming equity clerk. While holding this position he applied himself to legal studies, and in 1876 was admitted to the bar. Ill health compelled him to resign from the county clerk's office in 1879, and, in the same year, he became one of the law firm of Hirsh & Rasquin. In 1887 Mr. Rasquin was elected supervisor from the third ward, on the Republican ticket. At the close of his term as supervisor, Mr. Rasquin was nominated by the Republicans for the office of surrogate, but was defeated at the polls. His service in the National Guard began in 1877, when he enlisted in the 3d Catling Battery, of which five years later he became captain. He continues in command of the battery. He is connected with several beneficiary orders, including the Royal Arcanum, Free and Accepted Masons, the National Provident Union and the Knights of Honor. James Langan, a successful general law practitioner, has been a resident of Brooklyn since his boy- hood and has been prominently identified with public affairs for many years, holding important positions in political organizations. In 1872 he was elected to the Kings County Democratic General Committee as a representative from the fifteenth ward, and he continued to be a member of that committee until 1878, when he resigned and became a member of the Independent Democratic Committee, of which body he was elected secretary. During 1878-79 he was secretary of the department of fire and buildings. The Inde- pendent Democratic Committee disbanded about the year 1881, and when the Jefferson Hall Committee was formed Mr. Langan was elected to membership in it, being subsequently chosen secretary of the execu- tive committee. In 1882 the General Committee and the Jefferson Hall Committee agreed to disband, and a committee of one hundred and fifty was appointed by the. leaders of the two disbanded organizations. This committee appointed a sub- committee, with Mr. Langan as chairman, to devise a plan of reorganiza- tion. On January i, 1885, he took charge of the law department in the sheriff's office, where he remained during Sheriff Farley's term, retiring in 1887. The first ten years of Mr. Langan's life were passed in the city of New York, where he was born on July 7, 1838. His parents moved to Brooklyn in 1848 and he attended the public schools here for several years, going from school to the College of the City of New York, at which he was graduated in 1855. Mr. Langan was secretary of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick for seventeen years. He is a member of the Constitution Club and of the Tilden Club in the Eastern District. Alexander Cameron is one of those active, aggressive and brainy men who command success and typify the best elements of American character. A Southerner by birth, he is a Brooklynite by education and by residence, and has been closely identified with some of its most important local interests. He is a lawyer, and was one of the original counsel of the Kings County Elevated Railway Company. He is a life member of the Excelsior Club and a member of the Hamilton, Crescent and Brooklyn Riding and Driving clubs, the Yale Alumni Associations of Long Island and New York city, and the University and Alpha Delta Phi clubs of New York city. He is the son of George S. Cameron, who was in his lifetime a well- known banker and financier of South Carolina. Alexander Cameron was born in Charleston, S. C, on March 9, 1849. After studying in New York city, he was graduated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in June, 1864, and took a post-graduate course of three months at the Polytechnic in the fall of the same year. He was graduated at Yale College in the class of 1869. Turning his attention to the law, he quali- fied himself for admission to the bar and was admitted in the fall of 1870. During the winter of 1871-72 he was engaged in railway surveying. In the spring of 1872 he returned to the legal profession, becoming managing clerk in the law office of Barney, Butler & Parsons. He remained with that firm until January, 1876, when he formed a law partnership with James H. Gilbert, the eldest son of Judge Jasper W. Gilbert. The firm of Gilbert & Cameron continued in existence until about January, 1885, when it was dissolved and since that time Mr. Cameron has conducted an independent practice. He is a director of the New York and New Jersey Telephone Company and general counsel to that corporation, of which he was one of the incor- porators. He is also one of the incorporators and president of the National Automatic Fire Alarm Company, of Long Island, and one of the trustees and secretary and general manager of the Washington Building Company, a corporation which owns and controls the Washington Building, i Broadway, New York, formerly known as the Field building. Mr. Cameron married on September 28, 1876, Miss Florence Burt, of Brook- lyn, daughter of Charles Burt, the well-known engraver. John A. Quintard is a descendant of one of the oldest Connecticut families. His father, Seth Palmer Quintard, was a prominent resident of Greenwich, Conn., where John Addison Quintard was born in 1840. He attended the high school at Stamford, and was graduated from that institution when he was sixteen years old. He supplemented his early education by a systematic course of reading, and was the New York cor- respondent for the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate from i860 until 1870. In 1866 Mr. Quintard came to reside in Brooklyn. He joined the Franklin Literary Society, and has continued his membership up to the present time, taking an active part in the debates and other literary exercises. In 1886 he entered the law school of Columbia College. He was subsequently admitted to the bar, and began the practice of his profession in Brooklyn. In 1883 he was elected alderman-at-large, and two years later supervisor-at-large. He was reelected to the latter office in 1887, and was appointed counsel to the charities board in 1890. Since 1880 Mr. Quintard has been conspicuous in political life in Brooklyn. His first presidential vote was cast in 1864 for the reelection of Abraham Lincoln, and he continued in the Republican party until 1872, since which time he has acted with the Democratic party in national and state affairs. Through every phase of his career, whether in the excitement of professional and political activity or in the quieter walks of private life, George F. Elliott has borne an enviable reputation. His father was a clergyman, the Rev. John H. Elliott, of whose fourteen children three are living in Brooklyn. George F. Elliott, who was born in this city on September 17, 1850, is the only surviving son. He began to study law in the office of General Philip S. Crooke, but before long he left his desk and became a clerk in the New York jewelry firm of Tiffany & Co. An appointment as chief deputy to Sheriff Williams transferred his energies to Brooklyn, where he served in his new capacity for one term. When that period had expired a situation in the office of Tracy & Catlin opened a prospect for the resumption of his legal studies, and he availed him- self of the opportunity. His professional ambition received a new impetus from the additional facilities that were afforded him as a student at the New York University law school, from which he was graduated in 1878 and was chosen president of the class. He received an appointment as counsel to the board of health within two years after his admission to the bar and, through his instrumentality, this important branch of the municipal administration was rendered much more efficient than formerly. He urgently, and with ultimate success, advocated the recodification of the sanitary laws, a reform which had long been needed and which proved extremely beneficial to the community. yVfter holding office for more than five years he tendered his resignation when Dr. Otterson became health officer. He has held office as police counsel, and is employed in a similar capacity by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, several of the largest fraternal organizations in the country and by various private corporations ; and he is professionally connected with many large estates, both in this country and in Europe. He was in 18S8 a prominent candidate for the Republican nomination for district attorney, but retired from the field to allow the convention an opportunity to consider unanimously the claims of General Benjamin F. Tracy. In the autumn of 1892 he was the candidate of his party for the district attorneyship, and though opposed by James W. Ridgway, the most popular candidate on the Democratic ticket, he succeeded in making an excel- lent fight and in cutting down Mr. Ridgway's previous majorities. He is one of the leaders in the aggrega- tion of talented men who make up the membership of the Union League Club. His services as a lecturer are frequently sought by Young Men's Christian Associations and he is president of the Brooklyn Public Safety Union. The family tree of the Staffords, rooted in the baronage of Great Britain, yielded to America, more than two hundred and fifty years ago, the branch from which sprang Charles M. Stafford; and the parent stem, which bore an earldom from 1688 until 1762, is still in possession of the ancient barony of Stafford and of lands and honors in Staffordshire, England. Thomas Stafford, from whom the American branch of the family came, was born in lingland in i6i5,and coming to America, about 1638, settled in Rhode Island, and the generations between him and Charles M. Stafford are represented by Stukeley Stafford, born at Coven- try, R. I. ; Joel Stafford, born at Plainfiekl, N. H., in 1787 ; and Charles Cook Stafford, born at Bethany. N. Y., in 1822. Charles Cook Stafford married Miss Almaritta Sherwood, daughter of Henry Sherwood, a farmer and large landed proprietor of Ainenia, N. Y., whose father, Acel Sherwood, a native of the same place, and also a farmer and landowner, was of a family that came originally from England and settled in New England. Mrs. Stafford was born in 1827. Charles M. Stafford was born in Rush, Monroe County, N. Y., on January 8, 185 1. He was educated in the common schools, and with this education as a basis, rose by his own exertions. He is especially distinguished for his ability in jury trials, and his remarkable persuasiveness as a pleader causes his services to be sought in many important cases, in which he has had marked success. He came to New York to study law in 1870, and was graduated from the Columbia law school in 1872. He was admitted to the state bar the same year and was soon after admitted to practice in the United States courts. Mr. Stafford is a Democrat of an unmistakable type, and in 1885 an effort was made to nominate him for district attorney. The effort failed, and he was virtually out of politics for two years. In 1887, without any solicitation on Mr. Stafford's part. President Cleveland appointed him United States marshal for the eastern district of New York. He served with ability and credit until, his term having e.xpired, the change in the political tenor of the administration prevented his reappointment. He is a 32° Mason of the Scottish rite, a Knight Templar of the York rite, and a past master of Brooklyn Lodge, which enjoyed its season of greatest popularity under his administration ; he is also an Illustrious Noble of Kismet Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., and he was the representative of the third masonic district in the grand lodge of masons on its committee which selected the site at Utica, N. Y., for the asy- lum for the widows and orphans of masons and for destitute masons ; he is a member of the Brooklyn, Oxford and Aurora Grata clubs, the Law Library of Brooklyn, and other social and political organizations of the city. In 1888 Mr. Stafford married Miss Josephine Norris Simonds, daughter of Edward Simonds, of New York. He attends the Brooklyn Tabernacle, and is a close friend of the Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Tal- mage, its pastor ; and during the erection of the great new edifice of the society on Clinton avenue, he was its attorney and counsel, a relation which he maintains at the present time. 500 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Anthony Barrett is one of that class of lawyers who have earned prominence both in their profession and in the political arena. In the realm of law he has attained distinction by reason of legal acumen and forensic prowess, while in the field of politics his place has been gained as a far-seeing and energetic member of the Democratic party. His career has been fruitful of much that has advanced the interests of Brooklyn. It was largely through his efforts that this city was first lighted by electricity, and he was vice-president of the construction company that built the Union Elevated Railroad. He has also engaged in the most gigantic projects that have interested Brooklyn and New York capitalists during the last ten years ; among them, that of building a bridge across the East River from the Bowery in New York to Broadway in the Eastern District, another to Hudson avenue in the Western District, and yet another across the North River from Weehawken Heights to Seventieth street, New York. He is one of the founders of the Constitution Club, and is prominent among those who have made it an important factor in local politics, and he is a loyal member of the Society of Tammany. Other organizations in which he is a member are the Brooklyn Yacht Club, Juanita Club, War Veterans' Association of the 14th Regiment, N. Y. S. M., Rankin Post, No. 10, G. A. R., the Memorial Committee of the G. A. R., and the Society of the Army of the Potomac. Anthony Barrett was born in the Barony of Tyrawley, County Mayo, Ireland, on August 20, 1843. He was the eighth of twelve children, and when four years old was brought to Brooklyn by his parents. His father, Andrew Barrett, was a well-known contractor forty years ago. Anthony attended the school in the basement of the old cathedral of St. James, on Jay street, then that of Samuel Coleman, on Little street, and he was gradu- ated at St. James' School, in Jay street, the first parochial school taught by the Christian Brothers in Brooklyn. When the first call for troops was made, in 1861, he enlisted in Company B, 14th Regiment, N. Y. S. M., on April 18, and on May 23 he was mustered into the service of the United States for three years or during the war. He was slightly wounded in the knee at the first battle of Bull Run, and in 1862 was transferred to the navy. He served for nearly two years on the United States steamer " Corwin," participating in the engagement with the Confederate steamer " Yorktown " on the second appearance of the ram " Merrimac" at Newport News, Va., and in other important events. On being discharged from the "Corwin" he was appointed as master-at-arms of the United States steamer "Octororo," John C. Howell in command, and afterwards was transferred to the U. S. ship "Nerius," and for nine months served in the blockading squadron that kept the harbor of Wilmington closed to commerce. On the close of the war Mr. Barrett visited California, returning by way of Cape Horn as one of the crew of a sailing vessel. Shortly after his arrival home his brother, John F. Barrett, a prominent contractor, associated with the late William C. Kingsley, died, and Mr. Barrett closed up his deceased brother's business. Then, in partnership with his brother-in-law, William J. Kenmore, he purchased the United States Hotel, on Fulton street, but at the expiration of twelve months he withdrew from the enterprise and began the study of law in the offices of Ashby & Dunne. He was admitted to the bar on December 10, 1868. He has been counted as one of the foremost Brooklyn practitioners for the last twenty years, and has been counsel to the board of police and excise, and for Charles B. Farley during his term as sheriff. Of late he has turned his attention entirely to corporation law. He is a director and vice-president of the Brooklyn Elevated Railroad Company, counsel for the Municipal Electric Light Company of the Eastern District, a director and counsel of the Citizens' Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn, a director and vice-president of the Railroad Construction Company of New Jersey, a director in the New Jersey Construction Company, organized for the building of the North River bridge, and will be a director in the construction company to be organized for the con- struction of the two bridges over the East River. He is also a director in the Brooklyn District Messenger Company and in the Union Railroad Company of Brooklyn. In 1867 he married Miss Jane T. Coates, who was born in County Wicklovv, Ireland. William C. DeWitt is a man whose family name figures in the history of two nations. There is no more interesting group of portraits on the walls of the art gallery at The Hague than that of the DeWitt family, the central figure of which is John DeWitt, for a quarter of a century the grand pensionary, or president, of the states general of Holland, and a leading character in the history of the Dutch. He and his brother Cornelius were put to death because of their devotion to Republican forms of government Tjerck Clausen DeWitt, a cousin of John, landed in New York in 1657, and took up his residence in the valley of the Wallkill, Ulster County, in 1662. Among his descendants were Mary DeWitt, the mother of DeWitt Clinton and of Charles DeWitt, who was a member of the continental congress during the Ameri- can revolution, and one of the authors of the first constitution of the state of New York. William C. DeWitt, who is descended in direct line from Charles, was born in Paterson, N. J., on January 25, 1840. His mother was Lydia Ann Miller, a sister of Jacob W. Miller, attorney-general of New Jersey for a time, and a United States senator from that state for twelve years during the epoch of Clay, Webster and Calhoun. Mr. DeWitt was five years old when he came to Brooklyn, and with the exception of three years spent at Saugerties, Ulster County, N. Y., he has resided constantly m this city. He was a student at the Claverack Institute, where he completed his education in his seventeenth year. He entered a New 502 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN York lawyer's office and was admitted to the bar in June, 1861. He was elected corporation counsel of Brooklyn on January 3, 1869, and held that office un- interruptedly for six terms, extending over a period of thirteen years. Four times he was elected by the unanimous vote of the representatives of both political parties. The urgent need of municipal reform im- pressed itself forcibly upon the mind of Mr. DeWitt, and in 1872 he entered upon a vigorous crusade to secure it. He instituted and conducted the proceed- ings against the city treasurer and his deputy, for a defalcation of $125,000 ; against the tax collector and his assistant, for unlawful abstractions from the public funds ; against the comptroller, for alleged negligence in the sale of municipal bonds; against the extravagant contracts of the department of city works; and he prosecuted the civil litigation to collect the missing funds of the board of education. He was successful in all those litigations except the suit against the comptroller, in which the jury rendered a verdict for the defendant, and in the case of the reservoir contract, which resulted in a compromise judgment, confirmed by the court of appeals. He bore a conspicuous share in the formation and adoption of the present city charter; he was the author of the plan for the settle- ment of arrearages of taxes and assessments, and of the act passed for that purpose, subsequently taken up and followed rigorously by Mayor Seth Low. He retired from the office of corporation counsel in February, 1882. As a lawyer he is associated with that class whose lives and practice render the legal a really learned profession, and not an empirical one. In the midst of his practice he has found time to indulge literary tastes, which have enlarged his professional capacity and so enriched his mind that when speak- ing at the bar or on the platform, he always commands interested attention. As a writer, he has won the com- mendation of critics, especially by a volume published in 1881, entitled " Driftwood from out the Current of a Busy Life." In this volume are published many of his speeches and essays. When Judge Benjamin F. Tracy retired from the bench of the court of appeals, Mr. DeWitt formed a copartnership with that distin- guished jurist. Mr. DeWitt always sided with the Democracy. He was president of the Democratic state convention in 1870; a delegate to the national conven- tion at Baltimore, in 1871 ; a member of nearly all the state conventions from 1869 to 1877, and again in 1891. He was also a delegate to the national convention held in June, 1892, at Chicago. Frederic A. Ward, one of the best known counsel for corporations in Brooklyn and New York, was born in Farmington, Conn., on April i, 1841, He was gradu- ated at Yale College with high honors in 1862. Almost immediately upon leaving Yale he entered the Columbia College law school. He graduated in 1864, and at once became connected with the law firm of Emott, Van Cott & Jenks. He acted in the capacity of managing clerk in this office until the autumn of 1866, when, in conjunction with the late (Irenville THE BENCH AND BAR. 5°3 T. Jenks, he opened a law office. The partnership thus formed lasted until 1870, when Mr. Jenks died. Mr. Ward was then for some time associated in business with George G. Reynolds, who was after- wards appointed to the bench. Later he formed a partnership with the present corporation counsel, Almet F. Jenks, who left the firm some eight years ago. Since that time Mr. Ward has practiced alone. He has been counsel for the Union Ferry Company, the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, the Manhattan Ele- vated Railroad Company, tlie South Brooklyn Railr(jad Company, and many leading banks and other cor- porations, whose causes he has conducted with marked success. He also acts as attorney for the Van Nostrand, Astor and Suydam estates, and has a lucrative practice. Mr. Ward is a well-known member of the Brooklyn, Hamilton, Crescent Athletic and Lawyers' clubs, is vice-president of the Yale Alumni Association, a director of the Long Island Historical Society, the New England Society of Brooklyn and the Philharmonic Society of Brooklyn, and is one of the trustees of Green-Wood Cemetery and the People's Trust Company. He occupies a high social position and is a man of philanthropic impulses. He was for a number of years a director of the Long Island Free Library, to which and to many similar institutions he has been a liberal contributor. NoAH Teebetts, well known in Brooklyn as a lawyer and as a member and past commander of U. S. Grant Post, No. 327, G. A. R., was born in Rochester, N. H., in 1844, In September, 1862, he enlisted in Company I, isth N. H. Volunteers, and served in the Department of the Gulf under the command of Gen- eral N. P. Banks. He participated in the fighting around New Orleans and took part in the siege and battles of Port Hudson. In 1863 he was mustered out of service, but reenlisted in the 5th N. H. Volunteers and fought with his regiment through the bloody scenes preceding and accompanying the fall of Petersburg, and was present at Appomatto.x when the curtain fell on the last scene in the fiercest war drama of modern days. When peace had been reestablished Mr. Tebbetts studied law In 1867 he was admitted to the bar, and soon became an active participant in the political affairs of New Hampshire. P"or three years he was a member of the Republican state committee, and in 1870 the governor appointed him a bank commissioner. During his residence in New Hampshire he was master of Humane Lodge, No. 21, F. & A. M., and com- mander of Post No. 22, G. A. R. In 1872 he moved to Brooklyn, where he has since practiced his profes- sion. As soon as U. S. Grant Post was organized in this city Mr. Tebbetts became a member of it, and in 1888 his comrades unanimously elected him commander. He has frequently represented the post at depart- ment and national encampments. William J. Carr, one of the younger members of the bar, was born in Brooklyn on October 10, 1862, and was graduated in 1882 from the school attached to the Church of the Assumption. Two years later he was admitted to the bar. In 1888 he formed a partnership with John J. Walsh, who subsequently succeeded his father, the late Justice Andrew Walsh, on the bench of the Adams street police court. In 1S91 Mr. Carr was appointed as one of the clerks of the supreme court. He was for some years engaged in literary work of a legal nature. His contributions have appeared from time to time in the pages of the Albany Law Journal and other publications of a like nature. He assisted in the compilation of the American and English Law Encyclopedia. Mr. Carr is a member of the Columbian Club, the St. Patrick's Society and the Twenty-third Ward Democratic Association. William C. Beecher by his individual talents has proved himself a worthy scion of a family which, to slightly paraphrase the language of a celebrated divine, " has produced more brains than any other family in America." He is the second son of Henry Ward Beecher, and was born in Brooklyn on January 26, 1849. His education was entrusted to various institu- tions. He spent two years at the Polytechnic Insti- tute, a period more than twice as long in the Gunnery School, at Washington, Conn., and three years as a student in the Round Hill School, at Northampton, Mass. In 1868 he matriculated at Yale College, and was graduated four years later. The six months succeed- ing the close of his university course were passed in European travel, and in the summer of 1873 he joined the expedition which the United States government William C. Befxher. 5°4 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. sent under the leadership of Prof. Marsh to the western plahis for the purpose of studying the fossils of that re-ion In the autumn of 1873 Mr. Beecher entered the law school of Columbia College. Two years later he graduated, and in May, 187^, he began the practice of his profession as a partner in the firm of Lewis & Beecher which enjoyed a prosperous existence until its dissolution in 1885. Li 1881 Judge Rollins appointed Mr. Beecher assistant district atf.rney for New York County. This position he held until the followin in order to resume his private practice. He was nomi- nated by the Republicans in 187 1 for the office of dis- trict attorney, but was defeated by Winchester Britton. 'I'he following year he withdrew from the Republi- can party, and in 1875 he was nominated for surrogate of Kings County by the Democrats. His opponent, Walter H. Livingston, was declared elected, but Mr. Dailey considered that he was entitled to the office, and brought an action to obtain it, wdiich he succeeded in doing. He took possession of the office, and held it for nearly three years; then, when a new trial was ordered in the case, the continual litigation on the subject wearied him, and he came to an understanding with Mr. Livingston with the result that the case was not retried. Since then he has devoted his entire energy and ability to the practice of his profession. He is a firm believer in spiritualism, and has for many years been a prominent advocate of its doctrines. czA-je-t-M^ Sio THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Henry M. McKean. He was largely instrumental in the founding of the church of the New Spiritual Dispensation, the first of its kind ever incorporated, and of which he was the president. He is one of the directors of the Medico- Legal Society of New York, and is a member of the World's Fair Auxiliary; he is connected with societies for Psychical Research, and is a correspondent for several [jublic journals, and has composed quite a num- ber of poems, which he has recited upon public occa- sions. Hrnry M. McKean, who was born in Brooklyn on February 23, 1847, is not only a leading lawyer but a thorough American as well. His father was William H. McKean, a descendant from Thomas iSfcKean, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independ- ence, and his mother, whose maiden name was Eliza Ward Bell, was a direct descendant of Lord l^ell, who settled in Connecticut in the early part of the last cen- tury. Mr. McKean, in nSyi, married Carrie A. Hol- brook, of Worcester, Mass., whose father and mother were both descendants from Revolutionary families of the old " Bay State." After receiving a thorough education in the Brooklyn public schools, Mr. McKean studied law and he was admitted to practice the year of his marriage. He is a member of Montauk Lodge, F. & A. M., the Carleton Club and the 13th and 56th Regiment Veteran Association. He spends a great part of his leisure time in gratifying his inclinations as an amateur floriculturist. His garden is filled with many e.xquisite varieties of flowers and shrubs. Bernard J. York, who for twenty-four years has efficiently served the public as the clerk of the court of sessions, was born in Brooklyn on August iS, 1845. His education was obtainetl at St. James' School en Jay street and at public school No. 7. At the age of fifteen he entered the employ of i\ikman & Co., of I-'earl street. New York, and remained with them until September, 1868, when he received his appointment as clerk of the court of sessions of ICings County. He studied law under ex-Judge James Troy, and was ad- mitted to the bar in December, 1S69. He takes an active interest in social and charitable organizations, is an ex-president and director of the Columbian Club, an active nieml)er and director of the Carleton Club, and a member and ex-vice-pi esident of the Ctmstitu- tion Club. For the past five years he has held the post of state [iresident of the Catholic Benevolent Legion. He was a member of the committee of one hundred and fifty that was appointed several years ago to reorganize the Democratic party in Kings County. I-^rior to that time he had served as a delegate in the general committee. James Cornelius Bergen, who is head of the law firm of Bergen & ])yknian, is well known as a suc- cessful practitioner and is a large owner of realty. He is a lover of such recreation as may be obtained in yachting and shooting, and is a member of the Atlantic, New York, Seawanhaka and Corinthian yacht clubs. Other clubs of which he is a member are the Brook- lyn, of this city, and the Union, of New York. Mr. THE BENCH AND BAR. 5'T Bergen is a native of Brooklyn and was born on Marclr i8, 1S52. After attending tlie Borceau School, Brooklyn, and Charlier's, in New York, he was for some time a student at Ciencral Russell's Academy in New Haven, Conn., and then went to Germany, where he studied for two years at the University in Berlin. He was graduated from the Dane Law School, of Harvard University, and subsequently was graduated from the law department of the University in New York. Admitted to the bar in 1S73, he began to prac- tice in 1874 as a member of the firm of Bergen, Jacobs & Ivins. This firm was succeeded by that cf Ivins & Bergen, which, in turn, was dissolved in 1878, and Mr. Bergen formed a partnership with Edgar M. Cullen, which continued until Mr. Cullen was elected judge of the supreme court in 1880. Mr. Bergen's ne.xt part- ner was William N. Dykman and the firm of Bergen &: Dykman continues. Mr. Bergen married a daughter of the late Judge McCue in 1878. Benjamin B. Foster is a lawyer whose abilities have been recognized by his employment in important public capacities, including a long service as assistant United States district attorney, which office he held from 1876 till 1886, under District Attorneys Bliss, Woodford, Root, Dorsheimer and Walker, resigning on December 31, 1886. He had charge for some time of the criminal department of the attorney's office of the southern district of New York and has held equally responsible positions in Virginia, where he lived for several years after the close of the Civil war. From 1865 until 1873 he was a resident of Norfolk and dur- ing that period he was judge of the Norfolk city court. United States commissioner, register in bankruptcy and commonwealth's attorney for Norfolk County. Mr. Foster was born in Maine on November 23, 1831, and is a graduate of Bowdoin College, class of 1855. In 1861 he entered the Union army as a volunteer and served as a colonel on the staffs of Generals Casey, McClellan, Peck and Steel, successively, in the army of the Potomac, district of North Carolina and department of Arkansas. He is a member of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion and of the Lincoln Club. In 1S63 Mr. Foster married Miss S. Gibson Howell at Canandaigua, N. Y. John Johnson Allen, United States commissioner, and chief supervisior of elections, has been engaged in the active practice of law since 1873, and for a time was in partnership with the Honorable B. F. Tracy, his practice being largely in the United States courts of Brooklyn and New York. Mr. Allen was born in Utica, N, Y., on August 4, 1842, His father, Joseph D. Allen, was one of the leading civil engineers of this country. His mother was the daughter of John Johnson, for many years surveyor-general of ^'ermont, who was selected by the governments of Great Britain and the United States to establish the boundary line between Canada and the northeastern states. Mr. Allen's paternal ancestry runs back to Samuel Allen, who came to Plymouth in the " Mayflowe-," and he is a descendant of Miles Standish in the seventh generation. He was graduated at the University of Vermont in 1862, and entered upon the study of law. His work was interrupted by an appointment upon the provost-mar- shal's staff, where he served in connection with drafting and recruiting for the army, and at the close of the Civil war was acting provost-marshal in New York. Resum- ing his legal studies, he was graduated from Columbia College law school in 1866 and was appointed assist- ant United States district attorney for the eastern dis- trict of New York. After holding office for seven years he resigned and entered upon the private practice of his pro'fession. In the fall of 1873, receiving a unanimous nomination for the assembly, he was one of the four Republicans elected in Brooklyn, leading his ticket by a large vote. His practice is largely in the United States courts of Brooklyn and New York. For the past eighteen years he has held the responsible positum of United States chief supervisor of elections for the district comprising Long Island and Staten Island, and has discharged the delicate duties devolving on him with impartiality, discretion and skill. His service as United States commissioner also extended over many years. Commissioner Allen is a member of the Union League Club and a director in different corpora- tions. He married the daughter of the late Judge Shaler of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He lives in summer at Burlington, Vt., where the home- stead owned by the family for upwards of a century is situated. John J- Allen. 5^- THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Henry A. Powell, D. D., LL. B., was born in Chatham, Columbia County, N. Y., on September 13, 185 1. His father was Jonathan R. Powell, a civil engineer, and his mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Starks. He received his preliminary education at the district school and prepared for college at Fort Edward Institute. He was a member of the class of '73 at Union College, from which he entered the Union Theological Seminary, and graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity in 1876. In June of that year he received a call from the congregation of the old Bushwick Reformed Church, of Brooklyn, and being ordained, was duly installed as pastor of that congregation. While actively engaged with his ministerial duties he still found time to take a course of studies in the law department of the University of the City of New York. He was graduated in 1882 and admitted to the bar in the same year. In 1883 he received a call from the congregation of the Lee Avenue Congregational Church, which he accepted. During the years 1885, 1886 and 1889 Mr. Powell traveled extensively in Europe. In 1889 the title of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by Union College. During these latter years Mr. Powell had continued the study of the law, with the intention of adopting it as a profession, and in 1891 he tendered his resignation as pastor and retired from the ministry to form a co-partnership with James C. Foley, under the firm name of Foley & Powell. F. A. McCloskey, counsel to the board of police and excise, has occupied that position since February, 1890, and also held it from 1886 until 1888. He is a native of Brooklyn, and was born on July 28, i860, his father having been the late Henry McCloskey, formerly editor of the Eagle. Young McCloskey attended public school No, 5 in this city and was afterward graduated from St. Francis Xavier's College, in New York, in 1881. Two years later he was gradu- ated from the Columbia College law school and ad- mitted to the bar. He then formed a partnership with his brother Henry, which was continued until the death of the latter on October 11, 1892. Mr. McClos- key is a member of the Constitution Club. The professional career which John S. Griffith has mapped out for himself is a promising one, judg- ing of the future by the criterion of past achievements. As a lawyer he enjoys a practice as lucrative, perhaps, as that controlled by any of the younger members of the Kings County bar. Unassuming in manner, he is still the possessor of sufficient self-assertion to establish a certain preeminence among those more than ordinarily gifted. He is a Democrat, but has declined more than one- honor which in this city is within the reach only of men whose political belief is that of the dominant faction. He is an orator of first rate capacity and in 1879 took the prize for an oration delivered at the opera house in Ilion, and which was open in competition to all college men in the state of New York. He is a skillful versifier, and has published some poems of con- siderable note. His prose writings have frequently appeared in the columns of current publications. Mr. Griffith's social tastes formerly induced him to actively affiliate with many clubs and organizations, but since his marriage, four years ago, he has developed domestic habits and combines their cultivation with that of his literary predilections. Mr. Griffith was born in Oneida County on September 8, i86i,and was graduated from Hamilton College in 1880, and in 1881 from Columbia College law school. In 1882 he was admitted to the bar. William Sullivan is essentially a counselor, and in that capacity has been connected with a number of important cases where his thorough and comprehensive knowledge of legal principles and his extensive acquaintance with precedents and authorities have been of inestimable value. During several years preced- ing the legislative enactments which brought into existence the state board of charities and the office of state commissioner in lunacy, and gave to the supervisor-at-large the power to appoint the county board of commissioners of charities and corrections, he was counsel for the Kings County board of charities. He participated in the memorable contest which resulted from the opposition of Dr. Ordronaux, the state com- missioner in lunacy, against the removal of Dr. Parsons from the superintendency of the Kings County i^///-^.^c/(^^ 6^lt^- iunalic asylum and the substitution of Dr. /7 Shaw; and when the matter was carried to the supreme court he appeared f(jr the Kings County board //and won the case. In the controversy over the legislation pro- viding for the improvement of Gravesend and New Utrecht, he was counsel for the parties upholding the con- stitutionality of it, and secured the decisions in their favor which made possible the laying out and develop- ment of Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach and the several other beautiful sub- urban villages lying between Brooklyn and the seaside. He was an intimate friend of the late Thomas kinsella, of the Eagle, and drew his will. He is an Irishman and was born on January 16, 1S48. Coming to America in 1S62, he attended the public schools one year, after which he became a student of the Uni- versity of the City of New York, from the law department of which he was graduated. His early practical studies of his chosen profession were made in the office of the late D. P. Barnard, who was a lawyer of national reputation, and he was admitted to the bar in 1870. He has taken a reasonable interest in the social side of life, and for years was vice-president of the St. Patrick Society during the presidency of Thomas Kinsella in that organization, and upon the death of Mr. Kinsella he served as president for several years. He is a charter member of the Hamilton Club, a member of the Constitution and Crescent Athletic clubs and the Brooklyn Ethical Association in this city and of the Reform Club of New York. Sidney Vale Lowell is a descendant, on both the paternal and maternal sides, of people who have been distinguished in various walks of life. James Russell Lowell, the poet and statesman, v/as a kinsman, and among his ancestors is numbered Gilbert Vale, a scientist whose life-work yielded fruits of inestimable practical value. The Lowell family in America originated with Percival Lowell, who came from England ni 1628, and to him Mr. Lowell traces his ancestry in a direct line. Sidney V. Lowell was born on June 27, 1S44, at Newburyport, Mass., and was educated at the common schools there and in Brooklyn, studying also at Cooper Institute, in New York. He read law with Francis Tillow, of New York, and with John G. Schumacher, of Brooklyn, and was admitted to the bar on attaining his majority, being admit- ted to practice in Massachusetts at the same time. When John G. Schumacher was appointed corporation counsel for the city of Brooklyn, Mr. Lowell became his assistant and held that office from 1863 until 1S66, inclusive. He wished to retire when Alexander McCue succeeded Mr. Schumacher, but was induced to remain ; and during Judge McCue's term he conducted all the detail work of the office. In 1S71 Mr. Lowell was appointed as the first registrar of arrears of laxe.i and assessments, an office which he conducted with SU THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. marked efficieiic}-, bat at an expense that was merely nominal, employing- only one clerk, Colonel M. \V.Cole, who afterwards held the position of registrar. Mayor Hunter in 1875 appointed Mr. Lowell to membership in the board of education, and he was reappointed by Mayor Howell in 1S7S. He served until 1882. Mr. Lowell married Miss Josephine Champney in June, 1869. She is a daughter of Samuel T. Champney, who is an old resilient of ISrooklyn Heights and was one of the founders of the First Presbyterian Church, of which Mrs. Lowell has been a life-long member. She is a graduate of the Ligham University, of Le Roy, one of the earliest female colleges in the country, of which the Rev. Dr. Co.x, of Brooklyn, became chancellor. Mr. Lowell is a member of the Church of the Saviour, on Pierrepont street, over tiie Sunday-school of which he has presided for several years as sui)erintendent. In politics he has been a Democrat since he attained his majority. He is a member of the Hamilton and Rembrandt clubs, is a stockholder in many Brooklyn cor- porations, and has been a director of the Citizens' Gas Light Company and of other organizations. Frkdkricr p. Bellamy has been prominent in the social and intellectual life of Brooklyn for many years. His ailoption of the law as a profession was the result of his being called, immediately after his graduation from college, to take charge of large property interests in Brooklyn. To qualify himself for the discharge of his trust in the best possible manner he took a law degree at the Columbia law school in 1872, and subsequently was atlmitted to the bar. His practice has been general, and he has been in charge of important litigations, especially in the higher judicial tribunals, and has been eminently successful in the management of a number of large estates and other interests. He was one of the first board of civil service examiners for court officers ever appointed in this state. Li his social relations he is popular, and is a mem- ber of the Brooklyn and Hamilton clubs, of Brooklyn, and the Lawyers' and Llniversity clubs, of New York city. Mr. Bellamy's ancestry connects him with the early history of his native New England. Lie is a descendant of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Bellamy, who was one of the most representative and distinguished of the early divines of New England — the friend of Jona- than Edwards and Aaron Burr and related to Roger Sherman, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and to Ezra Stiles, D. D., LL. D., who was president of Yale College from 1777 until his death in 1795. ^'-'"- Bellamy was born in Connecticut, and was graduated in 1868 from Union College. His younger brother, Edward Bellamy, author of " Look- ing Backward," was one of his classmates. J. St1',w,\rt Ross, one of Brooklyn's most pro- gressive young lawyers, is a native and life-long resi- dent of the city. He was born on March 17, 1854. AVhcn fifteen years old he was graduated from public !_ school No. 25 and was the valedictorian of his class. * For a brief period he was employed in his father's dry- goods store on Myrtle avenue, but the vocation was not suited to his tastes, and he branched out for him- self in business which occupying onl)' a portion of his time, he devoted the balance to reading law in the office of James W. Culver, in New York. He studied assiduously until he reached his twenty-first birthday, when he was admitted to the bar. During the years in which he has l)ecn a practitioner he has gathered an extensive clientage and has become popularly known. He is a fluent and forcible speaker. He has always been a Democrat and in the fall of 1887 was the candidate of that party for the state senate from the third district. His opponent was Eugene F. O'Connor, and Mr. Ross had a Republican majority of 5,000 to contend against. He made a superb up-hill fight, and was defeated by a majority of only 2,500. J. Stewart Rosf^. The Dime Savings Bank, Court and Remsen Streets. BANKING AND FINANCIAL. ^ OLLOWING Rrooklyn's evolution from its character of a village wliicli was prac- tically a suburb of the metropolis, into the magnitude of a city which would be naturally metropolitan were it not for the contiguity of the greater municipality, there have been many developments of marked import. Prominent among these are the creation and growth of those strictly financial institutions which in the modern history of c(immerce and manufacture have become an absolutely neces- sary element in every important business community. The wheels of mercantile and industrial enterprise revolve so rapidly in these days that, even with the ini- provetl means of transit and the facilities for almost instant communication be- tween distant points, the man of business must have the bank, the safe deposit and the insurance office almost at his own door, while the provident wage-earner seeks near his home or his place of labor for the institution where he can place his savings for investment in such keeping as shall give him a safe if not a large return. Prior to 1824 the city of New \ ork was sufficiently near to furnish the people of Brooklyn all the banking and other financial advantages that were demandeid ; but since that time banks, trust comj^anies and insurance companies have multiplied m the younger city and, under the direction of men of wide experience and comprehensive ability, have been so thoroughly developed that among the several classes of these institutions, now existing in Brooklyn, ■ there are many which rank with the strongest and foremost in the country. Not only has Brooklyn her own mdependent financial institutions, but the iinportance of the city as a field for financial enterprise has become so fully recognized that some of the larger institutions of New York and other cities have found it good policy to establish distinct branches here in order tint they may share in the extensive business which has Si6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. been so largely and rapidly withdrawn from the outside to its legitimate centre. On March 23, 1824, the state assembly passed an act incorporating the Long Island Bank; and on April i in the same year the act passed the senate, receiving the governor's sanction on the same day. The capital of this bank was $300,000 in shares of $50 each, and Leffert Lefferts was the first president. The Brooklyn Savmgs Bank was the next to be incorporated, in 1827 ; and then followed the Atlantic Bank, in 1836 ; the Bank of Wilhamsburgh, in 1839; the South Brooklyn Savings Bank in 1850; and the Wilhamsburgh Savings Bank, in 1851. The subsequent multiplication of financial institutions was commensurate with the city's growth, and it is a fact highly creditable to the ability and judicious conservatism of local financiers, that their operations have been gen- erally carried out upon a basis so sound as to conserve the interests of those intrusting funds to their care. At the close of the year 1892 there were in this city twenty banks of deposit, thirteen savings banks, three safe de- posit companies and eight trust companies, besides a large number of savings associations connected with societies and other organizations. Early in 1893 three new banks of deposit were incorporated, making the total number twenty-one. The establishment of insurance companies in Brook- lyn followed closely the inauguration of local banking interests, the first institution here being the Brooklyn Fire Insurance Company, incorporated on April 3, 1824, with a capital of $150,000. The company was obliged to sus- pend in 1848, owing to the immense losses caused by the fire which occurred that year near Fulton Ferry ; but it was reorganized in 1849 and continued in operation until 1887, when it wound up its affairs. The Long Island In- surance Company, the second in Brooklyn, was organized on April 26, 1833, with a capital of $200,000, which was afterwards increased to $300,000 ; it retired from busi- ness in 1890. At the close of the year 1892 the number of insurance companies having their home offices in Brook- lyn was four, in addition to which there were the coopera- tive insurance associations connected with the many secret and beneficial orders. Of strictly Brooklyn securities there were at the close of 1892 one hundred and seven. These con- sisted of the stocks and bonds of the elevated and street railroad companies, of the gas, electric light, bank, trust and insurance companies, of the Academy of Music, the Amphion Academy, the ferry companies, the South Brooklyn Warehouse Dry Dock Company, the South Brooklyn Saw Mill Company, the Title Guaran- tee and Trust Company, and the Brooklyn city bonds. The history of Brooklyn securities is one of conser- vative but continuous increase in worth, but the year 1892 surpassed all others in the large increase of local values which obtained. This increase amounted to $20,884,180 and was chiefly notable in railroad securi- ties. In these the advance was about $14,374,200. Gas stock values increased $3,338,000 ; trust companies' stocks $2,700,000; bank securities $279,600, and miscellaneous securities $1,122,800. Insurance shares, however, showed a depreciation amounting to $139,250. The introduction of the trolley system had a marked effect upon local street railway securities. One of the most important financial features of the year was the absorption of local railway stocks by an outside syndicate, which was given a local complexion by the presence in the directorate of a number of Brooklyn men. Gas stocks were similarly influenced by syndicate efl'orts, and the contest for the control of the Brooklyn Elevated road was doubtless detrimental to the fullest advance possible in its stock values. Proposed and progressing elevated road extension, of course, is to be taken into consideration in determining the relative conditions of those stocks at the close of T892. There was a marked upward tendency in electric light stocks during the year and a considerable extension of plant and field of operations. Brooklyn Bank. NATIONAL AND OTHER BANKS. Long Island Bank. — The oldest banking institution in Brooklyn, as previously stated, is the Long Island Bank, established in 1824. It has a capital of $400,000 and is located at 186 Remsen street. The officers are Crowell Hadden, president ; John H. Ditmas, vice-president ; W. H. Leffingwell, cashier. As president of the Long Island Bank Crowell Hadden naturally takes a high rank among those BANKING AND FINANCIAL, S17 Crowell Hadden, who devote their energies to financial affairs, and his opinion on all monetary questions is considered of the utmost importance. He was born in New York city in 1840. When he was five years old his parents moved to Brooklyn and the education which fitted him for a practical business career was obtained in the local institutions. He was graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in 1856, and in tiie capacity of a clerk was at once employed by Richards, Haight &: Co., of New York. Several years later he embarked in the whole- sale clothing business, under the firm name of Had- den & McElroy, and established stores in New York city and New Orleans, both of which were maintained until 18S0. Besides holding the presidency of the Long Island Bank, he is a director and the auditor of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company, a director of the Franklin Safe Deposit Company, the Franklin Trust Company, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Broadway Insurance Company of New York, and a trustee of the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital, the Brooklyn Children's Aid Society, the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company and the Brooklyn Savings Bank. Brooklyn Bank. — Second in chronological order among local banks of deposit is the Brooklyn Bank at Fulton and Clinton streets. It was organized in 1832, and has a capital of $300,000. Henry E. Hutch- inson is president, and Thomas M. Halsey, cashier. A native of the Green Mountain state, born at Windsor, Vt., in 1837, Henry F1 Hutchinson has become a prominent figure in Brooklyn financial circles. He was fitted for college at the high school of his native town, and graduated from Amherst w'hen he was twenty-one years old. From 1858 until i860 he was a teacher in the Franklin Academy, Montgomery, Ala., studying law in his spare moments. He was admit- ted to the bar in 1862. After teaching in Montgomery for two years he came to New York, and received an ajipointment as assistant Luiited States assessor, which office he retained ten years. He was then sec- retary of the Mechanics' Savings Bank five years, and afterwards, from 1877 until 1S90, cashier of the Brook- lyn Bank. In the last-named year he was elected president of the latter bank, succeeding Elias Lewis, Jr., w'ho had resigned on account of ill health. He is a trustee of the Hamilton Trust Company. FVom 1870 until 1882 he was organist and musical director of St. Peter's P. E. Church. In the capacities of treasurer and president, respectively, he has been connected with the Brooklyn Choral Society many years. He - was a member of the finance committee of the Union League Club two years, and is a trustee of the Brook- lyn Dispensary and a member of the i\lpha Delta Phi Club, of New York. In 1882 he married Miss F^lla Stafford, of Brooklyn. The National City Bank was organized in 1S50, and is located at 357 Fulton street ; its capital is ,$300,- 000. David B. Powell is president; Charles T. Young, vice-president ; and David L. Harris, cashier. D.wii) B. P(.)WK],L was born at Flempstead, L. I., in 1 82 1, and was educatetl in the conniion schools of that quaint old town. In i842,wdien he attained his majority, he began Ijusiness as a retail grocer in Brook- lyn, which business he conducted successfully twenty- Henry e. Hutchinson. two years. He then became a wholesale boot and 5iS THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ■;,\^«i^; B. Powell. shoe dealer, the firm name being Powell Bro. & Co., and their place of business 130 Diiane street, New York citv. In this business he retains an interest. A resident of Ih'ooklyn since 1S42, he has grown in prominence with the development of the cit)', estab- lishing a high character for integrity, energy and pub- lic spirit. His broad and liberal views would commend him in any community, while his unostentatious liber- ality has largely tended to increase the efficiency of many of the charitable institutions of the city. He was elected to his present position of president of the National City Bank in 1885. He is a director in many of the leading institutions, among them being the Phe- ni.x; Insurance Company, National Bank of Deposit, New York ; New York & New Jersey Telephone Com- pany, City Fire Insurance Company, New York; the Consolidated Fireworks Company of America, and the Empire Saw Mill Company, of Georgia. The First Nation.-\l B.axk, organized in 1S51, has a capital of $300,000, and is located at Kent ave- nue and Broadway. Its officers are : John G. Jenkins, president; George D. ISetts, cashier. The Mechanics' Bank, at Court and Montague streets, was organized in 1852, and its capital is $500,- 000. George W. White is president; Henry N. Brush, vice-president ; and George McMillan, cashier. George A\'. ^^'HrrE has placed himself in the foremost rank among financial men by his individual energy and integritv. He was born in Brooklyn in 1S29, and is a son of e.x-Supervisor Sylvanus White. His business career was begun as a clerk in the shipping house of Johnson &: Lowden, in New York city, and he remained with that firm until 1852. When the Mechanics' Bank in this city was opened, he became the first book-keeper in that institution. He was soon promoted to the position of receiving teller, from which post he moved to the paying teller's desk, and a little later he became assistant cashier. The cashier, A. S. ^lulford, became ill and was forced to be away from his duty for weeks at a time. During these intervals Mr. A\'hite took his place, and when in 1857 Mr. Mulford resigned, Mr. White was promoted to the position. He held that office until 1883, when he was elected president of the bank. He was a member of the board of trustees of the State Trust Company, of New York city, and he has resided in that city several years. When the Mercantile Library, now the Brooklyn Librarj', was opened, he was appointed a member of the board of directors and was afterwards treasurer of the board. The Manufacturers' National Bank, organized in 1853, has a capital of $262,000, and is located at 72 Broadway. John Loughran is president ; William Dick, vice-president ; and T. C. Disbrow, cashier. John LdUfiHRAN was born in Ireland, but came to America in 1840, and when thirteen years old settled, in Brooklyn, where he attended the public schools. He began his commercial life as a clerk in a grocery store, going into the same business for himself in May, 1846. This business he sold out in 1865, and engaged in manufacturing in lirooklyn, the firm being Fraser, Bell & Loughran. He sold out his interest in this firm in the spring of 1878, and in June of the same year was elected a director of the Manufacturers' National Bank. In the following September George Mahon, the president of the bank, died, and Mr. Loughran was chosen to take his place. He is a trustee of the Nassau Trust Company, one of the charter members and a trustee of the Kings County Savings Bank, and a life member and trustee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. The Nassau National Bank was organized in 1S59, and its banking house is in the Garfield Building, at Court and Renisen streets. Its capital is $300,000. The officers are : Thomas T. Barr, president ; and Edgar McDonald, cashier. Among men prominently interested in financial affairs the name of Thomas T. Barr ranks high. He was born in Newcastle County, Delaware, on March 25, 1833, and obtained his education at the Friends' School, at Wilmington. From 1850 uutil 1855 he was a clerk in a Philadelphia grocery store. In the latter year he went west and engaged in the lumber and house furnishing business, at Dubuque, Iowa. There he remained until 1857, when he returned to Philadelphia and resumed his former occupation as a grocery clerk. In 1863 he came to New York and established the grocery firm of Howell, Barr & Co., which was dissolved in 1876 to give place to Barr, Lally &: Co., lea and coffee merchants. This latter partnership \vas BANKING AND FINANCIAL. 519 terminated some years ago by the death of Mr. Lally, but the firm reorganized under the name of Thomas T. Barr & Co., continued until 1889, when Mr. Barr retired, leaving his interests in his son's hands. In 1890 Mr. Barr was elected president of the Nassau National Bank. In New York he is vice-president of the Corn Exchange Bank and of the Commonwealth Insurance Company ; president of the Nassau Trading Company and of the Central American Trading Company ; trustee of the Continental Trust Company ; director of the Lykens Valley Railroad and Coal Company, and is interested in the wholesale grocery house of Thurber Whyland Company. He is a member of the Down Town Club. In Brooklyn he is a trustee of the Dime Savings Bank, the Long Island Safe Deposit Company, Home Life Insurance Company, Homoeopathic Hos- pital, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences ; treasurer and trustee of the Lafayette Avenue Pres- byterian Church ; member and trustee of the Riding and Driving Club, and a member of the Hamilton Club. The Mechanics' and Traders' Bank, at Greenpoint avenue and Franklin street, was organized in 1867, and the present officers are H. J. Oldring, Jr., president ; Timothy Perry, vice-president ; and George W. Paynter, cashier. The capital is $100,000. Henry J. Oldring, Jr., who for twenty-one years was cashier of the Mechanics' and Traders' Bank, and in March, 1891, was elected president to succeed the late Archibald K. Meserole, was born in New York in 1838, and educated at the public schools of that city. In 1854 his family came to Brooklyn and during the four years that followed he successively performed clerical work in a broker's office, taught school in Illinois and worked in a country store in Minnesota. His first experience in the business in which he is now engaged was in 1858, when he entered the old Farmers' and Citizens' Bank as a messenger. He was soon promoted to be paying teller, a position which he filled until 1867, when the bank failed. He then went to the First National Bank of Brooklyn as book-keeper and receiving teller ; he remained there until 187 1, when he was called to the position of cashier of the bank with which he is now connected. Mr. Old- ring was for years a member and deacon in the Lee Avenue Baptist Church, but is now connected with the Marcy Avenue Baptist Church. The Commercial Bank was organized in 1868, and its capital is $108,000. Its location is at 363 Fulton street, and the officers are S. L. Keeney, president ; and John J. Vail, cashier. The life of Seth L. Keeney has been eventful. His enterprise has been varied in its direction, and energy and shrewdness have made his ventures uniformly successful. He was born on May 26, 1831, at Black Walnut, Wyoming County, Pa., and spent his boyhood in working on a farm and attending a country school. He was graduated from Wyoming Seminary at the age of twenty, and accepted a position as superintendent of the North Branch Canal. He resigned in a year and assumed a contract to build ten miles of road for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, through the valley of the Delaware and in the famous Water Gap. This he successfully completed in two years, and then undertook a similar task for the Lackawanna and Bloomsburg Railroad. While pursuing these enterprises Mr. Keeney was also interested in commercial projects, and established stores in Wilkesbarre and in Wyoming County. In 1856 he came to Brooklyn. He continued his work as a contractor in this city, and in association with his brother. Col. Abner C. Keeney, the late William C. Kingsley and others, he successfully completed many important projects, including the Prospect Park reservoir, a portion of its conduit line and many miles of sewers. During the war Mr. Keeney was engaged in mercantile business, dealing chiefly in army supplies, and had two large stores in New York and Washington. After the reunion of the nation Mr. Keeney returned to contracting. He built the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, the Coney Island Elevated Railroad, a portion of the Brighton Beach Railroad, the concourse at Coney Island, the Nassau Gas Works, and the extension of the Brooklyn water works, besides laying many miles of water pipes and constructing numerous sewers. He has been a trustee of the Brooklyn bridge since 1886, and has held the presidency of the Commercial Bank since 1888. He is a director in the Brooklyn City Railroad, the Long Island Loan and Trust Company, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Brooklyn Warehouse Company, the E. W. Bliss Company, and in many other local and western corporations. Mr. Keeney was married in 1866, but he is now a widower ; he has two children, a son and daughter. The Fulton Bank, at 361 Fulton street, was organized in 1870. William H. Hazzard is president; Foster Pettit, vice-president ; and John A. Nexsen, cashier. The capital is $200,000. William H. Hazzard, whose success both as an architectural contractor and as a bank president, has made him prominent in the community, was born on April 8, 1823, near the town of Lewis, in Sussex County, Del. At the age of thirteen he went to Philadelphia to learn the trade of a builder. When twenty-one years old he was thoroughly proficient in his chosen calling and resolved to begin business in New York and Brooklyn. He came to Brooklyn in February, 1847. Mr. Hazzard is a pronounced Repub- lican ; in 1862 he was elected supervisor and served two terms. In 1879, he was nominated and con- firmed as a member of the board of public works. When the board was abolished he gave his pay for his unexpired term to the city's sinking fund. He was president of the Brooklyn City Railroad Company from 1882 until 1886. He was elected president of the Fulton Bank in 1887. ■ 520 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Sprague National Bank.— Admirably located for business, the Sprague National Bank, at Fourth and Atlantic avenues, has been a prosperous institution from the time of its organization in 1883. Its capi- tal is $200,000, at which sum it was fixed at the outset. The officers are N. T. Sprague, president; William Harkness, vice-president ; and F. L. Brown, cashier. Under its building the corporation has safety deposit vaults, which were constructed under Mr. Sprague's supervision, and are regarded as being as perfect as anything of the kind in existence. Among the chiefs of Brooklyn's great financial corporations Colonel Nathan T. Sprague is one who for twenty-eight years has been a conspicuous figure in the national banking system of the United States, and has rendered good service on important committees which have been summoned to consider grave financial legislation proposed by congress. To him is due the credit of the movement that resulted in the addition of Brooklyn to the list of cities of redemption for national banks. He is a native of Vermont, and was born at Mount Holly, in Rutland County, on June 22, 1828. His family traces its ancestry to William, son of Edward Sprague, of Upway, Dorsetshire, England, who, in company with two brothers, left the mother country in 1629 and founded a new home in the young colony which the Pilgrims had planted at Salem, subsequently moving to Hingham, Mass., his homestead. In 1799 Nathan Sprague, one of William Sprague's descendants, carried the name into Vermont. In 1808 his eldest son, Nathan Turner Sprague, began life as a merchant at Mount Holly, and, for the next quarter of a century, was foremost in the business enterprises of that town. For fourteen years he represented Mount Holly in the state legislature. Having moved to Brandon in 1833, he became the central figure of an influential and wealthy coterie, and after a period of service in the board of directors of the old Brandon Bank, was elected president of the First National Bank. For some time he was assistant judge of Rutland County, and during a period of five years he sat in the Vermont legislature as representative from Brandon. He married Miss Susan Button, and the junior Nathan Turner Sprague is one of their five children. Having arrived at the age of eighteen this son under- took the management of a large country store with marked success, but forsook the paths of commercial life in 185 1, and, settling at Wallingford in the following year, directed his attention to agriculture. Five years later he returned to Brandon, where he has since retained a home. The next ten years of his life passed in farming and stock raising, in assisting his father in the management of the large paternal estate, and in undertaking financial operations upon his own responsibility. " In association with his father and several moneyed men he bore a prominent part, in 1864, in the establishment of the First National Bank of Brandon, of which his father became the first president, and he the first vice-president. Upon the resigna- tion of Judge Sprague in 1867 the son succeeded him as president of the bank, a post which he has ever since occupied. Mr. Sprague, H. H. Baxter and others were among the organizers, in 1870, of the Baxter National Bank, of Rutland, and for twelve years N. T. Sprague was a most important factor in the delibera- tions of that institution's board of directors. In 1867 he was elected to the presidency of the Brandon Manufacturing Company, which has since expanded to immense proportions, and achieved a universal reputation as the Howe Scale Company. After ten years of unremitting activity in the management of this corporation, and after placing it upon an equal footing with the leading manufacturing enterprises of its class in the world, he retired from active association with its affairs. He was elected to the Vermont legis- lature several times as a member for Brandon, and was elected to the upper branch of the legislature, in 1872, as senator from Rutland County ; but for his firmly repeated declinations the Republican party would have eventually placed him in nomination for the office of governor. At the time of the centennial cele- bration of national independence he gave the entire amount necessary to erect the stately building which was the Vermont headquarters at the Philadelphia exhibition, and on being offered a partial reimbursement for his expenditure at the next session of the legislature, he conditionally accepted the money, and imme- diately tendered it to the corporation of Brandon for the purpose of establishing in that city the Sprague Centennial Library. He was one of the organizers, and from 1881 until 1886 he was the president of the American Agricultural Society of the United States. He was president of the Brandon Farmers' and Mechanics' Club nine years, and one of the Vermont Merino Sheep Breeders' Association four years. His connection with the financial interests of Brooklyn began in 1883 with the establishment of the Sprague National Bank, of which he was elected president. He has devoted time and money to the furtherance of various charities and educational institutions in Brooklyn. He is a trustee of the Brooklyn Institute, the Brooklyn Central Dispensary, the Long Island Free Library, the Hanson Place Baptist Church and the City Savings Bank ; president of the East Greenwich Water Supply Company, of Rhode Island ; a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce of many years' standing, and one of the promoters and, at present, a member of the Grant Memorial Association. During certain portions of the year he resides as much in Brooklyn as he does in Vermont. On November i, 1849, he married Minerva M. Hull, of Wallingford, Vt. She died in September, 1856, leaving one daughter. In October, 1857, he married Melinda J. Evans, of Springfield, Ohio, who died on January 28, 1885, leaving one son. His present wife, whom he married on October 14, 1886, was Miss Elizabeth Harrison, of Brooklyn. 522 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Oliver M. Denton. The Kings County Bank, organized in 1885, has a capital of $150,000, and is located at 12 Court street. Its officers are : Oliver M. Denton, president, and H. B. Auten, cashier. Oliver M. Denton was born near Rockaway, L. L, in 1840, and received his first education at the public school. Later, he attended the Union Hall Academy at Jamaica, L. L When about sixteen years of age he obtained a situation as clerk in a wholesale wood and willow-ware store, in New York city, where he remained some time. Not liking that business, he obtained an appoint- ment as clerk in a banking house, and since that time has directed his attention to financial affairs. That he has succeeded is testified to by the fact that he is looked upon as one of the most reliable and conscientious men in the city. When William B. Leonard, owing to ill health, retired from the presidency of the Kings County Bank in 1890, Mr. Denton was unanimously elected to fill the vacancy. He has proved himself to be an able president with a keen perception of financial facts and strong execu- tive ability. He was register of stocks for the Brooklyn City Railway Company several years, and served the South Side Railroad of Long Island three years as its treasurer. He resides at 27 Herkimer street, and owns a summer residence at East Rockaway, L. I. The Bedford Bank, at Bedford avenue and Halsey street, was organ- ized in 1886 and has a capital of $150,000. Eugene G. Blackford is presi- dent, and Howard M. Smith is vice-president and cashier. Eugene G. Blackford, president of the Bedford Bank and ex-commissioner of fisheries, is a practical scientist, in whom a keen business ability is combined with student proclivities. He was born in Morris- town, N. J., on August 8, 1839. At the age of fourteen he was employed in the office of Captain Asa W. Welden, ship broker, New York. His tastes lay in the direction of scientific education, to which he devoted so much of his attention that the old captain, at the end of three years and a half, declared him unfit for business, and discharged him. About this time he took some lessons in water-color painting. Several succeeding years were passed as a freight clerk and later he was two years with the late A. T. Stewart, his next employment being as book-keeper for Middleton, Carman & Co., fish dealers, in Fulton market. Soon he was offered a stand in the market on exceptionally favorable terms, which he accepted and at once threw into this business an energy that has increased the one stand to twenty. The old market has been rebuilt through his efforts and the insignificant trade of twenty years since has grown to immense proportions. The Blackford Fish Company leases five miles of the shore of Montauk point, which is arranged as a huge pen for holding live fish until required in the city. One of the towers of Ful- ton market is occupied by Mr. Blackford as a library and laboratory. The library contains one of the best collections of special works ever gathered in this country. In 1879 Governor Robinson appointed Mr. Blackford one of the four fish com- missioners of the state. It was due to Mr. Blackford's efforts that a hatchery was established at Cold Spring Harbor, L. I. The trout exhi- bitions which he inaugurated in 1875 are now considered one of the sights of New York. He brought to this part of the world the highly flavored salmon of the Restigouche River, the now famous red snapper — named after him, in honor of his efforts in this line, Lvtjanus Blackfordii — the pompano, various species of groupers, the delicate whitebait, and Oregon river salmon. From Europe he received the carp, sole and turbot ; from Asia the Chinese gouramie, the paradise fish, the fantail gold fish of Japan ; and from Mexico the axolotl. The Smithsonian Institution at Washing- ton received from him more than one thousand of its choicest specimens. At the age of twenty-one he married Miss Frances L. Green, of New York. He is a prominent member of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, president of the Brooklyn Baptist Social Union, and a patron of the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, in New York. Eugene G. Blackford. tt ■ ^ r ■, „ ■ t,. , ■ „ . He IS treasurer of the American Fisheries Society, vice-president of the New York Telemeter Company ; trustee and chairman of the executive committee of the People's Trust Company, trustee and chairman of the finance committee of the City Savings Bank, director of the Hide and Leather Bank, and treasurer of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Brooklyn, Hamilton, Oxford and Union League clubs, and of the Fulton and Reform clubs of New York; and also of the Oxford Rod and Gun Club at Eastport, L. I.; the Black Lake Fishing Club, and of the Blooming Grove Association, Pike County, Pa., and the Ichthyophagous Club. BANKING AND FINANCIAL. 523 The Broadway Bank was organized in 1887 and is located at Broadway and Graham avenue. Its capital is $100,000, and the officers are : Henry Batterman, president ; and E. M. Hendrickson, cashier. Essentially a Brooklynite in every sense of the word, Henry Batterman has made a name for himself in connection with the drygoods trade in this city. He was born here in 1849, and attended the public schools until he attained the age of fourteen, when he entered a drygoods house in New York as a sales- man. In 1867 he established a small drygoods store on the corner of Broadway and Ewen street in the Eastern District. His business rapidly increased in volume and in 1881 he erected the store which he occupies at Broadway and Graham avenue. He was one of the organizers of the Broadway Bank and he has been president since its inception. He is a director of the Bushwick and East Brooklyn Dispensary, of the Brooklyn Throat Hospital, and a member of the Union League Club. The Twenty-sixth Ward Bank. — In the fall of 1888 a meeting was held at the store of Ditmas Jewell on the corner of Fulton street and Broadway, which resulted in a decision to establish a state bank of deposit and discount with a capital of $100,000. Quarters were at first rented at 2509 Atlantic avenue, but the business of the bank steadily increased and the board of directors decided to erect a new building at the corner of Atlantic and Georgia avenues. The corner-stone of the pro- posed structure was laid on July 7, 1891, the edifice being completed and opened for public inspection March 3, 1892. The main architectural fea- tures of the building savor of the French Renaissance style of archi- tecture, but in the attic dormer and pointed tower it possesses certain mediaeval characteristics. The total cost of the structure, including fire- proof vaults and steel burglar-proof safes, was in the neighborhood of $3S,ooo. The land cost $15,000. The building rests upon massive founda- tions of rock-faced granite, while the main floor is constructed of Indiana limestone, with pilasters having deli- cately carved capitals and artistically designed traceries in the panels. The upper stories are faced with cream- colored brick in two distinct shades, with Lake Superior stone trimmings. The principal vault is a monstrous affair, weighing over 50,000 pounds. It is constructed of welded layers of steel and iron, and to gain access to it three doors must be unlocked. The first of these is six inches in thickness and the second four, while the third, which is self-locking and closing, is for day use only. The two exterior doors are constructed of welded steel, iron and farelotyn (a peculiar metal which it is claimed cannot be drilled with or without heat), and are supplied with numerous steel bolts, each two inches in diameter, and locking upon the sides, top and bottom. The officers of the bank, elected in February, 1892, are: President, Ditmas Jewell ; first vice-president, A. H. W. Van Siclen ; second vice-president, John V. Jewell ; cashier, James K. Alexander. Ditmas Jewell, who was largely instrumental in giving to the twenty-sixth ward one of the safest financial institutions in the city, was educated in the district schools of Fishkill, Dutchess County, where he was born in 1822. When fourteen years old he left home to live with an uncle, who gave him employment on a farm at Flatbush. He remained there six years and at the age of twenty became a carpenter's appren- tice. In three years he had learned his chosen trade and, until he was verging upon thirty, earned a com- fortable livelihood by diligent and unremitting toil at the bench. Then he married, rented a farm and resumed his earlier occupation, which he continued until 1857. Opportunities of successfnlly engagmg m mercantile pursuits presented themselves as inducements for him to abandon farming and he immediately laid the foundations of the flour business in which he still retains an interest. His establishment has always been situated at the junction of Broadway and Fulton street, in what has been successively the town of East New Twenty-sixth Ward Bank, Atlantic Avenue. 524 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. DiTMAS Jewell. York and the twenty-si.xth ward of Brooklyn. His first partner was Gilbert H. Bergen and business was trans- acted under the firm name of Bergen & Jewell. The death of his associate at the end of four years dis- solved the partnership and the firm of Jewell & Voor- hees succeeded that of Bergen & Jewell. Within five years this latter combination gave way to Jewell & Son ; in 1889 the senior member of the firm retired from active interest and John V. Jewell, the junior partner, has conducted the business ever since. In the fall of 1888 the first steps were taken toward the for- mation of a bank of deposit for the twenty-sixth ward. On March 25, 1889, all necessary preliminaries having been arranged and all legal regulations complied with, the Twenty-sixth Ward Bank opened its books for business at 2509 Atlantic avenue. Mr. Jewell has uninterruptedly held the presidency of the institution to which he was elected at the outset. Each week multiplied business until the methods of Mr. Jewell and his associates on the board of directors had in- duced such a measure of prosperity that the erection of a new building became a matter of necessity. The corner-stone of the new edifice was laid on July 7, 1891, and a few months later a splendid structure, meeting all the requirements of a modern financial institution, crowned a well chosen site at the corner of Atlantic and Georgia avenues. Another financial interest of Mr. Jewell's is in the Nassau Trust Company, of which he is a trustee. He is highly respected in social life, a leader in church work, and is generally recognized in the city as one of its prominent citizens. He is a member of the Union League Club. James K. Alexander, cashier of the Twenty-sixth Ward Bank, was born in Bloomington, Ills., on Janu- ary 17, 1859. His father, James K. Alexander, Sr., was born in New York, of English parentage, and his mother, Mary D. Thompson, who came from Scottish stock, was a native of the same city. In 1864 Mr. and Mrs. Alexander moved to Brooklyn, where their son James was educated in the public schools. Young Alexander's first occupation was that of an office boy in the Danforth Locomotive and Machine Company's establishment in New York. After occupying several minor positions both in New York and Brooklyn he was given an opportunit)' to enter the service of the National Bank of the Republic in the former city. He began the discharge of his new duties on December IS) 1879, and evinced so much capability that recog- nition of his worth was not slow in manifesting itself. He was advanced by steady gradations to the head of the out-of-town collection department, a post held by him until he accepted his present station. The Fifth Avenue Bank was organized in 1889, and has a capital of $100,000. It is located at Ninth street and Fifth avenue. The officers are A. P. Wells, president ; W. F. Merrill, vice-president ; and Isaac Simonson, cashier. Albert P. ^^'ELLS bore an active share in the organization of the bank of which he is the president. Under his management the institution has prospered in a manner to satisfy all who have invested money in the venture. He was born in 1S37 in a house that BANKING AND FINANCIAL. 525 stood on Adams street, near the site of the present city hall, in a section of the city which was then con- sidered to be " out of town." During the years of his business career he first gained considerable experi- ence in general office work, and finally engaged in the cotton trade, which occupied his attention until he had amassed a fortune large enough to justify his retirement. He is a director in various insurance com- panies and a stockholder in several of the banks and trust companies of New York and Brooklyn. He is a member of the Hamilton Club. The Hamilton Bank, at 79 Hamilton avenue, was organized in 1889, and has a capital of $100,000. F. G. Pitcher, president ; and Edward S. Clark, cashier. The WALLABoar Bank, organized in 1889, has a capital of $100,000, and is located at Myrtle and Clinton avenues. Its officers are : Charles M. Englis, president ; Alonzo Slote, vice-president ; and Joseph B. Pigot, cashier. The North Side Bank is on Grand street, near Kent avenue, and was organized in 1889. Its officers are : Claus Doscher, president ; Walter Mathison, vice-president ; and Charles A. Sackett, cashier. The capital is $100,000. Claus Doscher was born in Germany in 1830, and came to America when he was eighteen years old. All his slender means were exhausted in New York before he procured employment in a grocery store, where he remained several years. Later he followed the same line of business for himself. In 1870 he identified himself with Henry Offerman, Herman Katenhorn and Edward Hopke in the establishment of a sugar refinery at Hastings, on the Hudson, where their business increased far beyond their utmost expecta- tions. In 1876 Mr. Doscher, in company with Messrs. Offerman and Steunsburg, organized the Brooklyn Sugar Refining Co., and an extensive plant was located in this city. Mr. Doscher was made the president of the company. He was elected president of the North Side Bank soon after its organization in 1890. The Seventeenth Ward Bank was organized in i88g, and has a capital of f 100,000. It is located at 339 Manhattan avenue. Thomas C. Smith is president ; E. A. Walker, vice-president ; and W. H. Webster, cashier. The Union Bank, on Union street and Fifth avenue, was organized in February, 1893, by a number of men, all prominent in the business life of the city. It was incorporated under the state laws with f 100,000 capital. The trustees for the first year were : Silas B. Dutcher, John McCarty, Stephen M. Griswold, John Pullman, James McLaren, Frederick J. Griswold, Edward F. Fowler, John A. Bliss, Thomas E. Pearsall, Hugh M. Funston, John A. Nichols, Henry J. Strawkamp, James Ross, Patrick H. Flynn and Edwin B. Strout. The Eighth Ward Bank was incorporated in March, 1893, for a general discount and deposit busi- ness. Its capital is $100,000. Lower Third avenue was selected for its location. The People's Bank, organized to carry on a general discount and deposit business, was established on Broadway, near Patchen avenue, on February 17, 1893. Its capital is $100,000. Germania Savings Bank. — Any person viewing the magnificent buildings surrounding the city hall square will notice the highly ornamental structure belonging to the Germania Savings Bank. The statue standing out from the front elevation at the third story is an artistic reproduction of the "Watch on the Rhine," the "Germania" on the Niederwald. The only deviations from the original is that the figure holds a beehive in its hand in place of the imperial crown carried by the original Germania. The builder preferred the emblem of industry, economy and thrift, qualities for which Germans are noted, and while it is hardly in keeping with the proud and warlike bearing of this figure, it in a measure indicates the purpose of ■ the bank. The bank was opened for business on June i, 1867, with the following officers : F. A. Schroeder, president ; John G. A. Vagt, first vice-president; Dr. U. Palmedo, second vice-president; Theodore Happel, treasurer; Theodore Juencke, secretary. The deposits steadily increased from year to year, until the quarters occupied became quite inadequate for the business transacted, and in the spring of 1889 it was decided to build anew on the site extending from Fulton to Adams streets, which had been purchased in 1873, and on which the buildings occupied by the bank until that time were located. Carl F. Eisenach was chosen architect, and there was a building committee consisting of Augustus Kurth, chairman ; Julius Lehrenkrauss, Peter Reppenhagen, Gustav A. Jahn and the president, F. A. Schroeder, ex-officio. The build- ing was finished in May, 1891. The banking rooms are of ample size with an entrance on Fulton as well as on Adams street. The rooms are handsomely fitted up and well adapted for the business of the bank. The upper floors are divided up in counting rooms and offices, fitted up with all modern improvements, such as electric light, steam heat and elevators, and are occupied by many tenants. The bank had on deposit on July I, 1892, $2,386,005.51, most of the depositors being German residents. The present board of trustees con- sists of F. A. Schroeder, president ; Augustus Kurth, first vice-president ; Peter Reppenhagen, second vice- president ; Julius Lehrenkrauss, treasurer ; William D. Veeder, attorney ; and E. Mueldener, Henry C. Mangels, John W. Rasch, Herman Lins, Gustav A. Jahn, Carl F. Eisenach, Chas. A. Schieren, Edward L. Graef, John C. Richard, Augustus Jahn, Henry Francke and Christian Friedmann. The other officers and employees are Frederick Koch, secretary ; Oscar Thomass, cashier ; Joseph Lorenz, paying teller ; Hugo VVundrum, clerk. 526 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. «H The early life of Augustus Kurth was passed amid influences and scenes that made him an idealist. He was the son of a German government official and was born in Brandenburg on the Havel, near Berlin, on May 19, 1825. At the gymnasium, or school preparatory to college, he imbibed the philosophy of Hegel and, like many other young Germans of his time, became imbued with a spirit of patriotism which was^'not regarded with favor by the authorities. Preparing himself for the profession of civil engineer and surveyor, he obtained a government position. For a year ending in April 1846, he served as a volunteer in the regular army and before retiring passed an examination for the rank of lieutenant. Then he returned to the government service as a surveyor and was thus employed when he became an active participant in the revolution of 1848. For this he was punished in April, 1849, by dismissal from the government service, ; reduction to the rank of private in the army, depriva- tion of the rights of citizenship and imprisonment for one year. When his term of imprisonment ended he came to New York, arriving on July 13, 185 1, and began to work on a farm in Rockland County, but returned to New York to learn wood carving, and in December, 185 1, was employed by William Ferris, a surveyor, with whom he became associated as partner on June i, 1852. He retired from this connection, in a few months and in the autumn of 1853 opened offices on his own account in Brooklyn and West Mount Vernon. Subsequently he performed important work for the New York harbor commission, and when that commission was dissolved in April, 1857, he opened an office in New York where he was associated with Mr. Boschke, formerly chief engineer of the harbor commission, and Rudolph Rosa. He was ap- pointed city surveyor of New York in 1858, and for the next fourteen years had charge of the New York busi- ness of his brother, who died in April of that year. In July, 1872, he was appointed with Alfred Craven to make an expert examination of the municipal system of water works and report on its condition ; in the month of December following he was appointed city surveyor of Brooklyn and held the office until 1876. He was appointed assessor in 1880 and has held that office ever since. During the Civil war he was active in raising funds for the families of the soldiers and assisted in organizing a society for that purpose. He was one of the incorporators of the Germania Savings Bank in 1S67, was a trustee and chairman of the building committee and is vice-president of the institution. The legislation of 1886 permitting the establishment of title guarantee companies was secured by his efforts in cooperation with Oscar Shaw and Charles Betts. He has been active in movements to secure the repatriation of his exiled countrymen ; in the organization of engineering and technical socie- ties ; in the promotion of liberal religious thought and in advancing the interests of the Democratic party. He is a member of a number of societies, holding honorary membership in the Technical societies of New York and Chicago, and is a member of Pythagoras Lodge No. i, F. & A. M. (which he joined in 1859), and of the Germania Club. On March 22, 1856, he married the daughter of George P. Weil. The East Brooklyn Savings Bank is an outgrowth from the old East Brooklyn Accumulating Fund Association of which the late Samuel C. Barnes, first schoolmaster- at the Wallabout, was secretary, and which ceased to exist in 1859. In i860 Mr. Barnes secured a charter for an institution to be known as the East Brooklyn Savings Bank, and on April 11, 1861, the bank opened its books for business. The institu- tion conducts its business in a substantial brick structure at the corner of Franklin and Myrtle avenues. The officials are : Darwin R. James, president ; James Lock, first vice-president ; Thomas J. Atkins, second vice-president ; Alex. Hutchins, M. D., secretary ; Eugene F. Barnes, treasurer. The Williamsburgh Savings Bank was organized on April 9, 185 1, but actual business was not begun until June 9 of the same year. The business increased rapidly, and on June i, 1875, the fine building erected by the institution, at Broadway and Driggs avenue, was occupied. The officers are : Jeremiah V. Meserole, president; Franklin Whiting and Horace M. Warren, vice-presidents ; William E. Horwill, secre- tary ; and Oliver P. Miller, cashier. In 1669 Jan Meserole, a French Hugenot, immigrated from Picardy, and located at Lookout Point, Augustus Kurth. r r. mm m ^^j,,^ yS, -j-H "^ ffi\Nj, i '^' *s* 4-\. II 11 1^ Ifll *«WP*t. H* lift Germania Savings Bank. 5^^ THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. WiLLIAMSBURGH SAVINGS BANK. Kuy Kout, where he purchased a tract of land. From this French immigrant is descended the large and well-known family of Meseroles, of which General Jeremiah V. Meserole, president of theWilliamsburgh Savings Bank, is a member. Mr. Meserole was born in New York city on October 23, 1833, but four years later removed with his parents to Brooklyn, where he has resided ever since. He attended the schools of Jamaica and this city, and then chose surveying as his profession. In 1850 he was made city surveyor, a position which he fills at this writing. For nearly a quarter of a century General Meserole was a national guardsman. His career began with the 7th Regiment, N. G., S. N. Y., and he shared the honors as well as the dangers of his regiment during the campaign of 1861, under the first call of President Lincoln for volun- teers. On returning from the front he was instrumen- tal in the organization of the 47th Regiment of this city, and was elected its first colonel. In i868 he was elected brigadier-general to command the nth Brigade. In 1876 he retired from active military life. For upwards of three generations much of that portion of Greenpoint in the vicinity of Newtown Creek was used by the Meserole family for farming purposes. It was known as the Greenpoint farm until 1859, when it was divided into building lots. On April 20, 1859, Mr. Meserole married Miss Ann S. Richardson. General Meserole has been always active in charitable and benevolent enterprises. For years he has been a member of Greenpoint Lodge, No. 403, F. & A. M., and Greenpoint Division, No. 96, Sons of Temperance. He helped to build the first church at Greenpoint, and later became identified with the Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church. The Brooklyn Savings Bank, the pioneer institution of its kind in Brooklyn, has already been men- tioned as having been incorporated in 1827. It is located at 223 Fulton street, and its officers are: H. P. Morgan, president, and F. E. Flandreau, cashier. Henry P. Morgan was born in Connecticut, and was educated at the famous Bacon Academy at Col- chester, Conn. He came to Brooklyn in 1836, and began to work as a clerk in his brother William's dry- goods store. In 1850 William Morgan died, and Henry continued the business. Later he opened another store in the St. Ann's building on Fulton street, and in 1867 he retired and became president of a New York life insurance company. Later he organized the Nassau Gas Light Company. He was the first president of the company, and has held that office until the present time. In the fall of 1880 Hosea Webster, then president of the Brooklyn Savings Bank, retired, and Mr. Morgan was elected to succeed him, having been thirty years a trustee and for several years vice-president. At the com- mencement of the Civil war he was an active member of the Brooklyn City Guard and he took an active part in the formation of the 23d Regiment. He has been a trustee of the Brooklyn Hospital, and served as trustee and secretary of the Packer Collegiate Institute. He has been a director of the Brooklyn Bank and of the Long Island Safe Deposit Company. He is senior warden of St. Ann's Church on the Heights, of which he has been a member for more than forty years. Brooklyn savings bank, pierrepont and Clinton Streets. BANKING AND FINANCIAL. 529 The Dime Savings Bank, chartered on April 12, 1857, occupies a handsome building at Court and Remsen streets, erected on the site of the Hooley Opera House. Previous to the erection of this building, of which it took possession in 1884, it had been located nineteen years in the Halsey Building on Fulton street. Its first location was in a small room in Montague street, whence it moved to the Hamilton Build- ings. The officers are : Benjamin H. Huntington, president ; John W. Hunter, treasurer ; J. Lawrence Marcellus, secretary. B. H. Huntington, president, has long been known in the financial world of Brooklyn as an able and experienced official, one who has ever faithfully performed the responsible duties devolving upon him. Mr. Huntington is a native of Long Island, and was born at East Hampton in 1842. His grandfather, Abel Huntington, was a prominent physician and surgeon, and was twice elected to congress as the representative of the district in which he resided. His father, George L. Huntington, was also a physician, having been a pupil of the renowned Dr. Valentine Mott, and succeeded to his father's practice in Suffolk County. Mr. Huntington received his early education at Clinton Academy, East Hampton, and in the schools of Brook- lyn. He began his business life in the well-known East India house of A. A. Low & Bros., with whom he remained for many years, until called in 1877 to fill the position of secretary of the Dime Savings Bank. He was elected to the presidency in 1893. He takes great interest in the work of St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church, of which he is the senior warden. Other savings banks in Brooklyn are the Brevoort, Fulton street, near Bedford avenue — Felix Camp- bell, president; the Bushwick, 618 Grand street — Joseph Liebmann, president; City Savings Bank, Fourth and Flatbush avenues — Remsen Rushmore, president ; Dime Savings Bank of Williamsburgh, Broadway and Wythe avenue — Robinson Gill, president; East New York, Atlantic and Pennsylvania ave- nues — Frederick Middendorf, president; German, Broadway and Boerum street — Charles Naeher, president; Greenpoint, Manhattan avenue and Noble street — Timothy Perry, president; Kings County Savings Institution, Broadway and Bedford avenue — James S. Beams, president ; South Brooklyn Savings Institution, Atlantic avenue and Clinton street — Alexander E. Orr, president. ^f^ • \ trust and safe deposit companies. Brooklyn Trust Company. — The Brooklyn Trust Company, the first organization of the ki city, was established in 1866. It is situated at 177 and 179 Montague street. It has a capital of $ The officers are : Christian T. Christensen, presi- dent; Abram B. Baylis, vice-president; and James Ross Curran, secretary. Probably no better example can be found in Brooklyn of that fortunate blending of the best characteristics of foreign birth with those elements that constitute the highest tvpe of American citizenship, than that presented by General Christian T. Christensen. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on January 26, 1832, and from 1846 until 1850 was employed in a drygoods store in the adjacent seaport of Elsi- nore. He had scarcely attained the age of eigh- teen when he emigrated to America and obtained in New York a situation as book-keep. r and cashier. In 1855 he became a partner 'n the firm of Pepoon, Nazro & Co., note brokers. He organized in 1861 a company of Scandinavians which was merged in the ranks of the ist N. Y. Regiment, after electing him first lieutenant; he rose through every rank in the volunteer service to that of brigadier-general. He served through the four years of the war, taking part in the first engagement at Big Bethel, Va., and in the last at Fort Blakely. In July, 1865, he resigned from the army and entered the employ of Sturges, Ben- nett & Co., coffee importers of New York; when they were succeeded by B. G. Arnold & Co. he became a partner in the new firm and retained that interest from January i, 1868, until April, nd in the 1, 000, 00c C. T. Christensen. 53° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. 1877. At that time the celebrated Nevada Bank of San Francisco was at the flood tide of its prosperity and he took the management of its main office, in San Francisco, but returned to New York to organize a branch establishment. His contract with the bank lasted two years and then he accepted the position of manager in the banking house of Drexel, Morgan & Co. This post he occupied ten years, until his election to the presidency of the Brooklyn Trust Company, which had been rendered vacant by the death of Ripley Ropes. During the period from 1879 until 1885 he was one of the most active officers in the ranks of the National Guard, serving as major of the 13th Regiment, and commander of the 3d Brigade and for a time command- ing the Second Division. In 1867 the King of Denmark created him a Knight of the Order of the Danne- brog, and from 1869 until 1877 he was acting chargd d'affaires and Danish consul for the port of New York. On his return to Denmark a few years ago he was the recipient of many public honors. He has been presi- dent of the Brooklyn Excise League, director of the American Exchange National. Bank, trustee of the American Missionary Associaton, chancellor of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion and a park commis- sioner for the city of Brooklyn. He is vice-president of the Brooklyn Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor, and second vice-president of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society. For twenty-three years he has been a prominent member of Plymouth Church, in which he is chairman of its active church work com- mittee, and he was a warm personal friend of Mr. Beecher. His home at 70 Eighth avenue is one of the strikingly handsome residences in that part of the city. The Franklin Trust Company began business on Remsen street in August, 1888, but finding that the demands made upon it by continually increasing interests justified the occupancy of larger quarters it decided to erect a new building. The site chosen for the contemplated structure on the southwest corner of Montague and Clinton streets was purchased, and ground was broken for the foundations on April 23, 1891. The plot measured fifty feet on Montague street by one hundred feet on Clinton street, and it was designed that the building should cover the entire area with the exception of about eight feet across the Montague street front. The completed structure contains ten finished stories, an attic and sub-basement. Built in the modern Romanesque style, it constitutes one of the chief architectural ornaments of Brooklyn and invites comparison with the finer office buildings of New York and other great commercial centres. The materials used in its exterior construction form an attractive combination; the basement is built of Jonesboro red granite, the first and second stories of Indiana limestone, and the remaining stories of fire-flashed Perth Amboy pressed brick, with trimmings of limestone and light buff terra cotta. The lofty roof is covered with dark red Spanish tiles, which afford a good background for the lighter colored dormers and gables with their trimmings of stone and terra cotta. The height of the roof above the sidewalk is one hundred and fifty-six feet. The interior iron work of the building, and, in fact, all its structural features, internal and external, render it completely fire-proof. Particular care has been taken to supply the interior of the struct- ure with every known convenience, and the finish and fittings of its offices are of the latest and best design. The first story is entirely appropriated by the banking room and other apartments utilized by the Trust Com- pany, while the basement and the greater portion of the sub-basement are occupied by the offices and vaults of the Franklin Safe Deposit Company, an offshoot of the Franklin Trust Company. The entrance used in common by those who have business with either of these two organizations opens from the level of the pavement on Montague street to the main hall and constitutes one of the salient architectural character- istics of the building. The visitor passes through a mar- ble arch of elaborate design and ascends or descends a marble and bronze staircase to the banking rooms of the Trust Company or the business office of the Safe Deposit Company. The walls and floors of the princi- pal offices, halls, corridors and lavatories are wain- scoted and tiled with marble, while the interior wood finish is entirely of quartered oak. The officers of the Franklin Trust Company are : George H. Southard, president; William H. Wallace, vice-president; and James R. Cowing, secretary. The capital is $1,000,000. George H. Southard is a Bostonian, and was born February 23, 1841. He comes from pure Pilgrim George H. Southard. Franklin Trust Company. 532 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ancestry, being a lineal descendant of Constant Southard, who, with his mother Alice Southard, arrived at Plymouth, Mass., on the ship " Ann " in 1623. The lady afterwards became the wife of William Bradford, the governor of the colony. Mr. Southard received a public school education, and was graduated from the English High School of Boston in 1856. In the same year he began his commercial life as clerk in the em- ploy of Southard, Herbert & Co., oil manufacturers of Boston. Five years later he became identified with the lumber trade, and continued in it in Boston until 1856, when he went to Newburgh, N. Y., where he remained nine years. In 1874 he removed to Brooklyn, and, in the following year, became a partner in the firm of Southard & Co. He retired in 1887 to assist in organizing the National Bank of Deposit of New York, of which institution he was the first cashier. When the Franklin Trust Company was organized in 1888 he was induced to take upon himself the duties of secretary. In 1889 he was elected second vice- president, and, on January i, 1892, he was elected president. When the Fifth Avenue Bank of Brooklyn was organized, he was one of the incorporators, and is at present a member of its board of directors. He is also a director of the Broadway Insurance Company, and of the New York Fire Insurance Company. The People's Trust Company, at 172 Montague street, was organized in 1889, and has a capital of f 1,000,000. Its officers are : Felix Campbell, president ; J. G. Dettmer and Horace J. Morse, vice-presidents ; and Edward Johnson, secretary. Felix Campbell was born in Brooklyn on February 28, 1829, and after attendmg the city schools, began when twelve years old, to learn the printing trade in the Eagle office. He remained there two years, until offered a position in the office of C. Alvord, New York. Three years later he abandoned the printer's case to learn engineering. At the conclusion of an industrious apprenticeship and a two years' term of service at the bench and lathe with Walworth, Mason & Guild, New York, his skill and ability were recognized by promotion to the position of foreman. While learning his trade he improved his educational advantages by attending a night school in this city. His political life began in 1857, when he was elected supervisor from the eleventh ward, which then comprised the territory since divided between the seventh, eleventh and twentieth wards. Reelected the next year, he was successful in his contest with Tunis G. Bergen for the presidency of the board, although at the time he was the youngest man on the board. In 1859 he was nominated for the assembly as the Democratic candidate from the district, which at that time included the eleventh and ninth wards, but he declined on the ground that it would interfere with his business affairs. Ten years after becoming foreman in the establishment where he learned his trade, he acquired control of the business and has been its sole proprietor until the present day. In 1867 Mayor Kalbfleisch appointed him a member of the board of education, where his practical ideas and sound common sense proved valuable during a service of thirteen years. In that time he had superintended the heating of every school house in the city, besides causing the erection of grammar school No. 35 and intermediate school No. 41, in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards respectively. He was a member of the old volunteer fire department. He afterwards became fire commissioner, and was one of the trustees of the widows' and orphans' fund of the department. It was largely through his efforts that Brooklyn secured a paid fire department. With Seymour L. Husted and others during the Civil war he accomplished good work on the eleventh ward committee, which sent recruits to the front and raised money to aid in the support of the soldiers' families. In 1876 Governor Samuel J. Tilden appointed him one of the commissioners to represent New York state at the centen- nial exhibition. Impressed by the fact that Brooklyn stood greatly in need of a federal building for the accommodation of the post-office department, United States courts and other branches of national government, he determined to urge the matter in congress, and to that end accepted, in 1882, the Demo- cratic nomination from the second district of this city. He was elected by a majority of 5,700 over his Felix Campbell. BANKING AND FINANCIAL. 533 opponent, Charles Goddard. He has been three times reelected, the first time defeating ex-assemblyman Sheridan by 6,000 votes, and on the second occasion encountering only nominal opposition. In the autumn of 1890 he declined to again contest the district, but, before he had been a member of the national legisla- ture many months, he had asked for and secured the appropriation of $1,300,000, for the Federal build- ing on Washington street. He paid particular attention to the improvement of the East River water front in Brooklyn, and labored earnestly to secure the appropriation necessary to erect, on Fort Greene, a suitable monument to those who perished on board the British prison ships in New York harbor during the Revolutionary war. Since his retirement from public life, he has devoted himself to the management of his extensive private interests. In the spring of 1891 he accepted the presidency of the People's Trust Com- pany, succeeding the late Wm. H. Murtha. He is president of the Brevoort Savings Bank, and a director and stockholder in the Brooklyn Life Insurance Company, the American District Telegraph Company, Brooklyn Safe Deposit Company, Union Ferry Company, Franklin and Kings County Trust Companies, and is one of the best known members in the Society of Old Brooklynites. The Long Island Loan and Trust Company is located at 203 Montague street, and has a capital of $500,000. The officers are : Edward Merritt, president ; David G. Leggett, vice-president ; and Frederick T. Aldridge, secretary. The Nassau Trust Company was organized in 1888, and has a capital of $500,000. It is established at loi Broadway. The officers are: A. D. Wheelock, president; William Dick and John Truslow, vice-presi- dents ; and O. F. Richardson, secretary. Adam D. Wheelock has been well known to Brooklynites for nearly half a century; was born in Worces- ter County, Mass.,. on May 26, 1823, and received his early education at the district schools of that county. In 1839 he came to New York and became a clerk in a boot and shoe store. In connection with Samuel Daniels, in 1845, he established the boot and shoe firm of Samuel Daniels & Company. In the same year he moved to Brooklyn, where he has resided ever since. In 1873 he became deputy city treasurer, an office he retained until 1884, when he was appointed city treasurer by Mayor Low, serving also under Mayors Whitney and Chapin, although of a different political faith. In May, 1888, he resigned his public office to accept the presidency of the Nassau Trust Company, a position he now holds. He is president of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, treasurer of the Brooklyn Eye and Ear Hospital and a deacon in Plymouth Church. He devotes much of his time to the relief of the poor, who have no more devoted and helpful friend in the city. He is a member of the Hamilton Club, and takes a deep interest in the welfare of that organization. The Kings County Trust Company, at 373 Fulton street, was organized in 1889, and the officers are: Joseph C. Hendrix, president ; J. S. T. Stranahan, vice-president ; and Herman Morris, secretary. The capital is $500,000. A sketch of Mr. Hendrix will be found in the chapter on Political Life. The Hamilton Trust Company, organized in 1891, has a capital of $500,000, and is located at 191 Montague street. Its officers are : Silas B. Dutcher, president ; W. H. Lyon and Alfred J. Pouch, vice- presidents ; and Joseph B. White, secretary. The record of an honorable and active life passed in the varied fields of commerce, finance and poli- tics belongs to Silas B. Dutcher. He was born in Springfield, Otsego County, N. Y., and while a student at the public schools served as a district teacher during the winter, and worked on his father's farm in the summer. Soon after attaining his majority he engaged in railway affairs, which claimed his attention three years. He entered the mercantile field in New York in 1855. In 1868 President Johnson appointed him supervisor of internal revenue. He held that post until 1872, when he was made pension agent for New York city ; this position he resigned in 1875 to take the management of important interests in connection with a large life insurance company in New York. In 1877 he was appointed appraiser of the port of New York, and occupied that position until January, 1880, when Governor Cornell made him superintendent of public works of New York state. At the expiration of his three years' tenure of office he resumed his resi- dence in Brooklyn, and in 1886 was elected president of the Union Dime Savings Bank in New York, an institution of which he had been for some years a trustee. On February 2, 1891, he was chosen to fill the position of president of the Hamilton Trust Company. In 1888, after a political career which had lasted for forty years, he retired from all public activity of that nature and devoted himself exclusively to his domestic and business affairs. For ten years he was superintendent of the Twelfth Street Reformed Church Sunday-school. He has served also as a member of the board of education. Several of the local banks conduct a safe deposit business in addition to their financial operations, and have in their establishments vaults and safes where patrons may deposit plate, jewelry, bonds and other valuable papers and articles, to which only they or their authorized agents may have access. This business has grown to such proportions, however, that there are four companies in Brooklyn organized for the sole purpose of affording to the public such facilities for the storage of valuables. The Brooklyn City Safe Deposit Company, Montague and Clinton streets, has for officers : Henry N. Brush, president ; Stephen H. 534 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Herriman, vice-president ; and Thomas E. Clark, secretary. The officers of The First National Safe Deposit Company, Broadway and Kent avenue, are: J. G. Jenkins, president ; and S. T. Dare, manager- The Franklin Safe Deposit Company, in the Franklin Trust building, at Montague and Clinton streets, is officered by George H. Southard, president ; and Henry Camp, secretary and manager. The Long Island Safe Deposit Company, Fulton and Clinton streets, is under the presidency of Clement Lockitt, with S. H. Messenger, vice-president; and A. I. Ditmas, secretary and treasurer. insurance companies. Few institutions that depend for success upon keeping in touch with the commercial and moneyed interests of a community are more advantageously situated, in regard to local surroundings, than the Phenix Insurance Company, with its handsome building at i6 Court street, in the very business centre of the city, and a splendidly organized staff of officials. The movement for the organization of the company was begun in the spring of 1853 by Richard L. Crook and others, and on September 9, 1853, the company was chartered as the Phenix Fire Insurance Company. The incorporators were: Seth Low, Richard L. Crook, James H. Taft, Henry Collins, Edwin Beers, Henry Holt, S. Baldwin Chapman, Ezra Baldwin, Jotham Weeks, George W. Brown, Henry M. Conklin, Charles C. Betts, Edward Anthony, James S. Rockwell, Samuel Van Benschoten, Thomas S. Denike, John D. Lawrence, George W. Bergen, Stephen Crowell, David Barker and Gustav Schwab. At meetings held for the purpose of preliminary organization in February and July, 1853, it had been decided that the capital should be fixed at $200,000, and Stephen Crowell and Philander Shaw were respectively elected to the offices of president and secretary. The company began business at 345 Fulton street and on September 10, 1853, the first policy was issued. According to its charter the company was permitted to insure inland navigation and transportation as well as assume fire risks, and in 1859 inland insurance was added to its business ; ocean marine insurance was subsequently adopted and on June 27, 1864, advantage being taken of the provisions of the general insurance act of 1853, the capital stock was increased to $500,000. On November 22, 1865, another increase was ordered and the amount of stock was doubled. By legislative enactment on February 19, 1866, the word "fire " was dropped from the company's name. The Phenix sustained heavy losses by the great fires in Portland, Me., Chicago and Boston. In consequence of the Chicago disaster the company settled one hundred and sixty-seven claims amounting to $434,150 and has the credit of being the first insurance corporation to make a payment for losses after the great conflagration. It was able to meet successfully claims for $505,629, which were handed in for liquidation after the big fire in Boston in the autumn of 1872. At the end of the company's first twenty- five years, in 1878, its assets amounted to $2,580,278 and its net surplus to $760,189. From every source its income during that period aggregated $23,075,753 ; its total expenditures reached $21,831,163, of which 113,592,039 were paid for losses, and $2,014,000 had been distributed in dividends among the stockholders. Ocean and inland marine insurance were discontinued in 1887 and since that year the Phenix has given its attention to fire risks alone. At the present time its business as a company in receipt of premiums is one of the largest, if not the very largest, in the United States, and requires the employment of one hundred and fifty clerks. Stephen Crowell retained the presidency of the company until April 9, 1888, when, declining reelection on account of the infirmities of age, he was succeeded by the vice-president, George P. Sheldon, who is president now. Arthur B. Graves, president of the St. Nicholas Bank of New York, was elected to the vice-presidency of the company to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. Sheldon's withdrawal from that posi- tion, and is the present incumbent. With the exception of the four years from 1875 until 1879, Philander Shaw held the secretaryship from the date of the company's organization until 1890 ; for a period of four years he united the duties of vice-president with those of secretary. Charles C. Little, with W. A. Wright as assistant, now occupies that post. The corporation's New York office is in the Stokes building at 47 Cedar street. A branch office is situated at 1 14 Broadway, in the Eastern District, where it has been estab- lished since 1865. The directors of the company in 1892 were : George P. Sheldon, Arthur B. Graves, Edwin F. Knowlton, Albion K. Bolan, David B. Powell, William H. Male, Henry W. Slocum., George W. Bergen, Augustus Studwell, Edwin T. Rice, William P. Beale, William H. Wallace, William J. Logan, John H. Latham, Felix Campbell, Samuel E. Howard, John Cartledge, George M. Hard, George Ingraham, Charles W. Brega, Henry E. Southwell, William A. Hammond. The Williamsburgh City Fire Insurance Company has had an unusually prosperous existence since March 21, 1853, when it was chartered. It began business with a capital of $150,000 and a charter which extended for thirty years and was renewed for a similar term at the expiration of that period ; on January 12, 1883, the capital stock was increased to $250,000. Since the organization of the company an average rate of 16 per cent, has been paid to the stockholders. The total sum paid for losses during the thirty-eight years of the company's history amounts to $6,521,702.27, or an average annual loss ratio of 51.7 per cent, on each dollar of premiums received. The main office of the company is situated at Broadway and Kent avenue ; it has a branch in New York at 150 Broadway. Its official board consists of Marshall S. Phenix Insurance Company. 536 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Driggs, president ; William Marshall, Peter Wyckoff, John C. Debevoise, John G. Jenkins, James Rodwell, Chauncey Marshall, George E. Kitching, Stephen B. Sturgis, Henry W. Slocum, Silas W. Driggs, Moses May, Henry W. Slocum, Jr., Martin Joost, Joseph J. O'Donohue, Adrian M. Suydam, Frederick L. Dubois. The Nassau Fire Insurance Company is the oldest existing company of the kind in Brooklyn, hav- ing been incorporated on Februarys, 1852. Its original capital was $150,000, but the amount has been increased to $200,000. The company has offices at 30 Court street, and confines its business chiefly to local risks. William T. Lane is president, and Thomas M. Harris, secretary. The Kings County Fire Insurance Company, at 97 Broadway, was organized on October 18, 1858, with a capital of $150,000. Its officers are : William E. Horwell, president; and E. S. Terhune, secretary. The Manufacturers' and Traders' Cooperative Fire Insurance Company of New York and Brooklyn is not a strictly local institution, but has a very important relation to the business of the city. The Lafayette Fire Insurance Company was a conservative institution, which was organized in 1856, with a capital of $150,000, and continued business until June 21, 1892, when it reinsured its risks with a company in New York. TITLE guarantee COMPANIES. The establishment of title guarantee companies was authorized by the legislature of New York in 1886, one of the persons most active in securing the legislation being Augustus Kurth, of Brooklyn. Four such companies have been established here, the first being the German-American Real Estate Title Guar- antee Company, at 189 Montague street. Its officers are : A. L. Soulard, president ; and A. R. Thompson, Jr., manager. The other companies are : Bond and Mortgage Guarantee Company, 26 Court street — W. B. Isham, president ; and Frank Bailey, treasurer : Lawyers' Title Insurance Company, 166 Montague street — Edwin W. Coggeshall, president ; and V. H. Seaman, manager : Title Guarantee and Trust Company, 26 Court street — Clarence H. Kelsey, president ; John W. Murray and Frank Bailey, vice-presi- dents ; O. E. Schmidt, treasurer; and Louis V. Bright, secretary. Old Dutch Church, Fulton Avenue, near Lawrence Street. Built 1766, the Second Edifice on this Site. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. Fill ^^^"""^^^ appellation "City of Churches" was given to Brooklyn early in her history if I \^\ S-n^^ it clings to her. It grew out of the fame she acquired through the activity 'fi -^E^ ^"^"^ vigor of the devoted men who endeavored to have the organization of liwil ^ churches keep pace with the growth of population ; but the more rapid growth tMllM of recent years has so far outstripped the efforts of the church builders that the designation no longer properly belongs to the city, as indicating the proportion of churches to its inhabitants ; and in respect of its need for church extension Brooklyn is now regarded as a field for missionary work as much as is any other great city. She has become cosmopolitan, and with nearly a million of people within her borders she entertains every shade of religious belief and every form of ecclesiastical organization, while her great mass of what religious workers call " the unchurched " constitutes a field for constant evangelistic effort. For one hundred and twenty-five years the only religious denomination rep- resented by an organized church in Brooklyn was the Dutch Reformed Church, as was natural in a community consisting almost wholly of Dutchmen and their descendants. The first church was erected in Flatbush in 1654, and the first mmister was the Rev. Johannes Theodoras Polhemus, who came over from New Amsterdam for occasional mmistrations. In 1660 the people of Brueckelen obtained their first resident pastor in the person of the Rev. Henricus Selyns, whose name appears variously in early records as Henry Solinus and Hendricus Selwyn, as well as in the form which is here given the preference. Pastor Selyns came from Holland duly accredited by the Classis of Amsterdam, and his first sermon in Brueckelen was preached in a barn. S3S THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. on September 5, 1660. It is probable that on this interesting occasion there were visitors present from New York, or else the unusual significance of the event must have excited the generosity of the villagers, for the col'lection that was taken amounted to twenty guilders and four stivers, or a little more than eight dollars ; subsequent collections did not average more than six guilders at each service for many years excepting at the commemoration of the Lord's Supper, when as much as seventeen guilders were collected ; and there were times when, owing to the small attendance resulting from inclement weather and bad roads, the collection was as small as one guilder. Pastor Selyns presented his credentials to the local consistory on September 7, two days after his inaugural sermon, and when they were examined and approved he took his place as the president of the consistory. It was voted at the same time to send a letter of thanks to the Rev. Herr Polhemus for his ministrations, and it was borne to him by one of the members of the consistory, eliciting from him a graceful reply. When Pastor Selyns came to the village the membership of the First Reformed Dutch Church numbered twenty-five persons, of whom twelve were women. The little flock was scattered all over the four hamlets of Brueckelen proper, the Waal-bogt, PiRS^ Reformed Church on Joralemon Street— Removed in 1886. Gowanus and the Ferry, which at that time constituted the village. Although a grant of land had been made to the First Reformed Dutch Church of Brooklyn by the Provincial Governor and Council as early as the year 1656, there was at this time no church nor parsonage in the village, and for some time Pastor Selyns was accustomed to preach during the summer months on Director-General Stuyvesant's farm. The young people were instructed in the principles of Christianity on Tuesday afternoons, and this was a necessary portion of their education, as it was very desirable in those days for people to hold membership in the church, and no person was admitted to such membership without having followed a prescribed course of instruction and passed a somewhat rigid examination before the full consistory. In the year following the advent of Pastor Selyns an important functionary was appointed, the fore- runner of the educators and clerkly officials of the city, in the person of Carel de Beauvois, who was made parish clerk, court messenger, precentor, schoolmaster, grave-digger, bell-ringer and general utility man, under the clause in the warrant for his appointment which provided that he "perform whatever also may be required," all for twenty-five guilders a year and a house free. His name survives in his descendants of the well-known family of De Bevoise. When Pastor Selyns, who had married while he remained here, was dismissed in the autumn of 1664 to return to Holland, where his aged parents were living, Mr. De Beauvois continued the church services for some time, in accordance with the vote of the consistory, to keep the congregation together, and requiring "that Mr. Carel de Beauvois, our voorlezer, voorzinger and school- master, should on Sundays read before the congregation a sermon from the 'postil ' of Mr. Abraham Schul- tetus, besides the prayers and psalms before and after the aforesaid sermon." It was not until after the CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 539 The Middagh House and Barn, Henry and Fulton Streets. Occupied by St, Ann's Churchy 1784. departure of Mr. Selyns that, in 1666, the first church edifice was erected on the road now known as Fulton street, between Lawrence and Bridge streets. It was built on the walls of an old stone fort, erected for defence against the Indians. The Dutch Reformed Church lived through the transition periods in the history of the country,' and although it has been outstripped by several of the many denominations that have come to share with it the cultivation of the religious field in Brooklyn, it has grown in numbers, wealth and influence. Its record is the one thread that con- nects the present with the remotest past in the history of Christian civilization on Long Island, and it numbers among its adherents very many of those people whose ancestry runs back to the first comers from Holland who planted here the seeds of industry, thrift, morality and religion, from which has come ar mighty growth. The Episcopal Church was probably the next to be established in Brooklyn, and the year 1766 has been selected by some historians as the date ; but the grounds upon which the selection rests are purely legendary. While there may have been occasional services of the Church of England held in Brooklyn at as early a date as 1766 it is probable that the first minister of that church who was stationed here came in the early part of the year 1778. This minister was the Rev. James Sayre, and the existing accounts of him and his ministry are vague an-d unsatisfactory ; but that he was actually stationed here is indicated by an entry made in the "Record of Baptisms" in 1784, wherein he is designated as the "Minister of the Church at Brooklyn Ferry." Mr. Sayre's ministry here closed about the time when this entry was made, and the more definite record of the Episcopal Church begins with the advent of the Rev. George Wright, who began to hold services here in the spring of 1784. For a short time the services were held in a house on Fulton street, which bore the number 40, and was pulled down on "March 12 in the same year. The next place of worship was the barn of John Middagh, in the rear of his house at the corner of Henry and Fulton streets, and from there the congregation moved to a house built by British troops at the corner of Mid- dagh and Fulton streets. Episcopalianism was in this inchoate condition in Brooklyn when, in 1785, the first effort was made to establish a Congregational church. In that year the " Independent Meeting House " was built on Fulton street where the old Episcopal burying ground was subsequently located. The edifice was owned by a congregation in which were embodied various independent elements, and the society was duly incorporated with John Matlack as pastor and George Wall as assistant. The component elements of the organization were probably incongruous, and undoubtedly were inharmonious, for after a brief existence the society was disrupted by internal dissensions and the house of worship passed into the possession of the Rev. Mr. Wright's congregation. The edifice was consecrated by the Right Rev. Samuel Provoost, the first Protes- tant Episcopal Bishop of New York, and by act of the legislature passed on April 23, 1787, the society was incorporated as " The Episcopal Church of Brooklyn." By subsequent legislation, in 1795, the name was changed to " St. Ann's Church," which is the present name of the oldest Protestant Episcopal Church in the city. Episcopalianism has flourished here, and the denomination includes in its membership many of the oldest and wealthiest families of Brooklyn. With the Methodist Episcopal Church it stands next to the Roman Catholic in the number of its houses of worship, and it raised more than half a million of dollars in the year 1891 for church purposes. An off-shoot of the Protestant Episcopal Church is the little body known as the Reformed Episcopal Church, founded in 1873, which is represented in Brooklyn by two organized congregations, both of which were established in 1877. Another early comer into this field of religious work was the Methodist Episcopal Church, the seeds of which were probably sown by Captain Thomas SECOND Church of St. Ann's, V^ashington St., near Sands. Willi Ruins of the Original Church. 540 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. St Ann s Church Washington Street, near Sands Webb of the British army ; he began to preach in his own hired house near the barracks in New York as early as 1766, and subsequently made occasional visits to Brooklyn " to preach salvation by grace through faith " to the Dutch villagers. Woolman Hickson, an earnest and eloquent young man, whose career in the ministry was cut short by death from consumption at the end of seven months, was the next Methodist preacher to visit Brooklyn, and his first sermon here was delivered in the open air in front of the site of the old Sands Street Church. Afterwards he preached in the cooper shop of Peter Cannon, near the ferry, and in 1785 or 1786 a regular "class" was formed with several members. From that time the Methodist preachers stationed in New York visited Brooklyn regularly, but the village was only a part of a circuit which included the whole of Long Island and had but one preacher attached to it. It was not until 1793 that Brooklyn was regularly supplied with Methodist preaching and pastoral care ; in that year the Rev. Joseph Totten and the Rev. George Strebeck were appointed to the circuit, and alternated with each other in labors in Brooklyn and in other portions of Long Island, each remaining in Brooklyn a month at a time. The "class" formed by Mr. Hickson retained its existence under the leadership of Nicholas Snethen, who subsequently became a zealous preacher, and was succeeded in his leadership by Justice John Garrison, whose service of thirty-six years was ended only by his death. Out of this " class " grew the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which was incorporated on May 19, 1794, under the ministry of Mr. Totten. These were the beginnings of a denomination which has grown to be one of the strongest elements in the religious life of the city. With the Dutch Reformed and the Protestant Episcopal churches it had the field to itself until the present century was well advanced and then there began that multipli- cation of sects that in these days has given to Brooklyn an organized representation of nearly every variety of faith and form of worship held to by the civilized world. Early in the history of the Methodist Church in Brooklyn the colored portion of its membership became sufficiently strong to support churches of their own, and in 1818 they organized the African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church. The Colored Methodist Episcopal churches are seven in number at the present time. In 1847 the German Methodists organized a church of their own, and now they have four societies. Neither of these movements was schismatic, and the Colored and German Methodists must therefore be included in the enumeration of the great Methodist Episcopal body which, next to the Catholics, furnishes sittings for a greater number of people than any other denomination in the city. There are several other bodies of Methodists in Brook- lyn, but none of them are large. The Methodist Protestants established their first church here in 1832, and have added two to the number ; the Primitive Methodists have five churches, of which the first was organized in 1833 ; and the Free Methodists have one church, which was organized in 1878. In 1822 the Catholic, Presbyterian and Baptist churches obtained their first foothold. St. James' Roman Catholic Church was established at Jay and Chapel streets, and for nearly twenty years was the only church of that denomination in Brooklyn. Holy Trinity and Assumption churches were organized in 1841, and this was the beginning of that wonderful growth which is represented to-day by a communion which constitutes fully one-quarter of the city's population and owns one-third of all the church property. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. S4I Rev. Dr. Frederick A. Farley. So rapid was this growth that in 1852 Brooklyn was made a diocese, and was placed under the episcopal care of the Right Rev. John Loughlin, who, before the mitre was conferred upon him, had been the zealous and efficient Vicar-General of the Diocese of New York. He was a prelate who was so successful in winning the esteem of his fellow men, regardless of creed, that his death, which occurred on December 29, 1891, caused genuine sorrow among all classes in the community. A small denomination known as the Reformed Catholic Church, which was founded in 1880 by several men who left the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, planted an organ- ization in Brooklyn in 1881, and it continues its existence with a membership of one hundred and fifty. This denomination is bitterly antagonistic to the parent church and claims that it has received the true Apostolic succession in the ordination of its Bishop. The Presbyterians, while they have not kept abreast with the Catholics, have grown steadily in strength since their First Church was organized in 1822, and they rank with the leading denominations in the city. Their First Church worshiped in an edifice which stood upon the site now occupied by Plymouth Church, and its first minis- ters were the Rev. Joseph Sanford and the Rev. Dr. Daniel L. Car- roll. These clergymen were succeeded by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, who for many years was the most famous clergyman of Brooklyn. The growth of Congregationalism after it had been replanted probably had a retarding influence upon that of Presbyterianism, but the denomination is one of the strongest in the city, both as regards the number of its churches and the wealth 'and character of its adherents. In addition to the regular Presbyterians there are two other Presbyterian bodies in Brooklyn. The Reformed Presbyterians organized a First Church in 1848, but have not yet organized a second ; and the United Presbyterians, who now have two churches, organized the first of the two in 1849. The story of the origin of the Baptist Church in Brooklyn is a simple one ; in the summer of 1822, two zealous Baptists, Eliakim Raymond, a member of the Oliver Street Church in New York, and Elijah Lewis, made their temporary home in Brook- lyn. There were five other Baptists living in '^J""'' the village at that time, and inspired by the influence of Messrs. Raymond and Lewis they began to hold prayer-meetings, which in a short time they varied by securing some one to preach to the twenty or thirty persons whom they could bring together. Although they re- turned to New York they continued their work in Brooklyn, and Mr. Raymond built for the congregation a small wooden church on Pearl street. It was another instance of the oak springing from the acorn, for the result of these meetings was the organization, in 1823, of the First Baptist Church, from which has grown a local body which includes to-day thirty-eight church organizations, with an aggregate mem- bership of nearly fifteen thousand, and owning church property valued at nearly two millions of dollars. Two other branches of the Baptist denomination are represented in Brooklyn, each by a church ; one of these is the First Free Baptist Church, and the other is the First Par- ticular Baptist Church, which was organized in 1890. An entirely new religious element entered into the life of the community in 1833, when a few Unitarians living in Brooklyn, some of whom were in the habit of attending the Uni- tarian Church on Chambers street, New York, -y- St. Luke's Church, Clinton Avenue, in 542 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. where the Rev. William Ware was then ministering, began to agitate the question of organizing a local society, and invited other persons of liberal tendencies in religious thought to unite with them in the movement. Unitarianism is an outcome of the Congregationalism of New England, which section of the country it dominated for many years from the time, nearly one hundred years ago, when the spirit of its denial of the doctrine of the Trinity permeated the Congregational denomination to such an extent that in a majority of the parishes the church organizations and those of the parishes separated from each other, and two sects of Congregationalists were created — the Orthodox, who represented the church, or the spiritual portion of the parish, and the Unitarians, who represented the temporal or business portion. The wealth of the denomination was secured by the Unitarians, who for more than half a century consti- tuted the representative denomination in New England, excepting in Rhode Island, where the Baptists were the strongest body, and Connecticut where the Presbyterian Church was the strongest ; in these two states the Unitarian sect, which is in no sense aggressive, has only a few churches. The little band of Unitarians in Brooklyn organized their first church, now known as the Church of the Saviour, on July 31, 1833, and the first services were held on Sunday, August 17, in Classical Hall, on Washington street. The denomi- nation has made but little progress, for it is not greatly imbued with the missionary spirit ; it is accretive rather than assertive, and draws membership to itself by the power of attraction existing in its known position rather than by any efforts of propagandism. Its membership is limited, educated and refined, and is constituted largely of people who are in comfortable circumstances and whose ancestry can be traced to the vicinity of Plymouth Rock. There are but four Unitarian societies in Brooklyn. The Universalists, who are more nearly in sympathy with the Unitarians than they are with any other Christian denomination, were eight years behind those other so-called Liberal Christians in engrafting themselves in organized form upon the now wide-spreading growth of religious activity. It is a curious fact that the planting of these two denominations was attended by difficulties which arose in the case of the Unitarians from internal dissensions and in the case of the Universalists from external antagonism. The organization of the Second Unitarian Church resulted from a lack of harmony in the First Church, and for The Old Sands Street Methodist Church, Demolished for Bridge Improvements. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 543 Henrv Ward Beecher in 1847, Bishop Looghlin. a time the existence of the child threatened the dissolution of the mother. The first Universalist Society— tlie Church of the Restoration —underwent in its advent the experience of the Founder of Christian- ity who " had not where to lay his head." The men who organized the society had been in the habit of crossing the river to New York on Sunday to hear such preaching as accorded with their peculiar views of religion: but in 1841, William Burbank, Hiram K. Haskins, William Raynor, Edwin Smith and Mor- ris Reynolds arranged to have Universalist services held in Brooklyn, and on several suc- cessive Sundays the Rev. Dr. T. J. Sawyer, of New York, and other Universalist ministers preached in a hall on the cor- ner of Fulton and Cranberry streets, which was hired from the Hon. George Hall. That there was room for the new-comers was demonstrated by the success of the meetings, but the general spirit of the community was illustrated when an attempt was made to secure the hall for one year for the pur- pose of continuing the meetings. " Brooklyn is bad enough without having Universalism preached in it," was the sentiment of the majority embodied in the refusal of Mr. Hall to allow the continuance of the meetings on his premises ; and then the Unitarians justified their claim to the title of "Liberal" Christians, by sharing with the Uni- versalists the use of their church, a small frame building, on Adams street. The First Universalist Society was organized in 1841, and the first home, which it could call its own, was in the upper portion of a building on the corner of Fulton and Pineapple streets, which was erected by several of its members who rented the upper stories to the society, for whose accommodation it was fully arranged. The oldest Universalist societies in Brooklyn at the present time are All Souls and the Church of our Father, both of which were organized in 1845. The Lutherans preceded the Universalists by four years, some of the German residents of the city having organized in 1841, the German Evangelical Lutheran Church, now located on Scher- merhorn and Court streets. There are twenty-four Luth- eran churches in Brooklyn at the present time, and they include two where the services are con- ducted in English and one each where the Danish, Norwegian, Scan- dinavian and Swedish languages respectively are used. The mem- bership is large and represents an industrious and prudent element of the population. When the first attempts to plant Congregationalism in Brooklyn failed through the disruption of the society which built the Inde- pendent Meeting House in 1785, the Congregational polity disap- peared temporarily from the community. Its replanting by the Bap- tists, the Unitarians and the Universalists was not in any sense prophetic of the magnificent growth and world-wide influence which resulted from the re-establishment of orthodox Congregationalism in 1846. In that year seventy-one members of the First Presby- terian Church organized the Church of the Pilgrims and called as its Dastor the Rev. Richard S. Storrs, whose name is known and honored rev. dr. Samuel Hanson Cox. Rev. Daniel L. Carroll. 544 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. in thousands of churches and whose eloquence has made famous the name of hia own church. His people are happy under a pastorate that is nearing the roundness of a half century, and Brooklyn honors him as a man whose creed does not place a limit beyond which the love of a great human heart cannot extend. Congregationalism gave to Brooklyn another grand minister — a man of whom it is possible to write m the untempered spirit of adulation, for he has passed to his reward ; but whom— because it is impossible in this chapter to say all that might be said— it is necessary only to name. When the name of Henry Ward Beecher is written a world of Christian endeavor and philanthropic effort and patriotic work is opened to the view. The story of his life is told elsewhere in this work. The success of the Church of the Pilgrims led some of its members, including some of those who had left the Presbyterian fold to found the new denomination in Brooklyn and wanted to extend it here, to organize Plymouth Church ; and they invited Henry Ward Beecher, who was then a young man in the ministry and the pastor of a church in the newly settled West, to become its pastor. The growth of the Congregational denomination in Brooklyn has been very rapid since the Church of the Pilgrims and Plymouth Church were organized, and the city's fame has been enhanced by her possession of two such preachers as the Rev. Dr. Storrs and Henry Ward Beecher. The oldest Jewish synagogue in Brooklyn is the 'Pemple Beth Elohim, which was organized in Williams- burgh in 1850 by fifteen Hebrew residents, who hired a small place of meeting at $150 a year. As the Hebrew population increased the congregation grew and it owns at the present time a beautiful house of worship on Keap street, E. D. It adopted the modern or reform ritual in 1874, and the result was the secession of a number of conservative or othodox members, who formed the Congregation Ahavas Achim. The synagogues existing at the present time are nine in number and the aggregate membership is more than six thousand. Of the smaller denominations the Church of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian Church, began to take root in April, 1856, when about twenty-five adherents of that church inaugurated meetings in private parlors which they maintained for a year ; then they hired the hall of the academy on Clinton street, where they occasionally had the services of a clergyman, and in October they engaged James E. Mills, of Boston, as minister. Their only church was organized on June 15, 1S59, and owns a valuable piece of church property. The German Evangelical Association, which includes six churches, made its beginning here in 1858. The Church of Christ, or Disciples, the body of Christians to which the late President Garfield adhered during his life, and which he served from time to time as a preacher, has two societies in Brooklyn ; the first was organized in 1877 and the other in 1890. A Moravian Church was organized in 1S54 and continues its existence. There are two bodies of the Society of Friends, one representing the Hicksite branch and the other holding fellowship with the orthodox branch. The Hicksites organized their meeting house in 1836. Other small denominations which are represented here are the Berean Evangelical Church, Christian First Baptist Church, Nassau and Liberty Streets. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 545 Church of Evangel, Church of God, City Pulpit, Elim Chapel, First German New Church Society, First Church of Christ, German Evangelical Reformed Church, Household of Faith, First Hungarian and Sclav- onic Greek Catholic Church Association and the German Protestant Evangelical National Church. It is proper to include in the enumeration of religious bodies the Spiritualistic Associations, which are three in number, and the Brooklyn Theosophical Society, which is devoted to the study of Oriental religions and philosophies and the psychic powers in man. The general statistics of churches in Brooklyn as computed from tables published in the Eagle Almanac for 1892, show that there are 363 churches, 419 active clergymen and 348,516 members. The total amount of money raised for all purposes in 1891 was $2,139,373, of which $1,151,974 was for current expenses, $333,763 for missions and $652,500 for church debt and extension. The aggregate value of the church property is $19,170,550, and it is subject to a total indebtedness of $2,634,206. There are seats in the churches for 259,306 persons. The following table presents the comparative strength and wealth of the several denominations : Denomination. Baptist Congregational German Evangelical Association. Jewish Synagogues Lutheran .-. Methodist Episcopal " " Colored " " German " Primitive " Protestant " Free Presbyterian " Reformed United Protestant Episcopal " " Reformed. . . Reformed Dutch Unitarian Universalist Roman Catholic Miscellaneous Total No. of Churches 38 28 6 9 28 45 7 4 5 3 I 31 I 2 45 2 19 4 5 61 19 363 No. of Clergy. 34 25 6 9 28 47 5 4 5 3 I 23 I 2 43 2 15 3 5 143 15 419 No. of Members, 14.234 11,380 300 6,317 11,886 17,176 907 507 492 105 80 15,845 100 400 17,356 232 4,369 goo 739 244,200 1,006 348,532 Money Raised. $351,104 281,234 8,250 6g,ioo 98,885 327,274 5,800 9,800 4,750 1,000 3,548 303,160 2,100 2,553 523,274 11,023 98,126 12,000 19,420 8,870 $2,634,206 Church Debt. $295,000 56,000 40,700 110, 500 380,545 5,500 8,200 21,200 9,000 1,200 236,700 2,500 3,000 266,700 15,000 17,500 6,000 1,165,661 8,300 Value of church Property. $2,649,206 $1,884,100 1,742,000 42,000 236,000 1,163,500 2,181,800 70,000 49,400 47,500 18,000 8,500 1,675,000 15,000 51,500 2,334,850 53,000 993,500 205,000 186,800 6,509,500 186,800 $19,201,550 No. of Sittings. 27,417 26,510 950 4,536 19,640 37,355 1,100 2,600 1,650 500 300 28,900 400 1,000 30,374 970 18,050 2,550 2,684 56,340 3,450 260,276 Modern church work is carried on by the aid of a variety of organizations within the several societies, or connected with them, and of these the most powerful is the Sunday School. What the perpetuation of the institution means for the churches is indicated by the fact that, while the aggregate membership of the Protestant churches in Brooklyn is about one hundred thousand, the membership of the Sunday schools connected with them aggregates more than one hundred and twenty thousand. In the Catholic church the Sunday school does not appear to bear so important a relation to the church, and the fact that, with two hundred and forty-four thousand parishioners in the city, the Catholic churches have scarcely thirty thou- sand children in their Sunday schools seems to indicate a lack of interest ; but the fact is that there are more services held in the Catholic church than in any of the Protestant churches, and the children of the former are regular attendants on public worship, which is not so generally the case with the Protestants. In addi- tion to their Sunday schools the Catholics have a large number of parochial schools, wherein religious training is coincident with secular instruction ; and in these schools there are more than twenty-four thousand chil- dren. The Jews have Sabbath schools, the principal object of which is to instruct their children in the Hebrew language and the canoncial law, but the membership is less than eight hundred, or in the proportion of one to each nine members of the congregations. The institution is a comparatively modern one, and in its origin was not, as it now is, a part of the church machinery. Robert Raikes founded it in Gloucester, England, in 1780, and his first Sunday school was a little group of twenty- children, whom he placed under the care of a Mrs. King for Sunday instruction. The first Sunday school teachers were paid for their ser- vices, but in these times thousands of earnest Christian men and women are voluntarily engaged in the work, actuated only by zeal in religious effort and interest in the young. The Brooklyn Sunday School 54^ THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Brooklyn's First Sunday-School. Union is composed of 167 schools with a total membership of 75,153, of whom 7,283 are teachers and officers and 67,870 scholars. The management is vested in a board of thirty-six directors, who represent eight denominations of Evangelical Christians. One-third of this number is chosen annually, by the super- intendents of all the schools, to serve three years. The directors meet monthly for conference and to consider the reports of the standing committees, among whom the practical work of the Union is divided. Special prominence is given to the work of organizing and equipping new schools in needy sections of the city and to the trained exposition in different localities of the international series of Sunday school lessons. The present officers of the Union are : Silas M. Giddings, president ; Russell W. McKee, vice-president ; Henry E. Drake, corresponding secretary ; John R. Morris, recording secretary ; Henry G. Fay, treasurer ; Reuben H. Underbill, counsel. The history of the Brooklyn Sunday School Union is an integral part of the history of the city ; for Brooklyn is the banner city of the Sunday school world. Its unique annual celebration and parade has for many years been a notable event, waited for with the most joyful anticipation by the seventy-five thousand participants, and viewed with the most intense interest by strangers from all parts of the world, as well as with ever recurring pleasure by our own citizens. Indeed it is this feature, rather than the principle and method of the organization, that unites all interests in one, and constitutes a bond of fellowship and unity not to be found in the like work in any other city. The records of Sunday school work in Brooklyn show that in i8r6 a meeting was held to organize a society, which was known as the Brooklyn Sunday School Union Society, of which the first president was Joshua Sands. The society was at this time dealing with a work which had not grown beyond the experimental stage. Its stated object was to provide gratuitous religious instruction to children on the Sabbath day, and to unite Christians in this benevolent undertaking. At this time there appeared in the Long Island Star an advertisement which is interesting, as indicating the nature of the work, and in which it appears that the design was to combine religious instruction with spelling, read- ing and writing. Parents were requested to send their children as neat and clean as circumstances permitted. A contribution was asked of the citizens for the purchase of books and slates, and the manifest purpose of the work was evidently limited to the children of the poor. At this time the only school was held in Thomas Kirk's printing office — a frame edifice on Adams, between High and Sands streets. This was after- ward moved to District School House No. i, at Adams and Concord streets. In 1817 St. Ann's Sunday school was organized in a school house so far distant from the church that it was considered impracticable to continue its sessions during the winters of 1818 and 1819. As bearing upon the discipline of the school, the following is found among its rules: " No teacher shall appear with a rod or cane in his or her class, but order shall be maintained by the most temperate means." The school increasing in attendance, property at Washington and Prospect streets was purchased, and a building costing $1,500 was erected and occupied in 1829. Until this time the Sunday School Union Society had been mainly a drawing together for prayer and CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 547 conference of those who were interested in the work. Its influence was definite but limited, and it was not until 1829 that any celebration of the organization was held. The first celebration was held in that year at the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church. From this event may be dated the organization of many mis- sion schools, and the enlistment of business men and cultured women in the work. Thousands of dollars were expended for food and clothing for destitute children, and ladies of delicate breeding did not hesitate to explore the lanes and alleys for new members for the schools. Many of these schools still exist, and many others furnished nuclei for prosperous church organizations. Notable among the latter may be named the Prince Street Mission [1832], from which has grown the Brooklyn Tabernacle ; the South Brooklyn Mission [1840], issuing in the South Presbyterian Church ; the Navy Street Mission [1847], now the Mayflower Mis- sion of Plymouth Church ; the Warren Street Mission [1847], now Pilgrim Chapel ; the Border Mission, now Olivet Chapel ; the Throop Avenue Presbyterian Mission, now the church of that name ; the Rochester Avenue Mission, now the Church of the Mediator, and many others. The first annual parade of the schools was held on June 26, 1838, at which time nineteen schools took part, and George Hall, the first mayor of the city, was chairman of the committee on arrangements. Since PiEKKEPONT Street Baptist Church. that time this feature of the organization has continuously increased in interest and in numbers, until so great are the numbers and so extended the territory of the city that eleven divisions are now necessary, each of which divisions parades a greater number than the entire number of participants in the first parade. In 1854 a wider scope was given to the society by its reorganization in its present form as the Brooklyn Sun- day-school Union, becoming an incorporated body in 1864. The first printed report of the Brooklyn Sunday- school Union was issued in the year 1856. The following gentlemen have served as presidents of the union since that date : Andrew A. Smith, 1856-1867 ; A. L. Parsons, 1867-1869 ; James McGee, 1869-1870 ; A. B. Capwell, 1870-1872 : Israel A. Barker, 1872-1877 ; Benjamin H. Bayliss, 1877-1882 ; George A. Bell, 1882- 1884 ; Silas M. Giddings, 1884 to present date. The growth of the influence and efficiency of the union may not be claimed to have kept pace with the wonderful growth of the city's population, but the moral effect of its work has been a potent factor in the conditions which have made Brooklyn a city of peaceful homes and her citizens examples of moral integrity. Another organization of a siradar character is the Foreign Sunday-school Association, which was incorporated on April 4, 1878, under the inspiration of Albert Woodruff, who had supplemented many useful labors in connection with Sunday-schools in America by the impulse which he gave to the cause in Europe. The objects of the association are indicated by its name. 548 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. A feature of Sunday-school work which has been introduced within a few years is the effort to Chris- tianize the resident Chinese. This effort has its conscientious advocates and its bitter critics, between whom it is not necessary to make any decision in this chapter. There are eleven Chinese Sunday-schools in Brooklyn, of which number four hold sessions on Monday afternoon or evening in addition to the Sunday sessions ; and three of them hold both afternoon and evening sessions on Sunday. Four of the schools sus- tain missionaries in China, one of them sustaining five, another sustaining two and the others one each. The first to move in organizing these schools were the Baptists, who began two of them in 1880. The Sixth Avenue Baptist Church organized one of the two, and it is at present under the superintendency of Y. F. Mark, a Chinaman. The Baptists have six schools ; the Congregationalists have two ; the Methodists and Presbyterians have one each ; and there is one undenominational school, which is conducted by a circle of the King's Daughters. The average attendance of teachers is 253, and of Chinese 317 ; eighty-one of the Chinese are Christians. Auxiliary to the churches, and in most cases closely connected with them in organism, are a number of associations, societies, guilds and so forth, such as the Young Men's Christian Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Society of Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the Loyola Union and many others of this character, as well as various organizations for missionary or other religious effort, individual accounts of which will appear in their proper place in this chapter. (DUTCH) REFORMED CHURCHES. The (Dutch) Reformed Church in America is governed by a general synod and the country is divided into districts, known as classis, whose delegates form the synod. The classis is a body composed of the pastor and two elders delegated by each of the individual churches included in its jurisdiction. Long Island is divided into fhree districts, namely, the South classis, formed by all that portion of Kings County south of Flushing avenue; the North classis, which includes old Williamsburgh and Long Island City; and the East classis, governing the rural districts. Individual congregations have a system of self-government, which in- cludes a board of elders and board of deacons, elected annually, and together forming the board of trustees; with the pastor they form the consistory, which is the deliberative assembly. The board of trustees con- trols the executive and financial affairs of the church. The parent church of Long Island is the Reformed (Dutch) Church, Flatbush, of which the Rev. Cornelius L. Wells is the present pastor. Although at a very early date spiritual advantages had been pro- vided for the Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam by the Classis of Amsterdam, Holland, it would have been impossible at the time when the settlement of Long Island begar to form an ecclesiastical organization among the scattered pioneers. The settlement of Midwout, as Flat msh was named in its early history, began about the year 1651, and for twenty years those of the settlers who desired to attend church were obliged to make the toilsome journey to Manhattan Island, where a chur " had been established in 1633. Gov- ernor Stuyvesant, who appears to have exercised a controlling power in ecclesiastical affairs as well as in those of a civic and military nature, recognized the necessity of a more accesible place of worship for the people of Long Island, and in 1654 gave the order to have a church built at Midwout. This was the origin of the first church ever established in Kings County. Flatbush w,.s evidently selected as the most suitable of the settlements in the county, because it was central and more accessible than the other towns. The inhabitants of Breuckelen, Amersfoort (now known as Flatlands) and Midwout were united as a pastoral charge. The first church edifice was in form of a cross, and was Lwenty-eight feet wide by sixty or sixty- five feet long, and was between twelve and fourteen feet in height f.om the floor to the beams, its dimensions and construction being in accordance with directions given by the governor. The rear portion of the build- ing was set apart for the minister's dwelling. It was paid for by collections taken up at the Sunday service, and the first one taken, as shown by an entry in the account book of the deacons, was on the first Sunday in January, 1655. At this time the consistory was composed of two elders and two deacons. In September, 1660, the persons in charge of the work of construction reported that the building had cost 4,637 guilders, or about $1,800, and to this amount the settlers of other towns, who were from Holland and all of the same religious faith, were contributors, a portion of the money coming from the towns along the Hudson River. Although the several ministers who succeeded each other in this first church had pastoral charge of the six Dutch towns of Brooklyn, Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, Bushwick and New Utrecht, the minister's residence was always in Flatbush. The worshipers professed the doctrines and conformed to the order established by the National Synod which met at Dordrecht in 1618-19, and they accepted the Belgic Con- fession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the canons of the Dordrecht Synod. The clergymen sent from Holland were men of thorough theological training, bringing to the new world the spirit of those of whom Brodhead wrote : " The people, who at Leyden preferred a University to a Fair, insisted upon an educated 553 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ministry." The Rev. Johannes Theodorus Polhemus was the first minister of the church at Flatbush. In 1698 the congregation had apparently outgrown the old church and arrangements were made for re-bu:ld- ing. A sum equal to $6,291 of our money was raised and the new edifice was erected on the original site. In these early days all the churches in Kings County constituted one charge and their ministers were colleagues. The actual pastoral care of the Flatbush church begins with the pastorate in New Amsterdam of the Rev. Johannes Megapolensis, and includes the Rev. Henricus Selyns, who was the first pastor in Brooklyn proper. When Dominie Selyns returned to Holland, Dominie Polhemus resumed the active interest in the Brooklyn church which he had relinquished on Herr Selyns' advent. The Rev. Casparus Von Zuren was the successor of Herr Polhemus, and he in turn was succeeded by the Rev. Rudolphus Varick. Dominie Wilhelmus Lupardus was the next pastor, and was in charge from 1695 until he died in 1702. After the death of Herr Lupardus there was a long and serious disturbance in the churches of the colony, springing from the desire of some of the church members to call the Rev. Bernardus Freeman from the church at Schenectady, which idea was opposed by those who wished to follow the usual custom of sending to Holland for a minister. Both factions persisted, with the result that Mr. Freeman was installed in 1705, and about the same time the Rev. Vincentius Antonidus was sent from Holland by the Classis of Amsterdam with a commission to take charge of the church at Flatbush and the churches adjoining. The contention between the factions, marked at times by much bitterness, continued until 17 14, when an amicable adjustment of differences resulted in uniting the churches under two pastors with a consequent increase in the usefulness of the ministry. It was ordered in regard to the communion of the Lord's Supper that it should be adminis- tered to the communicants in Bushwick, Brooklyn and Flatbush together, and to those of Flatlands, Graves- end and New Utrecht together, the congregation of Queens County to form another communion. In regard to preaching it was agreed that on one Sunday one minister should preach in Bushwick and the other in New Utrecht ; on the next Sunday one in Brooklyn and the other in Flatlands ; on the third Sun- day one in Flatbush and the other in Jamaica ; and so on in regular rotation. Another controversy of less local significance, but embodying the same issue, was that which began about this time and continued until 1772, and caused intensely acrimonious feeling among the Reformed churches, one party contending for a coetus or assembly of ministers and elders in this country subordinate to the Classis at Amsterdam, and the regular organization of the churches into classes and synods to which should appertain all the powers belonging to such bodies in Holland. The aim was to do away with the inconvenience of sending to Holland for ministers, but the opposition party maintained that all ministers should be ordained in Holland and sent out under the authority or by permission of the Classi's at Amsterdam. In 1774 the church was remodeled. The subscription paper detailing the changes desired was signed by the male members, the assent of the congregation being in this way obtained ; in this as well as in almost every other ecclesiastical document reference is made to the articles of their faith as established at the Synod of Dordrecht. In this change of the interior of the church pews were substituted for the chairs formerly used ; these pews were drawn for by the heads of families and assigned to their respective owners by lot. The expense incurred amounted to ^290.16.9. There were two galleries separated by the door ; one of these was set aside for the colored people. The bell-rope hung down in the centre of the church. It was the ringing of this bell that announced the approach of the British troops before the battle of Long Island, and it was used more than once during the war to give an alarm to the people. A pew for the use of the minister's family was known as the Yeffrouw's seat ; the wife of the minister being known as the Yeff- rouw, a title of respect. This church was used during the revolutionary war sometimes for the sick and disabled soldiers and at other times the horses of the British troops were stabled within its newly renovated walls. Until 1792 all the services were in the Dutch language; in that year, the afternoon service in the congregations in Brooklyn, Flatbush and New Utrecht were held in English. In 1785 the church became incorporated. In 1793 the inhabitants of Flatbush assembled in public meeting, and having declared again their adherence to the doctrines of the church, they resolved to erect a new house of worship. This is the third building on the same spot, and as it was substantially built it remains in a good state of preservation. The consecration sermon was preached in Dutch by Dominie Schoonmaker, in 1797. After that date the English language came gradually into use in the churches. Some changes have been made in the interior arrangement, and memorial windows have perpetuated the names of families who have supplied its mem- bership through more than two hundred years, but the church is substantially the same as when it was dedicated in 1797. First Church.— The early history of "The Reformed Dutch Church of the Town of Breucklyn" has been outlined in the opening portion of this chapter. After the departure of Dominie Selyns to Holland in 1664, the church formed one of the collegiate group which included the church at Flatbush; and its pastors, until 1802, were those mentioned in the sketch of the church just named. In 1802 the Brooklyn church decided to have a pastor of its own and the Rev. John Barent Johnson, of Albany, was called. He was an excellent man, but his ministry was cut short by his death in March, 1803; he was thirty-four years old CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 'iKl when he died. A new house of worship was built in 1807, at a cost of $13,745, and was dedicated on De- cember 23; it was a substantial building and stood on the south side of Joralemon street, somewhat in the rear of the site occupied by the third edifice, the classic outlines of which, back of the city hall, were familiar to the present generation until the building was re- moved in 1886. The congregation now occupies the very beautiful church recently completed at Seventh avenue and Carroll street. The third edifice was dedi- cated on May 7, 1835, under the pastorate of the Rev. Peter Lowe. The succeeding pastors were: the Revs. Selah Strong Woodhull, D. D., Ebenezer Mason, Peter P. Rouse, Maurice W. Dwight, Acman P. Van Giesen, Alphonso A. Willetts, D. D., Joseph Kimball, D. D., Henry R. Dickson, David Vanderveer and the present pastor, the Rev. James M. Farrar, who was installed on September 25, 1890. The church membership is 500 and the Sunday-school, of which Frederick B. Schenck is superintendent, has 571 members. The pastor of the First Church, the Rev. James M. Farrar, was born at Candor, Pa., on June 16, 1853. The family of the Farrars is a cadet branch of the English house of which the present Canon Farrar is a prominent member. James M. Farrar was the fourth child of the Pennsylvania branch of the family. His parents were members of the United Presbyterian church, and he received his education at Westminster College, Wilmington, Pa., where he was graduated in 1875. He was graduated at the Princeton Theolog- ical Seminary in 1878. In May of the same year he was licensed to preach by the Frankfort Presbytery, and six months later, on December 10, 1878, he was ordained to the ministry by the Wheeling Presbytery. On his ordination he became pastor of the Harrisville, O., United Presbyterian Church, where he remained for six years. In 1884, he was called to Wooster, O., to succeed the Rev. Dr. D. A. Wallace, and at the same time received a call from the Fourth United Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. He selected the latter as affording a broader field for pastoral work, and was installed on September 29, 1884. In May, 1890, he accepted a call to his present charge. He is a painstaking preacher and an enthusiastic worker, and has an unbroken record of success in church management. Reformed Church on the Heights. — In 1834 the First Dutch Reformed Church was the only organ- ization of that denomination in Brooklyn. In 1836 the synod's board of missions appointed the Rev. John Garretson to work with a view to the establishment of a second church. As a result of his efforts a society was organized on March 3, 1837, under the title of " Second Protestant Reformed Dutch Church of Brooklyn." Mr. Garretson continued with the church until the close of that year, and services were held in the Lyceum. The following year a church edifice was erected on Henry street and the congregation was incorporated as the "Central Reformed Protestant Dutch Church." The Rev. C. C. Van Arsdale supplied the pulpit for nearly two years. In 1840, the church was dedicated and the Rev. Jacob Broadhead, D. D., was installed as pastor ; he was succeeded by the Rev. Malcolm McLaren in 1856. Two years later the Rev. George W. Bethune, D. D., took charge of the church, and from that time onward the congregation rapidly increased in numbers. Three months after Dr. Bethune's installation on December 16, 1848, and a few minutes after a large congregation had dispersed, the entire ceiling of the church fell down, crushing the galleries and pulpit, and many of the pews. Six months later, the corner-stone of the present church was laid, and on November 23, 185 1, the new building was dedicated. The same month the church received its present name. Dr. Bethune's resignation was the first of a series of retarding events in the history of the church. A few of the members left and forty others were dismissed to form a new church on Bergen Hill. In 1859 the Rev. James Eells, of Cleveland, was called to the pulpit. During his seven years' pastorate, the number of the congregation was again increased and a large debt on the church building was paid. The Rev. First Reformed Church, Seventh Av. and Carroll St. 552 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Reformed Church on the Heights. Zachary Eddy, D. D., was the next pastor, and during his ministration, which lastec! until 187 1, the Myrtle avenue and Be- thesda mission schools were organized The Rev. David Englis, D. D., LL.D., afterwards became the minister, and he was followed by the present pastor, the Rev. W. R. Davis, D. D. The church membership numbers more than five hun- dred, and the Sunday-school, which is superintended by William C. Spellman, has 200 scholars. The Rev. Wesley Reid Davis, D. D., has made a broad and enduring mark upon that page of Brooklyn's history which deals with the religious life of the city. During a pastorate that has not yet ex- tended through half a decade, he has made of the Reformed Church on the Heights a united and influential organization that is felt in the community through its va- ried activities, and which, in its constant growth, instead of drawing from its sister churches, is an inspiration and a help to them. He was born in the county of Carroll, Md., on January 14, 1847, and through an ancestry native to the state wherein he was born traces his lineage on the side of Cecilia Warfield, his mother, to an English source, and on the side of his father, . Francis A. Davis, to the hardy sons of Wales. Both of the families from which he comes were settled in Maryland as early as 1650. His parents died when he was five years old, and he was brought up under the guardianship of the Rev. Charles A. Reid, who married a near relative. His first ministry was in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he began his work on the Summerfield circuit, near Baltimore ; his last charge before he came north was the old St. John's Independent Church in that city, which was a society of great wealth and culture. The Simpson M. E. Church of Brooklyn received him as its pastor in 1873, and on the expiration of the three years, which at that time limited the pastorates in the Methodist denomi- nation, he was transferred to the St. James M. E. Church in New York city, succeeding the Rev. Dr. Cyrus D. Foss. When the allotted term of his pastorate of the St. James Church expired, he was led by his con- victions to withdraw from the Methodist body and he accepted a call to the Madison Avenue Congrega- tional Church, New York city, in the pastorate of which he was preceded by the Rev. Dr. George H. Hep- worth. Thence he was called, in 1882, to the Madison Avenue Reformed (Dutch) Church of Albany, from which church he came to Brooklyn in October, 1888. He has traveled a great deal in foreign lands, and especially in the East, with the art and literature of which he is very familiar. He has a beautiful home ,near his church, and among its treasures are many choice paintings and other works of art, and a well selected library of four thousand volumes or more, the growth of which is continual ; but not so rapid as it would be were it not for the frequent selection from it by its owner of works that he has read and which he sends on a mission of usefulness to less favored brethren in the ministry ; and thus it develops into a collection of what is rarest and most desirable in such literature as a scholarly clergyman favors. Dr. Davis received the degree of Master of Arts from the Wesleyan University of Connecticut and the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Rutgers College of New Jersey. Bedford Avenue Reformed Church. — The Bedford Avenue Reformed Church, which is located at the corner of Bedford avenue and Clymer street, was the first church of this denomination organized in Williamsburgh ; its history dates from 1829 and its first place of worship was a Methodist chapel on North Second street. The corner-stone of a new chapel was laid on Fourth street, near South Second, on Sep- tember 28, 1828, and the house was dedicated on July 26, 1829. During the winter of 1848-9 the building was enlarged and was occupied until 1865, when it was sold. The present edifice was dedicated on October 17, 1869. The pastors have been the Revs. James Demarest, who served for ten years ; Elbert S. Porter, who held the pastorate for thirty-four years ; E. P. Terhune, D. D., who resigned in 1891. The church has 500 members and the Sunday-school, of which Chester D. Burrows is superintendent, numbers 350. East New York Reformed Church. — It is fifty years since the East New York Reformed Church was established. An organization was perfected on December 20, 1839, ^"d John R. Pitkin, the founder of CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 553 East New York, presented the society with the site which its church now occupies on New Jersey avenue ; the corner-stone of the first building was laid early in 1840, and the structure was completed for dedication the following May, when the first pastor, the Rev. William H. Campbell, was installed. His ministrations were eminently successful, but he remained only two years with the church, when he returned to those educational pursuits which had previously engrossed his attention, and later he became president of Rut- gers College. He was succeeded by the Rev. Martin V. Schoonmaker, who was ordained and installed on September 25, 1842. He occupied the pulpit for eight years. The next pastor was the Rev. J. Pascal Strong, who was installed on September 25, 1850. The congregation increased and in 1855 the old building was removed and a new one was erected in its place. The old parsonage at the corner of Sheffield avenue and Fulton street was also built during Mr. Strong's incumbency. The Rev. Anson F. Munn was installed on June 29, 1856, and resigned after twelve years' service. The Rev. R. C. Blauvelt became pastor on May 6 1868; he was followed, in 1874, by the Rev. William J. Hill, who afterwards became a missionary to Dakota. The Rev. Daniel Van Pelt came to the church in November, 1882, but his work was interfered with by ill health and the affairs of the congregation were unsatisfactory until the present pastor, the Rev. Jesse W. Brooks, took charge on February 5, 1889. He was so successful that it was decided to remodel the old church. The church has 235 members and a Sunday-school of 425. The Rev. Jesse Wendell Brooks is a pleasant speaker and an author of some note in the field of religious literature. He was born in Cheshire, Conn., on September 26, 1858, and was graduated at Rutgers College in 1881. He took the full course at the Union Theological seminary and his earliest pastoral charge was the First Congregational Church at Bay Shore, L. I. During 1887-88 he was state superintendent of Christian Endeavor work ; he has received the degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Philosophy and is vice-presi- dent of the American Society of Comparative Religion. Reformed Protestant (Dutch) Church of ^ BusHWiCK. — The Old Bushwick Church was organized in 1654, and was one of the collegiate churches. Its first place of worship was an octagonal building, with a very steep roof which terminated in an open belfry. Until 1795 the members of the congregation furnished their own seats, but in that year pews were placed on the main floor, and a gallery was constructed. A new church was built in 1829 and was remodeled in 1876. It is located at the corner of Humboldt and Con- selyea streets. Two years later a Sunday-school building, to accommodate twelve hundred persons, was erected. There is a membership of 350, and the Sunday-school is large and flourishing under the super- intendency of Albert Cugner. Pastors Freeman and Antonides were the first ministers, and were suc- ceeded in turn by the Revs. Peter Low, Martinus Schoonmaker, of Flatbush, and John Bassett. The Rev. Stephen H. Meeker was pastor from 1874 until 1876, and was followed by the Revs. Henry A. Powell and Robert H. Barr. The Rev. T. C. McClelland is the present pastor. The church has 270 members and a Sunday-school of 550 members. Kent Street Church.— The Reformed Dutch Church of Greenpoint, better known as the Kent Street Reformed Church, was organized in May, 1848, and the first church edifice on Java street was dedicated on October 13, 1849. The first pastor was the Rev. John W. Ward, who was succeeded in 1854 by the Rev. Goin Talmadge. From 1862 to 1865 the Rev. George H. Peeke was pastor, and he was succeeded by the Rev. A. P. Van Gieson and the Rev. Alex. McKelvey. The Rev. Lewis Francis is the present pastor. The place of worship on Kent street, near Manhattan avenue, was dedicated on January 30, 1870. The church numbers 430 members, and has 1,140 in the Sunday-school and church mission. The Sunday-school build- ings were erected in 1880, and the mission chapel in 1891. The Children's Mission, under the supervision of this church, received its rather uncommon name from the fact that the greater part of the money needed for the erection of the present building on Eagle street, near Manhattan avenue, was raised by children, was organized November 20, 1881, and work was begun at 127 Eagle street. The present buildmg was dedicated on June 28, 1891. The work, comprising religious services and training schools, has been under the care of Messrs. William Roberts, James E. Clarke and J. H. Hager, who are entitled missionaries. South Church.— The South or Third Reformed Dutch Church at Gowanus originated in 1838, and its first building, at the corner of Forty-third street and Third avenue, was dedicated on June 24, 1840, in The Old Bushwick Church (Reformed). ^54 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. which year the church was organized. The building was burned in 1863, and the erection of a new edifice was begun at the corner of Third avenue and Thirty-second street ; it was completed in 1875, the congre- gation in the meantime occupying the cliapel, which was completed in 1863. During the yellow fever plague, 1856, the organization was nearly extinguished by its large loss of members, but rallied and now has a membership of 219. There are 350 members in the Sunday-school, under the superintendency of George W. Pool. The pastors have been the Revs. C. C. Van Arsdale, Samuel M. Woodbridge, J. M. Rowland, John H. Manning, Henry V. S. Meyers and A. De Witt Mason, who resigned in 1891. From May, 1842, until Jan- uary, 1850, "iVIr. Woodbridge, the pastor, preached alternately in the South Church and in the North Church on Third avenue, between Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, which the consistory had purchased from the Fourth Presbyterian Church. New Lots Church. — The Reformed Protestant Church of the Town of New Lots was formed in 1824 by members of the church in Flatbush who desired a more accessible place of worship. The new church was located at the corner of New Lots road and Schenck avenue, and its first and only church edifice was opened in June, 1824. The pastors have been the Revs. W. Cruikshank, J. Baldwin, J. M. Van Buren, C. Wood and N. Pearce ; the present incumbent, Mr. Pearce, took charge in 1877. The church has 200 mem- bers and a Sunday-school membership of more than 325. Centennial Chapel. — The Centennial Chapel on St. Mark's place, near Third avenue, originated in a Sunday-school mission which was established at the corner of Fulton and Adams streets on February 21, 1869, by members of the First Church. The chapel was built in 1871, and the pastors have been the Revs. A. N. Wyckoff, D. N. Westveer, J. H. Colton, D. D., James H. Callen, Charles B. Chapin and Austin B. Stockwell, who took charge in 1890. The Sunday-school has 425 members. St. Peter's. — The German Evangelical St. Peter's Church was organized in 1853 by a number of seceders from the Maujer Street Church. An old building on the corner of Union avenue and Scholes street was procured and services begun at once. In 1880 this was demolished and the present brick edifice erected. The church has 700 members, and 800 members in the Sunday-school. The present pastor, the Rev. J. C. Guenther, took charge in 1886. South Bushwick Church. — The church known as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of South Bushwick was organized on November 6, 1851. A site for a building, at the corner of what are now Bush- wick avenue and Himrod street, was given by Andrew and Abram Stockholm, and the edifice was dedicated in February, 1853. A Sunday-school building was added in 1881. There are 414 names on the membership rolls and the Sunday-school numbers 1,162. The Rev. George D. Hulst is pastor. Bethany Chapel. — The Reformed Church on the Heights organized a mission in May, 1870, which was first located at Myrtle avenue, on the corner of Navy street, and was then known as the Myrtle Avenue Mission. It is at present on Hudson avenue, near Myrtle, and is known as Bethany Chapel. Its members number 175, and there are 500 scholars in the Sunday-school. The pastors of the chapel have been the Revs. Alfred E. Myers, John V. Griswold, Alexander Shaw, Jacob Whitehurst and Edgar Tilton, Jr. North Church. — The North Reformed Church on Clermont avenue, near Myrtle, was organized on May 15, 1851, and its house of worship was erected in 1855. Its membership is more than 200 and the Sunday-school is equally numerous. The Rev. Edwin F. Hallenbeck is the pastor. New Church. — The Her.kimer Street German Reformed Church, known as the New Church, was organized in 1852 by the residents of Ocean Hill, and the following year a frame church was built on Herkimer street, near Saratoga avenue. In 1888 this was demolished and a handsome brick structure took its place, which was opened for public worship in 1889. The church has 380 members, and a Sunday-school of 300. The pastor is the Rev. Jacob Weber, who has held the pastorate thirteen years. Ocean Hill Church. — The Ocean Hill Dutch Reformed Church was organized on November 2, 1885, through the efforts of the present pastor, the Rev. A. M. Quick. Incorporation soon followed and the con- gregation set to work to erect a suitable church, worshiping in the meanwhile in the Herkimer Street German Reformed Church. In April, 1887, the church edifice on Herkimer street and Hopkinson avenue was dedicated. The church has 150 members and a Sunday-school of 235 members. Twelfth Street Church. — The Twelfth Street Reformed Church was first considered in a meeting held on September 11, 1849, In the following year, on January 28, 1850, the church was organized by the south classis of Long Island as the North Reformed Dutch Church of Gowanus. A church was at once built on the corner of Twenty-first street and Third avenue, and in 185 1 the Rev. N. P Pierce, D.D., was called to the pastorate. He retained that position until 1875, his pastorate being marked by the erection of the present church in 1869. The dedication took place on January 2, 1870. From 1875 to 1887 the Rev. U. D. Gulick was pastor and the present incumbent, the Rev. J. E. Lloyd, succeeded him. The church has more than 650 members; the membership of the Sunday-school is 1,200. Bedford Church. — The Bedford Church on Ormond place, corner of Jefferson avenue, is in the pastoral charge of the Rev. H. C. Berg. It has 284 members and a Sunday-school of 175. The Right Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, Bishop of Long Island. PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. The Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, one of the five dioceses of the state of New York, was created in 1869, and the present bishop, the Right Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, D.D., was at once placed in control. The see-house and the cathedral, given by A. T. Stewart, late in the seventies, are located at Garden City, in the town of Hempstead. Though the contrary is believed in most quarters, the authority of the bishop is imaginary rather than real; he has little, if any, absolute power, being merely a presiding officer exercising certain functions, such as that of confirmation. The diocesan affairs are managed by him and the standing committee, elected each year, and composed of four clergymen and four laymen. The canon law distinctly states that the bishop must act with the concurrence of this committee. The affairs of each parish are administered by the rector, two wardens and eight vestrymen. The rector, the wardens and the vestrymen together make up the "corporation — in charge of the church property." Spirit- ual affairs, the music, and such matters are in the care of the rector alone. The vestry meets each month. Both vestrymen and wardens are elected annually by the congregation and have the control of the church business matters. The annual convention of the diocese is composed of parish delegates, the rector or minister in charge and three lay representatives from each church. In 1892 seventy-seven churches were represented; there were present 121 clergymen and over 200 laymen. Their chief labors were onfinancial, educational, legal, missionary and church extension matters. The annual convention of the diocese names four clergymen and four laymen as delegates to the general (national) convention, meeting every three years. For missionary work the diocese is divided into four districts, presided over by archdeacons : North Brook- lyn, bounded by Montague, Fulton, Flatbush, Atlantic and Franklin avenues; South Brooklyn; Queens; and Suffolk. The Right Rev. Abram Newkirk Littlejohn, D. D., Bishop of Long Island, was born in Montgomery County, N. Y., on December 13, 1824. After his graduation at Union College in 1845 he at once began a course of study in theology and continued it until he was ordained to the diaconate at Auburn, N. Y., on March 18, 1848. A year of clerical duty at St. Ann's Church, Amsterdam, N. Y., was followed by a shorter service of ten months in Meriden, Conn., and on April 10, 1850, he was called to be rector of Christ Church, 556 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Springfield, Mass., where he was raised to the priesthood on November lo, in the same year. In July, 1851, he became rector of St. Paul's Church, New Haven. During his incumbency there he was unanimously elected president of Hobart College, Geneva, N. Y., but declined the honor. He had already distinguished himself as a scholarly writer and lecturer, as well as an efficient pastor and successful preacher, and in 1853 he was invited to deliver one of the addresses in a course on theological science delivered in Philadelphia by bishops and clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was lecturer on pastoral theology at the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn., throughout his stay in New Haven, and his reputation for scholarship was so early established that in 1856 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Pennsylvania. He was called to the rectorship of Holy Trinity Church, Brooklyn, in the early part of i860 ; and it was largely through his efforts that the magnificent property held by that parish was saved to the denomination. He had been rector less than eight years when the creation of three new dioceses in New York was authorized by the general convention of 1869, and two of them selected him to be their first bishop. He declined the election tendered by the diocese of Central New York for the obvious reason that in the diocese of Long Island he would have a field with which he was more familiar ; and the result of his choice, so far as the diocese is concerned, has been one of continuous satisfaction to the churches and people of the communion in this portion of the state. He was consecrated as bishop on January 27, 1869. He has been an energetic prelate, and his work has not been confined to his own diocese, for in 1872 he was appointed bishop in charge of all the Protestant Episcopal churches on the continent of Europe, which necessitates a large amount of extra labor on his part. In 1880 he delivered lectures before the University of Cambridge, England, and the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him in recog- nition of this service. He has delivered a number of lectures, which have been widely published, and he is officially connected with several of the most important educational institutions of the country. St. Ann's Church. — The oldest Protestant Episcopal church in Brooklyn is that known to-day as St. Ann's Church, whose house of worship is on Clinton street, at the corner of Livingston. It was incorpora- ted as "The Episcopal Church of Brooklyn" and the account of its early existence appears in the intro- ductory portion of this chapter. The Rev. George Wright, who was the first minister in charge, so far as can definitely be ascertained, was followed in 1789 by the Rev. Elijah J. Rattoone ; the next succeeding ministers were the Revs. Ambrose Hull and Samuel Nesbitt. During Mr. Nesbitt's ministry in 1795 the church was reorganized and incorporated under its present name. The Rev. John H. Ireland became rector in 1798, and while he was in charge a stone edifice was erected on land at the corner of Sands and Washington streets, given for the purpose by Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Sands. This building, which was consecrated on May 30, 1805, was replaced by a new one, begun in March, 1824, and consecrated on July 30, 1825. The first step toward building the present church edifice was the erection of the chapel, which was opened on April 7, 1867, and on June 7, in the same year, the corner-stone of the main building was laid, the house being opened for services on October 20, 1869. It was not con- secrated until 1879, in which year its sittings were made free in accordance with a condition imposed by R. Fulton Cutting, whose donation of $70,000 in 1878 freed the church from debt. The rectors succeeding Mr. Nesbitt have been the Revs. Henry J. Feltus, John P. K. Henshaw, Hugh Smith, Henry U. Onderdonk, Charles P. Mcllvaine, Benjamin C. Cutter, Noah H. Schenck, D. D., and Reese F. Alsop, D. D., the present incumbent. The church has more than 1,220 communicants and a Sunday-school with nearly 700 members. The Rev. Dr. Reese F. Alsop was born in Richmond, Ind., on November 18, 1837. When he was but a year old, his parents removed to Philadelphia, where he was educated. At the age of eighteen he became a law student, but before completing his course, he became convinced it was his duty to enter the ministry of the Protestant St. Ann's Church. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 557 Episcopal Church, of which he had already become a member. He studied in the classes of what is now known as the Philadelphia Divinity School, and in 185S he was ordained deacon, being ordained priest three years later, at St. Philip's Church, where he exercised his first ministry as an assistant. There he spent his diaconate and nearly one year of his priesthood. He was called to St. John's Church p"ram- ingham, Mass., where he remained two years, and subsequently was rec- tor of Christ Church, Rye, N. Y., for eight years. His next charge was St. Andrew's Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., and the next was Grace Church in Philadelphia, where he officiated until the spring of 1S86, when he was made the rector of St. Ann's. In 1880 he received from Kenyon College the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He was married on July 2, 1879, to Miss Mary L. Spring, a grand-daughter of the Rev. Dr. Gardner Spring. Mrs. Alsop died suddenly in June, 1892. Church of the Holy Trinity. — The erection of the Church of the Holy Trinity was the work of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar J. Bartow, who carried the work almost to completion at their own expense, lire chapel was opened on June 7, 1846, by the Rev. W. H. Lewis, D.^-D., whom Mr. Bartow had invited to take charge of it, and the church was opened on April 25, 1847. After the organization of the parish on November 27, 185 1, Dr. Lewis was made rector, and in 1856 the congregation pur- chased the property at a price much less than its estimated cost, to which they added by the completion of the church edifice in accordance with the beautiful design which Mr. Bartow had adopted. The church was consecrated on September 23, 1856. Dr. Lewis resigned the rectorship in i860 and was succeeded by the Rev. A. N. Littlejohn, who was rector until he became Bishop of Long Island in January, 1869. The Rev. Charles H. Hall, D. I)., took charge as rector on March 1, 1869. The parish is large, wealthy and active and has been influential in the estab- lishment of various religious and philanthropic enterprises in the city. It numbers 700 communicants and there are 139 children in the Sunday- school. Unless it be Bishop Phillips Brooks, the Protestant Episcopal Church in America has no greater preacher than the Rev. Charles Henry Hall, D. D., of Holy Trinity. He was born in Augusta, Ga., on Novem- ber 7, 1820. His mother was a strict Pres- byterian. He was sent to Phillips' Academy at Andover, Mass., to prepare for college, and entered Yale College at the age of eighteen years ; he was graduated in the class of 1842. His attention was diverted from Presbyterian theology to the Protestant Episcopal faith while he was at college, and he determined to devote himself to the church. He entered the General Episcopal Theological Seminary in New York and in 1845 was ordained to the ministry at Fair Haven, Conn. His first charge was St. John's Church, at Huntington, L. I., whence he was transferred to West Point, serving as a rector of the church of the Holy Innocents and as chaplain of the Military Academy. Two years later he returned to the south and became rector of St. John's Church on John Island, S. C, where he re- mained until 1856 ministering to the sparse white population and to the negroes of the sea islands. He next accepted a call to the Church of the Epiphany at "Washington, D. C, at that time strongly dominated by southern influences, Jefferson Davis and his family be- ing members of the congregation. The next Church of the Holy Tki.-^ity. 5S8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Rev. Charles H. Hall, D. D. decade was a trying time for the young preacher ; a southerner and an ardent Democrat, he was always a Union man in the highest sense of the word, and wisely managed to steer clear of difficulties while many mem- bers of his congregation threw in their fortunes with the Confederacy. It is a strange coincidence that the pew of Jefferson Davis was occupied during the war by Secretary of War Stanton. After the assassin- ation of President Lincoln, Dr. Hall preached a notable sermon on his life and character. Dr. Hall remained in Washington for thirteen years, but when Dr. Little- john was elected to the bishopric of the newly created diocese of Long Island, thus leaving vacant the pulpit of Holy Trinity Church in this city, Dr. Hall was called to succeed him. He found the church pros- pering and has continued to maintain the high stand- ard established by his predecessor. He is now the leading rector of the diocese, ranking next to the bishop as chairman of the standing committee and chancellor of the cathedral at Garden City ; he has been a delegate at many important conventions, but has sought no further advancement. He is none the less considered as a possible candidate, should a va- cancy occur in the house of bishops. He was one of the intimate friends of Mr. Beecher and the orator at his funeral ; he was also chairman of the memorial com- mittee having charge of the erection of the statue now standing before the city hall. Although he is essentially a " low churchman " the sacred music of Holy Trinity, under the direction of Dudley Buck, is celebrated throughout the country. At one time Dr. Hall published a collection of hymns, and he is also the author of " Notes on the Gospels " in two volumes ; " True Protestant Ritualism ;" " The Church of the Household ;" " Spina Christi ;" " Valley of the Shadow ;" and a number of pamphlets and special ser- mons. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Hobart, Columbia and St. James' colleges in the same year. Of late years he has taken a lively interest in politics ; he was ap- pointed civil service commissioner when the com- mission was first established and has served as park commissioner. In his pulpit he is a typical knight of the church militant ; he is tall and erect and his ringing words are devoted to the denunci- ation of evil in all its forms. His thought is not bounded by rubric and liturgy but comes from the depths of his own intellect and is vivified by his great heart. Church of the Messiah. — -The Church of the Messiah was organized on August 22, 1850, under the rectorship of the Rev. Wm. A. Newman. The first church was built in 1852 and enlarged in 1859. In 1863 this was found too small, and the vestry purchased an unfinished structure on the corner of Greene and Clermont avenues from the Presbyterians. This was completed and at once occupied. In 1886 this was renovated and orna- mented with the handsome terra-cotta trimmings it now displays. The second rector was the Rev. Robert J. Walker, who was succeeded in 1858 by the Rev. Octavius Perinchief. The succession comprises the Rev. Geo. E. Thrall, 1858-1859; the Rev. R. B. Duane, D.D., 1869-1872; and the present Church of the Messiah. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 559 rector, the Rev. Charles R. Baker, who has held the post since 1873 He was born at Medford, Mass., on April 15, 1842; his father was pastor of the Congregational church there. Richard Baker, his ancestor, came over in the " William and Mary," and was first president of the board of selectmen of Boston. Dr. Baker's maternal ancestors, of the Woods family, have been theologians for centuries ; his grandfather, Leonard Woods, was presiding professor of Andover Theological Seminary. When he was a lad of sixteen Dr. Baker went into the culture of pear trees on a large scale, and succeeded so well with this and other ventures as to have cleared about $50,000 before he reached the age of twenty-two. He defrayed all the expenses of his education, which for several years included the support and traveling expenses of a private instructor. His theological studies included a course of three years at Cambridge, Mass. Several years more were spent at the Friedrich Wilhelm Universitat, at Berlin, where he received, in 1S72, the degree, almost unknown in America, of Doctor of Theology. His distinctively theological studies occupied seven years, during part of which time he was a pupil of Lipsius, the Egyptologist at Berlin. He was ordained deacon in the diocese of Massachusetts, in June, 1872. On February i, 1873, he came to Brooklyn and took his present charge. A month later, he became priest and rector of the parish, which then had only twenty- three families. It now has 1,200 families, and 1,400 resident communicants. It has several hundred young men in military and other organizations, and more than four hundred girls under tutelage and supervision, in a building specially erected for this work. In 18S4, Dr. Baker published a book entited "The Apostles' Creed Tested by Experience ;" he has since published a review of the theological position of Schleiermacher. In 1891 he was elected archdeacon of the northern archdiaconate of Long Island. On November 5, 1873, in the church of which he is rector. Dr. Baker was married to Miss Mary Sneden Schenck. St. Luke's. — St. Luke's Church on Clinton avenue, near Fulton street, took up a work begun by Trinity Church, which was organized in March, 1835, and built a stone edifice sixty by forty-five feet upon a piece of land comprising eight lots on Clinton avenue, between Atlantic avenue and Fulton street, which was given for the purpose by George W. Pine. It had as rectors successively the Revs. D. V. M. Johnson, Dr. Thomas W. Coit, and R. C. Shimeall, Financial embarassment caused a dissolution of the congrega- tion in 1841 and the church property was sold. St. Luke's Church was organized before the year ended, and on December 27 it was incorporated, the Rev. D. V. M. Johnson being in charge until April, 1842, when the Rev. Jacob W. Diller, D. D,, became rector. The property of Trinity Church had been purchased for its occupancy and under Dr. Diller's ministrations the growth was large and steady and the building was enlarged. In the spring of 1S69 the system of rented pews was abandoned, the church becoming a free one. In 1878 Dr. Diller was given an assistant in the person of the Rev. James W. Sparks ; but in December, 1879, he re- signed and was made pastor emeritus. He had endeared himself to a great many peo- ple outside of his own con- gregation and his tragic death added to the sorrow caused by the burning of the steamer "Seawanhaka" on Long Isl- and Sound on June 29, 1880. He was a passenger on the doomed boat and perished in the flames, while his daughter, who was with him, was so badly burned that she died a few days afterwards. The succeeding rectors were the Rev. George R. Vandewater, who remained for seven years, and the Rev. Edward A. Bradley, D. D., who was called from Indianapolis and took charge on February i, 1885, the congregation being at that time greatly depleted in consequence of tue burning of the church and other discouragements. After Dr. Bradley's advent the process of disintegration was checked, and within four years the church edifice was rebuilt, a chapel for the Sunday- school was added to the conveniences of the parish, a new parish hall was erected and ui every respect the St. Luke's Church. 560 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Christ Church. parish was rehabilitated. Dr. Bradley was called to New York to take charge of the new St. Agnes Church on West Ninety-second street, and was succeeded by the present rector, the Rev. Henry C. Swentzel on May I 1892 The church now has 1,250 communicants and 313 members in its Sunday-school. ' Christ Church, at the corner of Clinton and Harrison streets, was organized on May 18, 183s, and began to hold regular services in a chapel at the corner of Court and Pacific streets. The present church edifice was begun in June, 1841, and was consecrated on July 28, 1842. The first rector was the Rev. Kingston Goddard and the present incumbent is the Rev. A. B. Kinsolving. There are 660 com- municants and a Sunday-school of 365. Christ Chapel, at the corner of Wolcott and Sullivan streets, is a branch of the church and is in charge of the Rev. James B. Nies, one of the assistant ministers ; it has 400 communicants and a Sunday-school of 851. The Rev. Arthur Barksdale Kinsolving is one of a race of giants and stands six feet two inches. He was born at Middlesburg Va., February 20, 1861. He is a son of the Rev. O. A. Kinsolving, D. D. He was edu- cated at the Episcopal High School of Virginia, at Alexandria, and the University of Virginia, from which he was called to a mastership in the Episcopal High School. The following year he entered the Theological Seminary of Virginia, adjacent, where he pursued his theological course, at the same time teaching Greek to the preparatory classes. He was graduated in June, 1886, and was then ordained a deacon. He was sent from the seminary by the bishop of Virginia to Warsaw, Richmond County, Va., where he undertook the care of the oldest parish but one in the state. A few months after his settlement there this church burned down, and all the energies of the young rector were turned to the problem of rebuilding. In seeking aid for his impoverished parish, he called on Dr. L. W. Bancroft, then rector of Christ Church, Brooklyn, the only person in his present parish with whom he had any personal acquaintance till he received a call to come to this city. While at Warsaw he was ordained priest in 1887. He received more than forty calls to larger fields, including two of the leading churches in Richmond, but remained at his post forty miles distant from the nearest railroad, until he had rebuilt his burned church. When the rectorship of Christ Church became vacant, Mr. Kinsolving was invited to occupy the pulpit for one day ; he began his work as rector on Decem- ber 15, 1889. The Rev. James Buchanan Nies, Ph. D., assistant minister of Christ Church, in charge of Christ Chapel, was born on November 22, 1856, at Newark, N. J. He was graduated at Columbia College in 1882. After he was graduated from Columbia he studied theology at the General Theo- logical Seminary. During all his studies he was a frequent prize winner. ^^^' ^^ ^' Kinsolving. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of the Holy Communion, New York, in 1885. His first charge was Holy Trinity Chapel, Harlem. A year later he was called to St. John's Church, Tuckahoe, N. Y., having been previously ordained to the priesthood in St. Thomas' Church in June, 1886. He was at Tuckahoe eight months, during which time he also served St. John's Church in New Rochelle. Then he was called to Christ Chapel, which was then under the care of Archdeacon Kirkby. In the same year, 1887, he received from Columbia College the degree of M. A.; and he received that of Ph. D. in 1888, after a course of study in philology, psychology and ethics. Ever since the time of his settlement in Brooklyn, in 1887, Dr. Nies has applied himself most vigorously to the work of the chapel at Red Hook, where he has succeeded in building up one of the most flourishing missions in the city. Dr. Nies married on September 3, 1891, Miss Jane Dows Orr, eldest daughter of Alexander E. Orr. The Rev. Llewellyn Neville Caley, assistant minister of Christ Church, was born in Hampshire, England, in 1859. He attended the famous school at Tunbridge, in Kent; after leaving which, he was CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 561 articled to his father, an architect of ability. Having spent the customary three years in the study of archi- tecture, Mr. Caley determined to take orders in the Church of England. With this purpose in view, he studied theology at the London College of Divinity, at Highbury, and in 1884 was ordained by the Bishop of Rochester, in Rochester cathedral. For the next six years he labored as curate in large and important London parishes with much success. In the summer of 1891 he came to America with his family and at once entered upon the duties of assistant to the Rev. A. B. Kinsolving. Grace Church on the Heights.— On May 3, 1847, Grace Church was organized with the Rev. Dr. Francis Vinton as the first rector, and on December 25, 1848, its house of worship on Hicks street and Grace court was opened. The church was consecrated on June 29, 1849. The present rector is the Rev. C. B. Brewster. There are 750 communicants and a Sunday- school of 316. A parish school is connected with the church, and the parish supports Grace Chapel on High street, near Gold ; the chapel is in charge of the Rev. R. H. L. Tighe, and there are 146 communicants and 463 members of the Sunday-school. The Rev. Chauncey Bunce Brewster is the direct lineal descendant of the eldest son of Elder Brewster, the well-known pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers. He was born on September 5, 1848, at Windham, Conn. He was gradu- ated from Yale College in 1868. He studied as a post- graduate for one year, and was tutor in Latin and Greek a year longer, after which he entered the Berkeley Divinity School at Middletown, Conn. In 1872 he was ordained deacon, and spent the year of his diaconate as assistant minister of St. Andrew's Church, at Meriden, Conn. In 1873 he was ordained to the priesthood at Meriden, and became rector of Christ Church, Rye, Westchester County, N. Y., remaining there till 1881, when he accepted the rectorship of Christ Church, Detroit, Mich. While at Detroit he represented the dioces'e of Michigan in the general convention of 1883. In 1885 he was called to Grace Church, Baltimore, Md., where he remained till he assumed his present charge in 1888. Christ Church, E. D. — One of the most flourishing churches in the Eastern District is Christ Chuixh, which was organized in 1046 and has its place of worship on Bedford, near Division avenue. There are 800 communicants and the Sunday-school numbers 750. The activity of the church in all spheres of religious and philanthropic work is strong and influential. Since the organization of the parish the rectors have been the Revs. Charles Reynolds, D. D., Alfred H. Partridge and James H. Darlington, the present incumbent. The Rev. James Henry Darlington, Ph. D., is a Brooklynite by birth, but of Scotch-English descent. His father is an attorney in New York city, and his mother was one of the Tophams from Thomley Park, Bedfordshire, England. Dr. Darlington was born on June 9, 1856, and is a graduate of the University of the City of New York, class of 1877, and of Princeton Theological Seminary, class of 1880. He received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1881, and after a few months' rest accepted the position of assistant to the Rev. A. H. Partridge, rector of Christ Church, in the Eastern District. A year and a half later, the death of Mr. Partridge left the rectorship vacant, and Dr. Darlington was shortly afterward elected the head of Christ Church parish. On July 26, 1888, he was married by Bishop Littlejohn, in the cathedral of the Incarnation at Garden City, to Miss Ella Louise Beams, daughter of James S. Beams, president of the Kings County Savings Bank. Grace Church. yTAxli^ ff,/Ww®^v. ' St. John's. — In 1826 St. John's Church was built on the corner of Washington and Johnson streets. This edifice was built at the expense of the Rev. Evan M. Johnson, to whom the parish of St. John's owed its origin and maintenance for several years. Assisted by the Rev. John A. Hicks, Mr. Johnson opened the church for service on September 24, 1826. By the following Easter there were nineteen communicants, and on July 16, 1827, the building was dedicated by the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart. In 1832 the building was S63 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. purchased and enlarged by the congregation, and the church began an era of prosperity. The Rev. ]. W. Dillon became assistant minis- ter in 1835, and in 1841 his place was taken by the Rev. Stephen Patterson; he in turn was followed by the Rev. Caleb S. Henry, D. D., in 1842. In July, 1847, the Rev. Mr. Johnson re- signed and the Rev. Samuel R. Johnson, D. D., was made rector. His successors were the Rev. N. A. Okeson in 185 i and 1852 ; the Rev. T. T. Guion, D. D., from 1853 until 1862 ; the Rev. George F. Seymour, D. D., 1863-1867, aided by the Rev. H. A. Spafford ; and the Rev. Alexander Burges, D. D., from 1867 until "■•-t*=Es*!«« ^'^•^9- In 1868 the old building on Washington ""tr-'^T^. street was sold, and the corner-stone of the ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, SEVENTH AVENUE AND ST. JOHN'S PLACE. prcscut church cdifice ou thc comcr of Seventh avenue and St. John's place was laid on June 15, 1869. The Rev. R. E. Terry was succeeded as rector in 1874 by the Rev. Thomas S. Pycott, who was replaced in 1887 by the present rector, the Rev. George F. Breed. The church has 350 communicants and a Sunday-school of 400 members. Church of the Redeemer.— The parish of the Church of the Redeemer was organized on April 14, 1853, and incorporated ui the following December. The first religious services were held in a hall over the old butcher-shop on the corner of Fulton street and Elm place, under the pastoral care of the Rev. D. W. Tolford. In November, 1853, the Rev. D. P. Sandford became rector, and in the following year lots were purchased on the corner of Fourth avenue and Pacific street, on which a brick chapel was erected, which was opened for services on Easter, 1855. On September 27, 1854, the parish was admitted to union with the Diocesan Convention of New York. The Rev. Charles S. Putnam became rector in July, 1858, but was obliged by ill health to resign in May, 1859. He was succeeded in the following August by the Rev. Edward jessup. In April, 1S65, the corner-stone of the present stone church was laid and the building was opened for service on Christmas Day, 1865. The church was completed and dedicated on July 6, 1866. Mr. Jessup died in 1872, and his place was filled by the Rev. William A. Leonard. In 1S74 the old brick chapel gave place to the present stone chapel, in architectural keeping with the church. In i88i Mr. Leonard was succeeded by the Rev. George W. Smith, S. T. D., and he was followed in 1883 by the Rev. Charles R. Treat, who served until 1887. The present rector is the Rev. G. Calvert Carter. The Rev. Ferris Tripp has been assistant pastor since 1869. The church has 423 communicants, and there are 329 attendants at the Sun- day-school sessions. St. P.\ul's Church. — The parish of St. Paul's was organized in 1849, and its first place of worship was on Carroll street, between Henry and Hicks. In September, 1869, the congregation moved to the corner of Clinton and Carroll streets. Changes in the population have put the parish in an unpromising condition as to growth ; but it has a useful work, which it pursues with vigor. There are 275 communicants and a Sunday-school of 165. The rector is the Rev John D. Skene, who took charge on December i, 1S89. He was born in Lincolnshire, England, on October 16, 1849, and was rector of Trinity Church, Asbury Park, N. J., for four years prior to coming to his present charge. St, Peter's Church. — One of the foremost churches of the Protestant Episcopal communion in the diocese of Long Island is St. Peter's, on State street, near Bond, of which the Rev. Dr. Lindsay Parker is rector. A missionary effort made by the Rev. William Staunton was the first work upon the foundations above vvhicli it has risen. He was in charge until 1849. The Rev. John Stearns became rector on July 15, 1849, and at once measures were taken for the erection of a church edifice, the corner-stone of which was laid on [une 6, 1850, the site being several lots of land at the corner of Atlantic avenue and Bond street, which had been purchased during the month when Mr. Stearns entered upon his rectorship. In 1853 a disagreement between the rector and the vestry resulted in the election of a new vestry and the secession of the displaced officers and their adherents, who organized the Church of the Redeemer. This weakened St. Peter's to a marked degree, and in November, 1854, Mr. Stearns resigned. On April 15, 1855, the Rev. John A. Paddock came from Stratford, Conn., to take charge and the parish revived under his ministra- tions. C)n June 13, 1S56, the corner-stone of the present building was laid, and in January, 1857, the first services wci'e held in the new church. In the winter of 1880-81 Dr. Paddock was elected bishop of ■Washington territory and accepted the office. He was succeeded by the Rev. Charles Austin Tibbals in 1881, who remained until the spring of 1886, when the present rector took charge. The church has 989 communicants and 779 Sunday-school members. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 563 iV St, Peter's Episcopal Church, The Rev. Dr. Linds.w P.^rker is a native of Duljlin, Ireland, and is a comparatively young man. He was formerly a Methodist clergyman. Since he became rector the church has been made a free church. He is assisted in his ministry by the Rev. (Zharles D. Brown. St. James' Church, — The parish of St. James was originated by some mem- bers of St. Luke's parish on May 25, 1868, and was admitted to the parochial con- vention on September 29, 1869. A chapel was erected an the corner of Lafayette avenue and St, James' place in 1868 and was twice enlarged in the same year. It was enlarged again in 1870, and in 1875 it was once more enlarged and remodeled. St. James' has 575 communicants. The Sunday-school numbers 310. At the be- ginning the assistant rector of St. Luke's, the Rev. Charles W. Homer, was invited to become rector of the new parish, which office he retains. Calvary Church originated in the efforts of the Rev. Charles Reynolds and Mr. Wm. G. Dunn of Christ Church parish in behalf of the northern part of Williams- burgh. The parish was organized on July 23, 1849, and in 1S52 a small church was built on North Fifth street, which was consecrated on Aprd 16, 1S53. The present edifice at Marcy avenue and South Ninth street was built in i860. The Eev. Cornelius L. Thwing became rector in 18S5. There are 240 communi- cants and a Sunday-school membership of 454. The Church of Our Saviour originated in a mission established by Christ Church. The first service was held in a carpenter's shop on Nelson street, near Court, on November 22, 1S57. The Rev, J, S. Barnes was appointed the first rector and served until 1865. In a short time sufficient money was secured to pur- chase land on the corner of Clinton and Luquer streets and erect the present church. This was opened with the proviso that the seats were to be always free. The Rev. Hugh McGuire is rectcjr. The church has 525 communicants and a Sunday-school of 480. St. Mark's, E. D. — The Protestant Episcopal Church known as St, Mark's, E, D,, was organized in 1838, and its church edifice on the corner of Bedford avenue and South Fifth street was consecrated in T841. The Rev. S, M. Haskins, I). D,, has been rector since 1839, The church has 500 communicants, and a Sunday-school membership of 300. St. Mary's Church. — The church at the corner of Classon and Willoughby avenues, known as St. Mary's Church, was organized in 1835 by the Rev. D. V. M. Johnson, who was then rector of St. Luke's, on Clinton avenue. Services were held in private houses until the old district school house, located on the Flushing road at about the junction of Bedford and Flushing avenues, was obtained, and there the organi- zation of the church took place. At this time there were not more than fifteen or twenty houses in the neighborhood, and between this and \Vashington Park there were scarcely as many dwellings. St. Mary's Church was admitted to the convention in the Diocese of New York in the year 1837, and the church building, which stood on the east side of Classon avenue north of Myrtle avenue, was consecrated on Sunday, February 16, 1840. In 1855, after frequent changes in the rectorship, the Rev. I). V. M, Johnson accepted a call, and for thirty-five years remained in the position. The growth of the parish and neighbor- hood made it necessary to provide a new building, and in July, 1S58, the corner-stone of St. Mary's present edifice was laid, and the first service was held in it on Trinity Sunday in 1859, In November, 1890, Dr. Johnson died and was succeeded as rector by the Rev. \V. \V. Bellinger, \\-ho is a native of South Carolina ; he was born on December 25, 1863, and is a graduate of the Union College and the General Theological Seminary of New York. He was rector of Trinity Church, Wethersfield, Conn,, before coming to Brooklyn in September, 1889, to become assistant minister at St, Mary's, The church has 671 communicants and 549 Sunday-school scholars. Good Shepherd. — The Church of the Good Shepherd, on McDonough street, near Stuyvesant avenue, was organized as the result of a" mission established by Holy Trinity Church, out of which grew also St, Stephen's Church. The organization was effected in 1868, and the church edifice was built in 1S71, during the first year of the rectorship of the Rev. Dr. H. B. Cornwell. It has been necessary to enlarge the 564 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. accommodations, and the church has 470 communicants and a Sunday-school of 354 members. The Rev. Henry B. Cornwell, D. D.., was born in Lebanon, N. Y., and is a graduate of Williams College, from which he has received the degrees of M. A. and D. D. In 1893 he was made pastor emeritus. Grace Church, E. D. — Grace Church, of Williamsburgh, worshiped in a private house from the time of its organization on May 19, 1853, until April 10, 1856, when the present edifice was built on Conselyea street, near Lorimer. It has 100 communicants and 270 members in the Sunday-school. The Rev. Wm. G. Ivie, the present rector, was installed in 1891. St. Mark's Church, on Adelphi street, was founded by the parish of Holy Trinity, and on June 24, 1850, the corner-stone of St. Mark's Free Church, in Fleet place, was laid. The building was a small one, and in September it was dedicated. In i860 a new building was erected at DeKalb and Portland avenues, where the congregation worshiped until 1865. The Rev. Spencer S. Roche became rector on November 28, 1875. In 1884 it was resolved to erect a chapel in stone and brick, and on November 11 the new build- ing was dedicated. Three years later the building of the present edifice was commenced, and it was com- pleted the following year, being first used for worship on Easter Day, 1889. The membership of the church is 500 and the Sunday-school 300. St. Matthew's Church grew from a Sunday-school begun by St. Mary's Church. It was organized as the Free Church of St. Matthew's, on May 25, 1859, and on June 7 received from Jeremiah J. Rapelye a gift of four lots of land, 100 feet square in all, at the corner of Throop avenue and Pulaski street, where the church edifice now stands. On February 10, 1861, the church was opened for services. It had been dependent upon St. Mary's until that time. In May, 1868, the free system was abandoned and the name was made St. Matthew's Protestant Episcopal Church. The church has 462 communicants and a Sunday-school of 386 members. The Rev. Albert A. Morrison, Ph. D., entered upon the rectorship of St. Matthew's in January, 1889. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1862, and is of Scotch parentage ; he was educated at the Illinois West- ern University, the Union Theological Seminary and the General Theological Seminary of New York. In May, 1892, he was elected Archdeacon of Northern Brooklyn. All Saints' Church was organized by laymen on August 4, 1867, and for a time was carried on with- out clerical assistance. On the first of January, 1868, the Rev. William D'Orville Doty became rector. The congregation had been worshiping in Military Hall, on Fifth avenue, near Ninth street, but land was pur- chased on the corner of Seventh avenue and Seventh street and a church was erected and dedicated on May 30, 1869. This was enlarged in 1880. The present incumbent, the Rev. Mellville Boyd, became rector in June, 1876. The church has now 607 communicants and 413 Sunday-school members. _^^^^^^^^ Church of the Reformation.— The Church of the Reformation on H|; ^^^MH^^^P Gates avenue, below Franklin avenue, was organized in the spring of 1867 Wgi ^'-'^IS^.^. ^^^ """^ ^^® 5°° communicants ; there are 350 attendants at the Sunday- r Jj|P*^^^| school. The Rev. Darius R. Brewer was rector from 1867 until 1873, since m \- ■ "^^^^^ ^'™^ ^^^ ^^^- J""^" ^- Bacchus, D. D., has been in charge. He is Wt 00t'-^l^m a graduate of Kenyon College and of the Episcopal Theological School of -' - T' I ; Cambridge, Mass. He is chairman of the standing committee of the I _ t^JI M^f • Church Charity Foundation and other benevolent institutions of the diocese. I V jiPlWr ^'^- Barnabas Church originated in a series of services begun in 1869 I ^ „.aw» ^ : ^y ^^^ ^^''- Henry A. Dows in a building on the corner of Evergreen ave- t^^l^^k^^M^^^^^ ^^^ ^"'^ Jefferson street. Church accommodations were found on Ever- ■■^■^HH||H|^HH| green avenue, near Stockholm street, in the same year, and in 1884 the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^H present church on Bushwick avenue, near Kossuth place, was opened. ^^^KKK/jK^/JI^ The Rev. D. L. Fleming became rector in 1888. There are 310 communi- MWBBp-v;lkt!,tv«W-'.'- ^^^^^W cants, and a Sunday-school membership of 363. ^J^^^g^^l^i^^i^jj^3^J St. Chrysostom's Church was organized as a mission in 1888 by Archdeacon Stevens, and soon after its establishment occupied the build- ing vacated by the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church, at the corner of Fompkms avenue and McDonough street. It was continued as a mission until March 1 1891 when the Rev. W. E. Wright, B. D., formerly of Fond du Lac, Mich., was installed as rector. The church has 175 communicants and a Sunday-school of 130 members. The Church of the Atonement was organized early in 1864 and was incorporated on February i of that year. The present church on Seventeenth street and Fifth avenue was opened for public worship on September 7, 1865. The present rector, the Rev. Edwin H. Wellman, took charge in 1891 The church was remodeled in 1878. It now has 613 communicants and 726 pupils in the Sunday-school St. Clement's Church was organized as a mission on November 11, 1888, and for a time services were conducted m the Oriental building on Atlantic avenue, near Alabama avenue. The present church on Rev. John G. Bacchus, D. D. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 565 Pennsylvania avenue, corner of Liberty avenue, was dedicated on September 21, i8go. On December 11, 1889, St. Clement's became a church and called the Rev. Charles A. Hamilton as rector. He was succeeded in 1892 by the Rev. R. E. Pendleton. There are 206 communicants and 379 members in the Sunday-school. St. David's Church. — ^Protestant Episcopal services for the benefit of deaf mutes are provided by St. David's Episcopal Church, which was founded on November 29, 1891, and is temporarily located at 279 Woodbine street. Its house of worship is, at this writing, in process of Construction and is on Knicker- bocker avenue, corner of Woodbine street. More than one hundred and fifty deaf mutes in Brooklyn and at least one hundred elsewhere are reached by its work. It is a mission and is in charge of the Rev. Anson T. Colt. Emmanuel Church had its origin as Ascension Church in 1853. The Rev. Wm. O. Lamson was the first rector. The congregation worshiped in a hall on the corner of Court and Sackett streets until a church was built on the corner of Third place and Smith street. On November 27, 1864, this was occupied and the name of the organization was changed to the Free Church of the Good Angels. In 1867 the church was organized under its present name and the edifice on the corner of Smith and President streets was built. The present rector, the Rev. Ormond Riddel, was appointed in 1890. The church was enlarged in 1870 and 1874 and again in 1878 ; it has more than 300 communicants and a large Sunday-school. St. Thomas' Church. — Under the name of St. Thomas' Mission the congregation now known as St. Thomas Episcopal Church in the City of Brooklyn was organized in April, 1872. It occupies an edifice which is the second it erected at the corner of Bushwick avenue and Cooper street, and it became a parish in May, 1892. There are 400 communicants and the Sunday-school has 500 members. The Rev. James C. Jones is the rector. St. Timothy's Church held its first service in its present church edifice on Howard avenue, near Atlantic, on July 3, 1892. From the time of its organization, on February 10, 1889, until the date men- tioned services had been held in a store at 2058 Fulton street. The Rev. H. W. Stafford was pastor until October 15, 1889, when he was succeeded by the Rev. Jas. Jamieson. A lay reader, Mr. H. P. Seymour, had charge from June to September, 1891, when the present pastor, the Rev. Walter I. Stecher, was appointed. The church has more than 100 communicants. Trinity Church of East New York was incorporated on September 11, 1854, the first place of worship being on what was then Wyckoff avenue. The present church on the corner of Arlington and Schenck avenues was dedicated on November 14, 1886, and greatly enlarged in 1890. The church has 380 communicants and the same number of Sunday-school attendants. The rector is the Rev. Nelson R. Boss, M. A., who took charge in November, 1884. St. Andrew's Church on Forty-seventh street, near Third avenue, has 300 communicants. It was organized on December 4, 1887, the first pastor being the Rev. Henry F. Scudder, who was succeeded by the Rev. W. Allen Fiske on January i, 1890. There are 310 communicants and 200 in the Sunday-school. St. Stephen's Church was originally a mission of St. Andrew's, organized in 1867. The parish of St. Stephen's was erected in 1868, in which year the church was built on the corner of Patchen and Jefferson avenues. This was dedicated on February 21, 1869. The present rector is the Rev. H. T. Scudder. The church numbers 250 communicants and there are 313 Sunday-school scholars. St. George's Church was organized on October 24, 1869. A church on Greene avenue, near Tompkins, was built and the Rev. Alvah Guion became rector. To him the church owes in a great measure its exist- ence. In 1888 the present church was built on the corner of Marcy and Gates avenues. The Rev. H. R. Harris is the present rector. The church has 840 communicants and 484 Sunday-school members. Holy Comforter Chapel.— The Chapel of the Holy Comforter was organized in 1889 and raised to a parish in 1892. The chapel is on Debevoise street, near Humboldt. The first rector was the Rev. G. M. Mayer. He was succeeded in 1892 by the Rev. Dr. Wm. T. Tierkel, who resigned in February, 1893. St. Bartholomew's Church on Bedford avenue, near Pacific street, was organized in 1887 and admitted as a parish on March i of that year. A church was at once built and the present rector, the Rev. T. B, Oliver, was installed. There are 450 communicants and a Sunday-school of 400 members. St. John's Chapel of the Church Charities Foundation was first opened in 1851. The present chapel in the hospital building was erected in 1880. The work was in charge of chaplains appointed by the bishop until 1891, when the first regular rector was appointed. The Rev. Albert C. Bunn was installed on Septem- ber 25 of that year, with full charge of the religious work of the combined charities. Saint Augustine's Church was admitted as a parish in 1891, having been organized in 1874. In 1890 a church was built on Canton street and Park avenue, and the Rev. J. P. Williams was installed as rector. The church has 220 communicants and 202 pupils in the Sunday-school. St. Margaret's Chapel, on Van Brunt, near President street, was organized about five years ago. It has never become a parish, but as a diocesan mission is under the charge of the bishop. 566 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. Methodism in Brooklyn is under the control of the New York East Conference. The rule of this body extends over Connecticut, Long Island and New York city, east of Third avenue, the Bowery and Broad- way This conference meets annually, but, like every other annual conference, it has no law-making power. The laws are made solely by the General Conference, which is world-wide, and comes together every four years At the annual conference of the section only ministers and presiding elders are present ; reports are read and the presiding bishop announces the appointments to the various churches. The New York East Conference is divided into four districts-Connecticut, east of the Connecticut river ; Connecticut west; Brooklyn, south, to Montauk Point, and the "New York District," so-called, taking in the north of Brook- lyn The line of division in Kings County curves in and out so as best to divide the field according to the strength of the churches. Each church has its "quarterly conference," an assembly of trustees, stewards and class leaders. The trustees (five to nine as may be) have authority over financial mat- ters, and are annually elected. The stewards attend to the poor funds and benevolent work of all kinds, and have charge of the communion service. The congregation is divided into " classes," each of which has its " leader," appointed by the pastor. The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in this country are not districted, but act as a single man. Sands Street Memorial Church. — The first Methodist Episcopal Church in Brooklyn is that known as the Sands Street Memorial Church, the origin of which has been referred to. For several years meet- ings were held in private houses, and in 1794 a church was incorporated under the title of " First Methodist Episcopal Church of Nassau Island." A board of trustees, con- sisting of John Garrison, Thomas Van Pelt, Burdett Stryker, Stephen Hendrickson, Rich- ard Everett and Isaac Moser, purchased from Joshua and Comfort Sands a lot fronting on New street, and the first house of worship was built. In 1796 the church was enlarged, and in 1810 a much larger church was erected. In 1812 the York Street Church was organized as a branch, and in 1831 the Washington Street Methodist Episcopal Church was erected. During the succeeding four years the Sands street and Washington street societies constituted one church and were under the same pastoral care, although having separate financial interests. In 1835 the two churches were separated, and from that date were in charge of different pastors. A few years later the old Sands Street Church was torn down, and a more enduring edifice of brick was erected. This was destroyed by fire on September 9, 1848. A new building was erected on the same site, and was occupied until its removal became necessary for the extension of the East River bridge. The corner-stone of the present church, at the corner of Clark and Henry streets, was laid on November i, 1889, and the dedicatory services were held on Sunday, March i, 1891. The church has 350 members and an equal num- ber in the Sunday-school. The Rev. S. L. Beiler became pastor in April, 1892. Janes Church. — Previous to 1858, that section of the city called Brownsville, now the twenty-fifth ward, was unprovided with a place of worship of any denomination. In June of that year Mr. Northrop, a member of Washington Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, organized a Sunday-school in his house and was assisted in the work by Ebenezer Wilson. In February, 1859, a house was leased on what is now the corner of Patchen avenue and Madison street, and services were held there, under the auspices of the Local Preachers' Association. The mission, known as the " Janes Mission," was practically under the care of the Nathan Bangs Church. A church was built the same year on two lots at Reid avenue and Monroe street. The erection of the present church building at Reid avenue and Monroe street was begun on October 29, 1883, and the building was dedicated on November 30, 1884, In April, 1889, the Rev. James Montgomery, the present pastor, took charge. The church has more than 1,100 members and 1,200 chil- dren in the Sunday-school, which is presided over by J. B. Morrell. Sands Street Memorial Church. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 567 New York Avenue Church. — For several years subsequent to 1855, tl'e section of the city in wliicli tlie New York Avenue M. E. Church was located was in a transitional state; the only thoroughfare was the old Clove Road, which was near the present line of Nostrand avenue. In the latter part of 1855 John Mc- Killop, a local preacher of the Summerfield M. E. Church, began to hold prayer-meetings at a private house near where the penitentiary is now situated. Then a small house was leased for four years, and opened for religious service on March 16, 1856. The new congre- gation received the name of the Clove Road Mission of Summerfield M. E. Church, and on June 9, 1856, the mission was made a separate society, and became known as the Nathan Bangs M. E. Church. In (October of the same year a plot of land was purchased, bounded by Clove Road, Butler street, Nostrand avenue and Douglass street, and a chapel was built, which was dedicated on March 8, 1857. Several mission enterprises were organized from time to time, which resulted in the formation of several new churches — the Greenfield, now Parkville Church ; the Janes Church, organized in 1859 ; the Gates Avenue Mission, organized as the Nos- trand Avenue Church in 1865, and the Embury Church, organized in 1866. The location of the Nathan Bangs Church becoming unfavorable to continued usefulness, the building of St. Andrew's P. E. Church, corner of Herkimer street and New York avenue, was purchased, and the first services were held there New York Avenue Methodist Church. on September 21, i!: The name of the society was changed to the New York Avenue M. E. Church, and a growth was at once perceptible in the membership. In July, 1874, an addition was made to the building, and in 1878 the church building was much enlarged. In June, 1887, the present church site at New York avenue and Dean street was purchased, and during the pastorate of the Rev. George P. Mains, the edifice now occupied was erected at a cost of $109,000. It was dedicated on October 19, 1891. The Rev. M. B. Chapman, D.D., became pastor in April, 1892. The church has 650 members and a Sunday- school of 600. Sumner Avenue Church. — In August, 1868, a number of persons, then identified with the Wesley M. E. Church, secured the second floor of a dwelling on the corner of Lafayette and 'fompkins avenues, and in this place about thirty persons were organized into a society, under the name of the Tompkins Square M. E. Church, the first services being held on September 6, 1S68, by the Rev. Henry Asten. The Rev. A. H. Mead was made pastor, and began his labors on September 13. In the spring of 1S69 a church site was selected on Greene avenue, one hundred and fifty feet east of Tompkins, where a neat frame building was erected, and on July 25 was dedicated. On April i, 1870, the legal name of the church was changed to Greene Avenue M. E. Church. A plot of ground one hundred feet square, on the corner of Sumner avenue and Van Buren street, on which the present edifice stands, was purchased in April, 1886, the name being changed to Sumner Avenue M. E. Church. The corner-stone of the new edifice was laid on March 23, 1888, and the people began to worship in the new lecture-room on Sunday, September 30, of that year. On January 6, 1889, the church was dedicated. The Rev. Dr. C. C. Lasby was the pastor of the church at the time of its dedication, and was succeeded by the present pastor, the Rev. James S. Chadwick, D. D. The membership now numbers 780, while that of the Sunday-school is 760. The Rev. J.\mes S. Chadwick, D. D., is a New Yorker by birth. He was a printer and worked at that trade until 1S55. Then he began his studies for the ministry and in October, 1861, was graduated from the Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, Ills. In 1861 he united with the Rock River Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was appointed by Bishop Simpson as City Missionary in Chicago. His duties called him to preach to the various companies of union soldiers at camp Douglas. He also labored among the Confederate prisoners brought to the camp. His ne.xt appointment was to the Third Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Rockford, Ills. In October of 1866 he was transferred to the Newark Con- ference and became pastor successively at Bethel, Staten Island, and Halsey Street Church, Newark, N. J. In the spring of 1872 he was transferred to the Kentucky Conference and appointed to the pastorate of Union Methodist Episcopal Church, Covington, Ky., remaining in each of these charges a full term. During the six years that he was in Kentucky he published and edited the Methodist Herald. He was sent hy the Kentucky Conference, in 1876, as a delegate to the General Conference of his denomination, which met that year in the city of Baltimore, Md. He was intimately identified with Sunday-school work in 5^ THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Kentucky and served as president of the State Sunday-school Association and as chairman of the executive committee. Returning east he became pastor of State Street Church, Trenton, N. J., and came to Brooklyn in the spring of 1879 as pastor of the Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church. He then succeeded the Rev. Dr. J. P. Newman, now bishop, as pastor of Cen- tral Church, Seventh avenue and Fourteenth street, New York, and suc- cessively became pastor of the Forty-third street and Bedford street churches. In November, 1889, he was elected assistant corresponding secretary of the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and served until January 31, 1892, at which time he tendered his resignation to return to pastoral work. Bishop . Goodsell transferred him to the New York East Conference and appointed him as pastor of this growing and influential church, where he commenced his labors on February i, 1892. He has lectured with success, and while acting as assistant corresponding secretary of the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society, he served as one of the editors of The Chris- „, TT ■ , , , r -rs . f T^- • ■-. r ^\. Rev. James S. Chadwick, D. D. tian Educator. He received the degree of Doctor of Divmity from the Ohio Wesleyan University in 1876. He has served as president of the New York Methodist Preachers' Meeting, and at the present time is president of the Brooklyn and Long Island Ministerial Association. Su.MMERFiELD Church. — In the early part of the year 185 1, Robert Ibbotson and John De Gray, two prominent Brooklyn Methodists, initiated a movement to establish a Methodist Episcopal Church in the neighborhood of Washington and Greene avenues. Three lots of ground on Washington avenue were pur- chased and a small church was erected there. It was opened for service in September of the same year, and was the seventh church of that denomination established in the city. The Rev. Charles Fletcher, a local preacher, occupied the pulpit for the first few Sundays, and was afterwards appointed pastor. The present church building at the corner of Washington and Greene avenues was dedicated by Bishop Janes in February, 1857. In April, 1889, the present pastor of the church, the Rev. T. P. Frost, took charge. The church has 500 members and there is a large Sunday-school superintended by George H. Raymond. No higher commendation can be earned by a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal faith than that con- veyed in the printed records of the conference under whose direction he labors. Of the Rev. Timothy P. Frost, to whom has been confided the care of the Summerfield church, the published statements found in biographical sketches of General Conference delegates say : " Progress and prosperity have marked his pathway. The range of his scholarship, the thoroughness of his devotion, and ability of his utterances mark him out for valuable services." He was born at Mount Holly, Vermont, on June 26, 1850. His grandfather settled there when the present state of Vermont was a portion of the New Hampshire grants. Timothy P. Frost was educated in the Vermont Methodist Episcopal Seminary at Montpelier, and at the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn. While a student at the former of these institutions he experi- enced a religious awakening that resulted in his conversion. His studies concluded, he was licensed to preach in 1870, and six years later joined the Vermont Conference. Pastorates, lasting three years each, were assigned to him at Thetford Center, Woodstock, Bradford and Montpelier, and one of shorter dura- tion made him a resident of St. Johnsbury for two years. In 1886 and 1887 he officiated as chaplain of the Vermont senate, without interfering with the discharge of his pastoral duties. While laboring at Brad- ford and Thetford he was appointed to the superintendency of the public schools, and in 1883 was appointed by the governor a delegate to the Interstate Educational Convention which met in that year at Louis- ville, Ky. In 1888 he served as chairman of the delegation sent by Vermont to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church and, until the termination of his residence in his native state, there was little connected with affairs of his denomination in which he did not bear some part. He was also a fre- quent and able occupant of the lecture platform. He was assigned to his present charge in the spring of 1889, and his efforts in a field usually productive of good results have been rewarded with the most grati- fying success. On January 23, 1876, he married, in eastern Vermont, Miss Caroline M. Holt. Hanson Place Church. — In 1847 a few members of Sands Street Church, associated with one or two others, organized the Dean Street Methodist Episcopal Church. A plain edifice was erected on four lots of ground on Dean street, between Fourth and Fifth avenues, donated by Mrs. Mary Powers. This was dedicated by Bishop Janes on Wednesday, October 27, 1847. For ten years the society struggled for existence, and then it was decided to rebuild in a better locality ; accordingly the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on May 26, 1857. Land was purchased on the corner of Hanson place and St. Felix street, and the new building was dedicated on Sunday, January 3, 1858. The present house of worship was dedicated on January 4, 1874. There are more than 2,000 members in the church and the Sunday-school has nearly 1,600 members. The Rev. Charles W. Parsons became pastor in April, 1892. / ■\ S7° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Hanson Place Methodist Church. The work accomplished by the Rev. James Munroe Buckley, D. D., LL. D., in connection with the Hanson Place M. E. Church was productive of results which have endeared his memory to those who recall the days of his pastorate. He came to Brooklyn in 1866, and for three years he occupied the pulpit of the Summer- field Church ; in fact, for the twelve succeeding years he divided his services between this city and Stam- ford, Conn. During his stay in the latter city he turned his attention towards the enforcement of the excise laws, and conducted a crusade against the liquor dealers which gained him a reputation for energy, ability and persistency of purpose. The facility with which he presented the legal aspects of his case to the courts enduced from his opponents tributes which were de- served but reluctantly rendered. He became known as the " Lawyer Preacher." In 1878 the Summerfield Church invited him for a third term ; but it was the opinion of the bishop presiding that he should be ap- pointed to the Hanson Place Church, where he remained three years. In 1880, while still pastor there, he was elected to his present responsible position as editor of the New York Christian Advocate, but continued for nearly a year in the pulpit. He has been the recipient of many honors from those whose authority is recog- nized in the councils of the Methodist Episcopal Church; he was sent as a delegate to the General Confer- ence 1872, 1876, 1880, 1884 and 1888, and in 1881 he was appointed to a seat in the Ecumenical Conference. He was also a delegate to the Second Ecumenical Council in 1891 and to the General Conference of 1892. He received the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity from the Wesleyan University, and that of Doctor of Laws from Emory and Henry College, Va. He is the son of the Rev. John Buckley, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and his mother was a daughter of Judge Clayton Monroe, of New Jersey. He was born at Rah way, N. J., on December 16, 1836, and after preparing for college was engaged for some time in mercantile pursuits in Philadelphia. In 1856 he entered the Wesleyan University with the intention of preparing himself for admission to the bar. Failing health caused him to leave the University in the second year of his term. He became actively interested in religious work and in March, 1858, he entered the ministry at Exeter, N. H., where he accepted thf pastorate of an independent church. While attending to his religious duties he continued his collegiate i udies under private instructors and read the- ology under the direction of the late Dr. Nathaniel Laselle, pastor of the First Congregational Church of Exeter. In 1859 he rejoined the Methodist Episcopal Church and held successive pastorates at Dover and Manchester, N. H. A year spent in European travel and three more passed in ministerial work in Detroit, where a church was erected during his ministry, preceded his advent in Brooklyn. He continues in the editorial direction of the New York Christian Advocate. Eighteenth Street Church. — The sixth Methodist Episcopal church established in the city is the Eighteenth Street Church, on Eighteenth street, near Fifth a- 'e. The first Methodist services were held in that district in the autumn of 1836, in a private house, x 840 a large kitchen near the junction of Prospect and Hamilton avenues was hired, and for two year^ services were held there. The first church edifice was erected on Eighteenth street, near Third avenue, m 1842. During the years 1849-1850, when the Rev. H. D. Latham was pastor, the present site of the church was purchased, on which in 1855 a larger chapel was erected. In 1882 the old frame church was torn down and the erection of the present edifice was begun. The church has 700 members, and there are more than 1,200 children in the Sunday-school. The present pastor of the church, the Rev. C. H. Buck, was called to its pulpit in 1891. Nostrand Avenue Church. — In i860 Ebenezer Wilson lived on the corner of Nostrand avenue and Quincy street, and in his house a Sabbath-school was held, accompanied by regular services. From this small source the Nostrand Avenue MethoJist Episcopal Church had its origin, and at the conference of 1866 the mission was made a regular appointment. The same year the site at Nostrand avenue and Quincy street, on which the church now stands, was purchased and the church assumed its present title. The building of a chapel was begun in September, 1866, and the dedication occurred on February 28, 1869. The present church was completed and dedicated in 1881. The Rev. Arthur H, Goodenough is the pastor. The church has a membership of 1,102 and a Sunday-school of 1,200, 572 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. REV. Wm. v. Kelley, D. D. St John's Church.— The society which has been known for twenty- five years as St. John's Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on May 8 1849, as the Third Methodist Episcopal Church. Its first home was on' the corner of South Fifth and Driggs streets. It was dedicated on July 25, 1850. On April 18, 1866, the name of "St. John's" was adopted. Lots were bought on the corner of Bedford avenue and Wilson street, and the dedication of the completed edifice occurred on Thursday, April 23, 1868. The church has 900 members and a Sunday-school of 850. The Rev. J. W. Johnson became pastor in April, 1892, succeeding the Rev. William V. Kelley, D. D. The Rev. William V. Kelley, D. D., was born in Plainfield, N.^J., m 1843. He was graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., in June, 1865, and during the following two years taught mathematical science and German in Pennington Seminary, New Jersey. He served as a pastor of churches in Camden, New Brunswick and Newark, N. J.; in Buffalo, N. Y.; Philadelphia, Pa.; and Middletown, Conn. Dr. Kelley was appointed pastor of St. John's Church in 1881, and held that position during fully one-third of the history of the church, although he was absent at one time for three years— being assigned to fill another pulpit. In the early spring of 1892, owing to the system of itineracy pursued by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Dr. Kelley was again transferred. His departure was a subject of deep regret to his congregation. He received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from Wesleyan University in 1883. He has been an extensive traveler in Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor and in Europe, the result of which is to be noted in the classic accuracy of his utterances and writ- ings. For many years he has been a frequent contributor to church re- views and periodicals ; and he is the author of a biography of Bishop Wiley, a carefully prepared and ex- ceptionally valuable work. He was also requested to write a life of Bishop Simpson, but owing to a pressure of other duties was unable to do so. Embury Church, on Herkimer street, corner of Schenectady ave- nue, originated in a meeting in the house of Mr. J. Dundas, on Decem- ber 10, 1865. The church was fully organized on April 6, 1866, and the building was dedicated on June 9, 1867. It was enlarged in 1876. The first pastor was the Rev. Thomas Stephenson, who served until 1872, and the present pastor is the Rev. W. W. Bowdish. There are 338 members and the Sunday-school numbers 575. Grace Church was organized in January, 1878, and at once pur- chased the chapel built by the Seventh Avenue M. E. Church, on Sterling place, in 1869. Afterward the present church was erected on Seventh avenue and St. John's place, and dedicated Jan. 21, 1883. The pastor is the Rev. Charles M. Giffin, St. John's Methodist Church. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 573 The Swedish Emanuel Church, originally known as the Scandinavian M. E. Church, was at first a part of the work of the New York Bethel Association. For several years religious meetings were held at the houses of various Swedes, but in 1868 it was determined to erect a chapel on Pacific street near Flat- bush avenue. In 187 1 the present brick church on Dean street, near Fifth avenue, was erected and the church became a part of the New York East Conference. The work was first under the care of the Rev. Albert Ericson, who was succeeded in 1880 by the Rev. A. J. Anderson, the present pastor. The church has 450 members and a Sunday-school of 500. Johnson Street Church. — The Johnson Street Church, on the corner of Johnson and Jay streets, was organized in 1839 by a colony from Washington Street Church. The church edifice was built in 1840. The Rev. T. D. Littlewood is pastor. The membership is 130 and there is a Sunday-school of 175. Knickerbocker Avenue Church. — The Knickerbocker Avenue Church, under the ministry of the Rev. William M. Stonehill, is located on Knickerbocker avenue, corner of Ralph street ; the first place of worship was in Ridgewood Chapel, I5i8-Gates avenue. The present church was dedicated on November 2,1891, just three months and two days after the date of organization. It has about 175 attendants and 85 members, with nearly 600 in the Sunday-school membership. Powers Street Church. — The Powers Street Church was incorporated in 1845 as the Second M. E. Church of Williamsburgh, L. I., and was located at the corner of Grand and Ewen streets. Since January, 1886, it has occupied a building on Powers street, between Ewen and Leonard. The church numbers 135 members and the Sunday-school has 273 scholars. The Rev. Nathan Hubbell is pastor. Williams Avenue Church. — The Williams Ave- nue Church was organized in 1861 as the East New York M. E. Church ; seven years later it was reconsti- tuted under the title, of the Ebenezer Church. The present edifice was erected in 1890 on the site first built upon in 1869. The Rev. I. C. Barnhart is pastor. There are 411 members and the Sunday-school num- bers 650. Carroll Park Church was organized in 1872, and the members worshiped in a store on Smith, near Carroll street, until December 22, 1872, when the present building was dedicated. The church mem- bership numbers no and there are 182 members in the Sunday-school. The Rev. J. E. Searles is pastor. Simpson Church, or, as it was formerly called, Carlton Avenue M. E. Church, was organized as the Eighth M. E. Church in February, 1845. This cor- porate name it has since retained, although once popu- larly designated after the location of its first church built on Carlton avenue, near Myrtle, in the summer of 1845. The corner-stone of the present church edifice, on Willoughby and Clermont avenues, was laid on September 24, 1851, and the building was com- pleted the following year. The church on Carlton avenue was mainly constructed of material from the old York Street Church. The chapel on Vanderbilt and Willoughby avenues was built in 1890. The first pastor was the Rev. Nicholas White and the present incumbent is the Rev. J. O. Wilson. The church has 900 members and a Sunday-school of 786 members. DeKalb Avenue Church originated in a prayer-meeting held in a private house on Flushing avenue in the fall of 1836. By January 18, 1837, the church was organized. In 1840 a church was built on Frank- lin avenue, near Park, and in the next year the church became a part of the Williamsburgh circuit, the Rev. Marvin Richardson being the first pastor. In 1846 the station was called East Brooklyn. The present church was built in 1856. In 1864 part of the members withdrew to form the Tompkins Avenue Church. The church has now 650 members with a Sunday-school membership of 640. Warren Street Church grew from a series of religious meetings held in the house of Caleb Leverich in 1852. The next year he set apart the upper floors of three houses on Baltic street for the use of the "Hedding Mission," which in 1853. united with the Hicks street mission. In 1855 the Hedding mission was again left alone by the formation of the Hicks street church, and it moved to the old Reformed church at Court and Butler streets. It afterward occupied a hall on Court street and Sackett, and in 1858 the par- lor of a house on Warren street. In 1859 the church was incorporated under its present name and the Simpson Church. 574 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. present church on Warren street was built and dedicated on June 24, i860. In 1869 it was remodeled. The pastors were at first supplied by the Local Preachers' Association. The present pastor is the Rev. W. E. Smith. The church has 100 members and 200 Sunday-school pupils. Epworth Church was organized in 1892 by a union of the Cedar street and Cook street churches and is under the pastoral care of the Rev. H. W. Byrnes. Its house of worship is at Bushwick and DeKalb avenues. The membership is 400 and there are 500 members in the Sunday-school. Cedar Street Church originated in a Sunday-school movement begun on Evergreen avenue, near DeKalb, in 187 1. The following year it moved to Broadway and became known as the "Broadway Mission." It was soon found expedient to hire a church building on Kosciusko street. In 1875 the church on Cedar street, near Bushwick avenue, was purchased from the Protestant Methodists, and was opened for worship on the first Sunday in 1876. The Cook Street Church was organized in 1841 and was for years known as the Bushwick Methodist Episcopal Church. Its early location was on Bushwick avenue, near the Cross Roads, now Cook street. The society secured the site on Cook street, near Bushwick avenue, and at various times altered and enlarged the building it placed there. South Third Street Church. — The South Third Street Church was organized on July 29, 1852, and a few months later began to worship in the edifice which it occupies on the block bounded by Union avenue, South Third, Hewes and Stagg streets. The present pastor is the Rev. William W. Gillies. There are 350 members and the Sunday-school numbers 500. Andrews Church. — As the result of an effort made to provide a church home for Methodists in the district known as Cypress Hills, a small building was erected on Union place and occupied in the spring of 1852. In the same year a Sunday-school was organized. Until 1861 the charge was served by local, preachers, but in that year the Rev. Stephen Rushmore was made pastor. The church is now located on Richmond street, between Fulton and Jamaica avenues. There are 235 members and 400 pupils in the Sunday-school. The pastor is the Rev. W. T. Pray. The Tabernacle Church was organized in 1864 by some members of the Greenpoint Methodist Episcopal Church under the direction of the Rev. J. F. Booth. In January, 1870, the present church was built on Manhattan avenue, opposite Noble street. The Rev. A. S. Kavanah is the pastor. There are 545 members and a Sunday-school equally strong in numbers. Bethel Ship Mission — The Norwegian and Danish Bethel Ship mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church was originally the Scandinavian Methodist Episcopal Bethel Ship mission of New York. In 1875 the Bethel ship was moored at the foot of Harrison street, where services were held until 1879, in which year a hall on the corner of President and Van Brunt streets was obtaineji. In 1881 the present church edifice was erected on the site of this hall as a donation from Edwin Mead, of New York, at which time the present name was adopted. The pastors in Brooklyn have been the Revs. O. B. Peterson, B. Johansen, Christopher Freeder, E. O. Bates, O. P. Petersen and S. E. Simonsen, the present incumbent. There are 165 members and a Sunday-school of 115. St. Luke's Church was organized in 1880. For a long time worship was held in a building on the corner of Harrison avenue and Hooper street, but in 1886 the present church on Marcy avenue, corner of Penn street, was occupied. The church numbers 200 members and is under the pastoral care of the Rev. R. Wasson. The Sunday-school has 350 members. The Central Church was organized in 1867 by the Rev. E. L. James, who began services in a build- ing on South Fifth, near Driggs street, formerly used by St. John's Church, now on Bedford avenue. The church has 450 members and a Sunday-school of the same number. The Rev. W. D. Thompson is pastor. Francis Church, on Park avenue, near Bedford, was organized in 1876. Until 1889 services were held in a chapel on Park avenue, near Skillman street, but in that year the present church was built and occupied. The pastor is the Rev. C. S. Williams. There are 108 members in the church and 481 in the Sunday-school. The First Methodist Episcopal Church of Greenpoint had its origin in meetings held by laymen. In 1847 it was organized by the Rev. S. H. Clark, who was pastor two years, and under whose ministry a frame building was erected on the corner of Manhattan avenue and Java street. This was graduallv com- pleted and enlarged to form the present church. In 1864 a part of the members seceded to form the Greenpoint Tabernacle Church. The First Church has 500 members and a Sunday-school of 500. The present pastor is the Rev. C. E. Miller. The South Second Street Church, properly known as the First Methodist Episcopal Church, was the first religious organization in the village of Williamsburgh and the second in the town of Bushwick! It was organized in i8oo and its first church was built in 1808 on the old Williamsburgh and Jamaica turnpike. This was repaired in 182 1 and was occupied until the dedication of the present building in August, 1838. This is on South Second street, near Driggs street. In 1845 the old building was burned. In 1842 the church received its first pastor from the conference, having previously formed a part of the Williamsburgh CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 575 circuit. From this old church have sprung all the churches in the Eastern District with the exception of St. John's. It has 400 members and a Sunday-school of 736. In 1853 the building was greatly injured by a storm, but was soon repaired and enlarged. In 1868 the present parsonage was added to the church property, and in 1875 the whole was remodeled with an entire change of front and a wing was added. The present pastor is the Rev. William D. Weston. BusHWiCK Avenue Church was organized in 1886. In the following year a hall on Bushwick avenue and Woodbine street was occupied for services, but a year later the church was located at Bushwick avenue and Ivy street. In 1890 the present church on Bushwick avenue and Madison street was completed and opened for public worship. The first and only pastor has been the Rev. L. K. Moore, who has served since 1888. The church has 600 members, and there are 1,350 persons connected with the Sunday-school. The Leonard Street Church was organized in November, 1867, in a room on the corner of Leonard and Skillman streets, where services were held until the dedication of the church on the corner of Leonard and Conselyea streets, on February 14, 1869. The church was incorporated as the Halfield M. E. Church. It has 150 members and a Sunday-school of more than 300. The Rev. T. Stevenson is pastor. The North Fifth Street Church originated in a Sunday-school organized in 1847 ir* the public school on North Second street. Soon afterward a church was organized and placed under the care of the Rev. S. H. Clark, of the Greenpoint Church. In 1848 a frame building was built on Fourth street, near North Fifth, and in 1850 the present church, on Bedford avenue and North Fifth street, was erected. The church has more than 200 members and a Sunday-school of 323, under the pastorate of the Rev. E. Cunningham. St. Paul's Church, formerly known as William Street M. E. Church, was reorganized in April, 1879. The property of the older church was sold, and services were held in private houses until a hall on William street, near Van Brunt, was obtained. The first pastor was the Rev. W. W. Bowdish, D. D. In 1887 the present church on Sullivan street, corner of Richards, was erected. The church is essentially a missionary post, but it has 130 members and a Sunday-school of 300, under the pastoral care of the Rev. G. Lass. York Street Church was a branch of the old Sands Street Church. The growth of the congregation of the present church resulted in the building of a chapel, which was dedicated by Bishop George on April 6, 1824. In 1828 a parsonage was built near the church, and in 1835 the chapel was enlarged. In 185 1 the present brick church was built and the brick chapel was added in 1853 ; the land being donated by Rutson Suckley. The Sunday-school was organized in 1832, and occupied rooms on the corner of Charles and Prospect streets until the erection of the chapel in 1853. The first pastor was the Rev. S. L. Stillman ; the present incumbent is the Rev. Lemuel Richardson. The church has 200 members and 280 Sunday-school scholars. Sixth Avenue Church was organized in 1884. In 1888 the present church edifice was built on the corner of Sixth avenue and Eighth street, previous to which time the congregation worshiped in a hall. The first pastor was the Rev. I. M. Foster ; he was followed by the Revs. E. Cunningham, C. E. Harris and the present pastor, the Rev. D. A. Jordan. The church has 315 members and a Sunday-school of 840 members. The Swedish Bethany Church was organized on March 28, 1891, by some members of the Swedish Church. The Emanuel Church had already purchased the property of the Calvary Baptist Church, on the corner of Troy avenue and Herkimer street, and this was at once turned over to the new congregation. The Rev. C. F. Thornblad was settled as the pastor. The church has 160 members and 125 Sunday-school scholars. Fleet Street Church, on Fleet street, corner Lafayette street, was organized by some seceding members of the Sands street and Washington street churches in March, 1850. In September of the same year a brick lecture room was dedicated, and in June, 1852, the present church edifice was begun. It was completed early in 1853. In 1859 a parsonage was built, the lecture room enlarged and the whole was renovated in 1872. The first pastor was the Rev. R. M. Hatfield ; the present incumbent is the Rev. C. J. North. The membership of the church is 572 and the Sunday-school is nearly as large. The First Place Church originated in a mission Sunday-school started under the auspices of the Washington Street M. E. Sunday-school in connection with some Baptists, who, later, formed the Strong Place Baptist Church. Early in 1850 the society was organized Land was purchased and a church built on the corner of Hicks and Summit streets. This was subsequently sold, and land was purchased at First place and Henry street, from which fact the name of the church was derived. The church was dedicated on Sep- tember 14, 1856. The pastor is the Rev. R. S. Pardington, and the church has a membership of 470, with 404 in the Sunday-school. Throop Avenue Church was organized in 1886. In 1887 services were held in Throop avenue, near Myrtle, by the Rev. J. Pilkington. In 1889 the present church in Throop avenue, near EUery street, was built, and the Rev. Geo. Dunbar became pastor. He was succeeded by the Revs. B. E. Taylor, W. Twiddy and W. E. Smith, the present pastor. The church has 58 members and a Sunday-school of 254. 576 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Russell Place Church was organized in 1886, and in the following year the church on Russell place, near Saratoga avenue, was erected. The Rev. J. E. Searles, the first pastor, was succeeded by the Rev. Alexander :\IcLean. The Rev. J. J. Foust is the present incumbent. The church has 170 members, with 339 in the Sunday-school. GooDSELL Church, named in honor of Brooklyn's bishop, the Rev. D. A. Goodsell, D. D., was organ- ized in 1888. In 1890 the present church on Sheridan avenue, corner of Adams street, was built, and the Rev. E. H. Hopgood was assigned as its pastor. The church has 40 members and 100 Sunday-school scholars. » The Fourth Avenue Church was organized on JNIarch 9, 1880, by some members of the Eighteenth Street U. E. Church. A mission Sunday-school had been organized in 1874. The first pastor was the Rev. Jesse Pooey. A chapel was built at 212 and 214 Forty-fourth street in October, 1876, before which time the work had been carried on in private houses. In 1879 the chapel was enlarged, and in 1885 the build- ing was moved to the present site, on Fourth avenue and Forty-seventh street. It was rededicated on June 28, 1885. The present pastor is the Rev. J. H. Lightbourn. The church has 234 members and 500 Sunday- school scholars. A new church is to be built. Wesley Church was organized in 1884. In 1886 public worship was begun on Shepard avenue, near Baltic street, under the pastoral care of the Rev. John Xash. In 1889 quarters were procured on Shepard avenue, near Belmont, where the congregation worshiped until the completion of its present church on Berriman street, corner of Eastern Parkway, in 1889. The church numbers 70 members and has 188 Sun- day school scholars. It is under the pastoral care of the Rev. W. B. Stewart. METHODIST EPISCOPAL (COLORED) CHURCHES. Since 1890 the ^lethodist Episcopal churches for colored people in Brooklyn have been reduced from seven to five. The two disbanded churches were Mount Calvary and the Zion Mission. Of the existing churches the African Wesleyan, St. John's and the Union Bethel are connected with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the other two are connected with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion branch of the denomination. The African Wesleyan M. E. Church, on Bridge street, near Myrtle avenue, is the oldest in the city. It was organized in 1818, and is in charge of the Rev. W. H. Butler. Its membership list numbers nearly 900, with about 300 children in its Sunday-school. St. John's A. M. E. Church, on Howard avenue, near Herkimer street, was organized in 1889, and the Rev. J. F. Anderson is its pastor. It has 70 members, with the same number in the Sunday-school. Union Bethel A. M. E. Church is on Dean street, near Schenectady avenue. The Rev. F. F.. Giles is the minister there and he has over 100 members in his flock and about 90 in the Sunday-school. The Fleet Street A. M. E. Zion Church was organized in 1873, a^^d until 1882 belonged to the A. ;M. E. denomination. In that year it separated from that body and associated itself with the Zion denomination. The Rev. R. W. Stitt is the pastor, and the membership numbers about 400 in the church and Sunday-school. Union Zion Church on South Third street, near Hooper street, is in charge of the Rev. George E. Smith. It was established in 1843 and about 160 members are enrolled in the church and Sunday-school. GERMAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. First German. — Under the corporate name First German M. E. Church of Williamsburgh, the Ger- mans of that denomination organized a church in Maj', 1846, and built a frame edifice at the corner of Lorimer and Stagg streets. The brick church on the same site was built in 1854. The Rev. F. H Rey was appointed pastor in 1890. There are nearly 200 members and a Sunday-school of 400. WvcKOFF Street Church. — The second German M. E. Church in Brooklyn, according to age, is that on Wyckoff street, near Hoyt, now under the pastoral care of the Rev. F. Glenk. It was organized in 1854, and has 80 members, with a Sunday-school of 176. St. John's Church. — The German :N[ethodists organized St. John's Church on April 14, 1&78, and in July of the same year occupied the church edifice on Yates place, near Broadway. The church has 200 members and a Sunday-school of 350. The Rev. A. Flammann is pastor. Greene Avenue Church. — The organization of Greene Avenue Church was effected in 1885, and its place of worship is on Greene avenue, near Central street. The Rev. G. Rubeck is pastor, and the member- ship is 140; the Sunday-school has 420 members. other METHODIST CHURCHES. Bedford Avenue Tabernacle. — The first Methodist Protestant Church organized in Brooklyn was the Bedford Avenue Tabernacle, on Bedford avenue, corner of South Third street, which dates from 1832. The Rev. A. B. Kelly is pastor, and there are 107 members. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 577 Trinity Methodist Protestant Church was the first organization of tliat denomination in the village of Williamsburgh. It was organized in 1833, and its first church was a frame building on Grand street, near Bedford avenue, which was replaced in 1837 by a commodious brick building, in which the congregation continued to worship until 1887, when they purchased the building of the First Presbyterian Church, standing on the corner of South Fourth and Roebling streets. The church numbers 155 members. The Rev. J. H. Lucas is pastor. Fifth Avenue Methodist Protestant Church, of which the Rev. J. Thompson is pastor, is located at 415 Fifth avenue. First Primitive Methodist Church.— The first church in Brooklyn of the Primitive Methodist denomination was organized in 1837, and builded its first house of worship on Bridge street, between Tillary and Concord, in 1845. Its present house, on Park avenue, near North Elliott place, was dedicated in 1874. There are 108 members, and the Sunday-school numbers 160. The Rev. John H. Acornley is pastor. The Monroe Street Primitive Methodist Church, on Monroe street, near Stuyvesant avenue, was organized to a great extent through the efforts of its present pastor, the Rev. John J. Arnaud. The church edifice was dedicated on June 11, 1890, that being considered the official date of church organization. The society already numbers 200 members, and has a Sunday-school of 140. The Orchard Primitive Methodist Church was organized in 1874 as the "Orchard Primitive Methodist Church of the Seventeenth Ward of Brooklyn." The first location of the church was on the corner of Nassau avenue and Oakland street, but in 1878 a new church was occupied. In 1883 a site was purchased on Oakland street and a new church built, with lecture room and parsonage. The church has 120 members and 250 children in its Sunday-school. The Rev. W. H. Yarrow has been pastor since 1891. Welcome Primitive Methodist Church, at 152 Classon avenue, was organized in 1883 and has 72 members, with a Sunday-school of 65. The Rev. C. A. V. Lacour is pastor. Lebanon Mission, an organization of Primitive Methodists, is located at 246 Myrtle avenue and is in charge of E. H. Wright. It has 75 members. The First Free Methodist Church of Brooklyn is the only representative of this body of Methodists in the city. It was organized in 1869 and for several years occupied the building vacated by the First Presbyterian Church of South Brooklyn. The present place of worship was built and taken pos- session of in 1881, being located on Sixteenth street, near Fourth avenue. There are 90 members and 180 attendants at the Sunday-school. The Rev. J. T. Logan is the pastor. ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCHES. The local Catholic Church is known as the " Diocese of Brooklyn," though the bishop's power extends over the whole of Long Island. According to common law the bishop is called the "pastor of the diocese," and he is the supreme arbiter. He delegates a large part of his functions to individual priests and advisory boards. Next to the bishop stand the two vicars-general of the diocese, who in his absence practically have the power of deputies, or assistant bishops, and who, as during the recent interregnum caused by the death of Bishop Loughlin, rule in order of their seniority. The powers of the vicar-general are not clearly defined by canon law, but in general he hears cases and manages the diocesan affairs. His decisions are always subject to appeal to the bishop, but he settles directly a great number of minor matters. The rites of ordination and confirmation, however, he has no power to perform. The most important advisory board, and that standing nearest to the bishop, is the board of six consultors, three of whom are appointed directly by the bishop himself, and three of whom are selected from' a list of names sent in by all the priests of the diocese. Their terms are three years, and their chief duties are to advise regarding the building of new churches and the founding of new societies. The board is purely a consulting one, and has not the slightest power. It meets every Tuesday at the episcopal residence. The administrator of the diocese is its execu- tive officer, so far as legal and financial matters go. He is generally a notary public in order to ensure greater despatch in the diocesan work. He attends to the drawing up of deeds and the placing of mort- gages, and looks to the valuations of all church property. He has religious duties besides these secular ones, the chief of which is the granting of dispensations for marriages and crimes. Two of the most important diocesan boards are the board of examiners of the clergy, consisting of three members, and the parochial school board of three members ; the bishop appoints both boards. The priest of each parish is a law unto himself, subject only to the authority of the bishop. He has assistants in the larger churches, in two cases, at least, as many as five. Whatever lay influence there may be in a parish is exerted purely and indirectly through the church society. The priest is not controlled by any of his parishioners. The only case where a layman has responsibility or direction is in the drawing up of plans for a new edifice, when a member of the congregation is named as the trustee with the bishop and the parish priest. This diocese is The Right Rev. Charles e. McDox.%'ell, Bishop of Brooklyn. in the archdiocese of New Yorlv, which also includes Newark. It is numbered in the plenary council of Baltimore, which is composed of thirteen archbishops and seventy bishops. A synod of Long Island has been called for by the plenary council, and will probably meet in the spring. The Right Rev. Charles E. McDonnell, second Bishop of Brooklyn, was born in the city of New York in 1854 ; but shortly afterwards his parents moved to Brooklyn, where his mother now resides. He received his education at the La Salle Academy and at St. Francis Xavier's College ; he was then sent to Rome to complete his theological and philosophical studies. Before his return to America the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him, and he was ordained a priest by Bishop Chatard on May 18, 1878. His subsecjuent training in canon law and church ceremonial was obtained in the households of Cardinal McCloskey and Archbishop Corrigan, for the latter of whom he acted as private secretary until the time of his appointment to the vacant see. He acted as chamberlain to the Pope while in Rome. After the Right Reverend John Loughlin, the first Bishop of Brooklyn, died on December 29, 1891, the claims of several local priests were urged on the board of nominating bishops, but the unanimous choice of the bishops of the province fell upon the youthful secretary of the archbishop. The nomination was forwarded to Rome and was confirmed in a remarkably short time ; the confirmation of his appointment arriving from Rome on I\Iarch 7 ; the papal brief arrived on April 11. In compliance with a law of the church requiring the conse- cration of a bishop within three months rjf his appointment, the ceremony was appointed for April 25, and on that day the Cathedral of St. Patrick in New York city was the scene of one of the most splendid and imposing ecclesiastical ceremonies ever seen in that city. On Monday, May 2, he was installed in his see with the solemn ceremonies prescribed for that event. The Rev. Jajies H. Mitchell, chancellor of the diocese of Long Island, was born in Astoria, Queens County, N. Y., on October 10, 1853. His study in the village school was followed by two years work in public school No. 40, of New York, after which he entered the College of the City of New York. Having received a good classical education he determined to enter Manhattan College for the purpose of pursuing a course in philosophy preparatory to beginning theological studies. He was graduated with honors in 1874, and in September of the same year he entered the Grand Seminary of Montreal, where he remained until his ordination as priest on December 22, 1S77. The diocese of Long Island being at that time well supplied with clergy, the Right Reverend Bishop Loughlin granted the young priest permission to attach himself to the Sulpician Church of St. Patrick in Montreal, m which enormous parish he labored fourteen CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 579 Rev. James H. Mitchell, Chancellor. months. He was then recalled to Brooklyn and was made an assistant at the cathedral on Jay street. He was soon given charge of the St. James Young Men's Catholic Association, a society which he represented at the association convention held in Washington, D. C, in Mav, 1880. at which he was elected diocesan vice-president for Brooklyn. At the «*> ,^«*-<;i«-- :*- - convention of the National Union, held in Boston in 1882, he was elected first vice-president of that body. Within the year the president, the Right Reverend Bishop Keane, sailed for Europe, and upon Father Mitchell as vice-president fell the labor of preparing for the convention of 1883 which was held in Brooklyn. This proved a great success, and despite his protest Father Mitchell was elected to succeed Bishop Keane in the presidency, an office he held until 1891. His brilliant success in this office gained for him a reputation as an administrative official and organizer. In the meantime he continued his other duties as secretary to the late Bishop Loughlin, and as director of the St. James Associa- tion, the Rosary Society and of the Guard of Honor, to which was added much parish work. After the canonical erection of the Guard of Honor he organized a confraternity at the cathedral, which his zeal and elo- quence soon increased to 7,000 members. After the death of Bishop Loughlin, Father Mitchell was one of those named for the vacant bishopric, and on the appointment of Bishop McDonnell, Father Mitchell was made diocesan chancellor, with pastoral care of the St. John's Chapel, the nucleus of the new cathedral. St. James' Church. — On January 7, 1822, a meeting of Brooklyn Catholics was held to consider the question of establishing a church of their own faith. Cornelius Heeney offered a plot of land on the corner of Court and Congress streets as a site for a church, but this was declined as being too far out of the vil- lage. Mr. Heeney did not abandon his purpose, and St. Paul's Church stands on that site to-day. On March 2, 1822, eight lots were purchased on the corner of Jay and Chapel streets and the work of building was begun. The structure was completed and dedicated on August 28, 1823, and was named St. James'. A school had been established in connection with the church, and after some difficulty the Rev. John Farnam was induced to become the first pastor. He served until 1832. The Right Rev. John Loughlin was conse- crated bishop on October 30, 1853, and installed in the newly created see of Long Island on November g, of that year. He at once raised the pioneer church of his diocese to the rank of a cathedral. The bishop secured an excellent site for a new cathedral to occupy the block bounded by Lafayette, Clermont, Greene and Vanderbilt avenues. The corner-stone was laid on June 21, 1868, but the building, which was to be the finest ecclesiastical structure on Long Island, has never been completed, although the chapel, known as St. John's Chapel, is used for worship, and recently a palace for the bishop has been built on the corner of Greene and Clermont avenues. St. James' continues to be the cathedral church of the diocese, and its priesthood consists of the bishop and three assistant priests. There are 8,000 parishioners and 800 children in the Sunday-school. Most Holy Trinity.— The Church of the Most Holy Trinity was organized in July, 1841, for the German Catholics of Williamsburgh and has had three church buildings on the site of its present edifice on Montrose avenue, between Ewen street and Graham avenue. The present building was consecrated on September 29, 1891. In the parish there are ro,ooo parishioners and the Sunday-school numbers 600. An orphan home is connected with the parish and St. Catherine's Hospital is one of its adjuncts. The Very Rev. M. May, vicar-general, is pastor, and his assistants are the Revs. John Kaeberle, George Sander, Joseph Prankle and Georg Schaaf. Sts. Peter and Paul.— A stable on Grand street sheltered the altar at which, in 1838, the first mass was celebrated in ^Villiamsburgh. Three years later the Church of St. Mary's was established at the corner of North Eighth and First streets. In 1848 the Rev. Sylvester Malone became pastor and on May 11, 1847, the corner-stone was. laid of a new edifice, to which the name of Saints Peter and Paul's Church was given. This church was located on Wythe avenue, near South Second street. The parishioners number 3,500 and there are 400 children in the Sunday-school. Four priests assist the Rev. Sylvester Malone in the pastorate. The Rev. Sylvester Malone has done much to destroy the barriers which creed has too often thrust across the paths of social life. He has in the course of nearly half a century's work endeared him- self to all, Catholic and Protestant alike, who have witnessed or experienced the effect of his ministrations; he has alway inculcated the strict observance of a man's secular as well as his spiritual duties, and when the time came to prove men's loyalty to the nation, he was one of the first to give expression to his honest, practical sympathy with the Federal cause. It is as a worker rather than as a preacher that he has attamed his chief distinction in the community, but his sermons have long been famed as the messages which convey 58° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. needful moral assistance. He was born in the town of Trim, about twenty miles from Dublin, on May 8, 1821. He studied mathematics and classics at the Academy controlled by Prof. Matthew Carroll, a Protestant, under whose guidance young Malone was subjected to influences which had much to do with the shaping of his future career and the maturing of his character. In 1838 the Rev. Andrew Byrne, of St. James' Parish in New York, visited Ireland to seek recruits who were willing to enter the priesthood in the new world, and with him tiie young student sailed for Philadelphia. From Philadelphia he came to New York, where he was advised by Archbishop Hughes to enter the seminary which had been temporarily established under the auspices of the church at Le Fargeville, in Jefferson County. He studied there a year and then completed his theological course at St. John's Seminary, Fordham. On August 15, 1844, he was ordained a priest, being the first candidate to whom Archbishop McCloskey, afterwards the first American Cardinal, administered the sacrament of Holy Orders. The earliest work undertaken by him was among the widely dispersed population of the straggling hamlet which afterwards became the city of Williamsburgh and later an important section of Brooklyn. The five years between 1844 and 1849 constituted a period of incessant and arduous toil, and although a man of magnificent physicjue the strain proved too much for him and he succumbed to the attacks of disease. When barely convalescent his house with all his library and furniture was destroyed by fire. Within ten years of his ordination he had removed the debt from the old church, built a new church, a parochial school and a pastoral residence, besides establishing literary organizations for the mental improvement of the younger portion of his parishioners. In 1854 he visited Europe, and while there witnessed the council of bishops which Pius IX. had convened at Rome for the pur- pose of proclaiming the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. "\\'hile he was absent a mob, stirred by the political and religious passions which were then fermenting in A\'illiamsburgh, attacked his church and would have burned it to the ground but for the prompt interference of the authorities. When the great civil war in this country began Father Malone hoisted the LTnion flag on the spire of his church and there it remained until it was taken down in order that it might be carried to the front by Williams- burgh men. It was replaced by another flag which the citi- zens presented. All through the war he labored arduously on behalf of his country and contributed generously both in money and e.vertion to aid the men in the field and to benefit the wives and children whom they had left behind. When the country was once more united he made a tour throughout the south in company with the late Rev. Thomas Farrell. In 188 1 his health again demanded a release from overwork and he visited Europe and Asia. The most nota- ble incident of his tour was his celebration of mass on Mount Calvary. When he returned he strove more zealously than ever for a closer sympathy between the clergy and their people, having witnessed abroad the evil effects resulting from the establishment of a bar- rier between ecclesiastics and the laity. Satisfied to remain always in the sphere of a parish priest. Father Malone has never sought for advancement in the church. But in 1852, while attending the first plenary council which the church ever held in the United States and which was convened at Baltimore, he was appointed Theologian to Bishop Reynolds, of Charleston. In i866, in a simi- lar capacity, he attended the sec- ond plenary council in the same city. Lie has been for many years a member of the Episcopal council. On IMay 8, 1892, Father Malone celebrated his seventy- CnuRcu OF Sts, Peter .ind Paul. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 581 Rev. Sylvester Malone. first birthday, and he has the honor of having served longer in the religious work of Williamsburgh than any other clergyman. Staunch in his loyalty to the church to which tradition, birth and education had bound him by indissoluble ties he never has hesitated to recognize the good which is apparent in all classes of men however separate and distinct may be their views on religious questions. His avowed intention, when first he entered upon the ministrations which he has never since relaxed, was to promote a spirit of charity among all to whom his influence might ex- tend, and the story of his success needs no repeti- tion. He has cultivated tastes naturally refined by study and by foreign and domestic travel ; he has given to his people the best fruits produced by years of patient toil, and to his liberal teachings and con- stant example of practical benevolence is attributable , the universal love and esteem with which all classes of the community regard him. The Church of St. Boniface, on Duffield, near ! Willoughby street, was originally built by the Episco- palians, but was purchased from them in 1853 and dedicated by the ritual of the Roman Catholic Church on January 29, 1854. The first pastor was the Rev. M. Ramasaur, by whom German services were con- ducted. The present pastor is the Rev. George Feser. The parish contains 1,000 people and the schools have 200 scholars. St. Mary Star of the Sea — The Church of St. Mary Star of the Sea, on Court street, corner of Luquer, dates from 1855, and the house of worship was dedicated on April 29, 1855. There are 12,000 parishioners under the pastoral care of the Rev. Joseph P. O'Connell, D. D., who is assisted by the Revs. Thomas Carroll and Martin J. Hogan. There are more than 1,200 children in the Sunday-school. St. John's Chapel, on Clermont avenue, near Greene, is the only portion of the proposed new cathe- dral that is completed. The corner-stone of the cathedral was laid on June 21, 1868. For various reasons the work was not pushed, but in 1877 the necessity of a church in that neighborhood led to the completion of the chapel and its dedication. In 1888 the bishop's house was built at Greene and Clermont avenues. The parish numbers 2,000 people and is under the care of the Rev. James H. Mitchell, chancellor of the diocese, and two assistants. St. Bernard's Church (German) was organized in 1872. For a time the congregation met in Tem- perance Hall, on Hamilton avenue, until the edifice at Hicks and Rapplye streets was finished. The first pastor, the Rev. J. J. Ammann, was succeeded by the present pastor, the Rev. M. N. Wagner. The parish numbers 1,000 and there are 200 children in the school. Church of the Assumption. — The corner-stone of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was laid on the corner of York and Jay streets on October 27, 1831, by the Rev. Father Farnham, who intended this to be an independent Catholic church. This project was subsequently abandoned and the unfinished church was bought by Bishop Hughes in 1840, and a parish was organized and placed under the care of the Rev. D. W. Bacon. The church was completed and dedicated on June 10, 1842. Father Bacon remained pastor until he was consecrated Bishop of Portland in 1855. The Rev. William Keegan, his successor, was appointed vicar-general of the diocese in 1880. The present incumbent is the Rev. M. J. Malone. The parish has 3,300 parishioners and 1,000 school children. The Church of St. Louis, on Ellery street, near Nostrand avenue, was built in 1890. From its or- ganization in 1869 until that year the church has been located on McKibbin street, near Leonard. Since the foundation the pastor has been the Rev. Jules JoUon. His parish now includes 3,500 people and 200 scholars in the schools. Church of St. Cecilia. — St. Cecilia's parish was organized in 1872. In 1873 the frame church on North Henry, near Herbert street, was erected. The parish now numbers 6,000 people and the school has 700 scholars. The pastor is the Rev. E. J. McGoldrick. St. Charles Borromeo. — The church of St. Charles Borromeo is one of the most prominent of the Roman Catholic churches in Brooklyn and is nearing its semi-centennial anniversary, as it was established 582 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. St. Charles Borromeo. in 1850. In that year the Episcopalian congregation now wor- sliiping in Grace Church on the Heights sold the edifice on Sid- ney place, in which they hitherto had worshiped, and the prop- erty was bought by the Catholics who formed the parish of St. Charles Borromeo. In 1866 the growth of the congregation made it necessary to build larger. The church was burned on Sunday morning, March 8, 1868. Operations were begun upon a new building three weeks after the fire, and on May 24, 1869, the new edifice was dedicated. The Rev. T. F. Ward is the present pastor of the church, with which he had been connected as an assistant priest for ten years. He is a native of Brooklyn and was born in 1843. Two assistant priests are attached to the church. There are 7,000 parishioners and a Sunday-school of 500. The Church of the Holy Family (German) was estab- lished in 1876 by the Rev. F. Hanselman, who gathered a con- gregation in a hall on Fourth avenue and Twenty-seventh street. In 1880 the frame church on Fourth avenue and Thirtieth street was built, and it was dedicated in the following year. Father Hanselman is pastor, and the church has 800 parishioners and a school under the care of the Sisters of St. Dominick, with 200 scholars. Holy Name Church. — The parish of the Church of the Holy Name was founded on March 15, 1878, by the Right Rev. Bishop Loughlin. The first service was held on March 31, 1878, in McCann's stable, on Eleventh avenue and Eighteenth street. Land was at once purchased and the erection of a church begun. The building was occupied on December 25, 1878. It stands on the corner of Prospect street and Ninth avenue. The parish numbers 2,000 persons, and has 430 scholars, all under the care of the Rev. T. S. O'Reilly, who is the first pastor. St. Augustine's Church. — The parish and church edifice dedicated to St. Augustine might serve as a type of the growth, in numbers and size, of the Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn. Within a period of twenty-two years the congregation has increased from a dozen to at least 4,000, notwithstanding the creation of other parishes within its limits, and after orginally worshiping on the upper floor of a private house, it now occupies an edifice that is pronounced the handsomest ecclesiastical structure in the city and the finest parochial building in the country. Prior to 1870 the Catholics living within the boundaries of the territory now subdivided into the parishes of St. Augustine's, St. Francis Xavier's, and parts of St. Agnes' and St. Thomas Aquinas were compelled to travel long distances in order to attend the religious services of their faith. When the number of Catholics in the district had increased to eighteen, the matter of petitioning Bishop Loughlin to organize a new parish was discussed. The Rev. Louis J. Rhatigan, assist- ant pastor of St. Stephen's Church, was appointed pastor, and the parish was organized in 1870 under the patronage of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. A house was leased on Warren street, near Prospect place, and for some time was used for church purposes. Ground was purchased on Fifth avenue, extending from Bergen street to Wyckoff street, now St. Mark's avenue, and the erection of a church edifice was begun. It was planned to permit of its transformation into a school house when the growth of the congregation should require a larger building. Three years later a pastoral residence was erected on St. Mark's avenue. Father Rhatigan died in March, 1876, and in April, 1876, the Rev. Edward W. McCarty, assistant pastor of St. Peter's Church, was appointed his successor. Rev. Edward w. mcCarty. 1^ -•■"^ *-* .3 |g,r •^m. IsS- ^' ^ a o 584 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Eight years later the church was free from debt. About the time that the question of erecting a new structure was under consideration, it was announced that an elevated railroad was about to be constructed on Fifth avenue, and after considerable negotiation the church property was sold to the railroad company and the site of the existing church and adjacent ground on Sixth avenue. Park and Sterling places was purchased. Li November, 1887, the first sod was turned on the site of the new building by Father Mc- Carty, and the corner-stone was laid one year later by Bishop Ludden, of Syracuse, N. Y.; Bishop O'Farrell, of Trenton, N. J., preaching an appropriate sermon. The dedication of the new edifice on Sunday, May 15, 1892, was the first official act of Bishop Charles E. O'Donnell after his consecration. The buildings consist of the church, now completed, a large chapel, the rectory, at the corner of Sixth avenue and Park place, and a parochial school at the rear of the church, on Sterling place. The new church, an adaptation of the English Gothic style of architecture of the transition period, is constructed of Pleasant Valley brown stone, rich with elaborate carving. The interior decoration is ornate and imposing. The cost of the build- ing and contents was $275,000. The Rev. Edward William McCarty, rector of St. Augustine's Church, was born in Brooklyn, not far from his present parish, on October 29, 1847. He was educated at St Francis Xavier's College, New York city, and studied theology at the seminary of Our Lady of Angels, Suspension Bridge, N. Y. He completed his theological studies at so early an age that a special dispensation was granted by Pope Pius IX., while the Ecumenical Council was in session at Rome, for the youthful deacon's ordination. Father iMcCarty was assigned to the assistant pastorate of the Church of the Visitation, on Verona street, and at the end of four years was transferred to St. Peter's Church, where he remained for two years. Since his appointment to the pastorate of St. Augustine's Church he has labored unceasingly to cancel the indebtedness on the old church and to collect funds for the new structure. He was the founder and is the honorary president of the Columbia Club. He is an eloquent preacher, and his addresses and orations have won for him renown as one of Brooklyn's ablest public speakers. The Rev. John Ij. Belford, one of the assistant priests of St. Augustine's, was born in Brooklyn. In his boyhood he was an acolyte at the altar at which he now officiates as priest. He was educated at St. Francis Xavier's College, New York city; St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, Md.; and the Catholic Uni- versity, Washington, D. C. After his ordination he was assigned to St. Augustine's Church. Church of the Nativity. — On October i, 187 1, the Rev. M. J. Moran, a young but zealous priest, was directed by Bishop Loughlin to organize a new parish in the Bedford region of the Hill, and the site for the church was selected at the southeast corner of Classon avenue and Madison street, where fifteen city lots were bought. There were few Catholics in the district at that time, and only thirty attended the first mass, which was celebrated on Sunday, March 17, 1872, in a building that had been occupied by the Nassau Institute. This building was converted into a parochial residence when the church was completed in the autumn of 1872. The dedication of the church occurred on October 21 in that year. The musical features at the services at this church have always been excellent. Particular attention is paid to the youth of the parish, and in 1885 a parochial school was begun, which occupies a sunny building adjoining the church and is in charge of Sisters of St. Joseph and lay assistants. The sisters conduct also the Na- tivity Institute at Franklin and Gates avenues. The institute was opened in 1886, and occupied a house at Jefferson street and Franklin avenue until its present beautiful home was purchased in 1889. The parish- ioners of Father Moran number more than 4,000 and tlie schools have a large attendance, the Nativity Insti- tute being especially prosperous. The church is a brick structure with a capacity for 800 people, and in its interior arrangement and decoration is plain but comfortable and is well lighted. The Rev. Michael J. Moran was born in the town of Bethlehem, County of Westmeath, Ireland, on June 24, 1842, and became a resident of South Brook- lyn when he was eight years old. He was given a good education at various schools, and during three ^^^^p»^«*^> Key. Michael J. Mokan. b86 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. years spent as clerk in the office of his father, who owned a large stone-yard, he attended i>ght school. In September 1857, he became a student at the seminary of Our Lady of Angels, and on December 8, 1865, he was ordained priest by Bishop Loughlin. His first duty as a priest was performed as an assistant in St. Patrick's Church, where he remained until June 7, 1869, when he was appointed pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross at Flatbush. While there he organized a congregation at Parkville and built the Church of St. Rose of Lima for it 111 health interrupted his labors in 1870, and he was out of the active pastorate until appointed to his present charge. He is tall and dignified in bearing and has a kindly and most pleasing countenance. Children have a special interest for him and are attracted to him in a remarkable degree, which is one of the causes of his being so successful as a parish builder. St. Peter's Church. — The parish of St. Peter's, which has its church on Hicks and Warren streets, was established in 1859 by the late Rev. Father Fransioli, who saw the religious needs of that rough district. Land was purchased and a church was built, which was dedicated on November 4, i860. The par- ish then contained about 3,000 persons. In 1866 Father Fransioli built the academy adjoining the church, and about the same time purchased a house on Congress and Hicks streets as a home for the children of sol- diers and for orphans. This afterward became St. Peter's Hospital. In 1878 the Beacon estate was purchased and the church thus became possessed of the entire block, all of which was devoted to charity. A little later the mission chapel of the Church of the Pilgrims (Presbyterian), on Warren street, was pur- chased and services for Italians were begun there. Buildings have been erected for the young men's societies of the church and for library and school use. The parish numbers 13,000 souls and has 1,580 school children. The Rev. John Barry is Father Fransioli's successor, and is assisted by four other priests. St. Patrick's Church, on Willoughby and Kent avenues, was established as a parish in 1842, the first in that part of Brooklyn. In 1848 the church was begun by the R€v. Hugh McGuire under the name of the Wallabout Church. On August 3, 1856, it was dedicated in honor of St. Patrick. The present pastor, the Rev. Thomas Taafe, was appointed in 1873. The church has 8,000 parishioners and 1,200 school children. St. Bridget's Church. — The parish of St. Bridget's was organized in October, 1882, and the Rev. J. McCloskey was placed in charge. A frame structure was built on the corner of Myrtle avenue and Linden street, and services were begun on Christmas Day, 1883. Three years later the church was moved to Linden street and St. Nicholas avenue. The parish now numbers 2,500, and has 300 school children. St. Francis' Church, on Putman avenue, near Bedford, was begun in 1857 as a German church by the Rev. B. Keller. In 1861 the congregation had left and the church was closed. In 1866 it was again opened with the Rev. N. Balleis, O. S. B., as pastor. The property is held in trust for the Orphan Asylum of Holy Trinity Church, to which it was bequeathed by Father Keller. The church has recently been rebuilt. There are 400 parishioners. St. Alphonsus' Church. — The German Catholic Church of St. Alphonsus, at Kent avenue and Union place, was built on the organization of the parish in 1873. The Rev. W. Guhl has been pastor since the foundation of the parish, which now numbers 1,000 parishioners and has 150 scholars in the school. Church of the Visitation.— The Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on Verona and Richards streets, was begun in 1880 and finished in the following year. The parish had been organized in 1854, and a frame church was built on Ewen and Van Brunt streets, and dedicated on October 29, 1855. The parish includes 8,500 persons, and the school has 700 scholars, under the care of the Rev. E. ]. McCabe and two assistants. St. Michael's Church was organized in November, 1874. Until 1876 a private house on Third avenue was used for worship, but in the last named year the church on Fourth avenue and Forty-second street was built. The Rev. M. J. Heckle was the first pastor ; he was followed by the Rev. J. P. O'Connell and the present pastor, the Rev. H. A. Gallagher. The parish now has 3,000 people and 100 scholars. St. Ambrose Church. — The parish of St. Ambrose was instituted early in 1883 at the request of several St. Peter's Church. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 587 ■-ft. h\l^J t< A families m that neighborhood. The Rev. D. J. Sheehy, formerly curate of St. Augustine's, was appointed pastor, and a private dwelling on Kosciusko street was used for services. The congregation cr,-ew rapidlv and the parish now numbers 3,500. A handsome gothic building has been erected on th^ corner of De Kalb and Tompkins avenues, and land has been purchased for an extension. St. Benedict's Church, on Fulton street, near Ralph avenue, was built in 1874. The parish was organized in 1859, and services were first held in a building on Herkimer street, since used as a school house. The first pastor was the Rev. M. Ramasaur- the church being used for German services. The parish contains 3,500 souls and the school has 300 scholars, under the care of the Sisters of Christian Charity. The Rev. J. M. Hanselman is now pastor. Church of the Transfiguration — The Church of the Transfiguration was organized in 1874 and worshiped for a time in a carpenter's shop on Hooper street, from which it moved to a building which it erected on the same street, near Marcy avenue, which was completed in 1875. The present edifice at the corner of Marcy avenue and Hooper street was occu- pied on October 23, 1892. There are 3,500 parishioners and a Sunday-school of 520 members. Connected with the parish are the Vincent de Paul Young Men's Holy Name societies, the Altar and Rosary circles and young ladies' sodalities. The Rev. John Pagan was the first rector and served for four years, when he was succeeded by the Rev. W. J. Hill, who remained two years and was followed by the present rector. The Rev. John M. Kieley, who took charge of the parish in February, 1881, is a native of Ireland and was born in 1847. He is a graduate of Mt. Melleray College and was graduated in theology at IJublin University. In 1869 he came to Brooklyn, and prior to his appointment to his present charge he was con- nected first with St. James' Church and next with the Church of the Visitation. He is a man of literary taste, and has published a number of religious articles and lectures. He is assisted in his parish by the Revs. W. J. Power and Peter Quealy. The Church of St. Francis de Sales was organized in 1S73; two years later the church edifice on Broadway and Hull street was built, during the pastorate of the Rev. Father Lenneuf. The present pastor, the Rev. E. H. Porcile, S. P. M., with three assist- ants, has charge of 2,000 parishioners and 300 school children. Church of St. Cecilia. — The parish of St. Cecilia was organ- ized in 1872 ; the ne.xt year a church was built on North Henry and Herbert streets. The first pastor was the Rev. Florence Mc- Carthy. The present pastor, the Rev. E. J. McGoldrick, has 6,000 parishioners and 700 scholars under his care. The Church of St. John the Baptist originated in a mission of the Congregation of the Mission, established in 1868, under the care of the Rev. E. M. Smith. Mass was said in the mission cottage for the first time on July 12, 1868, and on the same day the corner-stone of the church, on Willoughby avenue, near Lewis, was laid. The building was dedicated on August 29, 1869. A new church is now in course of erection, and will be comjileted very soon. The Rev, J. A. Harnett, C. M., the present pastor, has charge of 3,000 parishioners and 300 school children. The Church of S'l'. John the Evangelist was organized in 1849, and a wooden chapel was erected. In 1855 the Rev. Peter McLoughlin became pastor. In 1872 the church edifice, on Fifth avenue and Twenty-first street, was built. The present pastor is the Rev. B. McHugh, whose parishioners number 6,000. There are 1,000 children in the schools. Church of the Tr.^nsfiguration. Rev. John M. Kieley. 5S8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Church of St. Anthony of Padua.— In 1856 a tract of land was purchased by the late Bishop Loughlin on India street, and on this site the first church of the parish, known as the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, was erected and dedicated in 1858. On June 13, 1874, the present edifice, situated on Manhattan avenue, opposite Milton street, was dedicated. Adjoining the building is a parochial school. The Rev. P. F. O'Hare, the pastor, is assisted by the Revs. Thomas F. McGronen, William S. Kirby and M. P. Heffer- nan. The parish numbers 10,000 people, with 800 children in the Sunday-school. St. Agnes' Church was established on May 26, 1878, worship being held at first in a small frame building on the corner of Degraw and Hoyt streets. There the needs of the parish were ministered to until August 20, 1882, when the present magnificent edifice on the corner of Hoyt and Sackett streets was dedi- cated. The number of adult parishioners who worship at the church is 6,500. The Rev. James S. Duffy, the rector, to whose executive energy the parish owes its origin and present prosperity, was born at New- burgh, Orange County, N. Y., and was educated at St. Francis Xavier College in New York and obtained his theological training in St. Mary's Seminary at Baltimore. He was ordained on June 30, 1872. His assistants are the Revs. James J. McAleer and John C. York. The Church of Our Lady of Mercy was organized in 1857. Services v/ere first conducted in an abandoned factory on Debevoise place. The present church edifice was dedicated on February 7, 1869. The first pastor was the Rev. John McCarthy, but within a year he was succeeded by the Rev. John Mc- Kenna, in whose pastorate the present school buildings were erected. The other pastors have been the Rev. Thomas Taaffe, the Rev. James McElroy, formerly assistant pastor, and the present pastor, the Rev. P. J. McNamara, under whose direction the convent building was purchased. Father McNamara is assisted by the Revs. Michael Nevin and John F. O'Hara. The parish includes a large day school, the pastor and assistants also serving the Brooklyn Hospital and County Jail. The present pastor has been one of the irremovable rectors of the diocese since 1888, and was appointed vicar-general on November 2, 1892, by Bishop McDonnell. There are 7,500 parishioners and 600 children in the Sunday-school. Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary. — An effort to provide a distinctive church for the Catholic Italians of Brooklyn was begun in 1880 with a mission that struggled along for less than a year, during which time there were two short pastorates. It was renewed for a brief time, with the result of a second failure. Then, in 1883, the Rev. Pasquale de Nisco, P. S. M., was sent from Rome to take charge, and undertook the work of organizing the Italians into a church. The result was the establishment of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary. In the autumn of 1884 the corner-stone of the church edifice at the corner of President and Van Brunt streets was laid by the late Bishop Loughlin, and the building was dedicated on June i, 1885. A largely attended Sunday-school is connected with the church and there are 9,000 parishioners. St. Ambrose Church. — The Church of St. Ambrose was organized on April 23, 1883, and the Rev. Daniel J. Sheehy was appointed pastor. Its »house of worship on the southwest corner of Tompkins and De Kalb avenues was dedicated on March 30, 1884. The parish numbers 3,500 persons and there are 300 attendants at the Sunday-school. St. Ambrose's Academy, connected with the parish, has sixty-five pupils. The Rev. M. G. Flannery became assistant pastor on June 10, 1884. St. Edward's Church was the last city parish founded by the late Bishop Loughlin, its component parts being portions of the old cathedral parish and the parish of the Sacred Heart. The new parish was founded on December 8, 1891, and the Rev. James F. Mealia, who had been an assistant for thirteen years in St. James' Cathedral, was placed in charge, with the Rev. Wm. J. Donaldson, D. D., as his assistant. The church was erected on the corner of Canton and Division streets, that location being the most thickly popu- lated and furthest removed from the churches of the adjoining parishes. Already St. Edward's has 3,500 parishioners and 400 Sunday-school attendants. St. Michael's Church (German), on Jerome street, was organized on January 25, i860. The rectors have been the Revs. F. Peine, Cyrill Zielinski, M. T. Decker, C. MuUer, A. Oberschneider and T. Michels. The present pastor is the Rev. A. M. Nieman. The parishioners number 1,200. St. Nicholas' Church.— The organization of St. Nicholas' Church occurred in 1865, and the first church edifice, now occupied by the parochial school, was dedicated on May 13, 1866. The church building at the corner of Olive and Devoe streets was dedicated on June 24, 1888. The Rev. C. Peine was rector from 1866 until 1877, when he was succeeded by the Rev. John P. Hoffmann, who is assisted by the Rev. F. W. Dotzauer. There are 3,000 parishioners and the attendance at the Sunday-school is 365. In the paro- chial school there are 525 pupils in charge of seven sisters of the Dominican order and one lay teacher. St. Teresa.— The church known as St. Teresa's, at the corner of Classon avenue and Butler street, was organized in 1874, and the erection of its commodious church buildings was at once begun. The church was dedicated on October 16, 1887. Connected with the parish there are large schools for boys and girls and a convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph. The parish is in charge of the Rev. J. McNamee and two assistant priests, who have 4,500 parishioners with 700 children in the Sunday-school. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS 589 St. Francis Xavier— The parish of St. Francis Xavier was established in August, i886, and includes that portion of Brooklyn bounded by Third and Ninth avenues and Sackett and Fifth streets. The Rev David J. Mickey was placed in charge of the new parish, \ffhich has prospered under his pastoral care and has kept pace with the growth of population in the district occupied by it. In 1886 there were resident within the parish limits one hundred and eighty families, and now there are at least five hundred families and an average attendance of 2,300 adults at the Sunday services. One hundred children were present at the opening of the Sunday-school in January, 1887, and the present attendance is more than 500. A number of well organized and vigorous societies and sodalities are connected with the parish, and its institutions include St. Francis Xavier Academy, which is conducted by the Sisters of St. Joseph. The church edifice on Carroll street and Sixth avenue was begun in 1886 and was dedicated on June 12, 1887. In September, 1887, the academy was opened and was so successful during the next four years that in January, 1891, a plot of ground, fifty feet by one hundred, adjoining the parish property on Car- roll street, was purchased and a beautiful and commodious building was erected thereon. The building of a rectory was begun in May, 1889, and the completed edifice was occupied in May, 1890. In the parish work the pastor has had the assistance of the Rev. E. Smyth, who was appointed temporarily as assistant priest in January, 1887, and of the Rev. H. F. Rev. David j. hickev. Farrell and the Rev. M. H. Carey, who are his present assistants, the first named having been appointed in February, 1888, and the other in October, 1890. The laity of the parish has been earnest in labor and generous with means for the advancement of the cause of religion and education in their part of the city, and among those who have been most active are John Magilligan and William Flanagan, who have cooperated with their pastor wherever their judgment could prove serviceable. Church of the Annunciation — The Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary was organized as a German church in 1863 by the Rev. John Hauptman. The first church building erected in that year, on North Fifth and Havemeyer streets (known at that time as Seventh street), gave place in 1870 to the existing brick church. The present pastor, the Rev. George Kaupert, succeeded Father Hauptman, and has charge of a parish of 4,000 people and 500 school children. St. Joseph's Church, on Pacific street, near Vanderbilt avenue, was built at the time of the establish- ment of the parish in 1853. It has been greatly enlarged since that time. The first pastor was the Rev. P. O'Neill. The church has two large schools under the care of the Franciscan Brothers and the Sisters of St. Joseph, containing in all 800 scholars. There are 5,500 people in the parish under the care of the Rev. Edward Corcoran. St. Vincent de Paul. — St. Vincent de Paul's parish in the Eastern District, on North Sixth street, which has 900 parishioners, 1,500 Sunday-school children and an equal number of attendants at the paro- chial school, v/as organized in i860. There is a convent connected with it and a number of effective organi- zations. The clergy connected with the parish are the Rev. M. Carroll, rector, and the Rfev. J. T. Woods and the Rev. F. Ludeke, assistants. Our Lady of Victory — The Church of Our Lady of Victory was organized in 1868 and a temporary church was built on Throop avenue, near McDonough street, and dedicated on July 26, 1868. This was replaced by the existing church in 1882. The first pastor was the Rev. Father Creighton. His successor, the Rev. James J. Woods, with two assistants, now has charge of the parish that numbers 3,000 and has a school of 300 children. St. Anne's Church, on Gold and Front streets, was built in i860, directly after the organization of the parish. The work was entrusted to the Rev. Bartholomew Glee- son. The present pastor, the Rev. J. J. Durick, has charge of a parish of 3,500 people and 800 pupils in the parochial schools. Sacred Heart. — The parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was established on November i, 187 1, and the church Church of Our Lady of Victory edifice, on Clermont avenue, near Park, begun in 1873, 59° THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. was completed and dedicated on June 24, 1877. The Rev. John F. Nash is the pastor, and is assisted by the Revs. M. J. Tierney and Edward M. Gannon. There are 7,000 parishioners and 700 children in the Sunday-school. Between 1,100 and 1,200 children receive free instruction in the parochial school. St. Stephen's Church. — This church, since its organization, on July 15, 1866, has grown to a strength of 8,000 parishioners, and has 700 children in the Sunday-school. Its first place of worship was the old edifice of St. Paul's P. E. Church and its present building, at Summit and Hicks streets, was dedicated in July, 1875. The first pastor was the Rev. A. J. Dorris, whose successors have been the Revs. James Moran, Edward J. O'Reilly and Michael T. Kilahy, who is now in charge. The assistant priests are the Revs. John G. Fitzgerald and John A. Fitzpatrick. All S.A.INTS' Church was organized in 1867 by the Rev. M. May. A church was at once built on Throop avenue and Thornton street, and was dedicated on the last day of the year 1867. On the first day of the new year the Rev. Anthony Arnold became the pastor, a position he retains. There are now 3,000 people in the parish and 600 children in the schools. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament was established in 1891, The church is located at Fulton and Market streets. The parish is under the care of the Rev. Joseph F. McCoy, who has 1,500 parishioners. St. Cassijiir's Church. — The Polish Catholic Church, known as St. Cassimir's, on Greene avenue, near -\delphi street, was organized in 1874 and was located on Lawrence street, near Tillary, under the pastorate of the Rev. S. Marcikowski until 1890, when the present church was purchased from the congregation of Temple Israel, who had pre- viously used it as a synagogue. The work is now in the charge of the Rev. V. Bronikowski, who has 3,500 parishioners. The Church of the Immaculate Conception was built in 1853 under the direction of the first pastor, the Rev. Peter Mc- Laughlin. The parish now numbers 2,500 people and there are 420 school children, all under the care of the pastor, the Rev. James Taaffe, and an assistant. The Church of the Presentation was organized in 18S6, and work was at once begun on a church on Rockaway and St. Mark's avenues under the direction of the Rev. Hugh Hand, who remains as pastor. This church was completed in 1888. The parish numbers 1,500 and has 350 children in the school. The Church of Our Lady of Sorrows was organized in 1 889, and the church edifice on Morgan avenue and Harrison place was built in the same year. The first pastor, the Rev. J. B. Nillman, was succeeded in 1890 by the present incumbent, the Rev. John Zentgraf. The parishioners number 500. St. Michael Archangel. — The Italian church of St. Michael Archangel was organized in 1891 and located in the heart of the Italian quarter, at York and Jay streets. The Rev. P. de Santi is in charge and has 600 parish- .- ,,,..,-;„ ;vi.a,i.: . loUCrS. The Church of St. Thojias Aquinas was estab- lished in 1884 and the brick church on Fourth avenue and Ninth street was built in the following year and opened for public worship. The Rev. James Donohue has been pas- tor since the establishment of the church. He has 3,500 parishioners and 60 children in the Sunday-school. St. Paul's Church. — The second Catholic church in Brooklyn is St. Paul's, at the corner of Court and Congress streets. The site, which was St. Paul's Church. regarded as being outside of CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 591 Rev. William J. Hill. In 187 1 he was ordained as the village at the time, was given by Cornelius Heeney, whose body after his death, on May 3, 1848, was interred in the church- yard of St. Paul's. He was a wealthy resident of Brooklyn who had come from Ireland a poor lad and was a fellow-worker with John Jacob Astor, with whom he was afterwards in partner- ship. The church was completed early in January, 1838, and on January 21 it was dedicated by the Right Rev. John Dubois, D. D., Bishop of New York. The Rev. William J. Hill, the present pastor, is the sixth in line of succession, and was appointed on April I, 1881. On April 29, 1886, Father Hill announced that the church was entirely free of debt, and on Saturday, May 5, the ceremonies of consecration were performed by Bishop Loughlin. St. Paul's had completed fifty years of its history, and was in a position to celebrate the jubilee anniversary by one of the most solemn and imposing ceremonies in the church ritual. The church has 4,000 parishioners, a Sunday-school of 600 and one of the finest parochial schools in the country. The Rev. William J. Hill is a native of Ireland, and came to America in his childhood. From 1865 he was for several years a student at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Md., where he was distinguished by his scholarship, and in 1868 he was graduated at the head of his class. Having decided to take holy orders, he began the study of theology, and was as diligent in this as he was in his collegiate course a deacon, and on July 19, 1872, he was raised to the priesthood by Bishop Loughlin in St. James' Cathedral, Brooklyn. For the ne.\t three years he was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at Mount St. Mary's, to which position he w-as called by the unanimous vote of the president and council; and during the succeeding three years he was at the head of the junior department, which he had organized. He was a member of the council of the college for the four last years of his profes- sorship. He resigned his professorship in 1878, and, returning to Brook- lyn, was appointed assistant pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Vic- tory, where he remained for eight months, and then was appointed pastor of the Church of the Transfiguration, on Hooper street, near Marcy ave- nue. In the summer of 1880 he was elected president of Mount St. Mary's College, but declined the position. He was elected a second time in the same year, and having been advised by Cardinal McCloskey to accept he finally acceded. He assisted materially in the steps that led to the reorganization of the famous institution, but declined to be a factor in that reorganization. He returned to Brooklyn once more, and received his present appointment. He is assisted by the Revs. P. V. McDonald and Francis A. McCartney. The Rev. P. V. McDonald, D. D., was born in Ireland on September 24, 1855 ; studied in St. Colman's College, Fermoy, at the University of Louvain, and at the Gregorian LIniversity in Rome. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and was ordained priest in Rome on the 13th of April, 1879. The Rev. Francis A. McCartney, D. D., was born in Brooklyn, June 8, 1867; made his preliminary studies in St. Francis College, Brooklyn; studied theology in the Collegio Brignoli Sale, Genoa, Italy, where he received the doctor's cap and was ordained December 20, 1891. St. Malachi's Church was organized in 1854. The church edifice was built soon after on Van Siclen avenue, near Atlantic. The present pastor, the Rev. John J. Cramer, has 2,000 parishioners and 300 paro- chial scholars St. Matthew's Church was established in 1881, and in 1S87 the church building on Schenectady avenue, near Montgomery street, was occupied. The first pastor was the Rev. J. O'lSoyle ; the present incum- bent is the Rev. P. J. McGlinchey. The parish numbers 1,500 people. Rev. p. V. McDonald. Rev. Francis A. McCartney. 592 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Church of the Most Holy Rosary was organized in 1889 and was for a time located at 1747 Fulton street, but in iSgo the present church was built on Chauncey street, near Reid avenue. The parish is under the pastoral care of the Rev. D. Montverde, who has 1,000 parishioners. The Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel was organized in 1886. A church was at once built on Madison street, between Ralph and Patchen avenues. The pastor from the beginning has been the Rev. Eugene Mahone)', who has 2,000 parishioners, with 200 children in the parochial school. The Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel was established in 1887. The church at Union avenue and North Eighth street was built in 1889 by the Rev. P. Saponara, who is the present pastor. The parish numbers 3,000 souls. The Church of the Fourteen Holy Martyrs was organized in 1878, and a year or two later the church edifice on Central avenue and Covert street was built. The pastor is the Rev. B. F. Kurtz ; he has 600 parishioners and 200 pupils in the parochial school. St. George's Lithuanian Church was organized in 1878. For a time it was without a church home, but eventually secured the building on North Tenth and Fourth streets. The parish of 500 people was for a long time under the care of Father Yodyzsius, whose successor is not yet appointed. The Church of St. Leonard of Port Maurice (German) was established in 1871, and the Rev. J. J. Raber was assigned to the parish. The following year the church on Hamburg and Jefferson streets was dedicated. The school buildings were built in 1884 and are under the care of the Sisters of St. Dominic, who have 800 pupils. The parish contains 5,000 people and is under the care of the Rev. H. F. Weitekamp. PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES. The Brooklyn Presbytery, composed of churches in Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the local association of the Presbyterian churches. It is made up of the pastor and one representative (an elder chosen by the "session") from each church. It meets semi-annually in the spring and fall. The presbytery elects dele- gates to the Synod of New York, which includes the whole state. Between twelve and fifteen delegates are chosen to the synod from each presbytery. The synod meets annually in the autumn. The general assembly, representing all the churches in the northern states, has its delegates elected by the presbyteries themselves. From five to eight go to each general assembly, which is held annually in the spring. The essential policy of Presbyterianism is that each individual church shall manage its own affairs, so long as it does not infringe upon the individuality of other con- gregations or attempt to alter doctrines. Secularly, each church is a corporation in the hands of trustees, their number resting with the convenience of the con- gregation. As a rule, there are about nine trustees, elected in three classes, a third of the terms expiring each year. The corporation is never a close one. Spiritually, the church is governed by elders, known collectively as the "session." They are chosen by the votes of the congregation, two systems being in vogue among Presbyterians — one, the permanent eldership, that is, for life, subject only to removal for cause ; the other, the rotary, which is most in use — that of choos- ing the elders for a specified number of years. There is no limit as to the size of the "session." The elders are counselors, their powers being practically only ad- visory. The " session " constitutes the lowest court in the Presbyterian Church, and can act as a judicial body in certain cases. The pastor himself has not the power of admitting to church membership. He can bring a name up to the session, but it is only their vote that can make one a communicant. From the session a communicant excommunicated or suspended can appeal to the presbytery, then to the synod, and then to the general assembly, which is the national supreme court of Presbyterianism. The board of first Pkesuyterian church. •- K'-^,.. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 593 deacons of each church is chosen in the same manner as the elders. It has its specific duty, the chief of which is the administering of the deacons' fund to communicants in need. First Presbyterian Church.— The first church formed by the Presbyterians in Brooklyn was organ- ized with ten members on March lo, 1822, and was incorporated three days later as the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, N. Y. It was under the care of the Presbytery of New York from April 16 1822 until October, 1838, when the Synod erected the Presbytery of Brooklyn, to which the First Church was trans- ferred. The Rev. Joseph Sanford was ordained and installed as the first pastor on October 16, 1823 and was dismissed at his own request on July 9, 1828. His ' ' successors were Daniel L. Carroll, D. D., 1829-1835 ; Samuel Hanson Cox, D. D., 1837-1854; William Ho- garth, D. D., 1855-1858; Charles S. Robinson, D. D., 1860-1868 ; Norman Seaver, D. D., 1868-1876, and Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., the present pastor, who was installed on May 10, 1877. The first church edi- fice stood on Cranberry street, between Hicks and Henry streets ; the present edifice, on Henry street, near Clark, was opened for worship on June 6, 1847. In 1866 the City Park Chapel, on Concord street, was builded, and it has always been supported by the members of the First Church. Various colonies have gone out from the church to form other organizations, especially during the ministry of Dr. Cox, who was one of the noted clergymen of his time and represented the American churches at the first Evangelical Alli- ance in London. While Dr. Cox was pastor the divis- ion between the old and the new school occurred in the Presbyterian Church, and there was a secession from his congregation, which resulted in the organiza- tion of what is now the Second Church, but which for a long time claimed the name of the First Presbyterian Church. The present membership of the First Church is 1,196 and there are 855 members in the Sunday- school. The City Park Chapel, which is under the care of the Rev. Henry G. Golden, has a Sunday- school of 653 members. '''=^- Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D. The Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall, D. D., is a native of the city of New York. His father, William C. Hall, was the head of a prosperous firm of importing druggists. Dr. Hall was born on September 3, 1852, and about eight years later his father retired from business and removed to New Windsor, on the Hudson, where he purchased a home. On his sixteenth birthday the son entered Williams College, where he was graduated in the class of 1872. From childhood his great desire had been to become a clergyman, but the breaking of his voice soon after entering college convinced him that the ministry must be given up and he turned his attention to journalism. Every preparation had been made for his advent in the journalistic world, when, to his great surprise and joy, his voice returned about the time of his gradua- tion and he was able to utter his commencement oration with ease and effect. His original purpose of devoting his life to the Christian ministry at once returned, and his earlier plans of life-work were resumed. In October, 1872, he entered the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and in two years he was licensed to preach. He then went abroad and devoted a year to study at the Presbyterian College in London and the Free Church College in Edinburgh. On his return to America he was ordained to the ministry in December, 1875, and installed as pastor of the Union Presbyterian Church of Newburgh, N. Y., as suc- cessor to the Rev. Dr. Wendell Prime, the present editor of the New York Observer. Early in 1877 he was called to the First Presbyterian Church of this city. He is the embodiment of life, of action, of bright- ness and of sunshine, tempered by an ardent love for the beautiful. He is fond of music and well versed in hymnology, and was a collaborator with Prof. S. Lasar in the compilation of the " Evangelical Hymnal." His chief characteristic as a preacher is earnestness. The polish which he bestows upon his sermons, the eloquent and graphic diction and the sincerity and logic of his arguments are evidences of his trained mind. Brooklyn Tabernacle. — With a congregation which numbers nearly 4,300 persons, an edifice which will seat 5,000 people, and a pastor with a universal reputation, the Brooklyn Tabernacle is the largest church under the care of the Brooklyn Presbytery. On July 19, 1834, the Bruce Street Mission School was organized under the auspices of the Second Presbyterian Church. The success of the school early 594 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. called attention to the need of a church in that district, and on April 14, 1847, twenty-five persons were organized by the New York Presbytery as a district church, under -the title of Central Presbyterian Church. Worship was continued in the school-room until the building formerly occupied by the Fifth Presbyterian Church, corner of Willoughby and Pearl streets, was purchased. On December 22, 1847, the Rev. Nathaniel C. Locke was installed as pastor, and remained until October 21, 1850. He was succeeded by the Rev. J. Edson Rockwell, who remained as pastor until September 10, 1868. During his second year the edifice occupied until that time was sold, and the first Tabernacle was erected on the corner of State and Nevins streets for temporary use. On April i, the building was opened for worship. Meanwhile the erection of a permanent edifice on Schermerhorn, near Nevins street, was in progress and on June 11, 1854, the basement was first used for worship; the church was completed and dedicated on December 10, the same year. During the closing year of Dr. Rockwell's pastorate a controversy arose in the church and extinction was threatened when, on March 22, 1869, the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage was installed by the Presbytery of Nassau. Six years later the church reported a membership of 1,215, and in 1887 it reported 4,020. During the year following Dr. Talmage's installation a new edifice, called the Tabernacle, was erected on the same block as the church then occupied, the old building being used as a public school. The new building had a seat- ing capacity of 3,000. It was destroyed by fire in December, 1872. A new church was erected the follow- ing year, but was burned in October, 1889. Preparations were at once begun for erecting a stupendous edifice on the corner of Clinton and Greene avenues. On Sunday, April 26, 1891, dedication services were held in the completed edifice. The new Tabernacle is Romanesque in design and is constructed of rain- washed brick'with brownstone trimmings. A great square tower arises from a point at the angle formed by Greene and Clinton avenues and on either street the walls are pierced by the heavy arches that overhang the two main entrance ways. These arches, with their accompanying capitals and pillars, are ela- borately ornamented while, with the exception of the casings of the great windows on Greene and Clinton avenues and a certain amount of carving on the smaller doorways, the exterior of the church conveys an impression of massive simplicity undisturbed by any superficial adornment. Flights of stone steps lead to other entrances on Clinton, Greene and Waverly avenues, the two latter affording ingress to the Sabbath- school and also to the main auditorium of the church. The main auditorium is one hundred feet long and one hundred and twenty feet broad and can accommodate about 5,500 people. It is elliptical in form and is furnished with semi-circular rows of pews and has two immense galleries which greatly enlarge the seating accommodations. Two huge windows set in the Greene avenue and Clinton avenue walls are lighted by cathedral glass to which a simple chemical invention has imparted an appearance suggestive of the antique. The finish throughout is entirely of hard wood, highly polished and carved elaborately where- ever such ornamentation is permissible. There are many staircases, with broad steps and heavy balustrades, which lead from the ves- tibules to the galleries above. From the wide platform rise the pipes of the largest organ in Brooklyn, which was es- pecially built for the. Tabernacle at a cost of $30,000. Its base is cov- ered by a wall of pan- elled woodwork and the recess in which it is fixed is arched in stereo-relief work. At the right of the organ and set almost level with the wall are mementos of the visit v/hich Dr. Talmage made to the Holy Land and Greece just after the old Tabernacle had been de- stroyed by fire in 1889. These consist of four stones; on the uppermost one, which formerly rest- ed on the summit of Tabernacle Presbyterian Church. Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D. Calvary, is inscribed "Sacrifice," on two others, which were brought from Mount Sinai, is written "Law," and on the fourth — a fragment from the crest of Mars Hill — is chiseled the word " Gospel." The ceiling of the auditorium is domed and divided into panels of richly decorated woodwork. The architects availed themselves of the great expanse of roof to introduce a number of large and richly ornamented trusses. The comforts of the auditorium are augmented by spacious lobbies which encircle the seats on the first floor and those in the galleries. To the left of the platform rolling doors of lattice work are to be raised so as to unite the Sunday-school room with the church, thus increasing the seating capacity by 1,500. The Sunday- school room is finished in light colors and can be entered through doorways on Greene and Waverly avenues. It contains a gallery which is used by the infant class. Adjoining it are several private rooms and a library, and below it, in the basement, are supper rooms and a kitchen. The cost of the entire prop- erty from the time of the purchase of the site until the church was completed exceeded $400,000. The genius of a celebrated pulpit orator, like that of a philosopher, belongs to no country exclusively; it is the common property of mankind. Never has this truth found better illustration than in the history of the man who for the last twenty-three years has lived and preached in Brooklyn, whence his fame has gone out over all the world as the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, having an influence over the hearts and lives of earnest men and women everywhere. Thomas DeWitt Talmage was born at Bound Brook, N. J., on January 7, 1832. He was one of seven sons of a sturdy Christian farmer, four of whom entered the ranks of the ministry. His earliest preference was for the law; but the desire of his parents that he might be a preacher prevailed, and in 1853 he entered the Theological Seminary at New Brunswick. His first pastorate was in the Reformed Church at Belleville, N. J., where he spent three years, after which he was called, in 1852, to the Reformed Church in Syracuse, where three years more were passed. While he was in Syracuse he began to attract public attention by the vivid style of his preaching, which was marked by striking illustrations, directness of appeal and tremendous earnestness of delivery. He boldly discarded the conventional forms of address in the pulpit and founded a new school of oratory, which combined the forceful delivery of the stage without the stage's exaggeration; it was language in action, natural, impetu- ous, irresistible in its flow, pointed in its humor and pregnant with fact. Attention was at once drawn to so great a departure and soon the young divine was in demand as a lecturer, but his ministerial duties allowed him little time for the rostrum. In 1862 he accepted a call from the Second Reformed Church of Phila- delphia, where he remained seven years. In 1869 he received three calls from churches in San Francisco, Chicago, and Brooklyn, the last being from the Central Presbyterian Church. Undismayed by the fact 596 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. that the membership of the Brooklyn church had dwindled almost to the vanishing point he courageously undertook the task of building up, from a mere handful of worshipers, a new congregration. Only nine- teen members could be mustered to sign the call; but he went to work energetically, and to such good pur- pose that within a year the attendance was too large for the building and it was decided to erect a more commodious edifice. Then came some difference of opinion as to the character of the structure and the style of architecture. The pastor favored the amphitheatrical form, but this was scouted by the distin- guished architects who were consulted, and who spent considerable time over plans based upon the conven- tional styles. A bright young architect, who had the courage and ability to appreciate the pastor's idea, came forward at this juncture and submitted plans that were instantly accepted, and the revolution in American church architecture was accomplished. There are now fully half a hundred churches modeled after the Tabernacle in different parts of the Union. The story of the new building and its successors is told in the sketch of the Tabernacle Church. The Tabernacle became a recognized centre of Christian activity in Brooklyn and exerted an evangelistic influence that was felt throughout the entire Union. Many Sundays, three times the number that could be accommodated sought to gain admittance, and there was no church in the United States that had so strong a personal interest for so large a number of individuals. The sermons delivered from its platform were flashed by electric wires to every city in America, and read the morning after delivery. Every week they were translated into French, German, Italian, Swedish and Russian. Strangers, traveling in the remote parts of the world, encountered them in the native publica- tions. The name of the pastor became a household word everywhere. Arrivals in this country, almost as soon as they reached port, would inquire about the facilities for hearing the great preacher. What Spurgeon was to England and the English speaking population of Europe, Talmage became on an even greater scale to the people of this continent and the Christian communities of the globe. Dr. Talmage's literary methods are elaborate and painstaking. The genius that delights and whose felicity of expression appeals to the heart, by lip or pen, from the pulpit or in the columns of the Christian Herald, of which he is the editor, has been perfected at the cost of infinite labor and ceaseless study. He composes his sermons as Detaille might , - , compose one of his masterpieces on canvas — with an \ ■ ■'.' . artist's eye to light and shade and perspective, with an artist's love of color also, yet with extreme care that every point shall be brought out with absolute distinctness. The skeleton or draft of a sermon or lecture is made in his own study, in an upper floor of his residence on South Ox- ford street. This accomplished, the next step is to send for his stenographer, to whom he dictates in full rounded, oratorical sentences, pausing occasionally it may be to consult some authoritative volume in his library. The language comes to his lips full of those quaint and rugged phrases that are a notable feature of his style— phrases which, while they illustrate the richness of his vocabulary, are yet so simple and touching as to go straight to the heart. Indeed, it is true that he speaks more frequently to the heart than to the head, and chooses language which the farmer or mechanic can grasp as readily as the the- ologian and the philosopher. He has preached nearly four thousand original sermons, built three Tabernacles, raised, during a twenty-three years' pastorate, nearly a round mill- ion dollars for church purposes, and trained and equipped many missionaries and sent the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Lafayette Avenue Church.— On May i6, 1857, several gentlemen met at the house of Edward A. Lam- bert, on Clinton avenue, for consultation in reference to the formation of a Presbyterian Church in the eleventh ward, and on June 16 a public meeting was held in the church on Carlton avenue, when the establishment of the proposed church was determined upon. The Park Con- gregational Church Society had at that time just aban- doned the edifice on Carlton avenue, and on June 29, a petition for assistance presented to the Presbytery was granted by that body, which met the following month Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. in Carlton avenue chapel and duly constituted the new body. The church engaged the services of the Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock, D. D., who occupied the pulpit until January, 1859. In the spring of 1858, the congre- gation had so increased that the edifice was extended toward DeKalb avenue, giving it a seating capacity of seven hundred and fifty. On the termination of the service of Rev. Prof. Hitchcock the Rev. Lyman Whit- ing, of Portsmouth, N. H., occupied the pulpit until August, 1859. In February, i860, the congregation wel- comed to the pastorate the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, who was installed by the Presbytery on April 24. The erection of a new church edifice was begun in the spring of 1861 on the corner of Lafayette avenue and Oxford street, and the building was completed in March, 1862. It is of Belleville freestone, in the Roman- esque style, and will accommodate 2,300 persons. The new church was dedicated on March 16, 1862, when the name was changed from the Park Presbyterian Church to the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church. In 1881, an adjacent lot was purchased and the church edifice extended. By that addition, a commodious Sunday-school room was provided. The Rev. Dr. David Gregg succeeded Dr. Cuyler in 1890 and has pas- toral charge of the church at the present time. From this church have grown the Cumberland Street Mission, which is now the Fort Greene Presbyterian Church, and the Memorial Presbyterian Church at Sixth avenue and St. John's place. Two chapels are supported by the church, namely. Olivet Chapel on Bergen street, near Sixth avenue, and Cuyler Mission Chapel on Pacific street. The church membership is 1,500 and the Sunday-school has 2,500 members. Olivet Chapel, which was established in 1868, has a Sunday-school of 400 and the Sunday-school of the Cuyler Chapel, which was established in 1887, has 450 members. The name of the Rev. Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, D. D., who for many years was pastor of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, has become associated in the history of the Brooklyn pulpit with the names of Beecher, Storrs, Bethune and Talmage. He was born in the village of Aurora, on the shores of Cayuga Lake, N. Y., on January 10, 1822. His father, a young lawyer of promising abilities, died in 598 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. 1826, and the care of his son's early education was left to his widow. When Theodore was sixteen years old he was sent to Princeton College, where he was graduated with honor in 1841. At the conclusion of his collegiate course he visited Europe and spent some months in travel, writing to American newspapers graphic accounts of his experiences and impressions while abroad. On his return he became a student at the Princeton Theological Seminary, where he was graduated in 1846. His active career as a minister began in the small town of Kingston, Wyoming Valley, Penn., but his stay there lasted only a few months, as he accepted an invitation to the Presbyterian Church at Burlington, N. Y. He remained there until 1850, when he was invited to the first pastorate of the Third Presbyterian Church in Trenton. For three years he lived in the New Jersey capital, enlarging the sphere of his church's usefulness. While in Trenton he married Miss Annie E. Mathiot, daughter of Hon. Joshua Mathiot, of Ohio. In 1853 he was called to the pastorate of the old Market Street Church in New York, which he retained seven years. He was invited to go to Boston and take charge of the Shawmut Avenue Congregational Church ; but declined that offer, as well as another made to him in 1859 by a new Presbyterian Church, which was then meet- ing in Brooklyn, near the corner of DeKalb and Carlton avenues, a point at that time lying on the outskirts of the city. In i860 the Brooklyn congregation repeated its invitation, and he moved to this side of the East River. His new charge was then known as the Park Presbyterian Church and the Brooklyn Presbytery formally installed him pastor on April 24, i860. In less than a year his earnest parochial work and strong individualism in the pulpit had attracted so many to his congregation that it was decided to build a new house of worship, which was done. During his thirty years' ministry in Brooklyn, the Lafayette Avenue Church rose to a leading position in the ranks of Presbyterianism ; he received four thousand two hundred and twenty-six persons into the Presbyterian Church ; he preached more than three thousand sermons, delivered nearly two thousand addresses, and wrote between three thousand and four thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. His attention to literary work has been unre- mittent and he is the author of works entitled "Stray Arrows," "The Cedar Christian," "The Empty Crib," "Heart Life," "Thought Hives," "Pointed Papers for the Christian Life," "God's Light on Dark Clouds," "Wayside Springs from the Fountain of Life," " Right to the Point," "From the Nile to Norway and Homeward," and several others. His writings have been translated into the Swedish, Dutch and Ger- man. He has been the friend and correspondent of William E. Gladstone, Thomas Carlyle, John Greenleaf Whittier, and many other famous men. During the war of the Rebellion, he labored earnestly in the Union cause. Early in that four years' struggle, he ordered the Stars and Stripes hoisted on the spire of his church and there they floated until Lee surrendered at Appomattox. He was a valued friend of Abraham Lincoln and Henry Wilson, and in the days of national trial they experienced his practical aid and sympathy. As a preacher he stands among the foremost men that have ever graced his profession in the United States. Washington Irving, himself a rigid Episcopalian, at the conclusion of one of Dr. Cuyler's addresses, rose from his seat and taking the pastor by the hand exclaimed : " My friend, I should like to be one of your parishioners." On April 6, 1890, after a pastorate covering a period of thirty years, he officially tendered his resignation, and ten days later his 'congregation, and the public generally, thronged his church on the occasion of a farewell reception to the pastor and his wife. It was a memorable event, participated in by clergymen of almost all denominations, and at its close Dr. Cuyler was presented with a check for 130,000— the gift of his congregation. From the platform and through the medium of pub- lic print, for more than fifty years he has been a prominent advocate of total abstinence. When Dr. Cuyler retired from the pulpit of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, after a pas- torate of thirty years' duration, and the choice of a successor fell upon the Rev. David Gregg, D. D., of the Park Street Congregational Church of Boston, there was a general feeling of satisfaction manifested by all who were interested in maintaining the reputation of a religious institution that enjoyed more than a local notability. Dr. Gregg is a Pennsylvanian and was born in Pittsburgh on March 25, 1846, and, at the age of thirteen, entered Alleghany City College ; two years later he joined the freshman 'class at Washington and Jefferson College and was graduated from that institution in 1865. He completed a course at the Iron City Commercial College in the succeeding year and then studied for some time in Alleghany Theological Seminary, and also at a school near Belfast, Ireland. While at the latter place he received a call to the pulpit of a church in Greenock, near Glasgow. At the age of twenty-three he began preaching in the Scottish church on West Twenty-third street. New York, and remained there until early in 1887, when he became pastor of the Park Street Congregational Church in Boston. In his new sphere he added greatly to his already well established reputation ; he aided in a considerable degree the cause of commercial education in Boston and was the first to make the pew rents of his church more than pay its running expenses, although his predecessors in the pulpit had numbered such attractive speakers as the Rev. W. H. H. Murray, of Adirondack fame, and the Rev. J. L. Withrow, D. D. He began his pastorate of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church on December 14, 1890 ; the call to a new charge was accepted only after earnest solicitation on the part of the Brooklyn congregation and after every inducement in the CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANlZvYTlONS. 599 line of increased pecuniary compensation and official request had been used by the Boston church to retain his services. Dr. Gregg received his degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of the City of New York in 1888. He is a graceful writer and has contributed extensively to current literature ; the more prominent of his published works are : "From Solomon to the Captivity," "Studies in John " and " Facts Calling for Faith." His early associations confirmed him in his allegiance to republicanism, and Rev. David Gkegg. D. D. his first public address was a defense of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation ; he enlisted as an " emer- gency man " when Lee's daring invasion threatened Pennsylvania, and was one of the company tliat guarded Camp Howe when the garrison of that place had marched upon Gettysburg. On March 2, 1871, he married Kate, daughter of Robert and Catherine Etheridge, of New York. AiNSLiE Street Church.— The Ainslie Street Presbyterian Church is an offshoot from the South Third Street Presbyterian Church. In 1852 the mother church made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a mission in the Ainslie street district, which it renewed with success in February, 1853. Four lots were pur- chased at Ewen and Ainslie streets, and on April i, 1854, ground was broken, a small chapel was erected, and was opened for public worship on September 10, and dedicated September 24, that year. In October it was received into the Brooklyn Presbytery, and the Rev. C. W. Hodge was made its first pastor. In 1856, when the congregati(;n numbered about fifty, Dr. Hodge retired from the pulpit. From 1856 to i860 the church struggled with poverty and was several times threatened with total extinction, the pastorate benig vacant for the last two years on account of want of funds. In November, i860, the Rev. James McDougall, Jr., consented to supply the pulpit for three months, and succeeded so well that in the following May he was installed as pastor. In 1862 the church became self-supporting, and from that time its congregation has gradually increased. The church has been enlarged twice and is at present under the pastoral care of the Rev. R. S. Dawson. The congregation numbers nearly 700, and there is a large Sunday-school. Second Presbyterian Church.— The origin of the Second Presbyterian Church is referred to in the sketch of the First Presbyterian Church. The members who seceded from the First Church m 183 i began worship in a building on Adams street. During 1833 a new church was erected on Clinton street, near 6oo THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Second Presbyteriam Church. Fulton, and was dedicated May 4, 1834. The first pastor was the Rev. Ichabod S. Spencer, who continued to occupy the pulpit until he died in 1854. During his pastorate the Prince Street Mission, now the Brook- lyn Tabernacle, was established. !^«^; ' ■-'^m^mr^-T'-^-^- -—rr"?^^ ^.[^g g_gy^ ^yjjjjg Lord, D. D., was made pastor of the Second Church in 1856, and in i860 he was suc- ceeded by Rev. Nathaniel West, Jr., who came from Cincinnati; he re- signed in 1867. A remarkable de- cline from the prosperity which attended the church under the min- istry of Dr. Spencer then began and continued until the Old and New Schools again became one body. The reunited presbytery held a meet- ing on June 29, 1870, and it resulted in the Second and Third Presby- terian churches being amalgamated under the name of the Second Church. In December, 1882, the Second and Clinton Street churches were consolidated, the old Second Church was closed and sold, and ser- vices were conducted in the church at Clinton and Remsen streets under the name of the Second Presbyterian Church, the Revs. Dr. Crosby and Henry J. Van Dyke, D. D., the late pastor of the Clinton Street Church, continuing as pastors. The former soon afterward retired and Dr. Van Dyke took full charge. The church has a membership of over 500, and the Sunday-school, superintended by S. G. McNary, has 300 scholars. Dr. Van Dyke died in May, 1891, and in February, 1893, the Rev. John Fox, D. D., was called to the long vacant pulpit. Classon Avenue Church. — At a meeting held on December 10, 1866, in the study of the Rev. Dr. Cuyler, the question of the advisability of organizing a new church in the seventh ward, east of Washing- ton avenue, was considered. It was finally decided to establish such a church, and the first public services were held on January 27, 1867, in Mr. Stone's house on Gates avenue. On the 26th of March of the same year the congregation organized under the corporate name of the Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church. Lots were purchased on the corner of Classon avenue and Monroe street, and work began on a frame chapel, which was dedicated on the 30th of June following. On July 8, 1867, the church was duly constituted by the presbytery of Brooklyn with fifty-nine members. The Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, of the Collegiate Church of New York, became the first pastor on December 3, 1867. In December, 1868, the corner-stone of the present church and lecture-room was laid. The church has 769 members and 618 pupils in the Sunday- school. The Rev. Joseph Dunn Burrell, the present pastor, was born at Freeport, 111., on December 22, 1858; was graduated at Yale College in 1881, and at the Union Theological Seminary in 1884. His first pastorate was in the autumn of 1884 ; he became the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Clinton, la., and during his seven years' stay there the church grew to be one of the most important in the state. In Novem- ber, 1891, he received a call to the pastorate of the Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church. He was installed on March 8, 1892. Franklin Avenue Church. — The Wailabout Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn was the original name of the organization now known as the Franklin Avenue Presbyterian Church, and it was organized on December 20, 1842. The name was changed on April 19, 1870. The church on Franklin avenue was com- pleted in March, 1845, and was enlarged in 1870. From March 8, 1843, until his death, in April, 1865, the Rev. Jonathan Greenley, D. D., was pastor. He was succeeded in turn by the Rev. William A. Ferguson, Samuel P. Halsey, and the present pastor, the Rev. Charles Edwards, who took charge on March 22, 1893 The church has 350 members and a Sunday-school of 225 members. Westminster Church. — On the evening of January 31, 1856, AVestminster Presbyterian Church was organized with sixty members under the auspices of the Presbytery of Brooklyn. Very soon the present site of the church, corner of Clinton street and First place, was purchased and a frame chapel was erected, which was opened for public worship in May, 1856. During the next few years the congregation grew rapidly and the wooden chapel gave place to the splendid structure now occupied. It was dedicated in October, 1867. The Rev. Alfred H. Moment, D. 1)., the present pastor, took charge on December 16, 1885. The church has a membership of 425 and the Sunday-school numbers 350 members. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 6oi South Third Street Church. South Third Street Church.— When the South Third Street Presbyterian Church was organized in 1844, Williamsburgh was a town of about 10,000 inhab- itants. The church is the outcome of prayer meetings held in the year 1843 in the house of A. P. Cummings, editor and proprietor of the New York Observer. On Sunday, April 7, 1844, public worship was begun in the building at the corner of South Third and Fifth streets, used by public school No. i ; the Rev. N. S. Prime, D. D., was engaged to preach, and on Friday, April 19, 1844, the Brooklyn Presbytery received the new church, twenty-seven members being enrolled ; the organization was called the Presbyterian Church of Williamsburgh. Several years later it received its present name. In August, 1844, the corner-stone of the church building was laid. The basement was com- pleted and first occupied on December 4, 1845, and the building was dedicated on Sunday, May i, 1846. On the first Sunday of 1850, the Rev. John D. Wells, the present pastor, began his ministry in the church. In 1854 eight members left the church and organized the Ainslie Street Presbyterian Church ; in 1862 a second colony 'departed and established the Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church, and in April, 1864, twenty-seven more left and formed the Ross Street Presbyterian Church. Although the South Third Street Church has now nearly 500 members. Dr. Wells has always been in favor of self-supporting churches, and has received the support of his congregation in their establishment, rather than attempting to build up one very large congregation. Dr. Wells traveled through Europe in 1858. On July 28, 1864, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from his Alma Mater, Union College. For the last thirty-seven years he has been a member of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, and for a long period has served as its presiding officer ; he is a trustee of Princeton Theological Seminary and a member of the board of control of the New York State Coloniza- tion Society. On April 18, 1882, the Rev. Newell Woolsey Wells was installed as his father's associate in the work of the church. Throop Avenue Church. — The Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church is the outgrowth of a mission Sunday-school established in 1852, in what was then a desolate neighborhood, at the corner of Throop avenue and Bartlett street. The church was organ- ized on June 8, 1862, with twenty-seven members, seventeen of whom came from the South Third Street Presbyterian Church. It soon became evident that the church was not well located to become self-sup- porting, and in 1867 the congregation removed to a small frame edifice seating 450 people, which had been erected for the purpose, at the corner of Throop and Willoughby avenues. The first pastor of the congre- gation was the Rev. John Hancock, who served until 1867, when he was succeeded by the Rev. John Lowery, who continued as pastor until 1873, when he retired and the Rev. Lewis R. Foote was called. The church then numbered 137 members. In 1875 the congre- gation had increased to such an extent that wings were added to the building, and in 1882 it became neces- sary to again enlarge. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the church, in 1887, the congregation resolved to begin raising a fund for the construction of a new edi- fice. The corner-stone of the building was laid on November 2, 1889, and on November 2, 1890, it was Throop Avenue Presbyterian Church. 6o2 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. completed and formally opened for public worship. The church numbers about i,ooo members, and has 2,387 in the Sunday-school. The society owns the old building adjoining, now used as a chapel, and the Throop Avenue Mission building. The Rev. Lewis Ray Foote, D. D., was born in South New Berlin, Chenango County, N. Y., on March 29, 1844. When a little over seventeen years of age he entered the Union Army and remained until September 18, 1862, when he was discharged on account of a gun-shot wound received at the battle of Fair Oaks in June previous. He was graduated from Hamilton College with the class of 1869, and afterwards attended Union Theological Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1872. He was ordained by the Presbytery of New York on May 21, 1872, and was settled in his present charge in November of the follow- ing year. In 1889 Hamilton College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Rev. Dr. Foote married Mrs. Harriet Amanda Wilson on June 12, 1873. Throop Avenue Mission. — The Throop Avenue Mission Sunday-school was begun in 1852, and for many years did a very important work in that part of the city, which at that time was a neglected field. Out of it there have grown three Presbyterian churches, namely, the Throop Avenue, the Hopkins Street German and the Mt. Olivet. It erected a brick edifice on Throop avenue, near EUery street, in 1862, and continues its work there. It has 1,226 members. Darwin R. James, who has been connected with the mission forty years, is superintendent. Duryea Church was organized as a mission by the Rev. J. T. Duryea, pastor of the Classon Avenue Church, in 1887. It became an independent church in 1889. The church building on Clermont avenue, near Atlantic, was obtained, and the Rev. S. P. Halsey became pastor. The church has 220 members and 400 Sunday-school scholars. The pastorate is vacant at this writing. Cumberland Street Church. — In 187 1 the brick edifice now occupied on Cumberland street was erected at a cost of $44,000 and named Calvary Chapel by the Brooklyn Presbytery. During the following year the Rev. W. Guthrie Barnes, of Sag Harbor, L. I., worked with the congregation, and in February, 1873, the church was reorganized by the presbytery and called the Cumberland Street Presbyterian Church. On April 7 of the same year the name was changed to the Fort Greene Presbyterian Church. Rev. Adrian McClelland was installed as pastor. On December 12, 1887, the name of the church was again changed to its former style of Cumberland Street Presbyterian Church. The Rev. J. L. Campbell was called to the pastorate, and is at the present time working with the church, which has a membership of more than 200. The First German Presbyterian Church was organized on April 30, 1853, as the German Evan- gelical Mission Church. For a time services were held at 15 Maujer street, and the present church, on the corner of Leonard and Stagg streets, was occupied on October 14, 1855. From 1853 until 1885 the Rev. John Neander was pastor ; the present incumbent, the Rev. John G. Heber, succeeded him. The church has about 350 members and double that number of Sunday-school attendants. The Fifth German Church was organized on Novemb ; 3, 1886. A building on the corner of Hum- boldt and Moore streets was hired and services were begur jnder the pastoral direction of the Rev. Mr. Miller. The present pastor is the Rev. C. H. Schwartzbach The church has 200 members. Friedenskirche. — The German Presbyterian Friedensl xhe was organized under the care of the Rev. Philip Vollmer on October 21, 1884. For a time the congrej -^tion worshiped in the Greene Avenue Presby- terian Church, but soon moved to Ridgewood Hall, and 01, November 9, 1884, to its own church on Will- oughby avenue, near Broadway. The Rev. Louis Wolferz ' the pastor. There are 225 church members and 400 Sunday-school attendants. Grace Church.— At a meeting held on October 31, , S, for the purpose of considering the advisa- bility of establishing a Presbyterian Church in the uppe. irt of the city, the proposition was favorably regarded and services were held in a private house at Le '-pnu- Isey street. The permanent organization was completed on January 15, 1889. The Re - . ^^as called to the pastor- ate, retaining the charge until January 15, 1892. The Rev .^c is now the pastor. The con- gregation procured land on the corner of Stuyvesant an avenues and erected a church which they occupied on January 25, 1891. The church numbers aiembers and a Sunday-school of equal size. It is intended to erect a substantial church adjoining the present building, suitable for the accommodation of between 1,500 and 2,000 people. Hopkins Street Church.— The edifice of the Hopkins Street German Presbyterian Church, on that street, near Throop avenue, is a handsome building and the congregation, numbering over 400, was for many years the strongest German representative religious body of the Brooklyn Presbytery. When the congregation of the Throop Avenue Church left its little chapel to occupy more commodious quarters, in 1868, the building was handed over to the Rev. Julius C. M. Hones, who conducted Sunday services there in the German tongue. When the Presbytery of Nassau met in October, 1868, it examined twenty-one per- sons who were sent out to organize a German church in that locality, and the body was enrolled as the German Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Throop Avenue. In February, 1873, the church building on CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 603 Hopkins street was completed, dedi- cated and tlie name clianged to the Hopkins Street German Presbyte- rian Churcli. The church is in a flourishing- condition under the pas- torate of the young Rev. Arnold Winkleried Fismer, M. A., editor of the German Evangelist, tlie cliurch organ of the German Presbyterian church in the United States. There are 185 members and 353 persons enrolled in the Sunday-school. The Me.mori.4l Presbyterian Church originated in a mission Sun- day-school, established in 1S66 by some members of the Lafayette Ave- nue Church. In the latter part of the same year a chapel was pro- vided on Si.\th avenue and Warren street (now Prospect place). On February 19, 1S67, the chuixh was organized and formally recognized by the presbytery on March 28. The Rev. T. S. Brown was installed as the first pastor. In 1882 the church had outgrown the little chapel and work was begun on the existing edifice on Seventh avenue and St. John's place. This was first opened for worship on February iS, 18S3. The present pastor is the Rev. Thomas A. Nelson, I). 1). The church num- bers 625 members and 630 Sunday-school scholars. Dr. Nelson became pastor in .\ugust, 1877, imme- diately after his graduation from the Union Theological Seminary, New Yoi'k. The Mount Oi.ivet' Church was organized as a mission in 1SS7, and the present chapel on Evergreen avenue and Troutman street was occupied in the following year. The first pastor, the Rev. I. V. Schene, was followed by the Rev. David Junor, the present incumbent. The church has 200 members and 200 Sun- day-school scholars. 'nt Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn was organized on April ■r of Noble and Lorimer streets, was dedicated on December day-school has an attendance of 600. The Rev. Robert D. Memorwl Presbyterian Church. '*tii. Noble Street Church. — The Gre- 22, 1860, and its house of worsh"'' ^ at <-' Attn 4,1873. Its membership is^^Cjj^j^ ^ SprouU, I). D., is pastor. Prospect Heights PRE*-t5,(^,^„ „ member of the First Presbytet\M(^u , school at 418 Thirteenth street, (jj^\,' corner of Seventh avenue andThit William A. Holliday, D. D., took cW ■ Brooklyn, May 30, 188S. Thf ■.';iuij...., on i on April 7, 1889. Dr. Ff-"' municants. There are 35^ The Silvan Church (Coioi Worship was begun in a hall on Fu, ■H dates from January 16, 1887, when Mrs. D. H. Miller, a king in connection with the City Alission, opened a Sunday- th, the same year, the school was removed to the southeast =t, and an evening preaching service was begun. The Rev. ly, and the church was constituted by the Presbytery of rner of Eighth avenue and Tenth street was first occupied erward installed as pastor. The church numbers 100 com- of the Sunday-school. lized on July 25, 1S47, under the Presbytery of Brooklyn. L, and later was transferred to a mission house on Prince street. The building was recently torn dow ...id the society worships in a hall. The church has 154 mem- bers and 100 Sunday-school scholars. Arlington Avenue Church.— The Arlington Avenue Presbyterian Church of the city of Brooklyn is the only one of that denomination in the twenty-si.vth ward. It grew out of a series of cottage meetings and was organized on May 4, 1890, by the Rev. Augustus P. Pritchard, who is the present pastor. The place of worship is a new edifice on the corner of Arlington avenue and Elton street. There are 75 members m the church and 250 in the Sunday-school. Bethany Church was organized in 1888. Work was at once begun on a church edifice on Halsey street, near Howard avenue, and the' building was completed in 1889. The first pastor was the Rev. Chal- mers Martin, who was succeeded by the Rev. John A. Billingsley, the present pastor. The church has 150 members and 250 Sunday-school scholars. 6o4 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Greene Avenue Church.— The Greene Ave- nue Presbyterian Church was organized in 1874, and its first place of worship was a small building on a lot adjoining its present location on Greene avenue, between Reid and Patchen avenues. The Rev. W. J. Bridges was pastor from May 20, 1875, until June, 1890. The Rev. H. G. Mendenhall, the present incumbent, began his pastorate in September, 1890, and was installed on February 17, 1892. There are 330 members and the Sunday- school membership is 425. Ross Street Church. — The Ross Street Presbyterian Church (Old School), came into exist- ence in the chapel of Christ Church, on Division avenue. The Presbytery of Nassau organized the new congregation on April 28, 1864; on October 15, following, the Rev. Charles A. Pomeroy was installed as pastor. Land was at once purchased for a church on Ross street, between Lee and Bed- ford avenues, and on lots in the rear of this, on Wilson street, for a chapel. The chapel was dedicated and opened for public worship on Sun- day, May 14, 1865. On April 5, 187 1, the corner- stone of a handsome church edifice was laid, and the church was soon after occupied. It was origi- nally arranged to seat 1,000 people, but has been rearranged with about 800 sittings. Pastor Pome- roy was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Ginley in 1876. Two years later the Rev. Archibald McCullagh was installed in the pastorate, on March 17, 1878. In the spring of 1891 Mr. McCullagh was called to a church in Worcester, Mass. The Rev. J. E. Adams is the pastor. The growth of the church has been rapid and healthy. Its present membership is 541. It has a Sunday-school of 618 members, and has organized a mission school in Grand street. Reformed Presbyterian Church. — The First Reformed Presbyterian Church was a branch of the New York church of the same name, organized on April 3, 1848. A building was erected on Duffield street, near Myrtle avenue. This was sold to the Church of the Holy Trinity (Episcopal) in 1879, and for a time the congregation worshiped in Granada Hall. In October, 1881, the chapel of the Memorial Church, on Prospect place, near Sixth avenue, was purchased and has since been the home of the church. The church has 100 members and the Sunday-school has 200 scholars. The Rev. Thomas Walters is pastor. The First United Presbyterian Church was organized in 1849 by the Rev. H. H. Blair, who had previously carried on missionary work in the district occupied. The first regular pastor was the Rev. William Cleeland, and services were held in Bulterman's Hall until the purchase was completed of a brick church on South First and Eighth streets. This was subsequently sold and a church was built on Eighth and South Eighth streets. During the financial crisis of 1867 this church was exchanged for a frame church on North Fifth street, near Fifth. For a time the church was in financial straits and received aid from the board of missions, but it recovered in time and formed a union with the Associate and Associate Reformed Presbyterians, from which is derived the present name of the church. It has a church edifice at South First and Rodney streets. There are 150 members and a small Sunday-school under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. H. Andrew. The Second United Presbyterian Church was organized under the care of the Presbytery of New York in July, 1858. Public worship was begun in the Brooklyn Institute under the pastoral direction of the Rev. D. J. Patterson. In November, 1863, the church building at Atlantic avenue and Bond street was purchased from the Reformed Presbyterians and has since been used. The church has 250 members, and Mr. Patterson continues in the pastorate. Ross Street Presbyterian Church. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 605 ii^cm-'^'M:^ First Baptist Church in Pierrepont Street, Kemuved 1092. BAPTIST CHURCHES. Each individual Baptist church is absolutely free and independent of every other congregation the world over. No synod, conference or person has the slighest authority over a Baptist pastor. But for the sake of doing work which must be done collectively, associations are formed in cities and counties. Their "deliverances" are simply advisory, yet the weight of numbers and characteristics has a great influence upon individual churches. The Baptist Church E.\tension Society of Brooklyn is the local association. It not only has the confidence of the churches, but collections are taken up in nearly all of the congregations to aid it in its work. Its labors are in the cause of city evangelization, and new churches of insufficient strength to stand alone are aided financially. Each church sends its pastor and lay delegates (in number according to the church's size) to the meetings which are held monthly and annually. A board of trustees (fifteen in number) is in e.\ecutive control to attend to the making of loans, purchasing of property and the like. Individual Baptist churches are governed on precisely the same general plan as the association. For spiritual affairs there are deacons (one for each hundred members of the congregation usually) and for temporal matters there are trustees, who are usually divided into three classes, an election of one-third of the board being held each year. First Baptist Church in Pierrepont Street.— The church known as " The First Baptist Church in Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn," was formed by the union, in 1873, of the First Baptist Church in Brooklyn and the Pierrepont Street Church ; and its history is therefore a double one, that of the first church extend- ing back to the planting of the denomination in Brooklyn in the summer of 1S22 by Eliakim Raymond and Elijah Lewis, as already detailed. The church was formed on August 19, 1823, with Eliakim Raymond, Elijah Lewis, John Brown, Richard Poland and Charles P. Jacobs as trustees. It met in private houses until March, 1824, when the school-house at the corner of Adams and Concord streets was obtained, and the Rev. William C. Hawley was ordained as pastor. In the same year two lots of land were purchased on Pearl street, between Concord and Nassau streets, and a frame building, forty by sixty feet, was erected^ for the church by Mr. Raymond. Mr. Hawley was succeeded successively by the Rev. Joseph A. Warne [1S28- 29], the Rev. George Colt and the Rev, Josiah Denham [1829-30], and the Rev. J. E. Lascalle [1830-31]. The church was nearly broken up in 1832 by the prevalence of cholera in Brooklyn, but revived under the ministrations of the Rev. Leland Howell, who was settled in July, 1833; and a new building at the corner of Nassau and Liberty streets was completed in 1835. The Rev. Silas Ilsley was ordained as pastor in 1837. In 1840 thirty-three members were dismissed to form what was known at first as the East Church, and afterwards as the Pierrepont Street Church, and in 1847 a colony went out from the congregation to reor- ganize the Central Baptist Church. Other companies that went out from the church were those forming the 6o6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Washington Avenue Church, in 1851, and the Hanson Place Church, in 1854. Succeeding pastors were the Revs. James L. Hodge, 1851; O. W. Briggs, 1853; D. J. Yerkes, i860, and Henry M. Gallaher, 1864. The great Brooklyn fire of 1848 deprived the church of its house of worship, but the church was rebuilt the next year, and was enlarged during the pastorate of Mr. Gallaher, who resigned in 1872. In 1873 the Pierrepont Street Church also was without a pastor, and the two churches agreed to unite. The Pierrepont Street Church, which had worshiped in a hired hall for some time after its organization as the East Baptist Church, erected a stone edifice of Gothic architecture at Pierrepont and Clinton streets, and on May 24, 1843, changed its name to the Pierrepont Street Baptist Church. The building was completed in March, 1844. Like the church from which it sprang, the Pierrepont Street Church was a parent of churches, sending out thirty-eight of its members in 1847 to aid in re-forming the Central Baptist Church, and yielding up its pastor and fifty- four members in 1849, when the Strong Place Baptist Church was organized. It also sent a quota to aid in the organization of the Hanson Place Church. The first pastor was the Rev. E. E. L. Taylor, who was suc- ceeded by the Rev. Dr. Bartholomew Welsh, and he in turn by the Revs. John S. Holme, in 1854; Jesse B. Thomas, D. D., in 1864, and Walter W. Hammond, in 1868. Mr. Hammond resigned in 1870, and was the last pastor the church had as a separate organization. The Rev. Jesse B. Thomas, D. D., who after leaving the Pierrepont Street Church had filled a pastorate in San Francisco and one in Chicago, was invited to the pastorate of both the Baptist and the Pierrepont Street church, and took charge on January i, 1874 ; subsequently the two organizations, with an aggregate membership of eight hundred, united under a special act of the legislature, taking the name of "The First Baptist Church in Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn." In 1889 the erection of a new building at Pierrepont and Clinton streets was begun, and on October 17, 1880, the first services were held in the large auditorium. The church was made a free church from the first, none of the pews being either rented or sold, and the necessary revenues were more satisfactorily raised by means of voluntary subscriptions than by the old system of pew rentals. The pastorate of Dr. Thomas continued fourteen years, and he was succeeded on January i, 1888, by the Rev. Willard H. Robinson, who resigned on January 10, 1892. The church decided, in the spring of 1891, that a new location would be better, and accordingly an offer made for its real estate at Pierrepont and Clinton streets by the Brooklyn Savings Bank was accepted, and on December i, 1891, the property was conveyed to the bank. The congregation is temporarily occupying the hall of the Polytechnic Institute as a place of worship, pending the erection of a new church. The church has 645 members and a Sunday-school of 437 members. Central Baptist Church. — In October, 1831, the Second Baptist Church of Brooklyn was first estab- lished at Lawrence and Tillary streets ; for seven years it was ministered to by the Rev. Octavius Winslow, and when he resigned in 1838 the church disbanded. It was not until the early months of 1847 that the project of establishing a new church in that locality took definite form. Forty-two earnest Baptists were found ready to actively identify themselves with the undertaking, and John W. Sarles, who was then com- pleting his theological studies at Madison University, promised to become pastor of the new congregation, which he did in the autumn of 1847, when, on October 4, a regular organization of the Central Baptist Church was effected with ninety constituents, and ofiicial recognition was immediately extended. It was not long before events necessitated a change of location and a chapel, formerly occupied by the South Church, on Schermerhorn street, was purchased and transferred to a plot of ground on Bridge street. This build- ing was added to until a completed church of fair proportions was ready for occupancy. Church work was extended and a mission school was established on Hudson avenue. The contributions of the church toward charitable and religious work largely increased and for the six years between 1872 and 1878 aggregated $63,680. Dr. Sarles resigned in February, 1879, and left the pulpit during the following spring ; it was not until the beginning of the new year that the vacancy thus created was filled by the Rev. T. A. K. Gessler, D. D., of Elizabeth, N. J. In 1882 extensive repairs and improvements were made on the exterior and interior of the church. Dr. Gessler resigned at the close of October, 1886, and in December of that year the Rev. Halsey W. Knapp, D. D., accepted the call of the congregation, but resigned in the late autumn of 1890. On January 31, 1891, the Rev. Edward Everett Knapp was called and his ministry began in the fol- lowing February. The church has a membership of 343 and a large Sunday-school. Strong Place Church. — The Strong Place Baptist Church originated in a Sunday-school organized by some residents of South Brooklyn in October, 1847, in a vacant house on Degraw street, near Columbia. In 1848 Rev. George M. Vanderlip began preaching services and in October of that year the church was regularly organized. In January, 1849, services were held in a chapel on the corner of Strong place and Degraw street. In 1856 the present church was erected in front of this chapel, which was enlarged at the same time. In 1858 a number of members left to form the Greenwood Church, and in 1862 a similar move- ment resulted in the formation of the Tabernacle Church. The first pastor was the Rev. E. E. L. Taylor. The church has 830 members and 650 Sunday-school scholars under the charge of the Rev. N. E. Wood. The Strong Place Mission was established as the Carroll Street Mission. The chapel on Carroll street, near Hoyt, was dedicated on January 17, 1874. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 607 Marcy Avenue Baptist Church. Marcy Avenue Church. — The Marcy Avenue Baptist Church grew from a Sun- day-school movement inaugurated on the first Sunday in July, 1872, under the aus- pices of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church. On November 10, 1873, the church was organized with 43 members. Two lots at Marcy avenue, corner of Madison street, the property of the Wash- ington Avenue Church, were transferred to the new organization and the small frame building thereon was used for ser- vices. The Rev. Dr. Reuben Jeffery be- came pastor on December 14, 1873. The following evening the church was formally recognized by the delegates from the dif- ferent Baptist churches. The little build- ing was crowded week after week, and on October 11, 1874, a larger chapel was opened for worship ; in the summer of 1876 a wing twenty feet wide was added to the auditorium. On November i, 1880, Dr. Jeffery resigned and the Rev. Hugh 0. Pentecost became pastor in June, 1881. He remained so for two years when he resigned. For the next two years the church was without a pastor, and in De- cember, 1885, a call was extended to the Rev. Dr. W. C. P. Rhoades, of Granville, Ohio, which was accepted, and he entered upon the pastorate on January i, 1886. The church has built a beautiful edifice on the original site. There are 1,756 members of the church. Theodore M. Banta is superintendent of the Sunday-school, which numbers 1,848 scholars. The Bedford Avenue Baptist Church was organized on January 12, 1847, as the East Brooklyn Baptist Church. The original place of worship was on Skillman street, near Park avenue. The present edifice on Bedford avenue, near Willoughby, was occupied in 1855. The name was changed to the Bedford Avenue Baptist Church in 1883. The Rev. Hiram Hutchins, who was pastor from September, 1859, until April, 1890, is now pastor emeritus, and the Rev. J. Henry Gunning, who was settled in October, 1891, is the active pastor. The membership of the church is nearly 400 and there are 500 children in the Sunday- school. The Concord Baptist Church (Colored) was organized in May, 1847, at the house of Mrs Maria Hampton, on Fair street. At that time there were only five members under the care of the pastor, the Rev. Sampson White. For a year worship was conducted in Uris' Hall ; then lots were purchased on Concord street and a church was erected. In 1873 larger accommodations were required and the society pur- chased the property of the Central Baptist Church on Canton street. The Rev, S. White was succeeded by the Rev. Leonard Block in 1851, and he by Simon Bundick in 1853. In 1857 Mr. White again became pastor, but gave place to the Rev. William J. Barnett in 1862. The next year the present pastor, the Rev. William T. Dixon, was called. The church has 773 members and 430 children in the Sunday-school. First Church, E. D. — The organization of the First Baptist Church of Brooklyn, E. D , was effected on April 18, 1839, and was first known as the Bethel Baptist Church. The Rev. Daniel C. Eddy, D. D., the present pastor, began his ministry in 1881. The church edifice now occupied was formally dedicated on April 30, 1885, at which time the name was changed. It has 530 members and a large Sunday-school. The Rev. Dr. Eddy, the pastor, was graduated from the New Hampton Theological Institution in 1845, and has been pastor of churches in Lowell and Boston. In 1854 he was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives and was chosen speaker of that body by an almost unanimous vote. Bedford Heights Church.— The Bedford Heights Baptist Church of the City of Brooklyn was organized on January 4, 1889. It was the outgrowth of a Sunday-school which was instituted on March 9, 1886, in Conservatory Hall, at Bedford avenue and Fulton street. When the church was organized the Sunday-school became a part of it. The church building, at Bergen street and Rogers avenue, was dedi- cated on November 12, 1888. On October i, 1891, the Rev. R, Marshall Harrison, D. D., became pastor, and now occupies that position. There are 100 members and a Sunday-school of 225 members. 6oS THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Bethany Baptist Church was organized on January 27, 1887. For more than a year it wor- shiped in a building at Cumberland and Fulton streets, but on April i, 1888, the present church, at Vander- bilt and Atlantic avenues, was dedicated. The Rev. R. I. Gaines is the pastor, having iilled that office more than five years. The church has 175 members and 150 Sunday-school attendants. The Bushwick Avenue Church was organized in January, 1889, with 26 members. For some time it occupied a chapel built by the Church Extension Society in 1888 for the Sunday-school. Its pastor, the Rev. Thomas J. Whittaker, was installed in December, 1888. The new church prospered, and in May, 1891, it dedicated the house of worship which it occupies on Bushwick avenue, corner of Weirfield street. The membership is 232 and there are 740 names on the rolls of the Sunday-school. Calvary Church was organized in 1870 as the Herkimer Street Baptist Church, which name it retained until 1889, when its present place of worship, at Sumner avenue and Decatur street, was erected, and it adopted the name which it now bears. The Sunday-school and the church were established largely through the efforts of Leonard Richardson. The pastor is the Rev. John C. Allen, who took charge in February, 1890, after a pastorate of five years with the Hanson Place Church. The church has 365 members and the Sunday-school is large and flourishing. ^The Calvary Branch Bible School is a branch of Calvary Baptist Church and is under the care of Pastor Allen and Superintendent Alexander Baker. The mission was organized in July, 1891, and was first established at Buffalo avenue and Bergen street. The present build- ing on Ralph avenue and Bergen street was erected this year. The Bible school numbers 100 scholars. Central Church, E. D. — The Central Baptist Church of Brooklyn, E. D., was organized on July 11 1865, with 42 members, and its present membership is more than 500. Under the pastoral care of the Rev! J. L. Ray, A. M., Ph. D., the church is prosperous in every way. The Sunday-school has over 400 members. The Centennial Church was organized in the latter part of 1875, and was recognized as an inde- pendent church, in January, 1876. Its first membership was drawn from the moribund Clinton Avenue Church, established in 1864. The congregation worshiped in the Clermont avenue rink until 1885, under the pastorate of the Rev. Justin D. Fulton, D. D. In 1885 the handsome church on Adelphi street, near Myrtle avenue, was built. Dr. Fulton's successors have been the Revs. Samuel McBride, D. D., and J. W. Richard- son. The present pastor, the Rev. Isaac Newton Phelps, was installed in November, 1892. The church has 425 members and 200 Sunday-school scholars. The East End Church, on Van Siclen street, near the Eastern Parkway, occupied its present church edifice in 1887, one year after its organization. The first pastor, the Rev. J. Whitehurst, served for four years, when he was succeeded by the present incumbent, the Rev. George H. Home, in January, 1891. The church has something over a hundred members and gives good promise of future prosperity. There are 251 members in the Sunday-school. First Baptist Church, East New York. — The First Baptist Church in East New York was organ- ized in 1866, and incorporated the same year. The church was greatly assisted in its early days by the Washington Avenue Baptist Church and was almost a mission of that congregation. Worship was first held in a hall on Liberty avenue, from which the congre- gation moved to a church on Arlington avenue, near Schenck street. The present church on Schenck and Hendrix streets, near Fulton, was built a couple of years ago. The Rev. R. H. Baker is the present pas- tor. The church has 300 members and 380 attendants at the Sunday-school sessions. The Memorial Baptist Church was organized in 1891 with 93 members and 319 Sunday-school schol- ars. The church is at Eighth avenue and Sixteenth street, and is under the charge of the Rev. H. S. Baker. Washington Avenue Church. — There are ample reasons to account for the success of the Washing- ton Avenue Baptist Church, which is situated in the ; centre of the hill section of Brooklyn and supplied with every facility for conducting its work. It has passed through all the transitional stages from com- parative insignificance to prominence and influence, and has reached proportions that enable it to send out Rev. Edward Braislin, D. D. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 609 some of the strongest missions that have ever organized new congregations under the shadow of an older church. It was organized in December, 185 i, with 27 memliers, and a lecture-room, which had been built some time previously at Washington and Gates avenues, was its first home. Worship was continued there until i860, when the church, as it now stands, was built at a cost of $56,500, including subsequent additions and improvements. The first to assume the pastoral charge of the congregation was the Rev. Dr. James L. Hodge, who remained three years from September, 1S52, and was succeeded by the Rev. C. W. Anable, in November, 1862. The Washington Avenue Church was without a pastor until March, 1864, when the pulpit was occupied by the Rev. David Moore, Jr., whose term of service closed in 1875. Succeeding him, the Rev. Emory J. Haynes was pastor until 1S84. He was succeeded by the Rev. Edward Braislin, I). D., the present pastor. There are 767 church members and 580 in the Sunday-school. The Prospect Heights Mission is a branch of this church. It was organized in 1887, and located in a store at 608 Vanderbilt avenue. The Sunday-school has 60 sciiola'-s. The mission is under the superintendence of Mr. J. E. Ramsey. The Rev. Ehwaru Br.-\isi.in, D. 1)., entered upon his duties as pastor of the ^\'ashington Avenue Church on February i, 1886. He is a native of Burlington, New Jersey. When twenty-two years old, while studying in Philadelphia, he experienced religious convictions which led to his baptism in the First Baptist Church of Phdadelphia, after which he devoted his energies to qualifying himself for the ministry. He completed the prescribed course at the Crozer Theological Seminary, and, after his graduation, in 1873, spent a year more in that institution pursuing the studies of a post-graduate. His first ministerial experi- ence was with the Baptist Church at Mount Holly, N. J., where he was ordained in 1874. In 1881 he took charge of a church at Newton Centre, Mass. His con- gregation prospered under his guidance for five years. A unanimous call brought him to Brooklyn in Febru- ary, 1886, and he was installed as pastor of the ^Vashing- ton Avenue Baptist Church. Since that time he has attained a prominent position among the clergymen of the city. He has materially increased the prosperity and influence of his church and continued its work as one of the most potent facturs in the foreign and domestic mission fields. In all tlie societies that labor under the sanction of his church, Dr. Braislin takes a practical interest that manifests itself in every form of encouragement; his sympathy with the young has re- sulted in cementing and strengthening the youthful element in his congrega- tion ; while the elevated nature of his work in and out of the pulpit has at- tracted many of the most desirable people in the citv. His manner in the pulpit is clear and forci- ble, utterly devoid of sen- sationalism, and marked by a dignity of subject and address. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Richmond College, Va., at the time of his coming to Brook- lyn. The First Swedish Baptist Church was or- ganized in January, 1864, with ninety-four mem- bers, who had been a part of the Swedish Baptist Church of New York. Services were held in a hall at 16 Smith street, W.\,IIINGTO.^ AVENUE B.iPTIST CHUKCH. 6io THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. under the pastorate of the Rev. William Ludin. About the year 1885 the present church property on Atlantic, near Fourth avenue, was purchased. The church is under the pastoral care of the Rev. O. Hedeen and has 425 members, with 132 in the Sunday-school. Greene Avenue Church.— Under the name of the First Baptist Church of Bushwick the Greene Ave- nue Baptist Church was organized on April 5, 1854. Services were held in a frame church on Bushwick avenue for twelve years, but the building was sold in 1867, and the congregation worshiped in a private house. In 1884, worship was celebrated in Warner's Hall until the basement of the present church was occupied on April 22, 1888. The main building was dedicated on April 17, 1892. The pastor is the Rev. R. B. Montgomery. There are 720 church members and 900 members of the Sunday-school. The First Baptist Church, Greenpoint, was organized in 1847, with nine members. In 1849 a chapel was built. Rev. Peter Boyce was the second minister ; he was succeeded by the Revs. J. Y. Aitchison, Robert Carr, Kelsey Walling, Alfred Harvey and William Reid [1861-1867], during whose pastorate the present church, on Noble street, near Manhattan avenue, was built. The present pastor is the Rev. Samuel J. Knapp, and the church membership numbers 392 ; there are 497 members of the Sunday-school. The Greenwood Church grew from a mission of the Strong Place Baptist Church, conducted by the Rev. Henry Bromley, in 1856. A church organization was completed on September 21, 1858. In April, 1863, a brick chapel on Fifteenth street, near Fourth avenue, was dedicated, and on February 22, 1875, the present edifice was opened for public worship. The Rev. A. J. Lauren was then pastor, and he was suc- ceeded by the present pastor, the Rev. Robert B. Hull, D.D., who was installed in April, 1884. There are 983 members in the church and 1,263 in the Sunday-school. Hanson Place Church.— Dating from June 18, 1854, the Hanson Place Baptist Church has been a prosperous organization. It was begun in 1853 as a Sunday-school, on Atlantic avenue, near Nevins street, and the congregation built a chapel on Atlantic street, near Powers, calling itself the Atlantic Street Baptist Church, which was dedicated on May i, 1855. Four years later lots were purchased at Hanson place and Portland avenue, and a church was erected and dedicated in November, i860. The society then took its present name. The present pastor is the Rev. A. C. Dixon, who took charge in November, 1890. There is a church membership of 790 and a membership of 579 in the Sunda3^-school. The Rev. Amzi Clarence Dixon, who was born in Shelby, N. C, July 6, 1854, is the son of a preacher. He entered Wake Forest College at the age of fifteen and was graduated at nineteen. His studies at college were pursued with a view to make law his profession. He had no thought of becoming a preacher until he realized his mission from his success in exhorting in a country church. His most important charge before he came to Brooklyn was in Baltimore, where he organized and built up the first Baptist church in the city. He remained there several years. He is the author of a book entitled " True and the False." The Messiah Baptist Church was organized in 1887. Work was carried on in private rooms until 1889, when the present church on Troy avenue and Bergen street was built. The church is under the pastoral care of the Rev. Rufus L. Perry, who has been in charge since its organization. Ocean Hill Baptist Church was organized in 1889, and the church edifice, at Rockaway avenue and Somers street, was built in the next year. The first pastor was the Rev. J. L. Campbell, who was succeeded by the present incumbent, the Rev. W. J. Mosier. The church has 302 members and the Sunday-school has 500 attendants. The Pilgrim Baptist Church was organized in 1889 and in the same year began to worship in a vacant store. Its success, in a district of the city poorly provided with churches, was immediate and so marked that the Church Extension Society lent a helping hand to the work, and began the erection of a handsome brick chapel at Patchen avenue and McDonough street, which was dedicated on January 29, 1893. The property alongside is owned by the church and later will form the site of a church proper. The stained glass windows from the Pierrepont Street Baptist Church were used in the chapel. The Rev. W. R. Maul became pastor in 1891. The church has 92 members and 132 Sunday-school scholars. The Sixth Avenue Baptist Church was evolved from a mission school established at 195 Flatbush avenue in 1864. Soon afterward a chapel was built at Sixth avenue and Lincoln place, and church services began under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Henry Bromley. On January 16, 1872, the church was regu- larly organized and was reorganized on February 8, 1872. The first pastor was the Rev. J. B. Cleaver, from 1872 to 1874. The present incumbent, the Rev. Rufus B. Kelsay, was installed on November i, 1875. The present church edifice was built in 1880 and dedicated on December 28 of that year. The church has 431 members, and there are 810 members of the Sunday-school. The Rev. Rufus B. Kelsay, D. D., was born in Ocean County, N. J., August 7, 1842, and was educated at the Union Academy and the West Jersey Institute. He was ordained in Lancaster County, Pa., in December, 1862. His first charge was a small church in Lancaster County, Pa. While preaching there he raised a company of volunteers and was elected captain. He remained with the company until stricken with camp fever. In 1864 he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Meadville, Pa., a position CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 6ii he resigned to become secretary of the American Bible Union for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland After holding pastorates in Baltimore, Albany and Passaic, N. J., he came to his present charge. The Second Baptist Church, E. D., was organized in 1840, and the present property on Ainslie street, near Graham avenue, was purchased soon after. The church was built in 1854. In 1854 the Sunday- school was established; it has 300 members and the church has 200. The pastor is the Rev. E. K. Cressey. The Second German Baptist Church, originally known as the Harrison Avenue German Baptist Church, had its origin in amission school of the German Baptist Church of New York. In 1878 a chapel was built at 175 Harrison avenue. In 1881 the church was organized. The present church building on Wallabout street, near Harrison avenue, was completed in 1889. The Rev. H. Trumpp has been the pastor since the organization of the church proper. There are 162 church members and 290 in the Sunday-school. Trinity Baptist Church was organized in 1875 by some members of the Willoughby Avenue Baptist Church. Ridgewood Hall, at Broadway and Lexington avenue, was first used for worship, but in 1877 the present church on Greene and Patchen avenues was built. The church has 375 members and a Sunday- school with 559 attendants. The pastors have been Rev. Dr. Hodge until 1886 ; Rev. O. E. Cox, 1876-1885, and the Rev. S. G. Nelson. The latter resigned in February, 1893. The Union Avenue Baptist Church was established on January 17, 1870, with 34 members, and worshiped for a time on the site of the present Greenpoint branch of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion under the pastorate of the Rev. U. B. Guiscard. In 1880 the existing church edifice was built and occupied. The pastor is the Rev. A. B. McLaurin. The church has 315 members and 555 Sunday-school scholars. The West End Baptist Church was organized in 1886 and services were begun at once in a hall at Forty-third street and Third avenue. In 1888 the present church on Forty-seventh street and Third avenue was built and opened for public worship. The pastor is the Rev. George W. Greenwood, who has had charge of the work from the beginning. The church has 221 members and 484 Sunday-school scholars. Wyckoff Avenue Baptist Church was organized in 1886. The church edifice was built in 1888, in which year the Rev. George H. Home was made pastor. At present the church is without a pastor. It has 44 members and 220 Sunday-school scholars. Emmanuel Church was organized in October, 1881, by members of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church. For a time they worshiped in the Adelphi Academy chapel, but in 1885-6 the present handsome church edifice was built on the corner of Lafayette avenue and St. James' place, mainly through the munifi- cence of the late Charles Pratt. The first pastor of the church was the Rev. J. W. Heaton Smith. D. D., whose successor, the Rev. J. Hump- , ,, ,.,„ stone, is the present pastor. The • : ' '■ '^ church has 580 members and a Sun- day-school of the same numerical strength. The Rev. John Humpstone, D.D., was born in Manchester, England, on May 4, 1850. He came to America with his parents in the autumn of 1863, and settled at Philadelphia. His education was received at the Baptist college in Lewisburg, Pa., since named Bucknell University, where he was graduated in 187 1 ; and at Crozer Theological Seminary in the class of 1874, During his seminary life he was ordained in Galway, Saratoga County, N. Y. He married Miss Mary Paul, of that place, in June, 1874. His first regular pastorate was with the Baptist Church in Manayunk, Phila- delphia, where he remained nearly three years. Thence he removed to the Calvary Baptist Church at Al- bany, N. Y., where he remained five years, when failing health compelled a change. At Albany he began the practice of instructing Sunday-school Emmanuel Baptist Church. 6l2 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. teachers, which he has so successfully carried on since coming to Brooklyn. He has written the Sunday- school lessons for The Criterion at Albany, and for The Christian Inquirer of New York, and has been a member of the editorial corps of the latter ever since its inception. While at Albany, he was invited to be professor of homiletics at Newtown Theological Seminary, Boston, and since his settlement in Brooklyn, he was elected president of the Bucknell University, but declined in each case. In 1887, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from his alma mater. The Tabernacle Baptist Church was begun as a mission on Sunday, February 8, 1852, by fifteen members of the Strong Place Baptist Church, and in 1859 the organization was strong enough to build a large Sunday-school building at Hicks and Rapelye streets. On June 26, 1862, fifty-five members of the Strong Place Church, following the pioneer Sunday-school workers, united with them and formed the Tabernacle Baptist Church. The existing edifice was dedicated on September 26, 1875. The pastor up to 1892 was the Rev. A. P. McDiarmid, who was installed in 1890. Since its constitution the church has given membership to 1,159 persons, and it numbers at present 275 members, with 304 in the Sunday-school. The First German Baptist Church, E. D., was originated in 1854, and its house of worship is on Montrose avenue, near Union. The church membership is 350 and the Sunday-school has 300 members. The Rev. J. C. Grimmell is pastor. The First German Baptist Church, South Brooklyn, is located on Prospect avenue, near Sixth, and has 54 members with no in the Sunday-school. It was organized in 1873, and the Rev. S. Kornmaier is pastor. Hope Baptist Church, on Union avenue, opposite South Second street, was organized in 1892. There are 77 members and a Sunday-school of 400, under the pastorate of the Rev. James G. Ditmars. UNITARIAN CHURCHES. Unitarians, like the Baptists who preceded them and the Universalists and Congregafionalists who followed them in Brooklyn, are believers in the strict autonomy of the individual church. They recognize in the relation of the several churches only the principles of fellowship; and, while they summon councils to assist in the institution of a new church or in the ordination and installation of new ministers these councils are allowed no authority by which they can prevent the institution of a church or the induction of a man into the ministry. The Unitiarians have a national conference which meets biennially, and is simply a deliberative body whose chief function is to recommend lines of general action. There is also an older national body, known as the American Unitarian Association, endowed by gifts and bequests, and supported by member- ship fees and the contributions of socie- ties and individuals. Its principal objects are the dissemination of liberal Christian literature by sale and gift, the assistance of young churches in promising fields, and, incidentally, the maintenance of commu- nication between unemployed ministers and societies requiring occasional or stated ministrations. The denomination supports a strong and well-equipped Sun- day-school society. The national confer- ence usually meets in Saratoga, but the headquarters of the other organizations are in Boston, Mass., where a magnificent denominational building was erected in 1884 by voluntary contributions. Church of the Saviour. — The first Unitarian Church in Brooklyn was organ- ized as a result of several meetings held by people of that persuasion, v/ho held their first public services in Classical Hall, on Washington street, on Sunday, August 17, 1833. On March 31 of the suc- ceeding year, a formal call was extended church of the Saviour. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 613 to the Rev. David H. Barlow, who, for some months previous, had preached to the congregation; he was installed as pastor on September 17, 1834. In 1835 the Second Presbyterian Church, afterwards known as Gothic Hall, on Adams street, was purchased, and the society was incorporated under the title of the First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn. Mr. Barlow was succeeded by the Rev. Frederick W. Holland in 1838; he resigned his pastorate in the closing days of 1841. A number of families seceded on December 2, 1840, and formed what was known as the Second Society, which for a short time was known, under its corporate name, as the Second Unitarian Church. Threatened collapse was averted in March, 1842, when the two churches were united in a new organization under the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Frederick A. Farley. On April 24, 1844, a new edifice, on the corner of Monroe place and Pierrepont street, was consecrated, and a little later the church took the name it now bears — the Church of the Saviour. Dr. Farley retired in 1863, after a pastorate of twenty years, but continued to reside in Brooklyn until his death, in 1892. He was succeeded by the Rev. A. P. Putnam, D. D., who occupied the pulpit from 1864 to 1886, and then gave way to the Rev. Alfred E. Goodenough, who died in 1888. In the autumn of 1865 the church established the Furman Street Mission School, and a few months later completed the handsome chapel which adjoins the main building. The Rev. H. Price Collier was the next incumbent and, resigning in 1892, was succeeded by the Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, of Denver, Col, son of President Charles W. Eliot, of Harvard University. The church has 325 members and a Sunday-school with 400 members. Second Unitarian Church. — On November 5, 1850, a third Unitarian society, which took a per- manent place among the ecclesiastical bodies of Brooklyn, was organized, and its first services were held on April 20, 1 85 1. After wor- shiping in various places the ■ society erected its church on the corner of Clinton and Con- gress streets and took posses- sion in March, 1858. The first pastor was the Rev. Samuel Longfellow, a younger brother of the poet and the author of a number of beautiful hymns. He served from October 26, 1853, until April 29, i860, and was succeeded by the Rev. N. A. Staples, who died in Feb- ruary, 1864. The Rev. John W. Chadwick was ordained and installed in December, 1864. The church has 400 members. The Rev. John White Chadwick is known far and „ rr r- , Second Unitarian Church. wide among the cultured and studious classes as a poet, preacher, writer and theologian. When he came to Brooklyn as the pastor of the Second Unitarian Church he was a young man, little known, except among the friendly admirers who recognized the promise of his powers. He is the son of John W. and Jane Stanley Chadwick, and was born on October 19, 1840, in a quaint New England fishing town, Marblehead, Mass. His school days ended with his thirteenth year, when he began work in a drygoods store, where he remained until an opportunity to learn the shoemaker's trade offered itself. In 1857 he abandoned the awl and last to begin study at the State Normal school in Bridgewater, Mass., from which he was graduated in February, 1859. Shortly after- wards he spent some time at Phillips' Academy, Exeter, N. H., and then passed a year with a private tutor, who fitted him for admission to the Cambridge Divinity School, from which he was graduated July 19, 1864. During the youth and early manhood of Mr. Chadwick, New England was under the powerful spell of Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their transcendental inspirations permeated his doctrines; and the noble influence of their teachings, invigorating his mind, has been through him the bread of hfe to many souls. Under his pastorate the Second Unitarian Society has become a stable and influential body embracing many of the city's most respected men and women. It has been munificent in its chanties and earnest m its good works, prominent among which is the Brooklyn Guild, with a free kindergarten, located at 245 Concord street, and in connection with the church has been developed the Brooklyn Ethical Association the philosophical discourses of which have had a circulation and an influence throughout the English speaking world. 6i4 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Unity Church. — The Third Congregational Unitarian Society, known as Unity Church, worshiped in a hall on the corner of Classon avenue and Fulton street for a year after its organization on December 3, 1867. The Unity Church, on the corner of Classon avenue and Lefferts place, was dedicated on Decem- ber 9, 1868. The pastor, the Rev. Stephen H. Camp, was installed on October 6, 1869, and has continued to minister to the church. In 1886 the old Irving Hall, on the corner of Gates avenue and Irving place, was purchased and enlarged and rebuilt so as to make an artistic and attractive church. The number of members is 200. Willow Place Chapel. — The Willow Place Chapel is a branch of the First Unitarian Society, and had its origin in a Sunday-school mission conducted in the upper floor of the Wall street ferry house. On Easter Sunday, 1876, the present chapel on Willow place was dedicated. The average attendance at the present time is about 325, and in the Sunday-school there are 250 pupils. A large part of the work of the chapel is conducted by means of clubs, a boys' club meeting on Thursday and Saturday evenings, a girls' club on Monday and Friday, a drill corps on Wednesday evening, a woman's meeting on Monday evening and a kindergarten during the day. LUTHERAN AND GERMAN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES. The Lutheran, the Reformed, and the German Evangelical churches differ only in the matter of com- munion creed. This is sufficient, however, to form three separate general synods in the country. The Lutheran are one wing, the Reformed the other, and the German Evangelical, the United church, occupies a medial point. There is but one United church in Brooklyn, the First, on Schermerhorn street, which was organized when there were not enough Germans here to establish two congregations. In it both Lutheran and Reformed have equal privileges. Each church is governed by its consistory, the size of which may vary according to the church itself. Generally, it has either three or five elders, five, seven or nine deacons and the pastor. The elders and the deacons make up the trustees. In some churches the trustees are separate officers, to the number of seven, there being seven elders and seven deacons besides. To the yearly synod are sent the pastor and one layman, elected by the consistory. German Evangelical. — The German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brooklyn was organized on October 17, 1841, and in 1845 built its church edifice on Schermerhorn street, near Court, which was enlarged and refitted in 1865. In 1888 the erection of the present church begun. This was dedicated on January 19, 1890. The church numbers 1,000 communicants and 600 Sunday-school attendants. The pastor is the Rev. Jacob W. Loch, who was installed in 1886. St. Paul's. — The mother of the Evangelical Lutheran churches of the Eastern District is St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Congregation. This church was in existence as early as 1849, and from May 12, 1853, until October 11, 1885, occupied a building on the corner of South First and Ninth streets. In 1885 it dedicated the present building on the corner of South Fifth and Rodney streets. The first pastor was the Rev. E. H. Biihre. The present pastor, the Rev. H. B. Strodach, took charge in July, 1883. Although various churches have been organized from its membership, St. Paul's has continued to prosper; it has 800 communicants and 600 and 800 pupils in its English and German Sunday-schools respectively. The religious exer- cises are conducted in both English and German. St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church. — In 1864 the Rev. Philip Zapf preached to a number of German families in a hall located on Skillman street, near Park avenue. A school was established at the same place with Bernhard Haas as teacher. Early in 1867 Pastor Zapf ceased his ministrations and the incipient congregation disbanded. In 1867, the Rev. A. U. H. Schubert, Ph. D., gathered a number of those who had formerly attended the services under Pastor Zapf and on November 17, 1867, organ- ized the First German Evangelical Lutheran St. Peter's Church of Brooklyn, N. Y. From the hall in Skillman street St. Peter's Lutheran Church, CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 615 the young congregation, on December 15, 1867, moved into the Presbyterian chapel in Park avenue, near Spencer street, where services, Sunday-school and day-school sessions were regularly held. Dr. Schubert resigned his pastorate in 1868, and was succeeded on November 10, 1868, by the Rev. Robert C. Beer, who in turn was followed on October 17, 1869, by the Rev. Carl Goehling. On April 10, 1870, it was'decided to buy the Puritan Congregational church, corner DeKalb avenue and Walworth street, and the first services were held there on May 2d of that year. Mr. Goehling resigned and the Rev. John J. Heischmann, D.D the present pastor, was called on October 8, 1878. During his pastorate the society has prospered, and among the improvements made was the introduction of the English language in the services and the organ- ization of an English Sunday-school in 1880. St. Peter's was the first German congregation in Brooklyn to make such changes. The church has a membership of 1,600 and there are more than 1,100 in the Sunday- school. A parochial school and kindergarten with 242 scholars and four teachers are maintained and there are several effective working organizations connected with the church. The Rev. John J. Heischmann, D.D., is a native of New York and is a graduate of the Hagerstown, Md. Academy and Knapp's Institute, Baltimore. After a collegiate course at Bloomfield College, New Jersey, he was graduated at the Lutheran Semi- nary in Philadelphia, and took courses of study abroad at the universities ' "' of Berlin, Leipsic and Heidelberg. He is a fine linguist and preaches in both German and English, and has done much excellent literary work. At one time he was one of the editors of the Lutheran Church Paper and before that of the Pilger. He is at present a contributor to a number of European and American periodicals. Among his works which have appeared in print are: "European Notes," "Life in Germany," "On Classic Ground," etc. "How can the Social Question be Solved?" appeared in 1887, and received the official sanction of the Synod. Since 1887, he has issued yearly a " Teachers' Commentary on Lutheran Sunday- school Lessons." He is prominently identified with the New York Synod, holding many offices of trust in that body. He is the secretary of the executive committee; supervisor of the various mission congrega- tions; examiner in symbolics and history of doctrine; a director in the Lutheran Seminary at Philadelphia, and in Wagner College, Rochester, N. Y., and regularly a delegate to the general council of the Lutheran „, ,. ,°^.,„ Rev. J. J. Heischmann, D. D. Church m the United States. Bethlehem Church (Marion street). — In 1888 the Rev. John J. Heischmann, D. D., pastor of St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church, organized a branch Sunday-school in the hall on the corner of King- ston and Atlantic avenues, and later organized the Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Congregation which is now located in a comfortable church on Marion street, near Reid avenue, and numbers 200 members. The Rev. E. H. W. Kandelhart is pastor. Three hundred scholars are in the Sunday-school. ZiON Church. — The German Evangelical Lutheran Zion Church was organized in 1855 by the Rev. Frederick W. T. Steimle and Jacob Goedel with a congregation of twelve persons. This number dwindled to four, but in the spring of 1856 the energetic pastor had secured a footing which resulted in the purchase of a building known as Concert Hall, on Henry street, which was dedicated as a church. The building of the present beautiful edifice was begun in 1880, in which year Pastor Steimle died. His successor, the Rev. Johann F. C. Hennicke, carried on the work until he died in October, 1888, when it was taken up success- fully by the present pastor, the Rev. Emil C. J. Kraeling, who had been made assistant pastor the year before. The church has 1,200 communicants and a Sunday-school of 600 members. Trinity (Harrison street). — Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church (German), now worshiping at the corner of Harrison street and Tompkins avenue, was organized in February, 1886, under the name of the German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Congregation of Brooklyn. For a time the congregation occupied the Union Chapel on Columbia street, near Woodhull, but on October 9, 1887, took possession of the present building. In November, 1886, the Rev. George Konig was called to the pastorate and he has continued to preside over the church. The church numbers 200 members and has 150 scholars in its Sunday-school. Trinity (Norwegian). — The Norwegian Lutheran Trinity Church of Brooklyn was organized in Allesen Hall, on Twenty-second street, corner of Third avenue, on July 10, 1890. The pastor, the Rev. M. H. Hegge, was called in the following November. The church numbers 200 members and has secured land on Twenty-seventh street, near Fifth avenue, as a site for a church building. St. John's (Liberty avenue).— The German Evangelical Lutheran St. John's Church, at the corner of Liberty and New Jersey avenues, was organized early in 1847 and dedicated its house of worship on Sep- tember 17 the same year. The building was enlarged in 1868. Since 1891 the Rev. Justus F. Holstein has been pastor. The number of church members is 180 and the Sunday-school numbers 330. 6i6 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. St. Johannes' Evangelical Lutheran Church, on Graham avenue, near Maujer street, was organ- ized in 1844. For a time the congregation worshiped in the pastor's house, but a wooden building was procured on Graham avenue and occupied until 1847, when a church was built. The present building was erected in 1883. In 1885 a large portion of the congregation left to form a new church. The church has 935 members under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. P. Byer. Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church (English) was organized in 1881 under the pastorate of the Rev. George F. Behringer. The church edifice on Rodne}' street, near South Second street, was built in 1885. The church has 100 members and 190 Sunday-school scholars. It was under the charge of the Rev. Henry Sharp for five years previous to his resignation in January, 1893. Trinity Lutheran Church, worshiping in Americus Hall, 208 Grand street, was organized in 1885 under the care of the Rev. G. H. Vosseler. The church has 70 members. Emmanuel Church, on Seventh street, near Fifth avenue, was organized in 1884 under the care of the Rev. E. S. Wisswaesser. The existing church edifice was built in 1886. The church has 175 members and 275 Sunday-school scholars under the pastoral care of the Rev. E. F. Giese. Church of Our Saviour (Danish). — The Danish Church of Our Saviour was organized in 1878 from a mission begun in 1872 at Perth Amboy, N. J., and afterward extended in New York and Brooklyn. Services were first held in Harmonia Hall and subsequently in St. Johannes' Church, and the "Augsburg Chapel " Mission was established. This mission gradually grew into a church. The mission house on Ninth street, purchased in 1882, was remodeled as the church became larger. It has 200 members and 35 Sunday-school scholars and is yet under the care of its founder, the Rev. Rasmus Anderson. St. Matthew's English Lutheran Church, at Clinton and Amity streets, was organized from a mission begun in 1858 in a hall on Atlantic avenue and State street. In 1879 the building vacated by the South Presbyterian Church was purchased, and it is now the home of the church. The first pastor was the Rev. William Hull. The present incumbent is the Rev. T. T. Everett. The church has 200 members and 250 Sunday-school scholars. St. Luke's Lutheran Church was organized in 1869 and worshiped in a hall in Cumberland street, between DeKalb and Lafayette avenues, until the purchase of the property of the Simpson M. E. Church on Carlton avenue, near Myrtle, in 1870. A school was begun in 1870, and in 1878 a school-house was built adjoining the church. The Rev. J. H. Baden has been pastor since the organization of the church. It has 300 members and 200 Sunday-school members. St. John's Church, Greenpoint, was organized in 1866, and services were first held in Union Hall, on Manhattan avenue and then in a small church on Leonard street. In 1870 the present church building on Prospect avenue, near Fifth street, was occupied. A parochial school is attached to tlie church, and since 1883 some of the services have been in English. The first pastor was the Rev. O. Kaselitz. The church has now 800 members and 650 school children under the pastoral care of the Rev. F. W. Oswald. St. Paul's Lutheran Church, in Wyckoff street, near Glenmore avenue, was organized in 1888 under the care of the Rev. A. E. Hartman, and for a time services were held on Bradford street, near Liberty avenue. In 1889 the present church was built, and the congregation was placed under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. F. Flath. The church has 60 members and 150 Sunday-school scholars. St. Matthew's German Lutheran Church was organized in 1864. For a time the congregation occupied a hall for divine worship, but a church was soon built on North Fifth street, near Driggs avenue. The church numbers 700 communicants, and has an equal number of Sunday-school scholars, under the pastoral care of the Rev. G. Sommer. St. Mark's Church, at Bushwick avenue and Jefferson street, was organized in 1859. The church edifice was built in 1868. The first pastor, the Rev. G. A. Schmith, was succeeded by the present incum- bent, the Rev. Augustus E. Frey. The church numbers 950 communicants and 700 Sunday-school scholars. EmiManuel Church, on Driggs avenue and South First street, was founded in 1875 by the Rev, F. T. Koerner, the present pastor. Services were held in Tuttle's Hall until the purchase of the church building, which previously had been occupied, first by Presbyterians and then by Jews. The building was thoroughly remodeled. The church has 775 members and 500 Sunday-school scholars. The Norwegian Seaman's Church was organized in July, 1878, and a hall on Van Brunt and Presi- dent streets was occupied for worship. In 1879 the property of the William Street M. E Church, at 111-115 William street, was purchased and used for religious meetings for seamen. The first pastor was the Rev. O. Asperhem. The church is now in charge of two ministers — the Rev. Karl K. Saarheim and A. Sommerfelt. St. Paul's Church, at Henry street and Third place, was organized in 1872, and for some time worshiped in a hall on Columbia street, near Woodhull, under the pastoral care of the Rev. Robert Neu- mann. In 1876 the church edifice was built, and two years later the present pastor, the Rev. John Huppen- bauer, became pastor. The church has 600 communicants and 400 children in the Sunday-school. St. John's German Lutheran Church was organized 1866. Until the following year the Methodist CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 617 Church on Third avenue was its home. The church on Prospect avenue, between Fifth and Sixth avenues was dedicated in 1867, during the incumbency of the first pastor, the Rev. A. Reid-Enbach. In 1866 a parochial school was established, which has an average attendance of 125. The church has 300 members and 550 Sunday-school scholars, under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. H. Sommer. The Wartburg Chapel was established in 1888, and was placed under the care of the present pastor the Rev. E. Bohm. The chapel on Georgia avenue, near Fulton street, was built in iSgo. There are 73 members. Church of Our Saviour (Norwegian). — The Norwegian Church of Our Saviour, on Henry street near Third place, was organized in New York city in 1866. For twenty years the church was located in Monroe street. New York, but in 1886 the congregation moved to Brooklyn and the present church edifice was built. The church has 600 members and 350 Sunday-school scholars. Since coming to Brooklyn the Rev. C. S. Everson has been pastor. He is assisted by the Rev. R. W. Bang. Bethlehem Church, on Pacific street, near Smith, was organized in 1874. For a long time services were held in various halls, but in 1884 a church building was erected, during the pastorate of the Rev. A. Rodell. The church numbers 650 members and 235 Sunday-school scholars, under the pastoral care of the Rev. F. Jacobson. St. Paul's Swedish Mission, on Fulton street, was established in 1891, under the care of the Rev. M. Sandren. St. Paul's Church, on Palmetto street and Knickerbocker avenue, was established in 1890. The pastor is the Rev. H. C. Luehr. The church has 197 members and has 265 names on the Sunday-school rolls. GERMAN evangelical ASSOCIATION. Harrison Avenue German Evangelical Church. — The German Evangelical Association of North America was first represented in Brooklyn by the church now located at 125 Harrison avenue. It was organized in 1876 and maintained its existence by determined perseverance in the face of many discourage- ments. The church property is free from debt, and five other missions in the city have been assisted in their advent and early efforts by this parent church. There are 200 members and a Sunday-school of 500. The Rev. J. P. Schnatz, who was pastor from 1879 until 1881, has been in charge since May, 1890. Jefferson Avenue Church. — The Salem Church of the Evangelical Association, on Jefferson avenue, between Evergreen and Central avenues, is a mission church which was organized in June, 1890. In February, 1891, its building was dedicated, and on May i, 1892, the Rev. F. Kurtz became pastor. The membership is 34, and there are 160 in the Sunday-school. The East New York Church, at the corner of Atlantic avenue and Hinsdale street, is in charge of the Rev. E. Frank. The Melrose Street Church is located at 404 Melrose street, and the Rev. A. Pfost is pastor. It was organized in 1887. There are 70 members and 500 Sunday-school pupils. St. Paul's Church, at 545 Leonard street, was organized in 1883, and has a membership of 50, with 240 children in the Sunday-school. The Rev. C. Buehler is pastor. ZiON Church, on Ninth street, near Fifth avenue, has 60 members and a Sunday-school of 150, under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. F. Weishaar. other GERMAN PROTESTANT CHURCHES. The German Evangelical Church, on Wyona street, near Fulton, was organized in 1867. The congregation first occupied a frame church on Fulton, near Bradford street, during which time it was an independent organization, but in 1889 it was admitted to the Presbytery of Brooklyn. On December 13, 1891, the present church edifice was dedicated. The pastor is the Rev. H. Fech, who was called in 1888. On October 31, 1892, the churched annexed the Bethany Church, and, withdrawing from the Presbytery, became a part of the Reformed Church in the United States. Bethany Church was organized by the Rev. C. H. Hayser in 1888 as Salem Church, and a chapel was built on Schenck avenue, near Atlantic. In 1889 Pastor Hayser was succeeded by the Rev. J. Knelbing, under whose charge the name was changed to Bethany, and the church was in existence until the fall of 1892, when it was consolidated with the German Evangelical Church under Pastor Fech. The German Protestant Evangelical Church is on Throop avenue, near Myrtle avenue, and for several years the Rev. H. F. Bernhart has occupied the pulpit. The church was organized in 1881, and now has more than 75 communicants and 150 members in the Sunday-school. The German Evangelical Reformed Church was established in 1879, and until 1892 the congrega- tion worshiped in a frame edifice on Fulton street, near Butler street. A new church was erected the latter part of that year in Wyona avenue, near Liberty avenue. The Rev. Christian Freeh is the pastor. The church has 150 members and 350 in the Sunday-school. 6i8 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. UNIVERSALIST CHURCHES. Church of Our F.-vther. — The legitimate successor of the first Universalist Church established in Brooklyn is the Church of Our Father on Grand avenue, on the corner of Lefferts place. The earliest org-anization was known as the Church of the Restoration, and its first pastor was the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, who officiated from its inception in 1S42 until 1S44, when he was succeeded by the Rev. T. B. Thayer. The society built a church at the corner of Fulton and Pineapple streets; but lost it in the great fire of 1848 and built anew at the corner of Monroe place and Clark street. During the ne.xt few 3rears some of the younger members of the society formed a new organization, known as the church of the Redeemer, farther up town; and in 1868 the con- solidation of the younger with the older church was attended with the changing of the name to that which the first church now bears. The present house of worship was erected in 1883. The church is under the pastoral care of the Rev. C. Ellwood Nash, I). L)., who took charge in May, 1890, succeeding the Rev. Dr. A. J. Canfield. The membership is 240 and the Sunday-school numbers 275. All Souls Church. — Originally known as the First Universalist Society of Williamsburgh, All Souls Church is to-day the strongest organization of LTniversalists in Brooklyn; it has a membership of 400 and a Sunday-school with 500 members. Its organization was effected in 1845 with nine- teen members, and its first house of worship was a small : chapel on Second street. A church was erected in 1848 at the corner of Fourth and South Third streets, and the present edifice on South Ninth street, near Bedford avenue, was erected in 1873. The pastor- ates have been no- table, including the Revs. Henry Lyon, Day K. Lee, A. J. Canfield, D. D., Al- mon Gunnison, D. D., and the present pastor, J. Coleman Rev, Almon Gunnison, D.D. Adams, D. I). Dr. Gunnison was pastor from 1S70 until 1890, when he accepted a call to Worcester, Mass. Dr. Gunni- son's pastorate was remarkably success- ful. He was very popular in the city, and when he went away he was given a farewell reception, which was attended by representative clergymen of nearly every denomination. The Rev. John Coleman Adams, 1). D., the pastor of All Souls Universalist Church, comes from Revol u t ionary an- cestors on the maternal side; his mother was Mary Hall Barrett, grand- daughter of Colonel Nathan Barrett, who led the Concord Company in the struggle at Concord Bridge on April 19, 1775. His father was the Rev. John G. Adams, D. D., a divine conspicuous for his learning and piety. The son was born at Maiden, Mass., in 1849 and was graduated at Tuft's College in 1870, and at the Tuft's Divinity School in 1872. He received the degree of A. M. from his alma mater in 18S4, and that of D. D. from the same source five years later. His first pastoral charge, beginning in 1872 and continuing until iSSo, was with the Newton Universalist Church at Newtonville, Mass. In 1880 he accepted a call to the church of the Fn'st Universalist Society, of Lynn, Mass., the All Souls Universalist Church. Rev. John Coleman Adams, D. D. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 619 largest Universalist Society in America. He received calls to several churches, including that of Dr. Chapin in New York. In September, 1884 he took the pastorate of the St. Paul's Universalist Church in Chicago. The society was in a deteriorated condition, but before he left the congregation had been greatly augmented, the church freed from debt and a new church edifice erected. He was called to Brooklyn to succeed Dr. Gunnison at All Souls Church, in 1890, and his pastorate here has been a successful one. The Church of the Reconciliation, North Henry street, near Nassau avenue, was founded in 1857, and has 50 members, with a Sunday-school of 150. The Church of the Good Tidings is located on Quincy street, near Reid avenue, and is in charge of the Rev. J. R. Taber. Its church membership is 80 and that of the Sunday-school is 250. Prospect Heights Church was organized in 1888 and the pastor is the Rev. J. M. Bartholomew. The church has 25 members and there are 50 members of the Sunday-school. CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES. In its name the Congregational denomination clearly indicates its church polity, of which the essential element is the thorough independence of the individual congregation. The denomination is not " a church," but a family of churches ; and while it is more distinctively than any other an American body of churches, in whose economy is firmly imbedded the democratic idea underlying all our national institutions and political life, it is the growth of a seed matured and germinated in the old world, which found only in the new world the soil meet for its full development and fruition. John Robinson of Leyden was not the first of these democratic Christians, although he is revered as the father of the Congregational movement ; and the little colony that sailed on the " Mayflower " from Delft Haven in 1620 to find " on a stern and rock-bound coast " that " freedom to worship God " which their hearts desired were not the only Congre- gationalists, for when they fled from the despotism of England's ecclesiasticism to the temporary shelter of Holland's more liberal policy they left in the old home seed and root and branch of the same faith that was in their own hearts, and it has since borne fruit there in very large measure. In a certain sense Con- gregationalism may be regarded as the parent of American independence, for it resulted in the founding of New England, where the first forcible resistance was made against the impositions of European despotism. Its spirit has permeated other relig- ious bodies and the autonomy of the individual churches is recognized in the Baptist, Unitarian, Universalist and several other denominations. The polity of the Congregational body gives to each church absolute control of its own affairs, both spiritual and temporal. There is no dele- gated authority, and the councils called by the churches from time to time have no power beyond that of suggestion or advice. Formerly all the New York and Brooklyn pastors formed the New York and Brooklyn Association. During the seventies there was a division and the Man- hattan Association was organized, including from Brooklyn the pastors of the Church of the Pil- grims, the Clinton Avenue and others. These two associations meet at intervals of three or four months. Two distinct and separate bodies conduct the affairs of every Congregational Church, namely, the society, having charge of temporal matters, finances and the church prop- erty, and the church proper, ruling over spiritual affairs. The officers of the society are the trus- tees ; those of the church are the deacons. The trustees number either three, six or nine, accord- ing to the society's size; and a third of them are elected each year. A membership committee, varying in size in different churches, examines candidates for admission, and other committees are charged with special duties according to the Chvbch of the Pilgrims. needs of the individual church. 620 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Church of the Pilgrims. — The second Congregational Church established in Brooklyn was the Church of the Pilgrims. Its predecessor, the "Independents" of 1785, came to an end through internal dissensions and the church edifice was purchased by the Episcopalians of the city. The Church of the Pilgrims was organized on December 22, 1844, with seventy-one members. This was the result of several months' work on the part of some enthusiastic Congregationalists of the city. The corner-stone of a church edifice at Henry and Remsen streets had been laid on the preceding July 2, and it was hoped that the building might be ready for occupancy within a reasonable time. Unforeseen delays occurred, and the church was not dedicated until May 12, 1846. The cost of the church exceeded the original estimate by $40,000, but the entire indebtedness was removed in 1848. In June, 1846, the Rev. Richard S. Storrs, Jr., was invited to become pastor of the new church and was installed in the following November. In 1869 large additions were made to the building, its seating capacity being increased to 1,300 and sufficient lecture and committee rooms were added. Although the Church of the Pilgrims has been greatly surpassed in architectural beauty by other churches of more modern construction, none of them have surpassed it in practical beneficence or in the influence which its pastor has had on the progress of Brooklyn. The history of the church is intimately bound up with the various missions and schools it has assisted, and is a part of the city history, the well-known character of Dr. Storrs and his extensive influence being felt in every event of note. The church has 1,052 members and a Sunday-school with 1,306 attendants. Pilgrim Chapel was established as a mission under the auspices of the Church of the Pilgrims in 1876, and is in charge of the Rev. Edwin H. Byington. It is on Henry street, corner of Degraw, and has 1,300 members in the Sunday-school. The Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D. D., who has won by his eloquence the sobriquet of the "Chrysostom of Brooklyn," has added to fine natural abilities all that a great inheritance can give or the most liberal education supply. He is a descendant of the seventh generation from Samuel Storrs, of Nottingham, England, the founder of the family in America. One of his ancestors was a chaplain in the Revolutionary army and afterwards settled at Southold. His father, the Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, was for sixty-two years settled as a pastor in Braintree, Mass., where he died in 1873. Dr. Storrs was born in Braintree, Mass., on August 21, 1821. He was graduated from Amherst College in 1839, ^"d after teaching in Monson Academy and Williston Seminary began the study of law under Rufus Choate. But forensic victories appeared as little things to young Storrs, whose family traditions were all in the church, and were moreover of a time when the minister held patriarchal authority in the community; he turned his attention to theo- logy and entered Andover Theological Sem- inary. He was graduated from therein 1845 and ordained on October 22 of that year, in Brookline, Mass., having been called to the charge of the Harvard Congregational Church. In 1846 he accepted the pastor- ate of the newly organized Congregational Church of the Pilgrims in this city, a charge that he has filled in such a manner as to advance his church to the front rank of the great churches of America and to win for himself fame as a pulpit orator among the English speaking nations. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred on him by Union College in 1853 and by Harvard in 1859. He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Princeton in 1874 and that of Ph. D. from Columbia in 1887. He has delivered many lectures and sermons that have become historic. They are referred to in the chapter on literature. He was elected a trustee of Amherst College in 1863, and since 1873 has been president of the Long Island Historical Society, which owes much of its material prosperity to his untiring REV, RICHARD SALTER storrs, d. d, cfforts HI Its bchalf. In 1887 he was chosen CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 621 jment of the city's president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and by his wise moderation did much to harmonize differing views regarding its policy. It may be said that in intellectual circles through- out the country there is no clergyman to-day who has a wider reputation as a deep thinker and a scholarly theologian than Dr. Storrs. As a citizen of Brooklyn he has been foremost in the developr progress in civilization, and has taken a manly part in its public affairs. A third Congregational Church (being the second organized after the reestablishment of the denomination in Brooklyn), under the name of the First Free Congregational Church, came into being shortly after the organization of the Church of the Pilgrims, the members of the First Free Presbyterian Church on Bridge street, near IMyrtle avenue, voting to change their denomination. The Rev. Isaac N Sprague was pastor of this church, which about six years later was incorporated with the State Street Congregational Church The Fai till J-Iouse. Plymouth Church. Plymouth Church. — Probably one of the most widely known institutions in Brooklyn — associated in the minds of strangers with the Bridge and Prospect Park, as characteristic of the city — is Plymouth Church. This church had its origin in the desire of the supporters of the Congregational polity to multiply churches of that denomination, notwithstanding the opinion of many at the time that Congregationalism could flourish only in New England ; but the immediate and almost unlocked for success of the Church of the Pilgrims, then less than two years old, encouraged a contrary belief. The occasion was found in the opportunity, in 1846, of purchasing the church ediiice then recently vacated by the First Presbyterian Church in its removal to Henry street. Learning of this, Mr. John Tasker Howard, one of the original members of the Church of the Pilgrims, conferred with David Hale, of New York, a devoted Congregationalist, who associated with them Henry C. Bowen, of the Church of the Pilgrims, and Seth B. Hunt, of New York ; and, authorized to act for them, Mr. Howard completed the purchase for $20,000 of the property on Cranberry street, extend- ing through to Orange, where ever since Plymouth Church has stood. The society which was formed prospered so speedily as to be able to assume the purchase at once. The church was reopened for religious worship on May 16, 1847, the day possession was given. Henry Ward Beecher, then pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, who had come to New York to make the address at the anniversary of the American Home Missionary Society, was invited to preach the opening sermon, and after the formal organization of the church he was unanimously called to the pastorate. As indicative of the intensely 622 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. congregational spirit which has always characterized the church, it is recalled that when the moderator of the council, which convened on June 13, 1847, to organize it, pronounced the words which gave effect to the council's action, Richard Hale, one of the members, said: "No, you do not organize us; we organize ourselves." Two days later the call to Mr. Beecher was issued; and against the advice of his father, who thought the West offered a better field for his labors, and disregarding a flattering invitation from the historic Park Street Church in Boston, he accepted, moved principally by consideration for the health of his family, which required a return to the East. He began his labors in Plymouth Church on Sunday, October 10, 1847, and was publicly installed on November 11. The history of the church has been marked by many episodes which have attracted public attention. Among them was the vigorous part played by pastor and people in the anti-slavery agitation. Mr. Beecher had declared in advance, that in coming to preach Christ to men for the sake of bringing them to a higher life, he should faithfully apply the Gospel to "questions of peace and war, and temperance, and moral purification, and liberty," and before the first pew renting he preached on slavery, that none might doubt what he should hear discussed. Through the tem- pestuous quarter of a century that followed Plymouth pulpit was outspoken on all public affairs that involved a moral question. When Wendell Phillips could get a hearing in no other auditorium in New York, Plymouth Church was opened to him. More than once living slaves were brought upon its platform and their liberty purchased by the congregation. During the war the church was foremost in deeds as well as words for the maintenance of the Union and for stimulating a patriotic spirit. Mr. Beecher's public addresses in England belong properly to his personal biography ; but his church had some part in his being there. The inner life of Plymouth Church, not so generally known, has been deep and full. It never has been a field for religious excitement, though it has shared with other churches the fruits of great revival seasons. Although Mr. Beecher developed no talent as an organizer of church work, his teaching stimulated those who possessed it ; and Plymouth Church consequently became an active force in missionary work in the field that lay about it. During Mr. Beecher's life two great missions were established — the Bethel and the Mayflower — and endowed with the " Memorial Fund," contributed in 1872 in commemoration of the church's "silver wedding;" and numerous special activities in connection with these and with the church proper were instituted. The theology of the Plymouth pastors has been of the liberal type ; Mr. Beecher being the prophet, and Dr. Lyman Abbott, who succeeded him, a leader of "The New Theology." Until 1870 candidates for membership subscribed to the articles of faith adopted at the beginning, but in that year this creed was set aside, and a simple confession of Christian faith was all that was required. Members of other denominations have found themselves at home in this church, which includes in its membership, among others, original Episcopalians, Unitarians, Quakers, Catholics and Jews. For some years Mr. Beecher immersed those who desired it in the baptistry of the Pierrepont Street Baptist Church. In 1858 a baptistry was built under Plymouth pulpit at his request. The congregational singing of this church has been famous. Mr. Beecher's death, on March 8, 1887, closed his pastorate of forty years, and it was thought by many in the church as well as outside of it that it might terminate also the history of Plymouth Church. In October the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott had became acting pastor, and on May 30, 1888, he was called to the permanent pastorate. He was installed on January 16, 1890, and at the same time the Rev. Howard S. Bliss, assistant pastor, was ordained and installed. The composition of the council which met for this ceremony, of which the Rev. Dr. R. R. Meredith was moderator, was unusual ; for in pursuance of its doctrine of undenominational Christian fraternity, the church had called in not only Congregationalists but Episcopalian, Baptist, Presbyterian, Reformed and Methodist brethren, and that these were designated " honorary " members was in deference to them and not to the prejudices of Plymouth Church. Phillips , Brooks, Drs. Donald, Armitage, Robinson, Davis and Reed were among them. Under the admirable organizing power of Dr. Abbott, and the practical missionary experience of Mr. Bliss, the church has become a vast engine for the city missionary work in the field in which it is planted. Plymouth Church occupied the building purchased in 1846 until it was destroyed by fire in 1849. The present edifice was erected on its site the same year, the entrance being changed to Orange street. It is 105 feet long, 80 feet wide, and 43 feet from floor to ceiling. Folding chairs, invented by Moses S. Beach, were placed in the aisles in 1857, to add to the overtaxed capacity of the house. In 1859 plans for a new and larger church were considered, and land was secured at Hicks and Remsen streets ; but the financial uncertainty during the war led to the abandonment of the proposition. The membership has been as large as 2,500, but many of that number were non-resident members, who though being elsewhere were unwilling to separate for Plymouth Church. Such members have been encouraged to form other church connections, and the membership is now 1,816. The Sunday-school has 847 members. In the Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D., Plymouth Church has found a successor to Mr. Beecher who has made his own place as a theologian and a pastor, while at a same time he has maintained the traditions of the church to a degree that could hardly have been anticipated. Himself a member of the church for more CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 623 #i Rev. Lyman Abbott, d. D. than thirty years, in sympathy with its doctrines and its history, he was the natural recourse of the church during the anxious period that followed the death of Mr. Beecher, when, by his tact and wisdom in utilizing the lessons of affliction, he contributed much to the maintenance of lofty ideals and spiritual consecration in the deeply-moved congregation. For more than a year he served as acting pastor, until the church, find- ing that the pastor they sought was already with them, called him to remain permanently. Lyman Abbott was born in Roxbury, Mass., December 18, 1835, the third son of Jacob Abbott. His brothers, Benjamin Vaughn and Austin, attained eminence in the law, and to that profession he also devoted himself, on his graduation, in 1853, from the New York University. But after four years in his brother's office, he aban- doned the law for the ministry, and studied theology under the direction of his uncle, the Rev. John S. C. Abbott, the historian. Ordained in i860, he became pastor of the Congregational Church in Terre Haute, Ind., and remained there until the secretaryship of the American Union Commission, devoted to the welfare of the freedmen, was offered him in 1865, the duties of which brought him to New York. There he became also pastor of the New England Church, and assumed the dual functions of the secretaryship and pastorate until 1868, when he resigned the former, and in 1S69 he resigned the pastorate, and devoted himself to editorial work on the religious press. His literary work has been referred to in the chapter on literature and fine arts in this volume. His call to Plymouth Church summoned him from the active editorial management of the Christian Union, where also he had succeeded Mr. Beecher. A disciple of his former pastor, he had made his paper the leading exponent of the views on theology and church polity which were familiar to Plymouth Church. Unexpectedly, to himself as well as to his church, he found in the historic pulpit a field as surely his own as the editorial sanctum, and in the congregation so great an inspiration that he has in four years become known as a preacher of the first rank. He has admirably directed the energies of his people, who were aroused by the death of Mr. Beecher to a new sense of individual respon- sibility for the future of the church, and who have found in the changing conditions of population about the church ample fields for new work on new lines. He is recognized throughout the country as the represent- ative of liberal thought and progressive theology. His influence with young men is marked, and he has for some years shared with Phillips Brooks and others the discharge of pastoral duties at Harvard University. The Rev. Howard S. Bliss, the assistant pastor, was born near Beyrout, Syria, where his father, the Rev. Daniel Bliss, D. D., is located as president of the Syrian Protestant College. Mr. Bliss received his early education in that country. He is a graduate of Amherst College in the class of 1882. Two years were occupied in teaching and he then entered Union Theological Seminary, where he took a fellowship. A year of study at Oxford, England, was supplemented by another year spent at Gottingen and Berlin. He married Miss Blatchford, of Chicago, in 1889, and in the same year was called to the position which he holds in Plymouth Church. He is moderator of the New York and Brooklyn Congregational Association. Plymouth Church Bethel, located at 15 Hicks street, is a mission which was begun in 1841 by two zealous laymen, and was carried on in various localities until July, 1866, when it was taken under the auspices of Plymouth Church. The building now occupied was built after this change occurred and was taken possession of in October, 1868. It is in charge of the Rev. E. Horace Porter, recently appointed an assistant pastor of Plymouth Church, and has a Sunday-school with 628 members. Mayflower Mission. — Several zealous persons inaugurated near the Navy Yard in 1844 a work which for many years was known as the Navy Mission, and occupied a building at Front street and Green lane. From 1867 until 1870 it was in charge of the Church of the Pilgrims and then was conducted independently until January, 1871, when Plymouth Church took charge of it. The building of the Third Presbyterian Church on Jay street, near High, was purchased and the mission has been located there ever since, its name having been changed in November, 1872, to Plymouth Mission, and on May i, 1874, to the Mayflower Mission of Plymouth Church. It is in charge of the Rev. Richard H. Bosworth, since 1889 the pastor's assistant of Plymouth Church, and the Sunday-school numbers 810 members. 624 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. The Clinton Avenue Church was organized November i8, 1847, and its early years were full of dis- couragement, but through the en- ergy of its first pastor, Rev. D. C. Lansing, D. D., and the hearty coop- eration of its founders it gradually attained a position of importance in the religious community. On August 4, 1854, ground was broken for the large and handsome edifice on the corner of Clinton and Lafayette avenues, which was completed in 1856 at a cost of f6o,ooo. The Rev. W. Ives Buddington succeeded Dr. Lansing in 1855, and Dr. Thomas Boyd McLeod, the present pastor, took charge in 1879. The church membership is 942, and the Sunday- school numbers 393. The society maintains two branches. Willoughby Avenue Chapel, at 199 Willoughby avenue, was organized as a Sunday- school in 186 1, and after several migrations the organization took possession of its present home in October, 1882. It was organized as a church in 1884, and is under the care of the Rev. A. A. Robertson. There are 175 church members and CLINTON AVENUE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. ^^^ j^^ ^j^g Suuday-school. Atlantic Avenue Chapel, at Atlantic and Grand avenues, was established in 1887, and is in charge of the Rev. John Kershaw. It numbers 78 church members and has 300 in the Sunday-school. South Church.— The South Congregational Church of Brooklyn was projected by members of Plymouth Church in 1850, when a site for a building was purchased at Court and President streets. A chapel was built and the church was formally organized on March 24, 1851. In 1857 the main church edifice was dedi- cated and in 1864 it wks remodeled. The first pastor was the Rev. William H. Marsh and the predecessor of the present incumbent was the Rev. Henry M. Storrs, D. D., who served from December 23, 1867, until September i, 1872. The Rev. Albert J. Lyman, D. D., began his pastorate here in 1874. The church has 834 members and a Sunday-school of 800. A mission work is maintained by the church at the South Con- gregational Chapel on Fourth place. The Rev. Albert J. Lyman, D. D., was born on December 24, 1845, at Williston, Vt. At the age of fifteen he became a district school teacher. When nineteen years old he was licensed as a preacher, and thereafter attended the Union Theological Seminary, New York, from which he was graduated in 1868. He then spent a year as resident licentiate at Yale. In 1869 he was settled as pastor of the First Congre- gational Church of Milford, Conn., where he remained till failing health from overwork compelled him to resign in his fourth pastoral year. On January i, 1874, he entered upon his present charge, but was not formally installed until March 24, 1887. In 1870 he married Ella Stevens, third daughter of Philander Stevens, of Brooklyn. The New England Congregational Church was organized on May 26, 1851, as a result of several meetings held in the Eastern District during the two previous months. The Rev. Thomas K. Beecher was made pastor. The present church edifice on South Ninth street was dedicated in December, 1853. The Rev. Alexander Lewis is now pastor, and the church membership is 341, with a slightly larger number in the Sunday-school. The Puritan Congregational Church, at Lafayette and Marcy avenues, has recently acquired a new pastor in the Rev. E. P. Terhune, D. D. The church has a large congregation and a membership of over 600, with 1,200 scholars in its Sunday-school. The church was organized with less than twenty mem- bers in 1864, and for many years saw reverses. For some time previous to Dr. Terhune's coming the pastorate was vacant. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 625 Central Church. — With the intention of furnishing a church home to some Protestant religious organization that would include a majority of the population of the neighborhood, R, L. Crook erected a church edifice on Ormond place in 1853, intending to sell it at a reduction from its cost to such an organi- zation. It was leased for two years by several gentlemen in February, 1S54, and services were begun on the second Sunday in April. On November 27 the Central Congregational Society was organized and occupied the church until the expiration of the lease when, failing in the effort to raise means for the pur- chase of the building, it moved to a mission school house on Van Buren street. Eventually the society, aided by Plymouth Church and the Church of the Pilgrims, effected the purchase and reopened the house on November 16, 1856. Prosperity attended the society and from time to time it was found necessary to enlarge the building, and in 1872 the commodious edifice on Hancock street, near Franklin avenue, was erected. It is a strong, active church with a membership of 1,700 and maintains three Sunday-schools, with a total of nearly 3,000 scholars. Bethesda Chapel, at Ralph avenue and Chauncey street, was established in i88r as a branch and under the care of the Rev. Charles Herald has a church membership of 300 and a Sunday-school of 1,400. The pastors of the Central Church have been the Rev. Henry W. Parker, 1854- 1857 ; Justus C. French, 1857-1870; Henry M. Scudder, M. D., D. D,, 1S71-1882 ; and A. J. F. Behrends, D. D., from 1883 to the present time. The Rev. Adolphus J. F. Behrends, D. D., who has contributed largely towards sustaining the repu- tation of the Brooklyn pulpit, was born at Nymegen, Holland, on December 18, 1839. In 1S45, his father, who was a clergyman of the Lutheran faith, came to the United States, settling first in Ohio, and afterwards in New York and Missouri. After teachmg school several winters the son, who had affiliated with the Bap- tist Church, was graduated from Denison University, Granville, Ohio, 1862. During the civil war, he volun- teered for the protection of the state, when Ohio was threatened by the Confederate forces under General Bragg. In 1865 he was graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary, and was immediately called to the pastorate of the Baptist Church at Yonkers, where he was ordained on July 27, 1865 ; his ministry in Yonkers lasted for more than eight years, and was one of exceptional prosperity. In 1873 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Richmond College, Richmond, Va.— an honor which that institution then conferred for the first time upon a Northern man. In May, of the same year, he resigned his charge .in Yonkers and accepted a call to the first Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio. Owing to a change of doctrinal views, he concluded his Cleveland ministry on February i, 1876, and immediately received a call to occupy the pulpit of the Union Congregational Church at Providence, R. I. There he remained from March 1, 1876, until 1883. Then he came to Brooklyn as pastor-elect of the Central Congre- gational Church, and was installed on March i. In 1886 he was chosen as the Ely lecturer at Hartford Theological Seminary. His lectures in this connection were afterwards published under the title of " Socialism and Christianity." In 1S90 he was the Lyman Beecher lecturer in the Yale L' niversity Divinity School. The degree of Doctor of Sacred The- ology was conferred upon him by the University in the same year. His lectures at Yale upon "The Philos- ophy of Preaching" were also pub- lished. At different times he has contributed many excellent articles to the best periodicals of the day, including the Bihliotheca Sacra, the Homiktic Revinv and the Forum, and a number of independent pamphlets have been produced in the intervals allowed by the various demands upon his time. Through his efforts the Central Congregational Church has risen to an eminent position. Beecher Memorial Church. — In establishing a church that is in its name a memorial of Brooklyn's most renowned pulpit orator, it was only natural that the Rev. Samuel IJ. Hal- liday, who was intimately connected ^r^ Central Congregational Church. 626 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Beechek Memorial Church. with Mr. Beecher's parish work, should be one of the most active jiarticipants. He began the work of organizing the Beecher Memo- rial Church in Januar)^, 1889, by preaching to congregations which averaged about forty persons, in a small room on Fulton street, near Rockaway avenue. Services were held in that room for four months when the property was purchased by subscription and a larger build- ing was erected with a seating ca- pacity of 200. From that time on the congregation increased weekly, and the Sunday-school membership kept pace with it. Li the spring of 1890 plans were prepared and in May the corner-stone of the present handsome edifice on Herkimer street, near Rockaway avenue, was laid. The building was dedicated October iS, 1891, and will seat 600 persons. The church has 150 members and the weekly congregation averages 400. The Sunday-school has 500 members. The Rev. Samuel BvR.^ii Hallidav was born at Morristown, N. J., on June 5, 181 2. He became interested in religion while he was a lad, and while employed as a clerk in New York he taught in Sunday- school, and established, when he was eighteen years old, what was supposed to be the second Sunday-school infant class in this country. He intended to become a clergyman, but injured his eyes by study, and then devoted himself to the New York City Tract Society, serving for some time as general secretary. His next work in the religious field was that of a lay missionary, but failing health made it necessary for him to divert his mind by engaging in secular business, making religious work an avocation, and aiding in estab- lishing three Congregational churches. Returning to New York he was called to the pastorate of the Congregational Church at Lodi, N. J., and was ordained and installed in 1863, when more than fifty years old. His ne.xt position of service was the super- intendency of the Five Points House of Industry, which he left to become pastoral helper to Henry Ward Beecher at Plymouth Church. He remained \ at Plymouth Church until called to the pastorate ; of the church named in honor of the great Brook- - A^ lyn preacher. ToiiPKiNS Avenue Church — In the spring of 1875 it became known that the Presbyterian society worshiping on the corner of Tompkins avenue and McDonough street was financially embarrassed and that its dissoluticjn was immi- nent. The desirableness of maintaining a church in that neighborhood being recognized, a com- mittee on organization was appointed, and on July 6, 1875, the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Society was organized. Public worship was begun on June 6, in the school-house, on Tompkins ave- nue, near Fulton street. The society at once purchased the church at Tompkins avenue and McDonough street, and services were held there on July 18, 1S75. In November of that year a call was sent to the Rev. C. D. Helmer, of the Union Park Congregational Church, of Chicago. Mr. Helmer accepted and was installed on March 28, 1875. Mr. Helmer died on April 28, 1879, but his ill-health had forced him to tender his resignation in the previous September. On January 25, 1S79, the society extended a call to the Rev. S. M. Tompkins avenue church. ■'H} 'tjfi^ CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 627 Freeland, who was installed on May 27, following. On January 27, 18S0, Mr. Freeland resigned the pastorate, and the Rev. George F, Pentecost, D. D., was called to fill his place on December 5, 1880. On May 8, 18S3, Dr. Pentecost was formally installed, and served until the latter part of 1S86, when he resigned to devote himself to evangelical work. He had already spent six months assisting Dwight L. Moody in London, and felt that that was his duty. Under his pastorate all debts were paid in 1S81. On September 17, 18S7, the Rev. R. R. Meredith, D. D., began work as pastor of the church. Under his ministry the membership and congregation increased to such an e.xtent that it was found necessary to erect a new church, although he had been in Brooklyn little over a year. Work was begun in May, 1889, and the church was dedicated during the next year. It is in the Italian style of architecture, is of brick and stone, and has a seating capacity of 2,500, which has already proven too contracted. A chapel was built on McDonough street, in 1890, that is as large as an ordinary church. The membership exceeds 1,600, and the Sunday- school rolls bear nearly 3,000 names. The Park avenue branch of the Tompkins Avenue Church is located at Park and Marcy avenues, and was established in 1881. It is in charge of the Rev. Henry R. Waite. The Rev. Robert R. Meredith, D. D., came to Brooklyn in 1887, to become pastor of the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church. In him are embodied the vigor of the Methodist and the independence of the Congregationalist. He has been identified in his ministry with both denominations, and has acquired reputation by his work in the direction of biblical and theological discussion, conducted with that ignoring of sectarian lines which, in communities where denominational limitations are nebulous, has brought people of many churches together on the basis or unity in essentials and liberty in non-essentials. Less than a score of years ago he became popular in Springfield, Mass., by inaugurating a system under which Sunday- school and other religious instructors were brought together for deliberation and critical discussion of Sunday-school lessons. The class grew to grand proportions, and when Dr. Meredith took charge of a Congregational Church in Boston, about ten years ago, his reputation made a religious power of what had been at best only a nascent movement. There is a breadth in his ideas that causes them to blend with the opinions of even those who would reject all creeds, and the practical turn of his interpretation of scriptural statements of what is embodied in true religion drew into his audience many whose theological views would harmonize with the accepted views of evangelical Christianity at very few points. Physically he is a man of commending presence, and as a pulpit orator he is dig- nified without conventionality, learned without pedantry and de- cided without bigotry. His Bible class work has been one of the features of his ministry in Brook- lyn. He is between fifty and sixty years old, and while in his counte- nance he neither discloses his full age nor denies it, his appearance is an assurance of effective work for many years to come. The Lee Avenue Congre- gational Church, at Lee avenue and Hooper street, was organized in 1872 by persons who had formerly composed the Lee Avenue Reformed Church. The Rev. Theodore J. Holmes was the first pastor, and he was succeeded two years later by the Rev. Dr. Edward Eggleston, who had been a ^lethodist minister, and who took the pulpit with the understanding that the church was to become independent. His pastorate was dissolved in 1879, and the Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts accepted a call. A creed was adopted and the pastor allied himself with the Manhattan Congregational Association. Liberalism and orthodoxy did not assimilate and finally the latter form was adopted, which resulted m Mr. Crafts' resigna- tion In 1883 the Rev. Henry A. Powell was made pastor. Until that time the Sunday-school had been neglected and to Jeremiah Johnson, Jr., is due the credit of placing it on a prosperous footing. The present pastor is the Rev. J.B.Clark, and the membership of the church has reached about 800. The Sunday-school has a membership of more than 2,000. Trinity Covjgregational Church was organized in April, 1S92, from the wreckage of the extinct Covenant Church. The church edifice is situated on the corner of Dean street and Nostrand avenue. I he property also includes a parish house and lecture hall. The first and only pastor is the Rev. Henry- Randall Waite Ph D The membership is 86 and the Sunday-school has 160 members. The Church of the Lee Avenue Congregational Church. 628 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Covenant, the predecessor of this organization, was established in 1868, and ended its existence in 1892. The Bushwick Avenue Church, at Bushwick Avenue and Cornelia street, vas organized in 1885 and the present edifice was erected the following year. The pastor is the Rev. W. T. Stokes. The church membership is about 200, and there are 400 members of the Sunday-school. The East Congregational Church is an offshoot from the Puritan Church. It was organized in 1877, and Liberty Hall was used as the first place of worship. A church edifice was erected in 1878, and later the present one was erected on Tompkins avenue, near DeKalb avenue. The Rev. T. C. Emory is- the pastor. The church membership is 250. The Sunday-school has more than 400 members. Lewis Avenue Church.— The ground occupied by the Lewis Avenue Congregational Church was taken possession of in 1875 by an organization which took the name of Grace Presbyterian Church, but after a short existence the church was disbanded by the Presbytery of Brooklyn. Some of the members clung to the conviction that the ground would soon need to be occupied, and in 1877 they with others formed the church now known as the Lewis Avenue Congregational Church. Its house of worship was an unattractive building which was hired, and it was not until early in 1885 that any marked degree of encour- agement was met. In 1888 a call was extended to the Rev. Robert J. Kent, of Matawan, N. J., who accepted the invitation, and under his ministrations the growth was so rapid that a larger edifice became a necessity. The lot on Monroe street which the church occupied was exchanged advantageously for a lot one hundred feet square on Madison street and an adjoining lot twenty feet by one hundred on Madison street was pur- chased. In 1890 the congregation occupied the beautiful chapel in which it now worships. The erection of a new church building is contemplated, as the society is growing; the church membership is 660 and there is a very large Sunday-school. The Rochester Avenue Church, at the corner of Herkimer street, was organized in 1866. The first pastor was Bishop Faulkner, who served until 1879, when he was succeeded by the Rev. J. G. Roberts. The present pastor, the Rev. A. E. Newton, was settled in 1891. The church numbers 345 members, and has 350 scholars in the Sunday-school. Union Church. — The Union Congregational Church, formerly known as the Union Congregational Church of East New York, was organized on April i, 1883, and on December 6 following the church edifice, on Powell street, near East New York avenue, was dedicated. The corporate name of the church was at one time changed to the Orient Avenue Congregational Church, but at the time of the annexation of East New York and the consequent changes in the names of streets, the old title of the Union Congregational Church was resumed. The Rev. Curtis Graham was installed in the pastorate on May 17, 1883, retaining the charge until April 1,1887. The Rev. Simeon S. Hughson succeeded him, and the church prospered, although a number of its people withdrew in 1888 to organize the Beecher Memorial Church. Mr. Hughson resigned on March i, 18S9, and on the following July i the Rev. D. Butler Pratt, the present pastor, was ordained and installed. The church has 100 members and a Sunday-school membership of 275. The Pilgrim (Swedish) Congregational Church was organized in 1886, and the Rev. A. S. Ander- son is the pastor in charge. The church was organized by about twenty Swedes, and the present edifice, on Atlantic avenue, was erected in 1890. The membership is 200, with a similar number in the Sunday-school. The Stuyvesant Avenue Church was organized in 1885 with thirty members, and three years later the present edifice, on Stuyvesant avenue, near Hancock street, was erected. The pastorate is now vacant. The church has 150 members and 300 in the Sunday-school. The Rockaway Avenue Church, on Rockaway avenue, near Blake avenue, was organized in 1869. The pastorate became vacant in 1891. The membership is 100. The Nazerene Congregational Church, on Adelphi street, near Fulton, was organized in July, 1873, with twenty members. Services were held in a hall at Fulton and Cumberland streets. Rev. A. J. Henry is its present pastor. The church has about 150 members and about 200 in the Sunday-school. REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. The Reformed Episcopal Church was founded in New York city on December 2, 1873, by the Right Rev. George D. Cummins, who had just resigned the position of assistant bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky and withdrawn from the church because of the growth of sacerdotalism and ritualism in that communion. He was the first bishop of the new body which retains the Episcopal form of church government as being not of divine right, but a very ancient and desirablfe form of church polity. The form of worship is based on what is known as " Bishop White's Prayer Book," which is the " Book of Common Prayer" as it was revised, proposed and recommended for use to the General Convention of 1785. The denomination has made slow but healthy growth, and has extended itself into Great Britain and Canada. The governing body, next to the General Convention, is known as the synod and each synod is presided over by a bishop. New York and Pennsylvania compose one of the synods. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 629 Church of the Redemption. — The Reformed Episcopal Church of the Redemption was organized on September 10, 1876, and was incorporated on April 13, 1877. After worshiping in various places it built a home for itself on Leonard street, below Norman avenue. There have been six pastors, including the Rev. W. M. Reid, the founder, and the Rev. George L. Alrich, who is in charge. The number of mem- bers is 139 and the Sunday-school has 215 attendants. Church of the Reconciliation. — Among the handsome churches recently built in Brooklyn is the new edifice, on the corner of Nostrand and Jefferson avenues, occupied by the congregation of the Re- formed Episcopal Church of the Reconciliation. The parish was organized in December, 1877, by the Rev. W. H. Reid. In 1881 a plot of ground on Nostrand and Jefferson avenues was purchased, and a chapel was erected on the rear of the lot. In September, 1885, the Rev. George \V. Huntington, the present rector, took charge of the parish. The congregation took possession of its new church edifice, which is built of buff brick in combination with gray terra cotta. The style of architecture is the early gothic. The church sias 180 communicants and a Sunday-school with 225 members. SWEDENBORGIAN CHURCHES. While Emanuel Swedenborg never attempted the formation of a new religious body, the doctrines which he evolved in his undertaking to trace the soul of man to its inmost recesses in the body, and thence back to its origin and forward to its destiny, resulted in adding one more to the many sects of Christendom. His theology is the basis upon which in 1788 " The New Church signified by the New Jerusalem in the Revela- tion " was organized in London, England. The denomination has made slow progress, but is strong in some localities, one of its strongest positions being in Massachusetts, where it maintains a theological school in Cambridge. The distinctive doctrine of Swedenborgianism is that God alone lives, and all things else are dead except as vivified by the divine presence ; and the only difference between one man and another, or between a man and an animal, is the capacity of the individual to realize and reveal the fact that ' ' "^ God is within. The divine influence is bestowed as fully upon one as upon another, and the true child of God is not one who is divinely chosen, but one who chooses the divine. The church polity is congregational. The Brooklyn Society of the New Church was organized in 1859 by twenty-five persons ad- hering to the views of Swedenborg, and the Rev. James E. Mills became the first pastor. The con- gregation, which worshiped in hired halls for sev- eral years, grew steadily in numbers, and since 1865 has been under the pastoral care of the Rev. J. C. Ager. The church edifice, at Monroe place and Clark street, formerly the property of the First Universalist Society, was purchased in 1868, and was remodeled for the use of the congrega- tion, which continues to worship there. The society is free from debt and prosperous. It has 150 resident members, and there are 125 children in the Sunday-school. The First German New Church Society, onLynch street, was organized in 1882. The pastor, the Rev. William Diehl, held meetings in his house until 1883, when the present church was built. The late Rev. John Eschmann and the Rev. J. C. Ager have both helped to place the church on its present prosperous footing. The Sunday-school was opened on the same date as the church, and about 200 children attend it. The church has 50 communicant members. SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. The Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they are popularly known, has had a foothold in Brooklyn for more than a half century, and is represented by two organizations, or " meetings." These represent the "Orthodox '■ and the " Hicksite " Friends, respectively. Many modifications have been made in the customs Church of the new Jerusalem. 630 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. HicKSiTK Friends' Meeting House. of both branches in recent years, especially by the Orthodox, and the Quaker meeting of to-day is very different from that of the olden time. Among the Orthodox Friends the silent meetings and chance preaching have been replaced by a regular, active service. Among their several ministers is one who does the work of a pastor, giving his whole time to this service and receiv- ing regidarly therefor a comfortable sup- port. They have also the singing of hymns and Bible readings with expository re- marks. No such radical changes have been made among the Hicksite Friends, though some minor changes are observa- ble. Friends now uncover their heads on taking their seats in meeting, though occa- sionally one keeps his baton; there is per- fect liberty in the matter. Formerly " men- Friends " sat on one side of the meeting and "women-Friends" on the other and thus families were sepa- rated, but now families generally sit together. On Schermerhorn street, near Boerum place, there stands, a little back from the street, a plain brick building — the "meeting-house" of the Hicksite Friends. This branch of the society has had a place of worship in Brooklyn since 1834-. For three years a few members met in a room at Henry and Cranberry streets. Then they erected a small frame building on the northwest corner of Henry and Clark streets. There they met on " first-days " and " fourth " or " fifth " days every week in the year until 1856, when their present meeting-house was erected. The present membership is 518. They have a benevolent society, called "The Friendly Hand," which is designed to aid the needy wherever found and help them to be self- supporting. They were among the first and most vigorous agitators of the prison reform which called for the appointment of police matrons. There is a flourishing day-school connected with this meeting, under the care of the general meeting of New York; and on "first-days" a school corresponding to the Sunday- school of other religious denominations holds a session. The Orthodox F'riends have their meeting-house at Lafayette and Washington avenues; it is a plain brick building, erected in 1868. The meeting was established in 1863, being, like the meeting of the Hicksite Friends, an offshoot from the parent society in New York. Until the meeting-house was built the services were held in one of the lecture rooms of Packer Institute. The membership is 250 and the pastor is James Y). Chase. The young people have a Society of Christian Endeavor, for work similar to that done by the general society of that name throughout the coun- try, and there is a " Bible-school " which meets on "first-days." The meeting supports a mission Sunday-school on Kosciusko street, known as Elim Chapel and it contributes to the support of missionary Sunday-schools in the southern states and Mexico. CHURCH OF CHRIST, OR DISCIPLES. The Church of Christ is a body of Christians who hold to the Baptist doctrine of immersion and the congregational polity of church govern- ment. It was organized in Pennsylvania in 1827 by Thomas Campbell, a preacher who immigrated from Ireland in 1808, and the people are frequently referred to as " Campbellites." They are known also as " Disciples," and as " Christians," the first " i " in the latter word being pronounced long. They reject creeds and confessions of faith as Orti-iodo.\ Friends' llEEiisr; House. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 631 being of human origin and stand by a simple interpretation of tlie Bible as they read it. Simplicity and earnestness characterize their work, and they are zealous in educational, missionary and evangelistic labor. Sterling Place Church. — The congregation worshiping in Sterling place was organized in 1875. The Rev. Thomas Chalmers, the present pastor, took charge in 1891. There is a church membership of 284, and the Sunday-school has 155 members. Although he is a comparative stranger in Brooklyn, the Rev. Thomas Chalmers has become well-known as a successful pastor and an effective preacher. He is a relative of the famous Scotch preacher of the same name. He is only twenty-four years old, but already has performed noteworthy work in education and literature and on the lecture platform, in addition to what he has done as a clergyman. He is a graduate of Harvard University, and before entering the ministry he was a success- ful school superintendent in Michigan. Prior to coming to Brooklyn he was pastor of a large church in Columbus, Ohio. He is on the editorial staff of the Christian Standard and the Apostolic Guide, both denomina- tional papers; and he is the author of a " Life of Alexander Campbell Christian Endeavor Movement." The Church of Christ on Humboldt street, near Nassau avenue, was organized in 1890, and is in charge of the Rev. Edwin R. Edwards. It has a membership of 100 and a Sunday-school of 150. Rev. Thomas Chalmers. and " The Philosophy of the JEWISH SYNAGOGUES. Temple Beth Elohim. — The congregation of Temple Beth Elohim, whose synagogue is on Keap street, near Division avenue, is the pioneer body of Hebrew worshipers in Brooklyn, and the facts relating to its organization are presented elsewhere in this chapter. r :■ ■—- 77. There are 900 members and a Sunday-school of 150. The Rev. Leopold Wintner has been the minister since 1878. Temple Israel. — In 1869 a few Israelites of this city desired to found a congregation on reform principles and organized Temple Israel. ■ A charter was procured from the legislature; a temporary hall was rented, and during the same year a church building was purchased on Greene avenue, near Adelphi street, and converted into a synagogue. In November, 1889, lots were purchased on the corner of Bedford and Lafayette avenues, and on April 27, 1891, the corner-stone was laid of the new synagogue, which was dedicated on April 17, 1892. The congregation is in charge of the Rev. A. H. Geismar. There are 400 mem- bers, and a Sunday-school of 175. Ahavath Achim Synagogue was organized in 1862, and has 250 members and a small Sunday-school. The synagogue is on Johnson avenue, near Ewen street. M. B. Newmark is the rabbi. Baith Israel Synagogue is at Boerum place, near State street, and is in charge of Rabbi M. Friedlander. It was organized in 1856 and has 300 members, with 175 children in its Sunday-school. Beth-El Synagogue was organized in 1886, and its 250 members worship in a small edifice at no Noble street. There is a small Sunday-school connected with it. M. J. Luebke is the rabbi in charge. Beth Elohim Synagogue, on State street, near Hoyt street, is one of the largest in the city, and is in charge of Rabbi G. Taubenhaus. The congregation was organized in 1861. The membership is 500 and there is a Sunday-school of 300 members. Beth Jacob Synagogue is on Keap street, near South Fifth street. It has a membership of 200 and in its Sunday-school there are 50 children. The congregation was organized in 1869. , ^^_ . Bikur Cholim is a small synagogue on Wyona street. East New York, and was orgaf :e^. in 18S&. ' Temple Beth Elohim. THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. Temple Israel. Rabbi A. Cantor looks after its interest Its membership numbers 75 and there is a similar number in its Sunday-school. The Cook Street Synagogue, at 44 Cook street, is a comfortable little church, in which Rabbi Philip Feldblum discourses to 60 members. It was organized in 1883. There is a small Sunday-school attached to it. MISCELLANEOUS CHURCHES. The First Moravian Church of Brooklyn was organized in 1854 by mem- bers of the New York Moravian Church headed by the Rev. Edward Rondthaler, who was its first pastor. During the first ten years of its existence the congregation worshiped in a small frame edifice on Jay street, near Myrtle avenue. It was destroyed by fire in 1868. The present red brick structure, which occupies the same site, was erected in 1869, and has a seating capacity of 500. The church is directly connected with the New York Moravian Church, which is more than 120 years old. The present pastor is Rev. Clarence E. Eberman. The church has no members and about 130 in the Sunday-school. The Household of Faith worshiped at first at 176 Grand street, E. D., but soon removed to Liberty Hall, on the corner of Gates and Nostrand avenues ; the present church on Greene avenue, near Tompkins, was occupied on May 6, 1888. The society was organized on October i, 1886, and has since been under the care of the Rev. William N. Pile. The church numbers 100 members and has a Sunday-school number- ing 125. The Berean Evangelical Church, at the corner of Sumner avenue and Kosciusko street, is an inde- pendent organization, which was established in 1884, and works under the congregational system of govern- ment. It has a membership of 90 and a Sunday-school of 130. The Rev. W. Gould is pastor. The Christian Church of the Evangel, on Leonard street, near Meserole avenue, was organized, in i860, as a religious body which should be independent of existing sects and thoroughly in sympathy with all Christian work. The body was first called the Greenpoint Mission Society, and meetings were held in an old house at Leonard and Calyer streets, formerly owned by the Baptist Church. In 1863 the body took up its quarters on the site of the present edifice, and the Rev. E. W. Lockwood was made its pastor. He was succeeded by the Rev. Martyn Summerbell, and in 1869, under a supreme court decree, the large con- gregation adopted the name of the First Christian Congregational Church of Greenpoint, and was consoli- dated with the Suffolk Street Church, of New York city. In November, 1872, the church adopted its present manual and received its present name. In 1876 the edifice now used was erected. Dr. Summerbell resigned, after fourteen years' service, and in 1880 the Rev. Edward A. Hainer became pastor. The present minister is the Rev. Lewis R. Francis, and it has more than 100 members, with 200 children in the Sunday-school. The Reformed Catholic Church, on Cumberland street, near Lafayette avenue, was organized eleven years ago by the Rev. Edmund H. Walsh, the present pastor. The creed embraces that of the Congre- gational and Baptist churches. For seven years Mr. Walsh preached to small congregations in a frame church edifice on Bridge, near Tillary street. The increasing congregation made it necessary to secure a larger building, and the assembly room in Everett Hall was used until December, 1890, when the edifice now used by the church was bought from the Adventists. The building will seat about 300 persons, and there are 60 communicant members. The Church or God, on Reid avenue, corner of Jefferson avenue, was organized in 1888, and the little edifice is now entirely out of debt. It has seating room for about 100. The church has 60 members. The Rev. John Donaldson is pastor. The City Pulpit is a religious organization led by S. Miller Hageman, and its meetings are held in Avon Hall, on Bedford avenue. It was organized in 1891, and more than fifty persons attend it exercises regularly. First Free Baptist Church. — The history of the First Free Baptist Church, at Marcy avenue and Keap stra*t, dates from the year 1884, when the present pastor, the Rev. Rivington D. Lord, M. A., entered its pulpit and transformed it from a Baptist to a Free Baptist Church. For many years, under the name of CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 67,^ the Lee Avenue Baptist Church, the congregation had occupied that edifice, now the Lee Avenue Academy of Music. Later the congregation occupied a small edifice at Harrison avenue and Hooper street, and the congregation changed the name to the South Baptist Church. Mr. Lord became pastor in September, 1884, and the church was renamed the Hooper Street Free BaptLst Church. The membership and funds gradu- ally increased and in 1889 the present edifice, formerly owned by the Reformed Episcopalian, was purchased. The church was then consecrated and given its present name. Mr. Lord preached his first sermon to thirty-five persons, and now the church has 325 members, and 300 children in the Sunday- school. The church has a Ladies' Aid Society, a Christian Endeavor Society and the Loyal Myrtle and Rivington Leagues connected with it. The Rev. Rivington D. Lord, M. A., came to New York from his home in Michigan in 1880, and entered the Union Theological Seminary, where he was graduated with high honors. He passed another year at this institution in pursuing the studies of a post-graduate and paid particular attention to philosophy and church history. In June, 1884, he was called to supply the pulpit of the South Baptist Church of Brooklyn. He was regularly ordained in January, 1885, and a few days later married Miss Etta L. Chesley, daughter of Henry A. Chesley, of New York. He was born at Hillsdale, in the southeastern section of Michigan, on August 13, 1858. He is the youngest son of the Rev. David H. and Annette M. Lord. After some preliminary training in the public schools of his native town he entered Hillsdale College in the autumn of 1873 and in June, 1877, was graduated from the classical course with the highest honors. He intended at first to study law and in execution of that purpose went to Grand Rapids, where he remained for the next two years in the office of the Hon. J. C. Fitzgerald. In Grand Rapids, he first evinced an apti- tude for practical Christian work and thence he was moved to leave his desk and enter upon that course of preparation which led to his adoption of the clerical profession. The First Particular Baptist Church holds weekly services at 315 Washington street, and its congregation of fifty members is drawn from several of the Baptist churches. Their creed differs from that of the Baptists in that they believe in the more rigid faith of the English Baptists. The church has no permanent pastor. The Pilgrim (Second Advent) Church, 011 Stuyvesant avenue, near Hancock street, was organized in 1891 by a few Second Adventists, headed by the present pastor of the church, the Rev. Henry W. Bow- man, a young but energetic minister who is rapidly building up the congregation. The membership is 50 and there are 100 children in the Sunday-school. Christian Scientists. — The First Church of Christ (Scientist) of Brooklyn was incorporated in July, i88g, and in the following month it held its first regular services in Avon Hall, on Bedford avenue. In January, 1890, the use of the Aurora Grata Cathedral was obtained and services have since been held there. The Rev. Frank E. Mason was called to the church and ordained pastor in 1887. He combines the duties of pastor and editor of religious publications. Mormcn Church. — The Brooklyn branch of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints differs very materially from the generally conceived idea of a Mormon church, as derived from the Church of Utah. The Reorganized Church follows the doctrine enunciated by the founder of the church, Joseph Smith, in all its purity. Taking for its guide the Christian scripture, supplemented by the famous "Book of Mormon," the church finds reason for accepting or rejecting many doctrines at variance with the creed as enunciated at Salt Lake City. In fact, the Reorganized Church sends from its headquarters in Lamoni, Iowa, missionaries to the Utah Church to point out wherein its western brethren have departed from the original dispensation. The son of Joseph Smith is now the president of the Reorganized Church and its prophet. Among other things this church entirely rejects the doctrine of polygamy and also the ecclesiastical form of the western church. Its form of government is congregational, based on the system of the early Christian church. Under the care of Presiding Elder George Potts, the 65 members of the Brooklyn church meet at Epworth Hall, 2065 Fulton street, for two services on every Sunday. There is also a Sunday-school, where instruction is given in the doctrines of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Elder Potts is assisted by Elders Joseph Squires and W. Owen. 1 634 THE RAGLE AND BROOKLYN. ■•J''' ■% - . ' "^m " ' ■iiUii-liiii :-5"^'l.^. .^13 uMi^»r ai«U-»' ' 'y "»*~i 4 41,05' '»*-■¥ "^ tj,_U l< twra mrmm. «nHa n it ^'»>w%:,^ JM| T^,. ||-j^^ Young Men's Christian Association Building. RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATIONS AND SOCIETIES. Of the various religious organizations whicli are non-ecclesiastical in their character some are iinsect- arian, in that their membership represents a variety of churches ; some are unscctarian in spirit, although identified particularly with one certain denomination ; and still others are practically sectarian in that their membership is confined to representatives of one denomination, and their object is mainly to advance the interests of that denomination. No attempts will be made here to specify the category in which any of the organizations to be mentioned should be placed, as the story of each will indicate with sufficient plainness where it belongs. Another class is composed of those which have no relation whatever to any of the churches, but are religious or semi-religious in character, and these will be found appropriately grouped. Brooklyn Young Men's Christi.-\n Associ.^tkjn. — C)n June 9, 1853, a number of young men met in the Second Congregational Church to organize an association similar to the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation of New York, and by June 30 the organization of the Brooklyn Young Men's Christian Association was completed. There were 207 members, and Andrew A. Smith was elected president. The first home of the association was three rooms in the third story of the Washington building at Court and Joralemon streets, and the only paid officer was a librarian. Public meetings were held in the lecture room of the Church of the Pilgrims ami courses of lectures were instituted, the proceeds of which were devoted in part to the library, which grew rapidly by this aid and that of donations. In 1S57 the membership had increased to 491 and the annual expense was about $2,000. In 1859 the association took new rooms in the Brooklyn Institute building. Ladies had been permitted in 1858 to become associate members, and this privilege was continued twenty-five years, the number of such members reaching nearly 1,200 at one time. The policy was finally abandoned as experience demonstrated its disadvantages. During the war the work of the association went forward steadily and in 1865 the association opened new rooms at Fulton street and Gallatin place, where it had a lecture hall of its own. In 1867 the association made C. H. A. Buckley its •'chaplain and actuary," and he was the first executive officer whose whole time was given to the affairs of the organization. Evening classes were instituted, an employment and religious work was begun and developed, and steady accretions were made by the library. Steps were taken for the erection of an asso- ciati(jn building on the same site and it was completed and occupied in October, 1872, although encumbered by a debt which was liquidated by the influence of meetings conducted by Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist. A gymnasium was established and resulted in a large increase of membership ; the religious work was greatly extended with the institution of gospel-tent services as a feature. In accordance with a known general intention of the late Frederick Marquand, the heirs of that gentleman offered to contribute $200,000 CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 63s towards the erection of a new building on condition that $150,000 additional should be raised before 1885. This condition was complied with, and in September, 1885, the admirable building at 502 Fulton street was ready for occupation. It is one of the finest establishments of its class in the country and affords every convenience for religious and social life, reading and study, physical culture and the various employment and other agencies which assist in the work of such an institution. It was now felt that in a city of such wide extent all the young men could not be brought within the influence of a single association. Accord- ingly, in response to a petition from several hundred young men, a branch was established in the Eastern District. It is located at 131-133 South Eighth street and has 600 members, with O. W. Van Campen, Jr., chairman, and H. L. Simmons, secretary. The Bedford Branch, at 420-424 Gates avenue, was organized and it numbers 750 members ; Alonzo Alvord is chairman and E. H. Foot, secretary. The Long Island College League, which has a membership of 100, was organized in [891 and is officered by G. R. Hawley, chairman, and C. A. Byrne, secretary. The Prospect Park Branch, at 362 Ninth street, was begun in 1891 and has 200 members ; S. W. Fox is chairman and Henry Medd, secretary. Three hundred signatures have been attached to a petition for a branch in the twenty-sixth ward, of which Dr. George E. Law is to be chairman and John A. Davis, secretary. The central association has a membership of 2,500, and the total member- ship of all the associations is at least 5,000. In January, 1890, Frederick B. Schenck was elected presi- dent; Edwin F. See is general secretary. Frederick B. Schenck, president of the Young «» *• ■ '1 Men's Christian Association, was born in New York *^?<'' 1 city, and is a member of an old family which traces its ancestry to Holland. He commenced business at an early age, and has always been engaged in mercantile pursuits in New York city, having held many posi- tions of trust. For more than ten years he has been cashier of the Mercantile National Bank of New York. He has been an attendant at the First Reformed Church ever since he came to Brooklyn, more than thirty years ago, and has for years been an officer of the church as well as superintendent of the Sunday- school. He is a member of the Holland Society, New York Chamber of Commerce, St. Nicholas Society and Brooklyn Riding and Driving Club. He has been a director of the Young Men's Christian Association eight years, and as president he has been energetic in fostering its interests and painstaking in watching the details of its management and in enlarging its sphere of activity by branches in various sections of the city. He is recognized as one of the leading asso- ciation men of the country, being treasurer of the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, which has supervision of the association work throughout the United States and Canada. Edwin F. See, general secretary of the associa- tion since 1886, was graduated at Rutgers College in 1880, and filled the pastorate of the Third Reformed Church at Albany previous to the time of his removal to Brooklyn. He is a man of great energy and marked ability in the special line of work to which he has devoted his life. He is among the most prominent and honored of all the men in the country who have devoted themselves as secretaries to this work for young men. German Young Men's Christian Association.— The Deutscher Christlicher Verein Junger Manner, the German Young Men's Christian Association, was organized in 1878 by a number of young men who were members of the German Evangelical churches in the Eastern District. The meeting at which the organization was effected was held in the evening on April 14, at the house of Peter Blank, 63 Jefferson street, and the officers elected were: Peter Blank, president; Christopher Scherger, vice-president; Charles Schlieper, secretary; Frank Arnold, treasurer. The first rooms of the association were in the three-story brick building on the northeast corner of Broadway and Leonard street, E. D. In June, 1885, the association was incorporated under the laws of the state with the following named incorporators: Peter J. Straub, Peter Blank, Frederick Arnold, Henry W. Jaeckel, William Frei, Henry Von Glahn, the Hon. D. R. James, Peter Blank, Sr., G. W. Ihrig and Jacob Schmidt. During the same year the property known as the old Debevoise homestead, at 800 Flushing avenue, was purchased for the association work, and it is now the home of the Frederick TS. Schenck, President Y. M. C. A. 636 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. organization, which is independent of any similar association. Its ofificers, none of whom receive salaries, are: Peter Blank, president ; Christopher Grau, vice-president ; Emil Vom Lehn, secretary ; and William Jaeger, treasurer. Greenpoint Young Men's Christian Association. — A young people's society was organized in the Noble Street Presbyterian Church in 1884 at the suggestion of J. T. Bowne, who at that time was a secre- tary of the international committee of the Young Men's Christian Association. Out of this grew the Greenpoint Young Men's Christian Association, which was fully organized on December 15, 1885. On March 10, 1887, the association took possession of its first rooms at 138 Greenpoint avenue. The work of the asso- ciation is that which is carried on by similar associations elsewhere; and there is connected with the organi- zation a woman's auxiliary, which was organized on March 21, 1890. The property at 224-226 Manhattan avenue was purchased and occupied in April, 1889. There are nearly 300 members. J. A. Jenkins, M. D., is president; E. A. Walker, treasurer; D. F. Butcher, recording secretary, and Harry B. Smith, general secretary. Young Women's Christian Association. — In December, 1887, at an informal gathering of women, in the home of one of their members, the foundation of the Young Women's Christian Association of Brook- lyn was laid. The association was incorporated on February 13, 1888, with the following ofificers ; Mrs. Charles N. Judson, president; Mrs. Clark Burnham, secretary ; Miss E. S. Wood, treasurer ; Miss A. M. Reynolds, general secretary ; Miss R. A. Ogden, as- sistant general secretary; Miss L. A. Munson, librarian. The incorporators of the association were Harriet Jud- son, Helen F. McWilliams, Mary A. Brigham, Caroline E. Prentiss, Emily S. Wood, Matilda H. Spelman, Mary L. Beers, Nellie A. Porter, Caroline McP. Bergen, Caro- line Field, Adela J. Lyons, Lillian W. Betts, Sarah Trus- low, jNIartha C. McLeod. The object of the association as stated in its constitution is "To promote the tempo- ral, mental, moral and spiritual welfare of young women, particularly those dependent upon their own exertions for support." The first public meeting was held February 27, 1888, in the hall of the Young Men's Christian Association. Rooms were soon secured in the Johnston building, at Fulton and Flatbush avenues. From the beginning the organization has been very successful in every way. The sustaining members pay an annual fee of $5, while the annual dues of the associate members of $1 each entitles them to all the privileges of the association, except instruction in French and chart dress-making. The secretary, in her report handed in on January 2, 1892, stated that 2,537 members were enrolled. At this time the endow- ment fund was yielding an interest of $6,000 annually. Seventeen nationalities were represented by the asso- ciate members, a large majority of whom were young women, and most of them bread-winners. About ninety per cent, were unmarried. A large majority attended Protestant churches, and their pursuits cover a large field, comprising over one hundred different occupa- tions. Instruction is given in nearly all branches of education as well as household duties, and an employ- ment bureau is maintained. Members are sent to the country on vacations each summer at an expense less than the cost of going independently of the association, and most of them pay their own expenses. The library contains nearly 5,000 volumes, and in 1891 13,155 books were circulated. The present home of the organization is the Young \Vomen's Christian Association Memorial Building, at Flatbush avenue and Scher- merhorn street, which was first occupied in October, 1892. The building is a gift to the association from C. D. Wood, and is a memorial to his wife. The land upon which it was erected was a gift from the late S. B. Chit- tenden, and an additional lot 20 x 100 feet was donated by C. D. \\'ood, making his donation $143,000, of which sum $135,000 was expended on the building. An endowment fund for the purpose of maintaining the building Young Women's Christian Association Building. S \ CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 637 is being raised by popular subscription. Tlie building contains a gymnasium, baths, pharmacy, doctor's rooms, library, chapel, lecture-room, parlor, eighteen class rooms of varied sizes, and a kitchen and laundry rooms. A portion of the top floor is devoted to lodging rooms. The rear portion of the roof is designed for a large roof garden. The entire building is lighted by electricity, an elevator runs from the basement to the roof, and the ventilating and sanitary arrangements are of the best. The officers of the association for the year 1892 were: Mrs. Charles N. Judson, president; Mrs. Clark Burnham, recording and correspond- ing secretary ; Mrs. Daniel C. McEwen, treasurer ; Mrs. H. H. Shiverick, general secretary. The Home Association for Working Women and Girls is merged in the association. King's Daughters. — The Order of King's Daughters was organized in New York city through the efforts of Mrs. Margaret Bottome, about six years ago. The object is the accomplishment of charitable work through the united effort of all the members in each " circle " of ten, although one of the fundamental principles of the order is the absolute independence of each circle to choose its own object, direct its own work and control its own finances; the whole organization is under the direction of a central council, of which Mrs. Bottome is president. The four hundred circles, registered in Kings "County, form the Brooklyn Union, of which Mrs. E. F. Pettingill is president; Miss N. W. Allen, secretary ; and Mrs. H. A. Powell, treasurer. The Brooklyn Union comprises nearly 6,000 members, all engaged in home or foreign missionary work or aiding the philanthropic movements of the city. The separate circles, each composed of ten or more mem- bers, are generally connected with the evangelical churches of the city, but adherence to the evangelical faith is not an absolute qualification, the only requirement for membership being an expression of a desire to enter upon the work in a Christian spirit. City Mission and Tract Society. — One of the earliest, if not the earliest, organizations for Christian philanthropic endeavor in Brooklyn is the Brooklyn City Mission and Tract Society, which has its head- quarters in the Johnston building, on Flatbush avenue, near Fulton street. This society was organized on July 22, 1829, for the promotion of evangelical religion by missionary effort and by the systematic distribu- tion of tracts and religious literature. Bishop Mcllvane was the first president, and the first location of the society was in the Apprentices' Library building, at the corner of Henry and Cranberry streets. Its present activities, in addition to missions conducted in various languages, include such instrumentalities for good as the Factory Girls' Improvement Club, at 250^ Classon avenue ; the Concord Street Medical Mission and Dispensary No. i, supported by the First Presbyterian Church and located at 302 Concord street ; Medical Mission and Dispensary No. 2, at 412 Van. Brunt street; the Red Hook reading room, at 412 Van Brunt street; the Helping Hand Night Mission, a home and reading room for girls, at 283 Washington street, where there is also a dispensary ; a lodging house for men at 266 Jay street ; and a home for girls at 83 Dupont street. The evangelical work employs more than thirty missionaries, of whom the greater number , are paid, and the annual distribution of more than one hundred thousand tracts, papers. Bibles and parts of Bibles; families are visited; there is a regular system of visitation and preaching and prayer services for the jail, penitentiary and other public institutions ; mothers' meetings, and open-air services are held ; provision is made for the visitation of sailing vessels and canal boats; a good work is being done among the Chinese; and wherever the work of planting or fostering religion is possible the work is undertaken and the most effective agencies are employed. The regular missions now established are Zion's German Evangelical Church, on Liberty avenue, near Wyona street ; Bethany Chapel, at the corner of Twenty-second street and Third avenue ; Union Chapel, at the corner of Sixth avenue and Thirteenth street ; Shining Light Mission, at 452 Carroll street ; Bethlehem Mission, at 375 Atlantic avenue ; German Mission, at the corner of Debevoise and Morrell streets; and services in Swedish, held in the Warren Street M. E. Church. Out of the missions and Sunday-schools there have already grown no less than eleven evangelical churches repre- senting various denominations. The officers of the society include Alfred H. Porter, president; G. LeLacheur, M. D., general superintendent and secretary ; Miss E. E. Teller, office secretary ; Dwight John- son, treasurer ; and a board of twenty-nine directors. Cooperating with the society is the Woman's Auxiliary Society, the officers of which are : Mrs. James Scrimgeour, president ; Mrs. W. T.' Comes, vice- president ; Mrs. A. A. Raven, treasurer ; Mrs. J. J. Pearsall, assistant treasurer; Mrs. F. W. Mason, corres- ponding secretary; and Miss E. C. Stoughton, recording secretary, with a number of honorary officers, a large board of directors and an executive committee consisting of thirty women. The Woman's Auxiliary of the City Missions was organized on April 25, 1887, and has been active in evangelistic work ever since ; it has employed missionaries who have made house to house visitations, held meetings and sewing schools, visited courts and jails, gathered factory girls together for instruction, and given freely to the poor and unenlightened wherever found. The work is supported by contributions from churches, which pledge definite amounts for the purpose. The principal officers are: Mrs. Darwin R. James, president ; Mrs. J. J. Pearsall, treasurer ; Mrs. L. D. Mason, corresponding secretary ; and Miss E. C. Stoughton, recording secretary. The Brooklyn City Bible Society was organized on December 7, 1840. The society was an auxiliary 638 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. • of the American Bible Society organized in 1816 and its object was the circulation of the Holy Scrip- tures without note or comment. Its special field is the city of Brooklyn, but like other auxiliaries it makes contributions from time to time to the parent society to aid in the prosecution of its world-wide enterprises. The present place of meeting is the Johnston building, at Fulton street and Flatbush avenue. The officers are: Rev. Albert S. Hunt, D. D., president ; John Truslow and M. H. Dorman, vice-presidents ; Rev. Wesley R. Davis, D. D., corresponding secretary; E. B. Wood, treasurer; Miss Emma E. Teller, recording secretary. The Ramabai Circle, of Brooklyn, is a branch of the society for the elevation of the women of India, organized in Boston by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D. D. This circle, named in honor of the Pundita Ramabai, was organized in 1877, and has since its inception been under the presidency of Mrs. Mary J. Field. Its secretary in 1892 was Miss Josephine Thompson. Brooklyn Wo.men's Indian Association. — With the same impelling motive that prompted the estab- lishment of the parent institution the Brooklyn Women's Indian Association was organized as an auxiliary to the Women's National Indian Association. It was organized in January, 1883, with Mrs. A. B. Smith as president; Mrs. M. W. Huntingdon, now of Montclair, N. J., secretary ; and Mrs. Conklin, treasurer. The present meeting-room of the association is in the Young Men's Christian Association building on Fulton and Bond streets. It has established two missions ; one among the Poncas and Utes, which is cared for by the Methodist Church, and one among the Kiowas, of which the Presbyterians have taken the management. The association is planning to open a third mission in Montana on the Piegan reservation. The officers are: Mrs. J. S. Plummer, president ; Mrs. F. A. Van Iderstine, recording secretary ; Mrs. W. I. Bunker, corres- ponding secretary; Mrs. J. B. Gilbert, of New York, treasurer. Young People's Society for Christian Endeavor. — The Society for Christian Endeavor dates its existence in Brooklyn from the birth of the society all over the country in 1882, but it was not until five years later that any energy was infused into the work in this city. The society draws its membership chiefly from the Congregational, Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Brooklyn is divided into five districts by the main society, each containing all the churches in that section, and each district is governed by its own officers, who make reports through the Christian Endeavor Union in this city to headquarters in Boston. The Union is a legislating body, composed of delegates from every district. They map out the work for the city societies, and its officers control all the work in the city. The principal officers are : Rev. A. D. Heely, president ; W. W. Freeman, secretary ; A. N. Nielson, treasurer. Membership in the city is 15,000. Epworth League. — The Epworth League is the officially recognized Young People's Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was organized in May, 1889, by a number of members of five general Methodist societies of young people, and was made a part of the church in 1892. It takes its name from the town of Epworth in England, where John Wesley was born. Its object is the general development of Christian knowledge in young people. Every church in the Methodist Episcopal denomination has a league or chapter connected with it. There are forty chapters in Brooklyn, representing a membership of 9,500. The first chapter organized was that connected with St. Luke's Church, and the second one was organized at St. Paul's Church. The headquarters of the League is in Chicago, and at that office every chapter is reg- istered, given a number, and a record is kept of its officers. Kings County is divided into two districts — one governed by the Brooklyn district officers and comprising the whole of the city, and the other governed by the officers of the New York district. The latter district includes New York city, Long Island City, Greenpoint and other portions of Long Island. Chauncey W. Brown is president of the Brooklyn district; Miss Eva W. Bryant is corresponding secretary; George W. Burnham is recording secretary; and W. C. Abbott is treasurer. Methodist Episcopal Church Society. — The Brooklyn Church Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church was organized for the purpose of advancing the interests of the church by social and extra ecclesi- astical means. The membership consists of the pastor and two members of each church and forty others elected by the board of managers. The officers are: John E. Searles, Jr., president; Rev. George P. Mains, secretary and superintendent; and A. K. Shiebler, treasurer. The Rev. George P. Mains, D. D., superintendent and corresponding secretary of the Brooklyn Methodist Church Society, has been largely identified with the development of his denomination in this city. During his pastorate of Grace Church the edifice at the corner of Seventh avenue and St. John's place was erected, and during his term with the New York Avenue Society the magnificent church property between Bergen and Dean streets was planned and completed. The work of the man is typified in these two results. Both were in large measures due to his excellent judgment, his organizing ability, his exectP live power and his unflagging energy. These qualities which he has so practically manifested have won him the respect of all with whom he has come in contact. Therefore in 1892 when the Brooklyn Church Society of Methodism desired to increase its efficiency, he was unanimously chosen as its superintendent. His previous associations with the city, aside from his pastoral work, lasted from 1885 until 1887, when he CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 639 occupied the position of Superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Hospital. He was born in Newport, Herkimer County, New York, on August 7, 1844, and was graduated from Wesleyan University in 1870. Presbyterian Social Union. — The Brooklyn Presbyterian Social Union is an association of 120 members, organized for the purpose of affording social recreation. A necessary qualification for member- ship is good standing in the Presbyterian Church. The officers are: Darwin R. Eaton, president; and Thomas H. Wray, secretary. Baptist Church Extension Society. — The Brooklyn Baptist Church Extension Society was organ- ized on November i, 1886, as the Brooklyn Baptist Church and City Mission Society, and in 1887 it was incorporated under its present name. Its object was to establish Baptist churches, to foster existing feeble ones, to aid in erecting church edifices and to disseminate Baptist literature in the city of Brooklyn. Its membership is composed of pastors and laymen from all the Baptist churches in Brooklyn. Previous to its formation the object for which it was organized was under the care of the Long Island Baptist Association, which had endeavored to cover all of Long Island as well as the city of Brooklyn. A summary of the results of six years' work of this character shows the organization and fostering care of eight Baptist churches, the occupancy of four sections of the city by effective agencies for religious instruction and work; the revival and support of five other mission stations, whose work was languishing for want of financial help ; the purchase of advantageous locations for church edifices and the erection of suitable buildings on five of these locations. During the six years of its existence the society has raised and expended in its work $90,000, which has been used in the purchase of property, in loans and gifts to financially embarrassed churches, and in the erection of church edifices. The following church edifices have been built under the auspices of the society and with its assistance : Ocean Hill Church, Rockaway avenue, corner Somers street ; Bedford Heights Church, Rogers avenue, corner Bergen street ; Bushwick Avenue Church, Bushwick avenue, corner Weirfield street ; Memorial Church, Eighth avenue, corner Sixteenth street ; Pilgrim Church, Patchen avenue and Decatur street. The officers of the_ society include W. C. P. Rhodes, D. D., president ; Henry E. Drake, secretary ; John H. Hodgson, treasurer. Long Island Baptist Association. — The Long Island Baptist Association was formed in 1887 for the purpose of advancing the work of the Baptist Church by extra clerical means. It is composed of dele- gates from sixty-four Baptist churches on Long Island. The officers are: the Rev. D. C. Eddy, moderator; and W. F. Jones, clerk. Baptist Social Union. — The Baptist Social Union was organized in 1868. The membership increased rapidly and meetings were held regularly until 1877, when, for various reasons, they were temporarily dis- continued. The Union was not revived until June 19, 1884, when at a meeting held in the Washington Avenue Baptist Church the organization was reestablished. The union has no permanent place for its meetings, but they are held at the Clarendon Hotel, at Coney Island in the summer, at the Pouch Mansion and other places. At each meeting addresses are made by clergymen and others and the cultivation of a more intimate acquaintance among the members is not overlooked. The list of officers includes Charles H. Butcher, president; Henry E. Drake, treasurer ; G. B. Germond, secretary. The Young People's Baptist Union originated in a number of local societies established by the young people of various Baptist churches. These were consolidated in the fall of 1891, and the present union was formed; it consists of 178 delegates, representing 31 churches, and 72 associate members. Mr. Edward L. Harriott is president, and Mr. Charles S. Creegar, secretary. The Congregational Club of Brooklyn was organized on February 27, 1888, to encourage among the members of the Congregational churches of Brooklyn a more friendly and intimate acquaintance; to secure concert of action and to promote the general interests of Congregationalism in the city and its immediate vicinity. The membership is limited to two hundred, and there are now one hundred and sixty members. Regular meetings are held on the fourth Monday of each month, except during the summer, at different places decided upon by the executive committee. The officers are: Charles A. Hull, president; A. J. F. Behrends, D. D., vice-president; Edwin P. Ide, secretary; Richard S. Barnes, treasurer. The Unitarian Club, including all the Unitarian churches of this district, was formed in 1887 for the purpose of promoting unity among the members of that denomination and thus advancing their common interests. Its membership consists of 200 ministers and laymen. Du Borden Wilmot is president. The Unitarian Women's League, of Brooklyn, is a branch of the National Alliance of Unitarians and Liberal Christians in America, although the league was organized some time before the alliance. Its objects are charitable and social. The league seeks to secure through organization results which are beyond the reach of individuals. The officers are Mrs. John W. Chadwick, president ; B. W. Dix, corresponding secre- tary ; Emma C. Low, recording secretary, and Charles C. Knowlton, treasurer. Grand Eigne MissiON.-The Brooklyn Ladies' Association in Aid of the Grand Ligne Mission was organized on December 4, 1848, and is composed of representatives from thirteen of the Baptist churches, in the city. The Grand Ligne Mission was begun in 183S, at Grand Ligne, a small farming settlement 640 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. thirty-five miles from Montreal, Canada, by Madame Henrietta Feller, a Swiss Protestant, who aimed at evangelizing the French Canadians. She died in 1868, and a memorial of her, known as the Feller Institute, is a feature of the mission. The aim of the institute is to give a sound education to the children of French Protestants, extending facilities for a liberal education to such Catholic young men and women who desire them, and to train teachers, colporteurs, evangelists and ministers. The mission has so extended that there are fifteen stations in the Province of Quebec, with eleven missionaries and their wives, two colporteurs, two Bible women and seven teachers. The Brooklyn association has raised between $20,000 and $30,000 in aid of the work and has given to the Feller Institute two scholarship funds of $1,000 each, known respectively as the Brooklyn and the Mary Aline Ropes scholarship, besides furnishing thirteen rooms and the parlor. Mrs. Churchill H. Cutting is president, Mrs. Thomas L. Leeming, secretary, and Mrs. A. C. Burke, treasurer. Women's Board of Foreign Missions. — The Long Island Branch of the Women's Auxiliary to the Board. of Foreign Missions was organized by the ladies of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island in 1S78 for the purpose of assisting the Board of Missions and extending its work. At present the society is composed of delegates appointed by the rectors from nearly 70 churches of the diocese, making in all 900 members. The officers are : Mrs. Darwin R. James, president ; and Miss E. C. Stoughton, secretary. The Union Missionary Training Institute was organized by Mrs. Lucy Osborn, a returned mis- sionary, in 1885, for the purpose uf training prospective missionaries before sending them to foreign fields. In 1888 the use of a building on Willoughby street, near Raymond, was donated by F. G. Smith, and the advanced work of the institute is there conducted; the Hackettstown, N. J., institute supplies the elemen- tary instruction. A medical school is a part of the institute. The Edward Richardson Memorial Mission, on Clifton place, near Classon avenue, was the result of a design on the part of the daughter of the late Edward Richardson to perpetuate the memory of her father by a monument that would fully typify his philanthropy and altruism. The chapel was erected with that purpose in view. The mission work is under the care of Mr. S. A. Underhill, assisted by Mr. D. S. Moulton and Mrs. Samuel Vernon. The Waverly Young Men's Club was organized in 1891 by some of the members of the Washing- ton Avenue Baptist Church. The club is the pioneer in Brooklyn of the club movement for young men, adding to the usual social objects of a club a convenient house, rooms in which are rented to members. The club house, at 459 Waverly avenue, is the property of the club. Although organized by churchmen, one of the fundamental rules of the club is that no religious, political or strong controversial opinions shall be urged upon any member or guest of the club. Young men of any creed or of no creed at all, can enjoy the privileges of the club without feeling that some set of religious or political views will be thrust upon them for acceptance. The Hebrew Free School Association is a society founded for the purpose of affording education to Hebrew children without cost. For a long time the school was at 65 Throop avenue. The officers of the association are : B. Joachim, president ; and M. Krimke, secretary. The Brooklyn Theosophical Society was founded in 1890 for the purpose of forming a nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, a study of Oriental religions and philosophies, and to investigate the psychic powers of man. The society meets weekly at 164 Gates avenue. The officers are : Henry N. Hooper, president ; Henry D. Patterson, M. D., vice-president ; and Lily A. Shaw, secretary. Spiritualistic Societies.— Spiritualism in Brooklyn dates from the earliest days of the movement in the United States. In 1848 spiritualism became prominent in Brooklyn through the investigation by several prominent citizens, notably Stephen Pearl Andrews, of the phenomena presented. Dr. William Fishbough, formerly a Universalist clergyman, was prominent in conducting spiritualistic meetings in the old Brooklyn Institute building, on Washington street, and children's lyceums were established in various parts of the city. The spiritualistic belief is that communication between living man and disem- bodied spirits has existed through all ages and has never ceased. The growth of this cult has been precarious since its inception, less than fifty years ago, for the essentially democratic form of the sect and the absence of any requirement of public announcement of belief has not been conducive to the formation of spiritualistic societies. In i860 the Brooklyn Society of Spiritualists was organized. The meetings were held in Brooklyn Institute and in the hall on Smith and Fulton streets. In 1876 the present Society of Spiritualists was organized by E. V. Wilson. This society holds regular services in Conservatory Hall, on Fulton street and Bedford avenue. The Brooklyn Progressive Spiritual Conference was organized by Mr. Wilson in 1878. Its present officers are : Samuel D. Bogert, president ; Elizabeth F. Kurth, secre- tary ; and Joseph La Fumee, treasurer. The First Independent Club of Spiritualists is of later date Its present president is Mr. J. W. Fletcher, and John Hospinson is secretary. Various other societies have flourished m this city, and at one time there were two publications devoted to the elucidation and defence , of the phenomena and philosophy of spiritualism. CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 641 CLERICAL OFFICIALS AND LAY-WORKERS. In all that concerns the advancement of the Baptist Church in this country through the channels of religious authorship the Rev. Robert Thomas Middleditch, D. D., stands preeminent in his denomination He was born in Bedfordshire, England, on May 22, 1825. The impressions and convictions of his earlier life induced him to enter a seminary, where he was educated as a missionary ; at the age of nineteen, after completing three years of study, he joined his brother-in-law, who was stationed at the English Baptist Mis- sion in Jamaica. Two years later, returning to England by a roundabout route, he spent some time in the United States, and resolved to make this country his permanent abode. For some months he preached to a new congregation on Staten Island, and in 1848 was ordained pastor of the Baptist Church at Lyon's Farm, N. J. ; in 1850 he accepted charge of the church at Red Bank, N. J., which then had about forty members. There he remained seventeen years, and left the church with over three hundred communicants. The church at Eatontown, N. J., was built through his instrumentality. On leaving Red Bank, he took charge of the church at Nyack, N. Y., and two years later accepted a call to the First Church of Flushing, L. I., where he preached until 1874, when he gave himself entirely to editorial labor on the Baptist Weekly, with which paper he became connected at its inception in 1872. He continued his new work until 1887, when he undertook the publication of an illustrated monthly called the Gospel Age, which was subsequently incorporated with the Baptist Weekly ; from this combination rose The Christian Inquirer. Dr. Middleditch was inclined toward journalism from his youth, and had been connected with several papers before coming to America. In addition to his editorial work, he has published several tractates and books. He received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Madison University in 1858, and that of Doctor of Divinity from the same university in 1865. He married Miss Margaret Livingston, daughter of William Livingston, of New York, and became a resident of Brooklyn in 1875. The Rev. George Adams was pastor of the Sands Street M. E. Church during the period when the completion of the great bridge over the East River compelled the removal of the church from its historic location. He was born in the parish of West Brunswick, Staffordshire, England, on August 11, 185 1, and received a good education in the best schools and from a private tutor. His interest in religion began when he was fifteen years old, and he soon afterward became a local preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist Church. In 1874 he went to Canada and preached there one year, coming to the United States in 1875. After filling several appointments tp Methodist Episcopal churches in Indiana and California he took a full course of study at the Drew Theological Seminary, where he was graduated i'n 1886. Subsequently he took a post- graduate course. During his studies he supplied pulpits in New Jersey, and after his graduation he was transferred to the New York East Confer- ence, receiving an appointment to St. Paul's Church, Brooklyn. He was appointed to the pastorate of the old Sands Street Church in 1888, and proved his ability as a pastor by holding the homeless congregation to- gether while its beautiful memorial church was in process of erection. He is an effective preacher, and under his ministrations the society, after taking possession of its new home, was greatly awakened. In 1876 he married Miss Emily Sargent, of his native town. After closing his pastorate in Brooklyn in 1892, he took charge of the South Park M. E. Church, Hartford, Conn. The work accomplished by the Rev. Albert Carrier Bunn in the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island may be termed remarkable when the comparative brevity of his term of service is taken into account. Holding the important post of rector of the Church Charity Foundation he has confined his labors ■only by the limits of the territory included within the jurisdiction of Bishop Littlejohn. His fitness for the duties devolving upon him is the product of his dual training as a medical practitioner and a clergyman. He was graduated in medicine from the University of Buffalo, and for some years engaged in private practice. He went to China in 1874 as a medical missionary, and settled at Wuchang, in the central portion of the flowery kingdom ; where he established two hospitals. One for men was named Christ Hospital, while its companion institution, devoted to the treatment of women and children, was known as the Elizabeth Bunn Memorial Hospital. It was erected as a tribute of affection to the memory of his wife, who died at Wuchang in 1878. Dr. Bunn enjoyed an extensive practice among the Chinese, but relinquished it and returned to the United States in 1879 because of the illness which had overtaken his oldest son. Shortly after his return to this country he began to study for the ministry, and was ordained to the diaconate on June 5, 1881 ; he was ordained priest in April, 1882. He served at various places, and took his present position on Rev. George Adams. 642 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. September 25, 1891. He is a member of the Missionary Committee of tlie Diocese of Long Island, and local secretary for Long Island of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. As rector of the Church Charity Foundation, he is general superintendent of St. John's Hospital and the associate institutions. He was born at Cape Vincent, Jefferson County, N. Y., on November 24, 1S45. The Rev. Halsey Wing Knapp, D. D., is equally well known as a pastor and a business man. He is engaged in a large and successful poultry business in New York while he is settled as pastor of the Flatbush Baptist Church. Much of the income derived from his secular business is devoted to religious and philan- thropic work. He was born in New York in October, 31, 1824. He attended school in Suffield, Conn., until he reached the age of fifteen, when he was employed in the publishing house of Robins & Folger at Hart- ford. A year later he went to sea, cruising till he reached the age of twenty-one, and making two voy- ages around the globe. He then settled in New York, and obtained a position as bookkeeper in Washington market. In 1857 he was converted and soon began work as a lay preacher. In 1859 he was ordained and was in charge of various churches until 1884, when he came to Brooklyn as pastor of the Central Church in Bridge street, where he remained for six years. On February i, 1S91, he took his present charge at Flat- bush and assisted that church through a serious crisis. In 1890 the University of California conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The Rev. J. Glentworth Butler, D. D., author of " The Bible Work," is a native resident of Brooklyn and was born in 182 1. He was pastor of Presbyterian churches in various places until overwork compelled him to relinquish pastoral work in 1868, but he con- tinued to be active in ecclesiastical matters. The leisure thus gained enabled him to prosecute a design he had entertained for several years, which was to prepare a full and connected exposition of the scriptures that should be suited to all degrees of culture. This design he has nearly completed. Eight volumes have been published, si.x on the Old Testament and two on the New. This great work has occupied fifteen years ; it has necessitated the examination of the works of over seven hundred commentators and the perusal of thi'ee thousand volumes, in whole or in part, and the condensation and arrangement of a tremen- dous amount of matter. The Rev. J. O. Peck, D. D., who has held several prominent pastorates in Brooklyn, is now one of the corresponding secretaries of the Methodist Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and resides at 487 Madison street. He was born at (iroton, Vt., on September 4, 1836, and is a graduate of Amherst College in the class of 1S62. He has held prominent pastorates in Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Connecticut. He was at one time pastor of St. John's Church, Brooklyn, and later of the Hanson Place Church. In 1887 he was pastor of Simpson Church, Brooklyn, but was in charge only one year, as he was elected in 1888 to the oftice in the Missionary Society which he now holds, and tu wdiich, in 1892, he was reelected for a term of four years. In his youth he had to earn his own living, and was blacksmith, farmer, stage driver, as exigency or opportunity ordered ; but in all his callings he was honest, sober and a strict observer of the laws of morality. He became a Christian man when he was about twenty years old and was impelled toward his life-work long before he could see any way open for the necessary preparation. When he was pastor of a church in Chelsea, Mass., during the Civil war, he spoke five nights in the week under the direction of John A. Andrew, the " \Var Governor " of Massachusetts, and after the war he devoted himself with increased efficiency to his Gospel work, and revivals have been frequent under his ministry. Colonel Mark Hovt is as well known by his activity in church and educational work as by his extensive mercantile and manufacturing business. He united with the Summerfield M. E. Church in 1874^ and has been devoted to its interests ever since, having been for many years a trustee. He is deeply inter- ested in all educational work, and gives liberally to promote the cause of education. He is a trustee of the Adelphi Academy of this city, tne Wesleyan University of Middletown, Conn,, and of the board of education Rev. Halsev W. Knapp, D, D. / 644 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and trustee and treasurer of the Drew Theological Seminary. He is also a trustee of the American University at Washington, which is to be the great university of the Meth- odist Church, and he was elected to the presidency of the board of trustees, but was compelled to decline the office because of the pressure of other business. He came to Brooklyn to reside in 1868. During the Civil war he undertook, in 1862, the task of raising and sending to the field the 176th regiment, which had failed of success under other management, but which he soon accomplished, and the regiment did efficient service throughout the war. He is a member of the old and well-known firm of Hoyt Brothers, tanners and leather merchants, of New York. He was born at Stamford, Conn., May 5, 1835, of Puritan ancestry, the first of the name in America having settled in the town which is now the city of Boston in 1629. He received a common school education, and at the age of sixteen removed to New York, and became an apprentice in his brother's firm of Reese & Hoyt. In 1854 the firm was reorganized under the name of Hoyt Brothers. At the time of its organization, Mr. Hoyt was associated with three other brothers, of whom two have since died, and three sons of Oliver Hoyt, one of the deceased partners, have been admitted to partnership. Colonel Peter Mallett obtained his military title from the late Confederate government. He is of Huguenot stock, and his ancestors made their mark both in the annals of France and in those of his native state. He was born at Fayetteville, N. C, May 25, 1825, where his ancestors had been settled since 1769, when his great grandfather, Peter, was one of the founders of the settlement. He subsequently took a prominent part in the revolution. Col. Mallett was educated at Fayetteville. His father had a large cotton manufactory, and introduced the first cotton mill into North Carolina. Peter Mallett came to New York in 1845, as clerk for his father's commission merchants, and when the Civil war began he had been a member of the 7th New York regiment and was honorably discharged ; he went south and obtained a commission in the Confederate army. At one time he had six brothers in the same service. He took a prominent part all through the war ; for two years he was commandant of conscription and in charge of the camp of instruc- tion at Raleigh, and through his efforts North Carolina put more men in the field than any other state. He took part in the three days' battle of Kingston, N. C, where he was wounded so seriously as to confine him to his bed for nine months. He was with Jefferson Davis at the time of Lincoln's assassination, and heard the former denounce the crime in unmeasured terms. He was one of the first warehousemen to store cotton in Brooklyn. For the last twenty years he has been engaged in the storage business, and he was an active promoter of the system of licensing handlers of cotton for the protection of owners. He is senior warden of St. Paul's P. E. Church, and has been vice president of the Southern Society. He is president of the board of trustees of St. Giles' Home for Cripples. He married Miss Annabella Gibbs, of Wilmington, N. C. Benjamin W. Wilson, president of the board of trustees of All Souls Universalist Church, was born in the city of New York in 1S22, and in 1848 moved to Brooklyn. He learned the trade of a sailmaker early in life, and eventually formed a partnership with his brother, Nicholas F., with whom he maintained business relations until 1871. In 1856 he was elected alderman, an office which he occupied to the satisfaction of his constituents during three years. In 1859 he was elected and served as supervisor of the thirteenth ward, and he held the position of port warden of the port of New York for five years. His appointment to this latter office was attended with circumstances that rendered it of memorable interest to him, associated as it was with the greatest tragedy in American public life. The affixing of the presidential signature to his papers was one of the latest acts o*^ Abraham Lincoln, and on the evening of the very day on which Mr. Wilson entered upon the duties of his position, the president was assassinated. From 1856 until 1858 he was president of the fire department in the Eastern District of Brooklyn. In 1871 he retired from business, and, although a Republican of undoubted party loyalty, was appointed a tax assessor by Mayor Powell. He was successively reappointed from term to term until his tenure of office had covered a period of seven- teen years, and in 1892 he was again appointed by Mayor Boody a member of the board of assessors. For two decades he has been president of the Industrial School Association, on South Third street, between Bedford and Driggs avenues. In 1851 he married Miss Elizabeth A. Marinus, of Brooklyn. Of the ten children born to them six survive, the four sons, Daniel T., Nicholas W., Benjamin W., Jr., and Frank W., all being engaged in business in New York and Brooklyn. For eighteen yeans William D. Wines has been prominently identified with the Nostrand Avenue M. E. Church, and in 1892 succeeded Frank W. Taber as president of the board of trustees of that congrega- tion. He is recognized as one of the most active members and liberal supporters of the church. He was born in New York city in December, 1829, and four years later his family moved to Greenport, L. I., where he received his education. He engaged in var-ious pursuits during his earlier life in New York city, and in 1867 established himself in the iron business at 24 Centre street. New York. In 1858 Mr. Wines married Miss Pullis, daughter of the proprietor of an old and well-established line of stages in New York. He moved his family to Brooklyn in 1874 and has since made this city his home. Martius T, Lvnde, 145 Columbia Heights, a resident of Bi-ooklyn since 1847, has been prominent in the CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS. 64s Edward H. Branch. religious life of the city for many years, and has been an active worker in missions and Sunday-schools. During a quarter of a century-he was a member of Plymouth Church, and at one time held the office of deacon ; he was one of the promoters of the Bethel Mission established by Plymouth Church, manifesting a strong and practical interest in building it up, and performing a full share of the labors for which it was designed. For more than fifteen years he was one of the workers in the Bethel Mission Sunday-school as teacher and secretary. At the present time he is a member of Grace P. E. Church on the Heights. He is not actively engaged in business. Hfs parents were members of old New England families, but their home, when he was born in 1825, was in Sherburne, Chenango County, N. Y. His father, the late Hon. Tilly Lynde, was a very prominent man in public affairs in Chenango County, and served in the assembly and state senate. The father became a resident of Brooklyn in 1847, and died ten years later. Edward H. Branch, president of the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, was elected to that office in 1891 and reelected a year later. He has been a member of the board of trustees fourteen years and served six years as its secretary. He is the son of Mason Branch, who served for many years as judge of the district comprising the town of Lansing and the neighboring portions of the state of Michigan ; he was born in Vermont in 1833, and, removing to Michigan, studied in the State University at Ann Arbor. He came to New York in 1862, and has been engaged in mercantile business a long time. He is married, and has one son. Dr. Edward C. Branch, a graduate of the University of Vermont, now a practicing physician in this city. Ezra B. Tuttle, president of the board of trustees of St. John's M. E. Church, is a prominent coal merchant, a director of the Williams- burgh Savings Bank and belongs to the two most important committees connected with that institution ; he is likewise a trustee of the Nassau Trust Company and of the Kings County Insurance Company. For two years he acted as president, and for fifteen or twenty years as vice- president of the Cross Town Railroad Company, commonly known as Hunter's Point and Erie Basin line. He is a member of the book committee of the Methodist Book Con- cern, which controls the publications of all the books, periodicals and newspapers of the Methodist Church in America. He has for many years been a member of the missionary board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he is a trustee of the Drew Theological Seminary, the chief seminary of that communion. David Randolph Morse, one of the prominent men in the religious activities of the city, is a descend- ant of Robert Morse who, born in England, settled in Boston, Mass., in the year 1644, and in 1665 with his son, Peter Morse, joined a party of eighty pioneers, who were destined to become the founders of Eliza- bethtown, N. J.; they received a grant from the authorities warranting the purchase from the Indians of a tract extending seventeen miles upon the river front and thirty-five miles inland to Bound Brook. The deed was drawn up, and in return for their prop- erty the aborigines accepted a consideration which was designated in the document as follows : "At entry upon said land to pay twenty fathoms of trading cloth, two made coats, two guns, two kettles, ten bars of lead, twenty handfuls of powder; and further, after a year's expiration from the date of entry upon said land, four hundred fathoms of white wampum." The esti- mated value of the consideration was one hundred and fifty-four pounds sterling. Nehemiah R. Morse, who lived at New Market, N. J., and died at Plainfield on April II, 1883, was the father of David R. Morse ; his mother was Eliza Randolph, daughter of Captain David F. Randolph, of Middlesex County. Mr. Morse was born in New Market on March 30, 1835, and was 646 THE EAGLE AND BROOKLYN. m educated at the district school of his native village, at Bloomfield, N. J., and at New Hampton, N. H. He left school in the summer of 1853, and for nearly six years remained at the family homestead at New Market. Early in 1859 he came to New York city and entered the store of G. De Witt & Brother, as cashier and clerk. He did not leave their employ until April, 1862. In May following he formed, in association with John W. Howard, the firm of Howard & Morse, of which he has ever since been a member. In 1870 he was elected a trustee of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, a position which, with the exception of one annual term, he has since continuously held. He was for several years a director and member of the insurance committee of the Mutual Fire Insurance Company of New York, and since the establishment of the City Savings Bank, he has been a director of that institution and chairman of its examining committee. He has long been a member of the Union League Club of Brooklyn ; he is one of the oldest members of the Oxford Club ; and he was one of the founders of the Morse Society in which he serves as treasurer. On November i, 1866, he married Marietta Amelia Carpenter, daughter of the late Robert J. Randolph , she died in 1890, leaving two children, Frederick R. and Sarah R. Morse, both of whom are unmarried and live with their father at his home on Fort Greene place. KS2CSWCC" -^cSSs ,y^- ;■