fM^F 
 
 
 
 Ta^»1 
 
 Mm^^ 
 
 )f^rMmi 
 
 mrs^i^^M. 
 
 
 '■9'\ 
 
 '<si 
 
 
 !>■» '■>*« 
 
 iWiSKJ 
 
 
 M3 
 
 
 af «»'/ 
 
 
 
 ' ■ '■,;■, ^* ,(.:. v..;' *,.- ,.,.L. ■ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THIS BOOK IS ONE OF 
 A COLLECTION MADE BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 1854-1919 
 
 AND BEQUEATHED TO 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
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/cu31924028823296 
 
Historic and Antiquarian Scenes 
 
 Brooklyn and its Vicinity, 
 
 wrfa. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS OF SOME OP ITS ANTIQUITIES 
 
 T. W. FIELD 
 
 BBOOKLYN. 
 
 1868. 
 
 UK* I I t 
 
 U1v!{Vl:fUriY 
 
 liUUAUV 
 
Editios limited to 110 Copies. 
 
APOLOGIA, 
 
 DiJEixG the progress of some extended investigations into 
 the Revolutionary History of Long Island, many interesting 
 incidents presented themselves, not entirely conforming to the 
 narrow outline of a plan adopted for a larger work. These 
 were acqnued from sources, which intitled them to a fair de- 
 gree' of credit ; had never been published, and cost a certain 
 amount of labor in preparation and examination, which made 
 me loth to throw them entirely aside. Many of them were in 
 some form prepared by me for the Brooklyn Manual, though 
 since corrected and extended by additional particulars. 
 
 While tradition and fugitive documents are not always trust- 
 worthy foundations for history, they still possess in their details 
 an attractive interest, scarcely second to that which we yield to 
 its more dignified relation. The present collection forms but a 
 small portion of the mass of material obtained, much of which 
 consists of the personal narratives of citizens of our Island, 
 whose pens have preserved numerous details of a period in our 
 history, which will probably never cease to attract our absorb- 
 ing interest. It is the design of the author to present these in 
 occasional publications, which will, when combined, form a body 
 
IV Al'OLOGJA. 
 
 of material that he believes, will be prized the more highly, 
 as the traces of the events preserved in them grow fainter and 
 more obscure. The documents already prepared for the presp, 
 treat of the Revolutionary, Colonial and Indian Histoiy of 
 Long Island. The manuscripts of Gen. Woodhull and Gen. 
 Johnson, the journals of Prison Ship Captives, Accounts of the 
 Indian Tribes, The Poetry and Ballads of the Revolution on 
 the Island, form a part of the collection. 
 
 To those readers who love minute details of the heroic 
 period in the history of their locality, these gathered waifs are 
 respectfully commended, with the promise that nothing shall 
 be admitted to a place in the collection, that has not convinced 
 the judgment of the editor, of its fidelity to historical truth. 
 
COT^TENTS. 
 
 Nicesis* De Sille 1 
 
 Two British occupations of the Presbyterian Church at Jamaica 9 
 
 The Suydam House, and the Hessians in Brooklyn 19 
 
 The Eetreat at VaUey Grove 29 
 
 Denyse's Ferry Landing 38 
 
 The Simon Bergen, or De Hart House 40 
 
 EushwicJi Town House, Church and School House 41 
 
 Indian, Dutch and English names of Localities in Brooklyn and its 
 
 Vicinity 49 
 
 The Bising Sun Tavern, and the Kockaway Pass 61 
 
 Tide MiUs of Brooklyn 67 
 
 Escape of Henry and Elias Brevoort 73 
 
 Narrative of Services of Maryland Battalions 81 
 
 Traditions and Anecdotes 69 
 
ILLUSTEATIOI^S. 
 
 rAOB 
 
 View of the De Sille House 1 
 
 Presbyterian Church at tTamaica 9 
 
 Suydam House 17 
 
 Redoubt at Valley Grove 29 
 
 Site of Gen. Sullivan's Defeat 33 
 
 Freeks MiUs 35 
 
 Denyse's Ferry Landing 39 
 
 Gowanus Bay and De Hart House 40 
 
 Bushwick Town House 41 
 
 The Rising Sun Tavern 61 
 
 Luqueer's Mill 67 
 
 With three exceptions all the drawings from which these prints were engraved, were 
 made originally by or for the author, to preserve the memory of the scenes they portray. 
 They were used with his consent to illustrate the Brooklyn Manual and the Park Reports. 
 The views are, and always were , the property of the author, and are now not borrowed 
 but simply reclaimed. 
 
NIOASIUS DeSILLE. 
 
 Few of the inhabitants of Croolilyn will associate with tl'.e 
 name of Nicasins DeSille, many incidents of interest relat- 
 ing to the history of our country, and it is owing to the an- 
 tiquarian zeal of two eminent scholars that his name has 
 been rescued from an undeserved neglect. The translations 
 from the records of the Town, by Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan, 
 enable us to ascertain the part performed in its organization 
 by DeSillc. Appointed Fiscal or Attorney General by Pe- 
 trus Stnyvc^ant, he seems anxious tliat the town of Now 
 Utrecht should have an auspicious beginning. As soon, 
 therefore, as the patent had been granted in January, 1657, 
 the first of City Surveyors, Jacques Cortelyou, laid out 
 twenty lots of fifty acres each, and the Lord Counselor, &c., 
 Fiscal DeSille, preempted one. 
 
 The nineteen individuals, with unmistakebly Dutcli names, 
 who claimed the others, came together "so as speedily to 
 advance the place by sowing, planting and building on their 
 lots." Two hundred years must have changed somewhat 
 the character of their descendants, for the latter are not re- 
 markable for their eagerness to expend money to advance 
 the value of their lots. 
 
 One adventurous individual, named Jacob Ilellickers, 
 alias Swart, the records say " having a small square house 
 made of clap-boards, standing at Gravesend, incontinently 
 tore it down and removed it to the new settlement. 
 
 On this, because they could not begin all together and 
 alike, and for the purpose of sotting a good example to tho 
 
2 Ni cas'ii sD cS'ille. 
 
 common people, the Lord Counselor and Fiscal Xicasius 
 DeSille and two others of the aristocracy of New Nether- 
 lands, sent for the above named Jacob Hellickers, alias 
 Swart, who was a master builder, for the purpose of having 
 each a house built and warranted completed in May, 1658. 
 Shrewd Jacob Hellickers had not pulled down his clap- 
 board house in Gravesend and set it up in the wilds of New 
 Utrecht without an object. 
 
 But honest Jacob was not a whit better than his repre- 
 sentative master builders of this day, for he contracted to 
 erect the three dwellings within the specified time, and of 
 course failed to do so. 
 
 The records proceed to inform us that " this could not be 
 accomplished because the house of Heer DeSille was design- 
 ed to be thirty-si.x feet in length, bat afterwards, on the 31st 
 of May, 1658, he directed six feet more to be added, mak 
 ing it forty -two feet long ; and this was the first house in 
 the town which was covered with red tiles" — honest Jacob 
 Hellickers, alias Swan's clap-board palace being the first 
 dwelling. The house and garden of Ilcer DeSille were en- 
 closed with high palisades, set close together. Doubtless 
 this was intended as a defence from the Indians, but from 
 what we afterwards see we cannot resist the belief that it 
 was equally the result of a shrewd foresight of the dej)reda- 
 ting habits of his neighbors' swine, for we find that on the 
 complaint of Jacques Corteljou, the Surveyor the "Noble 
 and Right Honorable Lord Director, General Petrus Stuy- 
 vesant, directed the Fiscal to warn Anthony Jansen Van 
 Zalee to keep his cattle end hogs out of the common mead- 
 ow, in default of which the Fiscal was ordered to impound 
 the intruding animals. This Anthony Jansen Van Sale 
 was an audacious rover, who is thought to derive his name 
 from his Moorish origin, but perhaps had acquired it from a 
 long captivity spent at that place. He had slight reverence 
 for the high mightinesses of the Dutch colonial government, 
 for he presumed to the fundamental powers of treating with 
 
in which- Gen. Nathaniel Woodhi 
 Thishouse,lDmltinl6571]yNicasmsde SiUe, stood on 
 
mil died of his wounds in 1776. 
 
 othe spotnow occupiedbythe dwelling of BarnetWycKoff . 
 
Nicasius DcSUle. '3 
 
 the Indians for their land, and claimed equal privileges with 
 the authorities in cheating them out of it. 
 
 In consideration of an old coat, or perhaps a rusty gun 
 barrel, he had obtained the consent of some wretched abo- 
 rigines, (who would with the same nonchalanco have sold 
 him an estate in the Park of Versailles,) to occupy a large 
 piece of the salt meadow. 
 
 Although the complaint of Jacques Cortolyou is dated 
 only two years after the patent of the town, yet he asserts 
 that Antony Jansen Van Sale had been many years a resi- 
 dent of the place, which would indicate that neither the 
 house of DeSille represented in the accompanying plates or 
 the humbler dwelling of Jacob Swart, was the first struc- 
 ture erected in the town. Some of the iioetical effusions of 
 Heer DeSillc have been translated by the Hon. Henry C. 
 Murphy, and printed by the Bradford Club in the volume of 
 translations by Mr. Murphy, entitled "Anthology of the 
 Now Netherlands." 
 
 The poems of DcSille in that volume are prefaced by a 
 biography of the author, written by the translator, the 
 whole of which is subjoined in order to present the high 
 character and real literary eminence of the leading colonists 
 of our island. 
 
 " Nicasius DoSiUe, or Silla, who was first councillor in the 
 administration of Governor Stuyvesant of the affairs of New 
 Netherland, was a man of no ordinary attainments in litera- 
 ture and science. He was probably a descendant of the 
 person of the same name who filled several important posi- 
 tions under the government of the United Provinces, as 
 well as the municipality of Amsterdam, in the latter part of 
 the sixteenth century. The identity of their names is, how- 
 ever, all the evidence in our possession to justify the opinion 
 in favor of this relationship, unless indeed his title of icell 
 horn renders the supposition more probable. The elder Do 
 Sille M'as a native of Malincs, or Mechlin, in the Belgian 
 
4 A'washis DeSUle. 
 
 provinces, wliich he .abanfloned on account of religious per- 
 Mcniion at tlic time \\\m\ Balthazar dc Mouchcron, Peter 
 Planc'ius and othnr of his countrymen, for the same reason, 
 fled to Holland, wliere they become doubly entitled to the 
 rights and consideration of citizens of tlio Dutch Republic, 
 by reason of the part they took in tlie struggles of their 
 adopted country for independence of tlie imperial power of 
 Spain. 
 
 "Tlie subject of this notice was a native of Arnhem, and 
 came to Xew Xetherland in the summer of 1653, bringing 
 with him a commission from the West India Company as 
 first councillor in the colonial government. 
 
 "In this commission he is declared to be an experienced 
 and able statesman and soldier, and is instructed to reside 
 at Fort Amsterdam, to deliber.ate witli tlie Governor on all 
 (i;icstions of way, police or public force; to promote allian 
 ces of amity and comniere:.'; to assist in the administration 
 of justice, both civil and criminal; to advise generally on 
 all matters ■which miglit transpire in the colony. He ap- 
 ]ii'ais to have enjoyed tlie confidence of the Governor, wlioni 
 he accompanied in the expedition to the Dcleware against 
 tile Swedes. He siiceeeiled Van Tienhoven,in 1656, as Fis- 
 c d, or Attorney General. He was also at the same time 
 appointed Srliont or Sheriff of the city of Xew Amsterdam. 
 In tiiis office it was his duty among other important labors 
 to make nightly tours around the town. It marks tlio sim- 
 [iHcity of the times to read his comjilaints, on one occasion, 
 to the Burgomasters and Schepens of the city, of the dogs 
 mdiing dangerous attacks upon liini wliile performing that 
 service, of the hallooing of the Indians in the streets, and 
 tlie boys playing Jiocclje, tliat is playing hide-and-seek 
 around tlie hooks or corners of the streets, to llie prejudice 
 of quiet and good order. 
 
 ' He became one of tlie proprietors of X'ew Utrecht on 
 Long Island, where, in 1G57, he built the first house erected 
 
Nicasius DcSille. 5 
 
 in that to^vn. It was standing until within a few years past. 
 It was enclosed with liigh palisades to protect it from at- 
 tack by tlie Indians. He resided there in ]659 and in 1674, 
 and probably until his death, of which event, liowcver, wlien 
 and where it took place, we find no mention. 
 
 "lie began tlio records of the town, of Now Utreclit, 
 which are not only in his hand writing, but evince in differ- 
 ent respects his literary acquirements. It is to these records 
 that we are indebted for the few specimens of his verse, 
 whicli enable us to present liim as one of the poets of Now 
 Nethedand. 
 
 " DeSillc's closing days were clouded by domestic troubles, 
 and lie seems to liave needed all the consolations of tiiat re- 
 ligion which breathes throughout his poetry. He left three 
 children, all by his first wife, a son, Lawrence, from wliom 
 have descended many bearing his name, now generally ab- 
 breviated into Sill; and two daughters, Gerdientje, who 
 married Gerritse Van Couivcnhoven, of Brooklyn, and Anna 
 who became tlie wife of Ilendrick Kip, of New Amster- 
 dam." 
 
 Our interest in this fine relic of colonial life is further en- 
 hanced by the melancholy fact, that within its walls expired 
 the brave and unfortunate General Woodhull. After being 
 savagely hacked by a British sergeant, notwithstanding his 
 surrender, he was removed to the church at Jamaica, in 
 which the enemy were collecting the leading patriots, and 
 in tlio morning he was transferred to a hay boat and taken 
 down Jamaica bay to New York bay and landed at New 
 Utrecht village in a dying condition. As it became certain 
 that death would soon rob the malignant British officers of 
 their vengeance, his friends permitted the noble sufferer to 
 be removed to the DeSille house where ho soon expired. 
 
 Many incidents in the history of this outlying colony which 
 the Fiscal DeSille endured in his little government of New 
 Utrecht have been preserved. We are pained to learn 
 
G Nicashis DeSille. 
 
 from thorn what an-ant rascals were some of om- Dutch col- 
 onists, -whose arcadian simplicity of manners, and purity of 
 moi-als, wo have been so credulously fond of contemplating. 
 Even at that early period in its history existed the germ of 
 those habits of peculation in New York and the adjacent 
 colonies, which has grown to such thievish dimensions in 
 these days. 
 
 Such were the complaints of the more thrifty and well- 
 disposed of the colonists, that the irate Governor issued 
 proclamation after proclamation announcing the direst pun- 
 ishments against the contumacious rascals, who had as little 
 reverence for his Excellency's laws as for the eighth com- 
 mandment. On the 7th of January, 1659, the Director-Gen- 
 eral, as we can easily conceive, with patience quite exhaust- 
 ed, and stamping about with fury and copious objurgations, 
 proclaimed i'roni the Stadt House on Pearl street : 
 
 "That Whereas daily great complaints are made that the 
 posts, rails, clapboards and other fencing made with great 
 cost and trouble of the inhabitants around their several lands 
 and gardens, are stolen both night and day, the Director- 
 General and Council expressly forbid all such familiar liber- 
 ty with others' property on pain of being whipped and 
 branded for the first offence ; and for the second offence of 
 being hung with a cOrd until death follows, without favor 
 to any person. Every one is hereby warned." 
 
 After this, the Fiscal says, the inhabitants of New Ut- 
 recht "were diligent in the observance of the command" ; 
 and, in consequence, none of them fell under the dreadful 
 ire of Hard Kopping Peter. 
 
 But even the twenty proprietors were too man}' to remain 
 long in good fellowship ; for the record declares that the 
 inhabitants so often disagreed and disputed about their 
 plantations, houses, and the watch, that one Jan Tomasson 
 was appointed Sergeant of the Town, and De Sille sent him 
 a halberd to aid him in preserving the peace in New Utrecht. 
 
Nieasius DeSille. 7 
 
 A few weeks before the proclamation of the edict the 
 Fiscal DeSille, who had been appointed Scout of New Ut- 
 recht, on the complaint of the inhabitants that tliey were 
 badly armed, furnished them with ten muskets and proper 
 ammunition from his own armory. Only a week elapsed, 
 however, says the Fiscal in liis journal, before " The inhabi- 
 tants disputed, quarrelled, and disagreed among one another, 
 so that thirteen of them united in a pelition for relief, which 
 they handed to DeSille for safe keeping, as by reason of the 
 hostile Indians they could not send it to the Director-Gen- 
 eral, who had gone on an expedition against tliera to Eso- 
 pus." The poor Fiscal, thus tormented with his pugnacious 
 little community, imdertook to quiet its members for a 
 time " by fortifying and surrounding his house, which alone 
 had a tile roof, with palisades for the safety of the inhabi- 
 tants, and as a place of refuge." Only two months elapsed 
 before his uneasy subjects again made such bitter complaiuts 
 about their negligent and dishonest neighbors, the broken 
 fences and the ravaging swine, that they drove the vexed 
 and wearied Fiscal DeSille almost out of his senses. "These 
 disturbances," he says, " caused him so much running 
 about, and made him so weary of his office, that he doubted 
 whether to accept that of Sheriif of the Town of Utrecht " ; 
 but he consented, at length, in order that the ploughing and 
 building might go on, there having been in January, 1060, 
 only twelve buildings erected, of which one was' a barn. 
 Considering the peculating propensities of some of the in- 
 habitants, we are not surprised to learn that even two hun- 
 dred years ago, in the little town of New Utrecht, they 
 formed a Bing, the me.nbers of which, his informants refrain 
 with characteristic Dutch caution, from naming, while they 
 pester the poor Fiscal with complaints of their rascalities. 
 Vexations innumerable followed, and tormented the worthy 
 and peace-loving Fiscal, not the least of which was the raid 
 upon New Utrecht of that pestilent partizan, John Schott. 
 One day there was a clangor of brawling trumpets and 
 
8 Nicasius DeSille. 
 
 tlie tramping of reckless horsemen heard in the one qmet 
 street of the village, and a hundred Puritan guerrillas rode 
 into it and demanded something in a barbarous and un- 
 known tongue, but with a fierce manner which left little 
 doubt of their purpose. 
 
 What hard work the Fiscal had to be rid of John Schott 
 and his truculent horde who marched down to Broucklyn 
 Ferry and even threatened to beard the Dictator-General in 
 his Stadlhuys, we have no space to narrate. The crowning 
 trouble of theFiscal's life, was the charge m:ide by the the 
 States General that he forbade the soldieis in tlie Fort of 
 New Amsterdam firing upon tlie English troops, and in 
 consequence the co'ony fell into their hands. The Fiscal's 
 government, poetry, and troubles, form not the least inter- 
 esting ejiisode in the history of Long Island. 
 
Tid )t A BrownOiUThanies St N I 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH AT JAMAICA 
 "used as a prison \yy the Bntish in August 1776 
 
TWO BRITISH OCCUPATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PEESBYTERIAN OHUROU OF JAMAICA, 
 By Lord Coenbuet and Gen. Howe. 
 
 The Village of Jamaica has the honor of organizing and 
 sustaining the first church in this country which was not of 
 Slate establishment. The liberality of the Dutch Colonists, 
 not only permitted them to look upon the founding of a 
 Presbyterian Church, with indulgence, but induced them 
 to contribute to its aid by legislative enactments. The 
 date of the first organization of a religious body in this vil- 
 lage is 1672, and as the form of worship has been well set- 
 tled by the Rev. James M. Maodonald, its historian, to 
 have been Presbyterian, it may be confidently claimed as 
 the oldest of that sect in this country. 
 
 The date of the erection of the building represented by 
 the engraving, is nearly thirty years subsequent. The 
 quaint structure whose whimsical proportions and rude 
 architecture provoke a smile from us, was the scene of many 
 stirring and tragic incidents. It was the birthplace of reli- 
 gious tolerance in this colony, the cradle of civil as well as 
 religious liberty — and the prison of noble patriots, who suf- 
 fered martyrdom for avowing the principles of freedom, 
 whose realization we now enjoy. 
 
 The brief stories of two scenes its -walls were witnesses of 
 will convey to the readers of this sketch some idea of the 
 honorable place in the history of our island to which this 
 structure is entitled. The Village of Jamaica has at vari- 
 ous times in its history been the residence of some of the 
 2 
 
10 Two British Occupations of the 
 
 most notable men who have been prominent hi that of our 
 country. 
 
 Among them none were more remarkable for honorable 
 qualities than Lord Cornbury was for every opposite one. 
 Sordid, malicious, debauched, he was a terror and a scourge 
 to the people he was sent to govern. A fatal epidemic, 
 probably the billious remittent plague of our sea-coast, 
 which in 1702 prevailed in New York City, had driven his 
 Lordship to seek safety in Jamaica. Our little neighbor, 
 Jameco, was then a well grown brother, of proportions 
 equal to if not exceeding the settlement of Breukland, yet 
 it had not vacant tenements enough to accommodate his ex- 
 cellency, the scampish Governor Cornbury, and his retinue. 
 
 The best house in the village was the residence of the 
 Presbyterian minister, Mr. Hubbard, and the modest Gov- 
 ernor at once requested the clergyman to turn himself out 
 of house and home and instal him, the said Cornbury, in the 
 snug parsonage. To the great inconvenience of himself and 
 family, the humane and generous clergyman admitted his 
 Lordship, family and retinue. A terrible plague to his 
 household, and a most pertinent and ungrateful guest he 
 proved. Among other agreeable qualities, his Lordship 
 possessed, as was by no means unnatural, while he was 
 a most evil liver, he was a merciless bigot. 
 
 The first church with a republican form of government in 
 America was now to feel the persecuting tyranny of a pro- 
 scriptive theocracy. Twenty-one years after its founding, a 
 few of the adherents of the State Church had crept iuto the 
 village. Taking courage from the presence of so powerful 
 an adherent, and eminent professor of their creed, the Gov- 
 ernor's faction took forcible possession of the edifice, very 
 much as an impudent black-bird does of a pigeons' nest 
 while the rightful owners are absent. Between morning 
 and evening service one Sabbath, these zealous defenders of 
 the purity and of the honor of the house of God, entered its 
 doors and barred the real owners out. Never did religious 
 
Preshjter.'an Church of Jamaica. 11 
 
 zeal and theologic bate rage fiercer than in the little hamlet 
 of Jameco. It was true that there could not be the shadow 
 of a doubt regarding the rightful ownership of the building 
 being vested in the I'resbyterians, who had erected it, but 
 the Governor's party took heart from the very liberalism of 
 its founders. The resolution, by which the town voted to 
 erect the edifice, contained not a single word which denot- 
 ed its use to any particular sect ; and as the State Church 
 party — although it had neither right or numbers on its side, 
 yet as it had a hearty desire, aided by the pious Governor, and 
 a good deal of craft, it soon ousted the honest Presbyte- 
 rians at a single hoist. The original proprietors, though 
 true to their Dutch idiosyncracy rather slow to wrath, had 
 not bearded Louis XIV. and the Duke of Alva, to be flout- 
 ed by a Cornbury. 
 
 The village swarmed its inhabitants like an overcrowded 
 bee-hive; and as in such cases with the irritable little insects, 
 somebody was lilte'y to be stung when Dutchmen were imcer- 
 emoniously locked out of their own premises. The result was 
 the Governor's faction were routed from the church, and the 
 Dutch Presbyterians, still imitating our insect fiiends the 
 bees, who always rob their own hive when dispossessed or over- 
 mastered, fell to work upon the devoted building and tore 
 up the seats upon which they had devoutly reclined. The 
 possession of the house, and the key to the door, did not 
 however ensure a perpetuity of its occupation, for their op- 
 ponents rallied, and reinforced by the Governor's authority, 
 drove out the audacious Presbyterians, who claimed posses- 
 sion of their own property, with force and violence. Not 
 only did the gracious and benignant Cornbury aid them in 
 obtaining possession, but he brought the dread agency of 
 the law to avenge tlieir insults, and put an end to the pes- 
 tilent Presbyterians. It was true, the stake and gibbet 
 were out of fashion, but then there was the not less har- 
 rassing and intolerable prosecutions, fines and imprison- 
 ments which had come into vogue. Encouraged by him, 
 
12 Two British Occupations of the 
 
 the State Church party prosecuted their neighbor Presbyte- 
 rians before Cornbury's accommodating court, -which de- 
 creed the recusants heavy fines, long imprisonments, and 
 ruinous law expenses, so that many of them leaving house 
 and home fled out of the province. It was true that a num- 
 ber of poor wretches, who had fled across the angry ocean, 
 to find a place for their weary consciences to worship God 
 in peace, were rendered homeless and miserable ; but then 
 the Gospel was administered according to Lord Cornbury, 
 and the rest was of no consequence. His success, however, 
 iu routing these miserable Presbyterians did not appease 
 the demands of his Lordship's conscience ior the prevalence 
 of his religion, and accordingly he cast about for enriching 
 the church he had robbed the real proprietors of 
 
 Gratitude is so mean a virtue, only characteristic of 
 vulgar and common people, that it was properly deemed by 
 Lord Cornbury entirely unworthy a place in liis character. 
 It was true that the cleigyman Hubbard had, with a weak 
 generosity, permitted his Lordship to occupy his house when 
 flying from the pestilence ; but then he was only a Presbyte- 
 rian minister, and occupied a handsome dwelling and a rich 
 glebe of farm land, which, if the church belonged to the 
 other sect, the man Hubbard certainly had no right to. 
 The latter was therefore incontinently turned out by a sher- 
 iff named Card well, who has been approbriously styled a 
 mean fellow, for performing his duty with a conunendable 
 zeal, tliat hurried the dissenting ranter out of his glebe. It 
 was scant courtesy to Lord Cornbury or his sheriff, to com- 
 pare the fate of the latter, to that of Judas, for CarJwell 
 soon after went and hanged himself. It is fortunate for the 
 memory of Judas that Card well lived and died. Cornbury 
 Iiad the glebe surveyed into lots, and farmed them out for 
 the benefit of the State Church and the true faith. Some of 
 the sordid Dutch Presbyterians, Avho had not been exiled, 
 had the audacity to grumble, and a few had the insolent te- 
 merity to protest against the occupation of their church lands, 
 
Presbyterian Church of Jamaica. 13 
 
 but ConilDuvy soon settled his account with them by more 
 fines find imprisonment, which doubtless the recusants con- 
 tinued to resent by running away from his paternal govern- 
 ment. Cornbury gratified what Dr. Macdonald terms his 
 " pious rage" by declaring not only all Presbyterians public 
 nuisances, but he also decreed the Dutch Reformed clergy- 
 man and schoolmasters to be intolerable, and forbid the ex- 
 ercise of their profession. 
 
 These troubles put an end to the life of the clergyman 
 Hubbard in a year or two, at the early age of twenty-eight; 
 but such a trifle was not permitted by Lord Cornbury to 
 disturb his lordly quiet. It was true that Hubbard was a 
 most amiable, learned and pious mart, ardently loving 
 his people, who as warmly returned his affection, but then it 
 is the peculiarity of men, remarkable for such weak qualities, 
 to take the sufferings and persecutions of other people great- 
 ly to heart, and thereby cause themselves much unnecessary 
 pain. 
 
 We do not learn whether Cornbury had the kindness to 
 accelerate the death of Hubbard by poison, but it is 
 probable his revenge could only be satiated by starving the 
 miserable minister to death. The remainder of the narra- 
 tive of the pious robberies and murders of Lord Cornbury 
 must be sought in the histories of the times. 
 
 Another scene in the Old Stone Church opens on the night 
 of August 28, I'Z're. The disastrous battle of Brooklyn 
 had been fought on the day previous. Gen. "WoodhuU had 
 been hacked by the swords of Oliver I)elancey's troopers 
 until he was almost lifeless, and the loyalists now protected 
 by the British troops, turned with fury on the Whigs, who 
 had harrassedthem with their pestilent republican doctrines. 
 The most devout among them thought they were doing both 
 God and the King service by haling men to prison. They 
 accordingly were swift to denounce their whig neighbors to 
 the British officers, and before night the Stone Church was 
 well crowded with the descendants of the men Avbo had 
 
14 Two British Occupations of the 
 
 been turned out of it seventy j-ears before. Religious and 
 political intolerance spring from the same fountain, and are 
 frequently the birthright and heirloom of families. At all 
 events the whigs who were prisoners in the Stone Chvu'oh 
 were mainly Presbyterians. A venerable old man was early 
 in the day led into their midst, whom the most rancorous 
 political hate would have scorned to harm, but for the sel- 
 fish desire of a Tory neighbor to ingratiate himself with the 
 British. 
 
 This person was Eider Elias Baylis, the pious and almost 
 saintly Elder of the Church. Blind as he was, his patriotic 
 zeal had made him so prominent that he had been selected 
 as the cliairman of the town committee of safetj^ His in- 
 firmity made the crime of whiggery more heinous, and a 
 zealous tory took heart enough to seize the blind and aged 
 man and carry him before the British officers at Jamaica, 
 who accosted the miserable informer with honest indigna- 
 tion, " Why do you bring this man here ; he is blind ; he can 
 do no harm." The brave loyalist, who was not to be bul- 
 lied out of his captive in that fashion, replied, " It is true he 
 is blind, but he can talk." The unfortunate but stoutheart- 
 ed Baylis could and did enough of that, to talk himself into 
 prison. In the Church, the perversely cheerful old man in- 
 sisted upon administering comfort from his own obstinate 
 faith to his despondent neighbors and brethren. 
 
 The Elder had a sweet voice, and had led the choir for a 
 whole generation in the Old Stone Church, whose walls now 
 echoed the dirge-like strains of the Minstrel King for the 
 last time from liis voice. On the floor of that prison church 
 a manly and noble form lay bleeding to death. It was the 
 heroic Woodhnll, whose mangled body had been flung down 
 there, after his murderous capture. We know little of the 
 attendant circumstances of that sorrowful night in the old 
 church. 
 
 Death soon sealed the lips of all those who crowded the 
 seats from which they had listened to the divine words of 
 
Presbyterian Church of Jamaica. 15 
 
 comfoi't and instruction, and many of those who could nar- 
 rate the scenes they witnessed there, perished in tlie sugar- 
 honse or provost jail, long before peace returned to their 
 native village. 
 
 Elder Baylis was carried next day with Gen. Woodhull 
 and other whigs to the Dutch Church in New Utrecht, then 
 used as a prison. Hero he perhaps had an opportunity of 
 again administering consolation to the late President of the 
 New York Congress, whose eyes were then fast closing in 
 death. 
 
 Mr. Onderdonk says in his revolutionary incidents, that 
 while in this prison church, Baylis was placed by the guard 
 in the same pew with several of his old neighbor's, whom he 
 desired to get the Bible fi'om the pulpit and read to hi;n. 
 This, their fear of violence from the British soldiers, prevent- 
 ed them from attempting, but they led the blind old saint 
 to the steps, which he ascended, and was returning with the 
 treasure of such inconceivable value to him, when the 
 British guard, outraged possibly at the pretension of a blind 
 dissenter to receive consolation from that source, after de- 
 priving him of the volume, beat him with inhumin violence. 
 
 As descriptive of his own and his neighbors situation, he 
 sung the 152d Psalm, 
 
 "Lord I am brought exceeding low." 
 
 After a confinement of two months in the Provost at New 
 York, the health of the aged and saintly patriot failed so 
 rapidly that it was evident his captivity was drawing to a 
 close. Even his jailors shrunk from the opprobrium of the 
 murder of the blind old man, and at the intercession of 
 his wife and daughters, who had often visited him, 
 was released; but died while crossing the ferry. The 
 heartless wretch who arrested the blind Elder, dreading the 
 vengeance of his outraged neighbors, on the evacuation of 
 the island by the British, iled to Nova Scotia, from whence 
 after two years exile he returned to Jamaica, so niisei-able 
 
16 Occupation Pres. Church of Jamaica. 
 
 and forlorn in appearance, that his wretchedness disarmed 
 the resentment of those he had injured, and he was suifered 
 to drag out the remainder of his worthless life. It is some 
 comfort to know this was the worst punishment that could 
 have been bestowed upon him. 
 
 The Church was exactly forty feet square, and stood in 
 the middle of the main street. A wide aisle passed through 
 the centre of the building with a large door at either end. 
 Through this broad passage one summer Sabbath, when 
 both doors were open, a reckless fellow rode his horse at 
 full speed. The irate Dutchmen rose in burning wrath, and 
 unharnessing their horses from their wagons, pursued the 
 daring and impious rascal for several miles. The pious in- 
 dignation of the hard riding congregation was not however 
 gratified by overtaking the culprit, who, better mounted 
 and with a good start, was careful not to be overtaken by the 
 heavy handed worshippers. 
 
 Six months e.^ile in New Jersey, the Texas of the colonies, 
 cured him of any fancy for steeple chases. 
 
 In 1813, after having endured for more than a century, 
 the Old Stone Church was removed. 
 
 The vane, pierced by the bullets of the British soldiers 
 quartered iu the village from 1776 to 178-3, until the winds 
 sifting through the ball holes, would no longer turn it on its 
 rusty socket, is said to bo still in existence. 
 
 Only one house of worship of Revolutionary date remains 
 on this part of the island — the Quaker meeting house at 
 Flushinnr. 
 

 
 J 
 
 
 «■ JH»^ „, ^ 
 
THE SUYDAM HOUSE, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE HESSIANS IN BROOKLYN. 
 
 The auxiliai-y troops of the British Army lefo many 
 traces of their occupation in Brooklyn, and many of their 
 number, to represent the Teutonic element of the foreign 
 troops, which for seven years, made its surface little more 
 than a camp. Evidence of their occupation of one at least 
 of the residences of the old citizens, remains to this day, 
 upon the house of Hendrick Suydam's family, in the 18th 
 "Ward. ' The street upon which it is situated, now calidd 
 Evergreen avenue, was then known as ISTew-Bushwick Lane, 
 and connected the King's highway to Jamaica, with the 
 Cripplebush road to Newtown. The house itself is a vener- 
 able and well preserved specimen of Dutch architecture — 
 the first story built of stone, almost thick enough for a for- 
 tress, and lighted by the same tiny panes of glass set in 
 heavy sash, which give it the air of looking through spec- 
 tacles. The walls of the house have been built not less than 
 one hundred and sixty years, as the traditions of the family 
 testify. The farm was bought by Jacob Suydam, the ances- 
 tor of the present occupants, in the year 1768, at which 
 tim€ the house had been occupied by the former proprietor, 
 Leflfert Lefierts, since 1724. In the deed by which the 
 property was transferred to Suydamj it is termed the fafm 
 and dwelling house of Leflfert Lefferts, of Busliwick, and 
 Annetje his wife, in New Bushwick. — Lots conveyed to 
 
 them by William Van Nuys. Jacob Suydam was accustom- 
 3 
 
18 The Suydam House^ 
 
 ed to say to his son Heridriek that the old house was in such 
 bad condition in 1768 that it was necessary to make large 
 repairs before he could occupy it. 
 
 It is built as was the invariable practice of the old Hol- 
 landish settlers, in a gentle depression of the ground, where 
 it would bo protected from the sweep of the dreaded north 
 wind. The airy site and broad prospect which so entice the 
 newer occupants of Brooklyn soil, had no attractions for 
 the phlegmatic and comfort-loving Dutch race. The old 
 farmers quietly hid their houses away in the little valleys 
 and turns of the road, much as a cautious fowl creeps into 
 a hedge, and constructs its nest for a long incubation. But 
 it is chiefly for the marks it bears of the rude times of the 
 Revolutionary struggle, that it is interesting to us. In the 
 month of November, nge. Gen. Johnson, says, in his 
 Manuscript Recollections of the Revolution, '• Col. Rahl 
 took up his quarters in Busliwick, with a regiment of Hes- 
 sians. They constructed barracks on the land of Abraham 
 Luqueer, although many of them were also quartered on the 
 inhabitants. The regiment of Col. Rahl made free use of 
 the wood in the Wallabout Swamp, which extended along 
 north of the Cripplebush Road, from the Bay to Newtown 
 Creek." In the humane treatment of a conquered enemy, 
 the Hessian soldiers, after they became acquainted with the 
 people of the island, would compare with the British, much 
 to the disadvantage of the latter. The testimony not only 
 of the prisoners of the Wallabout prison-ships is often 
 highly creditable to their humanity. They had first, how- 
 ever, to be disabused of the conviction so craftily impressed 
 by the British, of the barbarity and savage cruelty of the 
 Americans. 
 
 But their cupidity and proneu ess to commit petty robberies, 
 appropriating every species of property, upon which tliey 
 could, without much personal risk, lay their hands, has be- 
 got for them the reputation of arrant thieves. It was sel- 
 dom however, that they wantonly injured the property of 
 
The Hessians in Broolclyn. 19 
 
 others, as occurred at the house of Ilendrick Suydam. 
 The old farmer like his brother the stout Lambert Suydam, 
 of Bedford, captain of the King's County troop of horse, 
 ■was a sound Whig, though compelled, from his situation in 
 the midst of the British camp, to take the oath of conform- 
 ity, or be lodged in a foetid and infected prison, with num- 
 bers of his Bush wick neiglibors. lie could not, however, ob- 
 tain his freedom from an infliction scarcely less pestiferous 
 than the other alternative, the lodgment in his house of a 
 squad of Hessian soldiers. So filthy were their habits, 
 that a malignant fever ensued, in the summers succeeding 
 their occupancy of the houses of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and 
 Flatbush, where they were quartered, which carried off num- 
 bers of the inhabitants. In consequence of their peculiar 
 habits, so abhorrent to the fastidious neatness of our Dutch 
 .ancestors, the Hessian soldiers were termed the Dirty 
 Blues. 
 
 It was during the absence of Hendrick Suydam on ser- 
 vice with the revolutionary army, that twenty-one Hessians, 
 with a woman to jDerform their cooking, were quartered in 
 the south room, while Mrs. Snydam and her children were 
 compelled to occupy that on the other side of the hall. She 
 found her situation unendurable in a short time, from the 
 outrageous conduct of the Hessians, and accordingly aban- 
 doned the house in alarm. Three months after when she 
 reitirned to her dwelling it was found completely sacked, the 
 furniture arid bedding s tolen, and every part of it covered 
 with filth. 
 
 On one occasion during the occupation of the Suydam 
 House, a Hessian Captain, for want of other occupation, or 
 possibly to spite his Dutch host, chopped with his sword 
 several largo pieces from one of the side-posts of the door- 
 way. 
 
 As a memento of tlic old troublous times, and to keep 
 green the memory of the wrongs which so deeply embit- 
 
20 The Suydara House, 
 
 tered him, the old Whig would never permit the defacement 
 to be repaired. 
 
 With Dutch pertinacity in the same humor, his descend- 
 ants have very commendably preserved the tokens of the 
 detested occupation of their domicile by a foreign enemy, 
 and the marks of the Hessian sword are still apparent. 
 
 The Germans early entertained a fondness for the soil of 
 Bushwick and Brooklyn, for even at this period they exhib- 
 ited the strongest desire to escape from military control, and 
 settle upon it. That they had then discovered its capacity 
 for the manufacture and storage of lager beer is susceptible 
 of some proof. Certainly all the frightful toi'tures which 
 awaited the captured deserter did not deter them from at- 
 tempting escape from British protection. Many of them 
 settled in Brooklyn, and by their thrift and industry acquir- 
 ed not a little property. One of the subjects of the Elector 
 of Hesse Cassel, named Louis Warner, in some quiet Dutch 
 fashion of his own, crept out of the watch and ward of his 
 majesty, George the Third's soldiers, who zealously endeav- 
 ored to return the dear subjects of the Elector to his p.ater- 
 nal care. Louis pursued the occupation of milkman for a 
 long time on the Luqueer farm, in Bushwick, now nearly 
 covered by the building of Peter Cooper's glue factory, 
 where he had bivouacked with his Hessian comrades for 
 many months during the revolution. 
 
 Chris. Zimmerman was another of the Hessian auxiliaries 
 who preferred to remain upon the land which the cupidity 
 of liis prince and the perversity of fortune had cast him. For 
 many years after he quit the hard trade of a soldier, by con- 
 veying himself away from the guardianship of British troops, 
 he pursued the peaceful occupation of miller at the old mill 
 on the Maspeth turnpike in Bushwick, in later years known 
 as Master's mill. Chris, was a surly German, of bibulous 
 habits, whom the boys of Bushwick, now grown to Bank 
 Presidents and sober Judges, then playing about the flume 
 and wheel of his mill, still remember for the maledictions 
 
The Hessians in Brooklyn. 21 
 
 he vented, when he chased them in great dudgeon from 
 their sporting grounds. 
 
 The intervals of sobriety in Chris.'s life became shorter 
 and less frequent, until he left the mill, and rented the old 
 Bushwick Town House, situated opposite the Bushwick 
 church, on Woodpoint road. Here the town business was, 
 for many years after the revolution, transacted. The mili- 
 tia musters, the justices' courts, and all gatherings of the 
 freeholders of the town were held at this building, which 
 the thrift of the Dutch town proprietors induced them to 
 let annually for an inn. Under the shadow of the liberty 
 pole which was erected near, just after the evacuation of 
 the Island by the British, Chris. Zimmerman kept his tav- 
 ern, until the freeholders unanimously quit-claimed their 
 title in the land and building to the trustees of the Bush- 
 wick church, when he disappeared from the observation of 
 his former guests, crawling, it was thought, into some wretch- 
 ed hole, like a toothless and dissipated old rat, to die. 
 
 A character well-known in Brooklyn for many years after 
 the revolution, was Sam Higbee, who supplied his custom- 
 ers with the spoils of New York Bay. Higbee had fought 
 on the Flatbush hills on the bloody twenty-seventh of Au- 
 gust, under Gen. Sullivan. When the frightful rout began, 
 (and the survivors of four thousand Americans, after having 
 been driven by De Heister's soldiers upon Clinton's grena- 
 diers, only to be thrown back again upon the Hessian bayo- 
 nets, at last broke through the enclosing ranks,) Higbee 
 succeeded in reaching Freeke's mill-pond, and plunging in, 
 was lucky enough to make his way safely across. 
 
 One of his strongest animosities was against a bandy-leg- 
 ged rope maker, named Engles, Avho was also a soldier in the 
 same battle, but unfortunately for his peace, not on the same 
 side with Higbee. Engles was a Hessian artilleryman, and 
 although fighting stoutly against the Americans while in 
 the British service, proved a good citizen of the republic, as 
 soon as he could find a fair occasion to change sides. 
 
22 The Suydam House, 
 
 'I'he boys, who highly enjoyed the altei-cations of Higbee 
 and Engles, were fond of saying that Engles' legs had re- 
 ceived their peculiar curve by his service in riding the stout 
 Dutch artillery horses. Although a son of Higbee had mar- 
 ried a daughter of Engles, the old fisherman could never for- 
 give his ancient enemy for participating in the carnage of tlie 
 rout from which he had so barely escaped. Whenever Higbee 
 met his quondam Hessian relative, his patience could not 
 endure the memory of that disastrous day, when De Heister 
 and Clinton were playing shuttlecock Avith the American 
 army, and the credulous Germans, infuriated by the wily 
 falsehoods of the British regarding the barbarity of the 
 Americans, were butchering them without mercy. All 
 these recollections were too much for the crisp temper of 
 Sam Higbee, whenever he caught sight of Engles, and his 
 fish-cry was instantly arrested, to pour a torrent of impre- 
 cations upon the Hessian, who, in company with his 
 
 countrymen, had rattled their musket-balls about his ears 
 wliile he was plunging through the muddy waters of 
 Gowanus Creek. 
 
 Engles was not the only Hessian who attained a good 
 estate and fair credit with liis old enemies. A handsome 
 farm on Fulton street near Clinton, extending to Love Lane, 
 
 was owned by Swartcoup, who made an involuntary 
 
 emigration to America in the Hessian ranks, and fought in 
 De Heister's columns, on the hills overlooking Yalley- 
 Grove. Swartcoup determined to remain and enjoy the 
 land over which he tramped as a conquering enemy, and 
 was fortunate enough to find an opportunity. In the Hes- 
 sian service he had been an armorer, and from this occupa- 
 tion he naturally enough became the gunsmith of Brooklyn. 
 For a long time after the revolution, the people of the town 
 had enough to do, besides furbishing up their old arms, and 
 it is probable that Swartcoup would have had short com- 
 mons but for other occupation. Yet little by little he 
 scraped together sufficient to buy the farm now so immense* 
 
The Hessians in Brooklyn. 23 
 
 ly valuable. Idle people, who knew notliing of old Swart- 
 coup's secret, said he.had found a pot of gold. And so he 
 had, but it was hid in his own energy and thrift. For many 
 years ho kept his shop on Fulton street, near the junction 
 of Clinton. He was remarkable for his venerable and 
 striking appearance, his long white beard and stately 
 march marking him as one of the notables of the staid little 
 Dutch village of Brooklyn. 
 
 But among the numerous converts to republicanism 
 among the Hessians, there was not one whose fortunes 
 were more varied, or whose fate at tlie time excited more 
 interest than an officer named Conrad. He had, while sta- 
 tioned with his regiment in Brooklyn, become enamored 
 
 with the beautiful daughter of , and, as he was 
 
 a noble, soIdierl3--looking fellow, he was unfortunate cnough- 
 to awaken her admiration, if not affection, and by his inge- 
 nuitj', stimulated by his love, he contrived to elude the 
 watchfulness of the British guardians of the German auxll- 
 liaries, and remained on Long Island. 
 
 The impression he had made on the lady was much more 
 favorable than upon her father, but even Dutch fa'.hevs are 
 sometimes obliged to succumb to the vehemence of the 
 universal passion, and the Hessian officer and his beautiful 
 sweetheai't were married. When the affairs of the respect- 
 ive governmeats engaged in our revolutionary struggle 
 had become well settled, and the accounts of the little po- 
 tentate of Hesse Cassel and his cn5tomer, George the 
 Third, fairly balanced, so that there was no longer any dan- 
 ger in our officer's return to his native country, he deemed 
 it necessary to revisit it for the recovery of some property 
 which he hoped to. secure for himself. 
 
 Old was not slow to grasp all the advantages 
 
 which the absence of the object of his dislike afforded, and 
 skillfully made use cif the apparent silence of the absent hus- 
 band, to instill into his daughter a belief that she had been 
 deserted forever by a faithless foreigner. Whether his letters 
 
24 The Siiydam House, 
 
 were really miscarnecl and lost, or were surreptitiously 
 disposed of by her father, is uncertain ; but the old man 
 adroitly took the occasion of the mood of resentment his 
 oft-repeated story of desertion had aroused, to recommend 
 to her favor an old admirer, who once more presented him- 
 self. This was the miller, John Cornell, a stout, handsome 
 young fellow, whose tide-mill stood near the junction of 
 
 and streets, its wheel turned by the waters 
 
 collected twice each day in the great pond that spread out 
 over a large part of the sixth ward, then and long after 
 known as Cornell's Pond. Poor Conrad had left his hand- 
 some wife with strong confidence, for long before he depart- 
 ed it had become evident that she was carrying within hera 
 little being whose existence to him was a sufficient guarantee 
 of her fidelity. Mrs. Conrad had borne a daughter soon after 
 his absence, who had received and always bore the name of 
 Hannah Conrad. The little girl, who gave evidence of a 
 beauty more than hereditary, did not, however, prove the 
 irrefragible bond her father had anticipated, for moved by 
 her natural resentment of her husband's neglect, the con- 
 stant asservations of his entire desertion- by her father, and 
 the warm attentions of the honest miller, she at last yielded 
 .ind accepted him as her suitor. It seems incredible at this 
 day, that no precautions should have been deemed necessa- 
 ry to establish the fact of the death of her husband, or to 
 procure a legal separation from him. But without taking 
 ranch trouble to make the union Icgaland its oifspring legit- 
 imate, the intrigue of old was successful, and the 
 
 miller was united in marriage to his old sweetheart. Where 
 the devil sets his foot without opposition, he usually con- 
 trives to make the place uncomfortably hot in a short time, 
 and accordingly this wretched comedy had hardly been 
 performed when the outraged husband returned with the 
 most sanguine anticipations of domestic happiness. His suc- 
 cess in his designs abroad already gave him the most radiant 
 hopes of an affectionate and joyous reception, which were 
 
The Hessians in Brooklyn. 25 
 
 crushed in an instant by the infoi-mation of the inSdelity of 
 his loved wife. 
 
 The news of his anival had sped before him, and the 
 greatest precautions were taken to prevent his obtaining an 
 interview with her. Day after day he paced impatiently, 
 and almost crazed in front of her house in street, un- 
 til at last he became convinced that she would no longer see 
 him, and had really become indifferent to one who had so 
 clear a right to her love. At last the torment of his cruel 
 desertion became so intolerable, that one evening he drag- 
 ged himself, worn down with watching, and a broken heart, 
 to the steps of her house, and placing a pistol to his head, 
 discharged it into his brain, and fell dead almost at her feet. 
 If the woman possessed a soul, who would envy her the 
 nights and days of a long, long life that was prolonged be- 
 yond the generation which had known her faithlessness and 
 her sorrow. And yet there was much to qualify our censure 
 of her conduct, and much to ehcit even pity for her unfor- 
 tunate position. She lived to almost a century, retaining 
 until her latest years, a beauty, for which she is remem- 
 bered by all who ever saw her. There was a placid gentle- 
 ness in her face that made one willing to believe her rather 
 the victim, than the perpetrator of a crime. Among her 
 descendants are some of the most reputable and wealthy of 
 the citizens of Brooklyn. 
 
 Not on her own person did the retribution for the wrongs 
 of the unfortunate Hessian fall, but the avenging angel, 
 notwithstanding, dealt his swiftest and fiercest blow upon 
 her. Hannah Conrad, at eighteen years, had acquired all 
 the splendid beauty which her youth and parentage .pro- 
 mised, and the number and quality of her admirers was not 
 lessened by the memory of her early misfortune. The favor- 
 ite, anditwas believed, the accepted lover, was a young law- 
 yer, afterwards promoted in the judicial affairs of King's 
 county to the office of magistrate of its court. One day a 
 concourse of peoj)le had gathered about St. Ann's churchyard 
 in Fulton-street, where St. Ann's buildings now stand, and 
 
26 The Suydam House, 
 
 drawn by curiosity, the young girl approached just as the 
 gravediggers were removing from the earth the corpse of 
 a man who had died of yellow fever. At the very instant 
 of her appearance, the body feculent with its dreadful poi- 
 son, was carried close to the young girl, unconscious of her 
 danger. But a few days elapsed before she sickened with 
 the terrible pestilence, and was carried to the grave. 
 
 Although generally arrant thieves, the Hessians exhibited 
 much greater humanity towards the American prisoners, 
 whom they guarded, than the English soldiers. They fre- 
 quently robbed the w»men who carried food to the prison- 
 ers across the ferry, where they were stationed as a guard, 
 but they seldom offered the prisoners or their friends any 
 personal abuse, and often permitted indulgences which their 
 British comrades brutally refused. Their thievery was inces- 
 sant, and wonderfully comprehensiv-e. The Ilesse Hanans, 
 described as an ill-favored set of little men, who were sta- 
 tioned at Oyster Bq^y in the winter of 1783, performed the 
 almost incredible feat of stealing the Episcopal Church 
 of that place. Tiie first comers ripped out the seats and 
 planks to build barracks, berths and other conveniences, 
 and their later comrades so thoroughly gleaned the other 
 accessible portions for fuel, that the building, for want of suf- 
 ficient material to secure it, fell down in a succeeding storm. 
 It is stated that the wreck was sold at auction, but what 
 such industrious peculators could have left, to furnish a 
 subject of a vendue, is beyond our comprehension. The 
 German auxiliaries of all ranks, were possessed with a spirit 
 of acquisitiveness so unsatiable, as to appear grotesque in 
 its monstrosity. Gen. de Heister was an old officer, and 
 had at the period of his embarkation for America, so little 
 hope of ever returning that he would not accept the com- 
 mand, until his Sovereign Prince had given him his solemn 
 pledge to provide for his widow and orphans, as he deemed 
 the family he left behind. But the sight of the riches of the 
 rebels, which, with continental ideas of warfare, he deemed 
 his just perquisites, so inflamed the old Hessian's cupidity, 
 
The Hessians in Brooklyn. 27 
 
 that he began at once to store up the most heterogeneous 
 mass of plunder, which any warrior ever carried in his 
 train. It excited the astonishment of the English offi- 
 cers, at its curious medley, and evoked the mockery and 
 laughter of the whole army. So great was the amount col- 
 lected by Col. Rhall, that when he was surprised by Wash- 
 ington at Trenton, twenty-one wagon loads of plunder were 
 distributed by him to the persons robbed, as far as they 
 could be ascertained. The Hessians were perpetually 
 watchful of opportunities to desert, and were not unfre- 
 quently subjected to some of the most frightful punishments 
 when detected. For ordinary offences, picketing was the 
 usual sentence, which was executed by suspending the of- 
 fender by one arm to the limb of a tree, while the ball of his 
 foot rested upon a sharp stake, which had been driven into the 
 ground beneath him. No penalty however could be devised, 
 the horrors of which were sufficiently appalling, to prevent 
 their attempts to escape from the hated bondage. To ef- 
 fect this they not only hazarded the awful punishment 
 doomed them by their officers, but often placed themselves 
 in imminent hazard of death from the elements. During 
 the latter part of March, ITSO, three of the Prince of Hesse 
 Cassel's subjects attempted to desert from their camp at 
 Loyd's Neck, by crossing the Sound, but from ignorance of" 
 navigating their craft, or its great insecurity, two of their 
 number were drowned, and the other with much difficulty 
 landed upon the Connecticut shore. The story of one of 
 these deserters exhibits an astonishing instance of human 
 endurance, only less wonderful than his determination of 
 purpose. 
 
 In 1781 a regiment of Germans from Waldeck, who had 
 been captured by the French on one of the West India 
 islands, having been exchanged or paroled were quartered 
 in Flatbush. Many of them were billetted upon the citi- 
 zens, who were compelled to furnish them quarters in their 
 own houses, with conveniences for cooking their food. The 
 officers were alloted rooms by themselves, while the pri- 
 vates were quartered in the kitchen. 
 
28 The Suydam House, 
 
 The conduct of the members of the regiment was so un- 
 exceptionable, and so few depredations were committed by 
 them that the inhabitants remembered them chiefly for the 
 terrible punishment endured by one of the soldiers named 
 Raymond. In common with many of his comrades he had 
 formed the determination of deserting, which he at length 
 accomplished at great hazard, and secreted himself on board 
 of an American merchant ship ; the poor fugitive had the 
 misfortune to be recognized, when the ship was captured 
 by a British Cruiser, and on the arrival of the latter in 
 New York, he was sent back to Flatbush. His Colonel, 
 DeHorn, at once instituted a court martial, which sentenced 
 him to walk the gauntlet ten times, a decision equivalent 
 to a sentence of death. Raymond was stripped to his waist 
 and placed between two platoons of soldiers, the front 
 with fixed bayonets reversed, and the rear carried the same 
 presented towards him; the regiment was then formed in 
 two open ranks facing each other, and while the two pla- 
 toons marched slowly along with the prisoner between 
 them, each soldier was required to inflict upon him a 
 heavy blow with a whip. At each return a sergeant passed 
 in front of the, victim with a bundle of small hickory 
 or other saplings, from vfhich every soldier was required 
 to draw a fresh one, in order to prevent him secretly injur- 
 ing his rod, so as to lessen the severity of the chastisement. 
 Ten times was this terrible punishment repeated, and still 
 to the astonishment of all, the wretched Ravmond survived, 
 His back was dreadfully lacerated; every blow being fol- 
 lowed by a spurt of blood, yet through all the infernal tor- 
 ture his determination never fixltered. Five thousand blows 
 must have fallen uj)on him, and yet his decision was unal- 
 terable to kill his Colonel and desert. His comrades would 
 not however permit him to accomjalish his revenge, but he 
 succeeded at length in deserting, and reached the American 
 lines in safety. At Philadelphia Dr. Strong naively says 
 he was treated with such signal attention on making his 
 story known, as almost to compensate him for his sufierings. 
 
THE REDOUBT AT VALLEY GROVE. 
 
 On the knoll projecting into the valley, so far as to cov- 
 er the road into the village of Flatbush, ■\\'as constructed 
 the battery which Gen. Sullivan, unconcious of the strata- 
 gem which the British were then preparing for h!ni, sup- 
 posed was doing splendid execution in holding De 
 Heyster's columns in check. The position was admirably 
 adapted for the jDurpose, and the Americans who had 
 worked sturdily in the constnipti'^n of the redoubt, from 
 the moment the Hessians appeared at Flatbush, now as 
 busily employed its guns in its defence. Just in front of it 
 the Porte Road forked from the main Brooklyn Road, giv- 
 ing the position additional importance fiom its power of de- 
 fending two routes to the Brooklyn lines. The Porte or 
 Gate road, so called from its being an opening in the line 
 of hills, led to Freek's Mill Pond, part of whose dam is still in 
 existence. Half a mile in front of the redoubt, and within 
 the present village of Flatbush, was the little half moon en- 
 trenchment, on the land of Judge Martense, and from which 
 the Americans had been driven out a day or two before by 
 the Hessians. Across the Flatbush road lay the huge 
 trunk of the Old Dongan Oak, rendered historic as the 
 White Oak referred to by Gov. Dongan, in his charter 
 grant, as one of the land marks in the boundaries of Brook- 
 lyn. It had that morning been felled by an axe in the 
 hands of Simon Voorhis, whose farm house was at the very 
 time being plundered by the invaders who occupied it. 
 The branches of the tree were sharpened by the sturdy far- 
 mer, and made a formidable obstacle to the approach of an 
 assaulting coluniji, 
 
30 ThJs Redoubt 
 
 The farm on which the redoubt was situated was owned 
 for many years after by the Beaseley family. It is on the 
 side hill to the east, that Col. Alden J. Spooner planted the 
 first vineyard attempted in America. The celebrated Isa- 
 bella Grape had but recently been brought to notice by 
 Mrs. Isabella Gibbs, of Brooklyn, and it was this variety 
 that Col. Spooner here planted. Among the first of the 
 many treatises on the culture of fruit was that of Col. Spoon- 
 er, relating to the Grape ; the result of his experience in 
 its cultivation on this spot. It was on the heights over- 
 looking it that Gen. Sullivan commanded in person, and from 
 whence, impatient of the delay of De Heyster's assault, the 
 cause of which he could not divine, he made the ill-judged 
 reconnoisance in which he was taken prisoner. His pres- 
 ence at the center would not probably have changed the 
 result ; but he might have checked the dreadful rout and 
 organized such resistance as would have protected the fu- 
 gitives in their flight. General Greene was not a better 
 soldier than Sullivan, but he was a far better general offi- 
 cer. The former left nothing to chance, and considered 
 fighting only a part of the duties of a commander; while 
 Gen. Sullivan's bravery made him overlook some of the 
 preliminary steps to success. All the routes over the hills 
 would Iiave been examined and guarded by Greene, and 
 the British compelled to perform some hard fighting in 
 passing them. Sullivan ought also to have secured all the 
 tories and royalist sympathizers, who were suffered to have 
 free communication between his lines and the British. Sul- 
 livan's vain confidence in his ability to repulse the attack- 
 ing party was exhibited in his reply to the apprehensive 
 question of one of the American Chaplains, who asked him 
 if he had guarded the Jamaica road, as the British might 
 make & circuitous march and by taking that road outflank 
 him. His reply had not a little of the insolent scorn of 
 military men for clerical interference with their duties, for 
 he replied — " Yes so that an Angel cannot force it." 
 The petulance of the General was probably much in- 
 
At Valley Grove. 31 
 
 creased by the selection of General Putman for the Chief 
 Command on the Island ; his aspirations for the position 
 having been disregarded by Washington. The confident 
 boast was soon forgotten in the stirring events vrhich 
 almost immediately succeeded, terminating in his own 
 capture, for in a letter written by him, October 25th, he 
 makes a statement somewhat contradictory. " General 
 Putman had taken the Command fi-om me four days before 
 the action. I was uneasy about a road through which I 
 had often foretold that the enemy would come, but could 
 not persuade others to be of my opinion. 
 
 " I went to the hill near Flatbush to reconnoitre, and 
 with a picket of four hundred men was surrounded by the 
 enemy, who had advanced by the very road I had foretold, 
 and which I paid horsemen $50 for patroling by night, 
 while I had the command." 
 
 General Sullivan was without doubt, at the time of his 
 surprise, occupying either the hill on which the redoubt 
 stood, or the one opposite, acros.s the Flatbush road. This 
 capture was not effected without a stout resistance, for he 
 continued to fight for three hours after he was surrounded. 
 
 The guns in the redoubt proved a source of much annoy- 
 ance to the British Forces encamped in Flatbush, under the 
 command of Lord Conwallis. 
 
 Dr. Strong, late pastor of the church in that village, 
 gathered many facts relating to its occupation, and narrates 
 that the British soon possessed themselves of the half moon 
 redoubt thrown up by the Americans at the north of the 
 village. The fire from the woods and the Valley Grove 
 redoubt was however so severe that to defend themselves 
 the invaders broke embrasures for their cannon through the 
 stone walls of the house of Adrian Hegeman. This heavy 
 old Dutch structure, built in the ponderous style in 
 fashion among the Dutch Colonists, afforded almost the 
 protection of a fortress. Another similar defence was made 
 of the house of Lefferts Martense, on the opposite side of 
 the road. This house was built of wood, and covered by 
 
32 The Redoubt 
 
 one of those long roofs, sloping almost to the ground, char- 
 acteristic of Dutch architecture, and in this roof apertures 
 ■were cut for musketery. 
 
 The houses which stood between the British lines and 
 the woods, were often used by the American riflemen for 
 covers to approach within range of the enemy, and thus 
 greatly annoy and frighten the simple Germans. To obvi- 
 ate this detachments, were sent out by Cornwallis which 
 set fire to the houses of Jeremiah Vanderbilt, Leffert Lef- 
 ferts and Evert Hegeman. The British were exercised by 
 little scruple in the use or destruction of the houses of the 
 conquered Americans, for they took possession of the hous- 
 es of Cornelius Antonides and Rem. Vanderb!lt, which they 
 occupied as hospitals. The church was used as a prison 
 for the captured Americans ; and tlie principal hospital was 
 in the old school house. 
 
 Many of the ivounded prisoners taken in the battle of the 
 27th of August, died in these hospitals. A lady who had 
 been absent for thirteen days, counted on her return, twen- 
 ty-eight new made graves in the churchyard, which proba- 
 bly contained more than one corpse. The inhabitants of 
 the neighboring village of Flatbush, had fled before the 
 advancing army of the invaders, and the road to Brooklyn 
 which passed the redoubt was so unfrequented from the 
 day of their landing, on the 22d of August, until after the 
 retreat of the American army, that it was nearly grown 
 over with the grass which had sprung up, nouiished by the 
 almost constant rains which prevailed during the interval. 
 The places along the road however, which had been occu- 
 pied by the encampments, presented a scene of waste, des- 
 olation and filth that was sickening. The street was not 
 only strewn with the usual litter of a camp, but with the 
 wrecks of furniture from the houses, the contents of their 
 feather beds, skins of animals, and with the ghastly 
 skeletons, or recognizable heads of the stock which had 
 been slain and used in the most reckless profusion. The 
 houses which had been abandoned by their inhabitants, 
 
At Valley Grove. 33 
 
 presented a sad spectacle on their return, of the destruction 
 and pillage which attends the progress of an invading force. 
 Not only Avere the feather beds cut open and their contents 
 strewn along the highways and fields,- but the wells Avere 
 filled with them so as to render their water unfit for use. So 
 wanton had been the sacking of the dwellings of Flatbush, 
 that the very furniture which the enemy's soldiers had 
 used for their own convenience during their occupation, 
 was broken to pieces on their abandoning their quarters. 
 The best rooms in the houses had been used as stables for 
 the horses, while the drawers in their cupboards and bu- 
 reaus had served as manarers and feedino; troughs. 
 
 During the interval before the battle the enemy exhibit- 
 ed a wholesome dread of the American riflemen in the 
 woods adjacent to the redoubt, and kept at a safe distance 
 from their outskirts, The Hessians complained biterly of 
 their exposure for two or three days, to what they termed 
 savage warfare, and were at their urgent request removde 
 by Lord Cornwallis to safer quarters. 
 
 The guns in the redoubt exhibited in the engraving, 
 were of too small a calibre to produce any great eflfect up- 
 on the advancing lines of the Hessians on the morning of 
 the 2'7th; yet the Americans seem confidently to have re- 
 lied upon their power of repelling the assault. The site of 
 the battery was long in doubt, but the writer of this sketch 
 expended no inconsiderable time and labor in accumulating 
 the testimony which fixed it on this spot beyond doubt. 
 A view of it was taken at the expense of the writer, and 
 furnished by him to adorn the Tth annual Prospect Park 
 Report, in which it appeared without acknowledgment of 
 its source, or of the accompanying description. 
 
FREEK'S AND DENTON'S MILLS. 
 
 The Mill Ponds of Brooklyn, formed such important por- 
 tion of its defences in 1776, and added by the impediments 
 they presented to the retreat of the Americans, so much to 
 the horrors of the rout, that they will continue to he ob- 
 jects of interest while the memory of that event continues. 
 
 Freek's Mill, or the old Gowanus Mill, is said by Mr. 
 Tennis G. Bergen, to have been the oldest of these struct 
 ures in the city ; it stood near the junction of Nevins and 
 Sacket streets, and is shown to have been in existence as 
 early as 1601, by a deed conveying the interest of Isaac 
 DeForest, to Adam Brower ; the property having been 
 held jointly by them prior to that date, as lessees, under the 
 patent of Jan Evertse Bout, dated July 6, 1645. Mr. Ber- 
 gen found evidence of this in the affidavits of Jan Cornelius 
 Buys and Dirick Jansen, of Sept. 12, 1698; who testify 
 that Bout gave the corn and meadows and place whereon 
 the Mill is grounded, to the children of Adam Brower, in 
 1667. 
 
 The heirs of the old colonist, Jan Bout, subsequently ex- 
 ecuted a conveyance of the neck of land on which the Mill 
 was situated to Adam Brower, in conformity with his de- 
 sign. The Pond was formed by constructing a dam across 
 the upper part of Gowanus Kill, and portions of the struc- 
 ture may still be traced between Third and Fourth Avenues. 
 
 A break in the line of defences near this pond, whichnear- 
 ly proved fatal on the day of the battle has been attributed 
 to the haste with which the entrenchments had been con^ 
 structed; but this hypothesis appears scarcely credible, 
 when we consider that Col. Ward's regiment of almost six 
 
FreeTc's and Denton's Mills, 35 
 
 hundred strong, had been engaged in their construction for 
 nearly two months. 
 
 From some unexplainable cause a gap in the line of de- 
 fence had been left open between the head of the dam and 
 the entrenchments until the morning of the battle. Heze- 
 ~ kiah Munsel says in his narrative that on the morning of 
 that day he was stationed near a tide mill, which he erro- 
 neously styles the Yellow Mills, this being the designation 
 given to Denton's Mill, which was situated a few hundred 
 yards farther south. 
 
 During the morning Mr. Munsel was engaged with the 
 regiment to which he belonged in closing the gap, by dig- 
 ging an entrenchment and forming a line of abattis in front. 
 This was constructed from a row of apple trees growing in 
 an adjacent orchard, which were cut down and dragged in- 
 to line. The closing of the gap was concealed from the 
 enemy's view by a group of forest trees, and during the 
 day a movement of of the enemy indicated that he had been 
 apprised of the breach by some of the Tory inhabitants, 
 but was totally unaware of the completion of the lines. 
 
 A heavy force moved up, as if to assault them, but on 
 approaching within less than an hundred yards, halted as 
 if surprised at the discovery of the defence, and after re- 
 receiving a sharp fire wheeled and retired. 
 
 Washington visited the defences at this point during the 
 day, and while giving orders to the Colonel in command, 
 a man who seemed to be a citizen of the Island, was ob- 
 served to have become inextricably fastened in the mud of 
 the pond, while fleeing from the enemy. 
 
 Several of the soldiers were desirous of going to his aid, 
 but "Washington ordered them back, saying that their ef- 
 fort would be unavailing, for they would be unable to ex- 
 tricate themselves and would thus unavoidably be made 
 prisoners by the enemy. The fate of the unfortunate man 
 was lost sight of in the number involved in a similar one.'' 
 
 Many conflicting statements have been published relative 
 
36 Freek's and Denton s Mills. 
 
 to the number of fugitives who were drowned in the creek 
 and mill pond, each of which is probably true of the par- 
 ticular spot referred to. Several persons of credibility nar- 
 rate that they visited the battle field the day after the con- 
 flict, and saw but two or three bodies of soldiers drowned 
 in the creek. 
 
 When it is recollected that skirmishing along the lines 
 of the creek was continued during a poi'tion of three days 
 subsequent to the battle, and that in the intervals soldiers 
 were employed in removing the bodies from the creek and 
 ponds at low water, it is evident that these citizens could 
 really have known but little of the matter. 
 
 Denton's Mill which appears in the engraving on the 
 right, was known as the Yellow Mills. The pond was 
 formed by damming a branch of Gowanus Kill, and proved 
 a formidable obstacle to the flight of the fugitives from the 
 battle field on the 2Vth of August. Col. Smallwood char- 
 ges a fatal act of selfishness, and indeed of rank cowardice, 
 (which is only another name for that vice,) upon a Col. 
 Ward, who commanded one of the New England regiments 
 on this day. As soon as this panic struck officer had 
 secured the retreat of his own troops over the bridge and 
 dam, in order to prevent pursuit by the enemy he set 
 fire to the Yellow Mills and bridge, with an utter disregard 
 for the crowd of fugitives who were to follow. This was 
 the more unnecessary as the i^assage was covered by a bat- 
 tery of cannon, and would. Col. Smallwood asserts, have 
 afforded a secure retreat for his battallion, two hundred and 
 fifty-six of whom fell not far from the site of the mill. 
 
 Denton's Pond was the subject of a curious contract about 
 1709, between its original proprietors Abram and Nicholas 
 Brower, and Nicholas Vechte, who iu 1699 erected the 
 building known as the Cortelyou House. With the strong 
 prediliction of his race for canals and dikes and water com- 
 munication, old Vechte added the traitsof excentricity and 
 independence. His house stood on a bank a few feet above 
 
Freeh'' s and Dentoris Mills. 37 
 
 the Salt Meadow, at the distance of a hundred yards from 
 the navigable waters of the creek. To secure access to 
 them from his kitchen door, Vechte dug a narrow canal to 
 the creek, but the ebb tide often left his boat firmly sunk 
 in the mud, when he wished to reach the city market with 
 the produce of his farm. He therefore contracted with the 
 Browers to supply him with water from their pond, and a 
 channel was in furtherance of his scheme dug to a water 
 gate, through which his canal was to be flooded. The old 
 Dutch farmer was accustomed to seat hinxself in his load- 
 ed boat, while it was resting on the mud of the empty chan- 
 nel, and hoist his paddle as a signal to his negro servant to 
 raise the gate. The water soon floated his boat and bore 
 him out to the creek, exulting with great glee over his 
 neighbors, whose stranded boats must await the next flood. 
 The contract for this privilege as well as another by which 
 Vechte leased the right to plant the ponds with oysters, are 
 in possession of Mr. Arthur Benson. 
 
 Vechte's canal was said to have been a fatal barrier to 
 the flight of the fugitives from the battle field. The hedge 
 had so overgrown it that its width was deceptive, and 
 many of the poor fellows, deluded by its apparent narrow- 
 ness, attempted to leap it, and either fell short or only 
 landed on the treacherous bog to fall back into the channel 
 then filled by the tide. In this manner, it is said numbers, 
 of the Marylaaders, after their splendid and heroic assaults 
 on the British battery stationed at the Cortelyou house 
 had been repulsed, were either drowned or shot while 
 struggling in the slimy water. A great and wealthy city 
 should not permit a century to elapse before a fitting 
 monument should commemorate the generous self-sacrifice 
 of these noble young men. 
 
DENYSE'S FERRY LANDING. 
 
 The bluff on which Fort Hamilton is constructed, was 
 occupied at the period of the Revolution by the houses of 
 Denyse Denyse, Abram Bennet and Simon Cortelyou. The 
 house of the latter, who was a Tory, is the one in the fore- 
 ground of the engraving. The neighborhood was inhabi- 
 ted almost entirely by loyalists, one of whom was the no- 
 torious British Pilot and spy, Frank James, who command- 
 ed a tender to the Asia, and by various devices lured many 
 American coasting vessels under her guns, when they were 
 plundered and their crews made prisoners. Chris. Duy- 
 inck, of New York, lay many nights in the reeds and 
 thickets near, in hope to capture him. The adventures of 
 these two worthies, from a chapter of some interest in the 
 Narrative of Military operations on Long Island in 1776. 
 
 A party of Americans established a battery of two or 
 three twelve pounders on this point, from which they fired 
 into the Asia, as she headed the fleet on Lord Howe's en- 
 trance to the inner bay. The great ship brought her broad- 
 side of forty guns of heavy calibre to bear upon the auda- 
 cious artillery men, and sent a storm of twenty-four and 
 thirty-two pound balls crashing through the grounds around 
 the houses we have named. One of the balls passed through 
 Bennet's kitchen, and another tore away the paling of the 
 garden fence of Denyse Denyse. Near this point the land- 
 ins of sixteen thousand British and Hessians occurred on 
 the morning of the 22d of August. A drawing accompany- 
 ing the detail of services of Sir George Collier, in America, 
 represents a severe resistance from a battery erected here, 
 being made durinp; the landing. 
 
 The scene was one of the most imposing which the new 
 world had yet witnessed. A vast fleet composed of ves- 
 sels manned by six thousand sailors stretched across the 
 
Denyse's Ferry Landing: 39 
 
 wide bay, from the southern point of Staten Island to the 
 shoal water half a mile from the Long Island shore. 
 
 On the beach of Staten Island eleven thousand German 
 soldiers are under arms, who, at the firing of a gun from 
 the flagship, march down the shore for embarkation. 
 Thirteen thousand English soldiers are forming into line 
 for the same purpose. As far as the eye can cover, the 
 land bristles with steel and swarms with armed men* 
 Nearly three hundred boats await the first division, and as 
 rank after rank marches down and occupies the places 
 assigned, they push out upon the bay and form in columns 
 on its waters, as if preparing for assault. 
 
 At the roar of the signal gun a thousand oars, almost 
 simultaneously, strike the waters of the bay and impel the 
 ai'mada to the eastern shore. 
 
 The great war vessels fill their sails and stand up with 
 the favorable breeze to the verge of shoal water, and bting 
 their broadsides to bear upon the Long Island shore. 
 
 In advance of the boats, a fleet of gun boats sail close 
 into the land, firing as they advance upon every clump of 
 trees and thicket which could shield a rebel rifleman. 
 
 More in defiance than with the hope of repelling the 
 advancing thousands, the little battery on the blufi" above 
 the ferry landing, answers the broadsides of the men of 
 war and the batteries of the gunboats. From the point 
 where the brave soldiers of Col. Hand's command then 
 stood, the vast armada must have seemed as irresistible and 
 appalling as a tornado. Yet, only as the boats approach 
 the shore, and the heads of the boat columns spring out 
 and rush up the beach, do these hardy and defiant freemen 
 slowly and sullenly yield the ground. The great guns of 
 the fleet are still sending their heavy missiles through 
 every covert, and only cease when the shore is crowded 
 with the disembarking troops. 
 
 Thus commenced the first resistance to British arms in 
 the middle States, on the spot where Fort Hamilton now 
 stands. 
 
THE SIMON BERGEN OR DeHART 
 HOUSE. 
 
 This house, believed to be the oldest dwelling in Brooklyn, 
 was occupied in 1678 by Simon Aerson DeHart, so that it 
 has been at least two centuries in existence. 
 
 It is noticed in the narrative of Bankers and Sluyter. 
 translated by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, and recently printed by 
 the. Long Island Historical Society. The visit of these two 
 persons, acting as agents of the Labadaist Society in Hol- 
 land, was made in 1678, and the incidents which occurred 
 are narrated by them with great minuteness. They speak 
 in glowing terms of the magnificent hospitality of DeHart, 
 and mention the items composing the supper, as the pro - 
 duct of the adjacent forest and waters. Deer meat and 
 Wild Turkey indicate a hunter's paradise on our Island, 
 and the annoyance they express at the noise of a drunken 
 revel in an Indian camp close at hand, proves that the abor- 
 igines had not abandoned the forests of Breuckland. The 
 scene of the infuriated savages rushing up to Simon's door 
 in pursuit of wives and children who had fled to the house 
 for safety, filled the two missionaries with horror; and they 
 severely rebuked DeHart and his wife for their practice of 
 soiling liquor to the Indians. From the reply of Simon it 
 would appear that the house was occupied as a frontier 
 trading post, much as those of the fur traders of the upper 
 Missotiri at this day. Thus we have on the outskirts of 
 our two cities of one aind a half millions of inhabitants, the 
 relic of a traffic which has pushed the savages three thou- 
 sand miles westward. 
 
BUSHWIOK TOWI^ HOUSE. 
 
 CHURCH AND SCHOOL HOUSE. 
 
 Few citizens of Brooklyn are aware that there is still in 
 existence a Town House in which the weighty functions of 
 civic officers were performed long before her marble struc- 
 ture was conceived in the brains of its architect. That gen- 
 tleman* will haTdly find an example of its architecture in any 
 of the erudite treatises he consults. What is the date of its 
 erection there is now no means of ascertaining, as the 
 Records of Bushwick have been disposed of in a peculiarly 
 Hibernian fashion. The Town of Bushwick (wh'.ch included 
 all that portion of the present City of Brooklyn lying north 
 and east of Broadway, and Division avenue, including the 
 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th wards), having been 
 swallowed up in the great city, a wise functionary of the City 
 Hall, on assuming charge of its Old Dutch Records, con- 
 temptuously thrust them into his waste-paper sacks and sent 
 them to the paper-mill, by which his perquisites were increased 
 at the rate of four cents per pound. 
 
 The Bushwick Town House, however, dates its erection 
 anterior to the Revolution, as accounts are still current 
 among the older inhabitants, of a festival and high rout, held 
 there on the first anniversary of the natal day of the Repub- 
 lic, after the evacuation of the town by the British. 
 
 A tall liberty-pole had been erected in front of the civic 
 edifice and tho Republican ensign hoisted, and a cannon 
 fired. 
 
 The Dutch citizens of Bushwick, few of whom at that date 
 spoke more of the English language than was necessary for 
 the sale of their market produce, gatlcred at Hett Dorp, or 
 
 *Mr. Gamaliel King, whose correct taste and excellent judgment have com- 
 l)ined to give us structures of noble detign without ruinous cost. 
 
 6 
 
42 Bush'wick Town House. 
 
 the Town Plot, with a grim determination to celebrate the 
 day with due semblance of jovialty. 
 
 They had taken comparatively but little part in the con- 
 test which had raged so fiercely in the other Colonies, and 
 indeed generally felt no sympathy with its confusion and blood- 
 shed, to which aversion their native phlegm, and their hatred 
 of wrangling alike contributed. Here were gathered the 
 Van Ransts, the Terhunes, the Van Brunts, the Luquiers, the 
 Conselyeas, the Debevoises, the Wyckoffs, the Vanderveers, 
 and many other Dutch families, which now alas ! have no 
 representatives of their Hollandish nomenclature in our city. 
 This was the center of the Village of Hett Dorp, or the Town 
 Plot. Across the Woodpoint Road, stood the Town Church 
 and the Town School House, as much civic edifices and mu- 
 nicipal property as the Town House itself, for under the 
 Dutch polity the trustees of the church were trustees of the 
 town, school and every other department of local govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Across Kikeout, or Lookout Lane, a portion of which ap- 
 pears in the plate, were a few old Dutch coitagcs, some of 
 which are yet standing. 
 
 Indeed there is no portion of our city which still affords a 
 scene so primitive as the junction of North Second street and 
 Busliwick avenue. The row of houses on the left of the 
 plate of the Bushwick Church indicates the entrance of the 
 Kikeout Lane. It was towards this center of town life that 
 the principal roads of the settlement verged, and in every dii-ec- 
 tion as the citizen receded from it he receded from civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The Octagonal Church, with its spire rising from the cen- 
 ter of a long, sloping roof ; the quaint old Town House, 
 homely and plain, to the last extreme of simplicity ; the group 
 of one-story Dutch cottages, with their long curved roofs slo- 
 ping almost to the ground, formed a scene of primitive Hol- 
 landish life that must have been charming with its exquisite 
 grotesqucness. And such was Hett Dorp until 1835. 
 
Church and School House. 43 
 
 Northwest of the Church was the house of Abram Van 
 Eanst, a Lieutenant of the Kings County Militia in the Revo- 
 hition, but who we learn was not present in the fatal rout of 
 the 27th of August. Bushwick Creek at that time flowed al- 
 most at his door ; and Abram, who had heard of the arrival of 
 Sir Henry Clinton's flanking party of 1,500 men at Simon 
 Duryea's* on the New Bushwick Lane, placed his family in a 
 boat, and silently rowed across to Harlem. Van Eanst's 
 house became the rendezvous of Pherson's corps of Refugees 
 and Tories, as prowling, thievish, riotous a crew of outlaws 
 as ever harried a Whig or ravaged a dairy and fowl yard. 
 Doubtless the old Church felt the evil influence of their sacri- 
 legious revelry. This Refugee corps furnished the guides 
 and spies through all parts of the Colonies for the British 
 Army, and many a plundering enterprise schemed at Hett 
 Dorp was performed under their guidance. 
 
 The school house near the Cliurch was occupied by a dis- 
 trict school under the charge of the present Board of Educa- 
 tion until within a few years. A curious controversy be- 
 tween the latter body and the Trustees of the Dutch Church 
 arose in consequence of this occupation, having at issue the 
 ownership of this building, in which discussion the tenure of 
 the occupation and title of tlie Old Dutch town property was 
 fully discussed. 
 
 A few hundred feet to the right of the Church, on an angle of 
 the Old Woodpoint Road, the ancient grave yard of the Dutch 
 settlement is still to be seen, its weather worn stones inclining 
 at all angles, with inscriptions now barely legible. 
 
 Hidden by the Church is the Conselyea House, a well pre- 
 served specimen of Dutch Architecture, erected as tradition re- 
 lates at or near the date of the first settlement of the Town. 
 In 1848, Andrew Conselyea, its then proprietor, related that 
 his grandfather, who died at the age of 92, was accustomed to 
 say that his father, who died long before the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, could not remember any other altera- 
 
 *0n the grounJs of the author near Wierfield street. 
 
44 Bushwick Town House. 
 
 tion in it, than the construction on a new roof. This would 
 make its erection anterior 'to 1700. The formal establishment 
 of a colony in the Town was made in 1660 by Petrus 
 Stuyvesant in person, who, on February 19th of that year, ac- 
 companied by Nicasius de Lille, Ser Van Rayven, and the 
 Surveyor, Jacques Corlean, with great state and dignity, fix- 
 ed the boundaries of the new town, and directed the site of 
 the settlement of the colonists. This was not the last visit 
 which the valiant Director General made to Hett Dorp, for 
 the next year he made a tour of inspection to the new settle- 
 ment, and, at the request of its citizens, bestowed upon it a 
 name among the places of the earth. The tall woods and ex- 
 tensive forests which then covered the land, suggested to the 
 Viceroy its appropriate name, and he accordingly gave it the 
 title of " Boswyck," or the Town of Woods. 
 
 The circumspection and energy of the Director General 
 reached to various minutias affecting the interests of his sub- 
 jects. 
 
 He directed the route and direction of the roads, the land 
 for meadows, and tillage, as well as the site and character of 
 the improvements in this frontier settlement. 
 
 He called the attention of the various outlying settlements 
 of the town to their danger from the hostility of the Indians, 
 and warned them that the forces of the Viceroyalty at New 
 Amsterdam, across the river, could notbe spared for their 
 defence. Gen. Johnson says that attempts at settlements had 
 been made as early as 1 629. One of these was made by a few 
 Norman families at a place called Hett Strandt — the Strand 
 — near the foot of Grand street, as he informed the writer in 
 1849. The shore from this place to Bushwick or Norman's 
 Kill, was called Water Kant or Water Side. It would be 
 difficult to obtain documentary protf that a settlement was 
 commenced there at such an early date. 
 
 Hett Kins Padt, or the Cross Roads, was another early 
 settlement, at the crossing of the present Bushwick Avenue 
 and the Flushing Road. Two Norman families had early 
 settled near the mouth of Newtown Creek, which was in con- 
 
Church and School Mouse. 45 
 
 sequence called at that time Norman's Kill. But Hctt Dorp 
 ■was the central and principal Village, and hither the Director- 
 General ordered all these outlying settlers to assemble, or 
 continue their dangerous border residence at their own peril. 
 
 In the year 1662 the dwellings, then no more than twenty- 
 five, were, with sixteen acres of land, enclosed with a high 
 pallisade of sharpened logs, for protection from hostile Indians. 
 
 This enclosed the four corners at the crossing of Kikeout 
 and Woodpoiut Roads, and the site of the Church. Although 
 evidence is extant to prove the existence of a Church edifice 
 here as early as 1714, it was not until 1720 that the Octagon 
 Church, exhibited in the plate, was erected. Some incidents 
 of the history of the town, not heretofore published, are 
 extracted from the Manuscripts of Gen. Johnson. 
 
 In every town of the New Netherlands which was settled 
 under the Dutch Government, a School was established, which 
 was taught by a competent teacher, under a license of the 
 Government, which paid him a small salary, in addition to 
 his other emoluments. These teachers were the Sextons of 
 the Town, and the choristers of the Churches. They were 
 also bound to instruct the children in the Catechism of the 
 Reformed Dutch Church, and in the Scriptures, and to open 
 School with prayer. After the conquest by the English in 
 166'I, the teachers received no salary from the Government, 
 which did but little to encourage education. 
 
 All the proceedings of the new rulers were transacted and 
 recorded in the English language, which was not understood 
 by the inhabitants or taught in their schools ; and no English 
 Scliools were established by the authority of the Government 
 to take their place. The liberality of the paternal Dutch 
 Government was thus strongly contrasted with the stinginess 
 of the English authorities, who never dreamed of such extrava- 
 gance as paying salaries to teachers.* Strong and arbitrary 
 
 ♦ It will thug be seen that the Dutch established Free Schools in Brooklyn 
 more than two hundred years ago, and that the English influence destroyed them 
 for one hundred and seventy-four years, 
 
46 Bushwick Town Itouse. 
 
 measures were taken to establish an Englisli Episcopal 
 Ciiurch in Bushwick, for the support of which the inhabi- 
 tants of the town were grievously taxed. But the citizens 
 of Bushwick, although compelled to pay the parson, could not 
 be forced to attend his preaching, and accordingly the Priest, 
 with his " Beloved Roger" were withdrawn. 
 
 This attempt to force an obnoxious religious service upon 
 the town, together with other infractions of the treaty, caused 
 the Dutch inhabitants of Kings County to hold a public meet- 
 ing in the year 1665, whereat the people passed some vigorous 
 resolutions concerning the haughty Englis'i, and their faith- 
 lessness towards tliem in violating the conditions of the 
 treaty, by the infliction of a Church tax, and compelling them 
 to litigate in a language they did not comprehend. When 
 the meeting was held, there were two cases noticed for trial 
 before the County Court, to be held in the Town of Graves- 
 end, for the West Riding of Yorkshire, as the County of 
 Kings was then termed." 
 
 Our sturdy Dutch ancestors had not fought the bloody 
 Duke of Alva ; worried the valiant Prince of Parma ; and 
 defied the patience of the most blood-thirsty fanatic the world 
 has ever seen, — King Philip Second,— to be flouted and harried 
 in the little Colony of Bushwick, by a testy little English 
 Governor. Stout burghers, representing the five Dutch 
 Towns, Boswyck, Breuklyn, Amersfort, Nieu Utrecht and 
 Midwout*, assembled in the first Convention held in that 
 modern headquarters of caucuses, Brooklyn, two hundred 
 years ago. They resolved upon strict non-inlercourse with 
 the English usurpers, and established a tribunal before which 
 all disputes were to be tried by voluntary submission of the 
 parties. Even the litigious Dutch farmers hushed their 
 neighborhood resentments and settled their differences by 
 arbitration, and their unyielding phlegm and obstinacy starved 
 both the Parson and Constable. 
 
 Thus the first Revolutionary measure against British rule 
 
 * Bushwick, Brooklyn, Flatlands, New Utreclit, Flatbush, 
 
Church and School House. 47 
 
 in America was taken in Kings County. The five Dutch 
 Towns have the honor of making the first resistance to 
 English tyranny. The boastful Yankee should moderate his 
 self-glorifying strain at the proofs that his slow, heavy- 
 brained Dutch neighbor, had anticipated him more than a hun- 
 dred years in his two favorite subjects of self-laudation, Free 
 Schools and Revolution. 
 
 In front of the Bushwick Town House one May morning in 
 1684, poor John Van Lejden expiated the offence of an 
 unbridled tongue by being fastened to a stake, with a horse 
 bridle in his mouth, and a bundle of eight rods tied under his 
 arm, while a label attached to his breast declared " John Van 
 Leydcn is a writer of lampoons, false accuser, and defamer of 
 magistrates." To this punishment the culprit had been sen- 
 tenced by the puissant magistracy of Boswyck. Here also a 
 thieving rascal was compelled to stand for three hours under 
 a gallows, with a rope around his neck and an empty scab- 
 bard in his hands. With these grim forebodings of 'the fate 
 which awaited him if he continued in his evil courses, none 
 but the most hardened wretch would have failed to gvoid 
 them in future, with great contrition for his past rascalities. 
 
 Hett Dorp witnessed another strange scene during the last 
 year of Dutch supremacy. A venerable clergyman of Bos- 
 wyck, had, in an incautious moment of generous sympathy, 
 married an amorous couple without the formalities which the 
 Dutch Statutes demanded. The root Bergerrecht,* with the 
 Hoofd Schout, Do Fiscale, and the Geheim Schryver, as- 
 sembled at the Town Plot, probably in the Church, and con- 
 demned the poor Minister to flogging and banishment, but in 
 consideration of his great age, finally mitigated the punish- 
 ment to exile from the Colony of Boswyck. 
 
 Long after the Revolution, the Old Town House continued 
 to be the high Seat of justice, and to resound with the repub- 
 lican roar of vociferous electors on town meeting days. 
 
 * The Great Bargomaaters, the High Sheriff, Attorney General, Recorder of 
 Secrets. 
 
48 Bushwick Town House, Sfc. 
 
 The first Tuesday in April, and the Fourth of July in each 
 succeeding year, found Hett Dorp (now Anglicised to Bush- 
 wick Church) suddenly metamorphosed from a sleepy little 
 Dutch hamlet into a brawling, swaggering country town, 
 with very debauched habits. Our Dutch youth had a most 
 enthusiastic tendency, and ready facility in adopting the con- 
 vivial customs and uproarious festivity of the loud-voiced and 
 arrogant Anglo-American youngsters. One day the close- 
 fisted electors of Bushwick devised a plan for easing the pub- 
 lic burden, by making the Town House pay part of the annual 
 taxes, and accordingly it was rented to a Dutch publican, who 
 afforded shelter to the Justices and Constables, and by his 
 potent liquors contributed to furnish then with employment. 
 
 In this mild partnership, so quietly aiding to fill each 
 other's pockets, our old friend, Chris. Zimmerman, had a share, 
 until he was ousted, because he was a better customer than 
 landlord. The services of the church were conducted in tlie 
 Dutch language until near about the year 1830. The cler- 
 gyman had the care of five churches, each of whicii received 
 his spiritual services in turn. The homely, but pious men 
 wlio performed these duties were sometiinci learned and dig- 
 nified gentlemen, always a little aristoctatic in their ways, 
 for the dominie of a Dutch colony was an important function- 
 ary, whom the Governor-General himself could not snub with 
 impunity. One of their self indulgent cu.-itoms would strike 
 a modern community with horror. 
 
 On arriving at the church, just before the time for the 
 Sunday service, the good dominie was wont to refresh him- 
 self, from the fatigue of his long ride, with a glass of some of 
 the potent liquors of the time at the bar in tlie Town house. 
 
 At last the electors of Bushwick grew tired of keeping a 
 hotel, and unanimously quitclaimed their titlp to the church. 
 Some time after the venerable structure was sold to an infidel 
 Yankee, at whose bar, the good dominie could no longer feel 
 free, to take an inspiriting cup before entering the pulpit, and 
 t;he glory of the Town House of Boswyck departed. 
 
INDIAir, DUTCH AID ENaLISH MMES 
 
 OF 
 
 LOCALITIES IN BROOKLYN AND ITS VICINITY. 
 
 The ever swelling torrent of commerce, is sweeping away 
 by its attrition, all monuments of the storied past around us, 
 and will soon leave us nothing but their names. Indeed we 
 must be diligent, even now, to recover many of their wonder- 
 fully suggestive titles. Localities once rich with historic as- 
 sociations, are not only ro longer recognizable, but even the 
 rich suggestiveness of their names has been forever lost. 
 Every lane, and copse, and headland teemed with historic life ; 
 stories of rare and vivid interest were pictured with photo- 
 graphic instantaneousness to the mind, by the very sound of 
 their names. 
 
 Constantly pursuing that arrant thief, Oblivion, as he 
 steals into infinite darkness with the priceless histories of our 
 land, the antiquary hastens to snatch some of the fleeting 
 memorials from his hands. With a strange sympathy of taste 
 for the nomenclature of the aboriginal proprietors of the soil, 
 our Dutch ancestors, were accustomed to bestow an epithetic 
 name, upon every locality and prominent feature of the coun- 
 try they colonized. Our Anglo-American brethren have de- 
 meaned themselves more like adventurers than settlers, and 
 with a stupid sort of egotism, have conferred their own com- 
 mor -place names upon every natural or artificial object, 
 which was deemed worthy of localizing by a title. 
 
 It is now too late, we fear, for us to do more than per- 
 petuate the Indian names of the streams and headlands of our 
 Island ; their signification has passed forever from us. That 
 they had a characteristic significance, often a poetic one, is to 
 be conceived fi-ora the unvarying tendency of the aboriginal 
 tribes of America to confer upon all localities titles suggestive ' 
 of their peculiar features. 
 
 A few namesof places. in Brooklyn and Kings County have 
 been preserved in old charters and conveyances. 
 
50 Indian, Dutch and English Names 
 
 Kes-lcaclc-que-rem — The title of lands in Bushwick, supposed 
 to be the locality of the Dutch Settlement made in 1684, called 
 Hett Dorp. 
 
 Ben-ne-gaclc-onch — The Wallabout neighborhood conveyed 
 to the ancestors of General Johnson by the Indian Chiefs, 
 Kak-a-pa-ta-no and Pen-a-cha-as. The salt water creek which 
 flowed from Broadway through River street into the Bay was 
 called Ren-ne-gack-onck Kill. 
 
 Mispat — The Indian name of Newtown Creek, and of the 
 lands bordering it. The name is varied to Mespat, Mes- 
 pacht, Mespatchtes. Maspeth village and road derive their 
 title from this word. Mispat Kill was the Indian and Dutch 
 names combined for Maspeth Creek. 
 
 Canarsie, or Canausee — Was the name of the Indian tribe 
 which occupied the northwest portion of the island. 
 
 Nyack — The name of the Indian tribe which possessed the 
 site of Brooklyn. 
 
 Goimnes, or Gouviins, or Cujanes — The Nyack name for 
 the Cove and Creek, and lands upon them which bear the 
 name at this day. Were the name of Dutch origin it would 
 have a recognizable significance. It was adopted by t'le 
 Dutch settlers as the title of the little hamlet on the east side 
 of the creek. 
 
 Sabononk — The name of a district or tract of land in Brook- 
 lyn, the locality of which is unsettled. 
 
 Cufi-ta-teun — The Indian name of a tract of land or village 
 near Flatlauds. 
 
 Nar-ri-ocl- — The aboriginal title of Coney Island. 
 
 Bccht-ga-iva-nes — A point of land projecting into the East 
 River, near Hell Gate. 
 
 Gemeco — The name of a tribe of Indians settled near the 
 eastern border of the County, from whom was derived the 
 name of the village of Jamaica; the Indian name has been 
 tortured by the English into that of a West India Island. 
 
 Ma-recJc-a uncle, or 3Ic-recJi-]ia-mck-!)igh, wa? the aboriginal 
 
Of Localities in Brooklyn and its Vicinity. 51 
 
 title of the peninsula nearly enclosed by Mispat Kill on the 
 east, East River on the west, and Gowanus Kill on the south- 
 east. It was the Indian name of Brooklyn. 
 
 Ich-pa-ton-ga—'The distinctive Indian title of Brooklyn 
 Heights. 
 
 Sea-wan-hacJc-y — The Indian title of Long Island, the sig- 
 nificance of which has been declared to be Island of Shells. 
 Seaivcm, or Seaivant, was the coin manufactured by the 
 Aborigines from the shell of the quahog or clam ; and Long 
 Island was the great mine from which most of the medium of 
 circulation was obtained. 
 
 The significance of the Dutch names of localities in and 
 around our city is more readily recoverable than that of the 
 aboriginal titles. 
 
 '■a 
 
 Nassau — This name, bestowed upon Long Island during 
 Governor Fletcher's administration by the General Assembly 
 of New York in 1693, is generally believed to have been 
 conferred by the Dutch in honor of Prince Maurice, of 
 Nassau. 
 
 Breulc-hn, or Breulc-land — The significance of this name has 
 been the subject of much speculation. It was long believed 
 by historians and antiquaries to signify broken-land. The 
 peninsula upon which the more thickly-populated portion of 
 the city now stands was originally much broken by abrupt 
 eminences and deep hollows. It was intersected by creeks and 
 almost surrounded by wide marsh-lands. The Hon. Henry C. 
 Murphy has, however, made out a good case for judgment 
 being rendered in favor of another signification. During a 
 visit to Breuk-elen in Holland he became convinced that our 
 city derived its name from the attachment of its first settlers 
 to their old home in the Low Countries. 
 
 Breukelen — Is pronounced Breukeler, which is the Dutch 
 word for marshland, which is quite as significant of the 
 character of the soil in the neighborhood of the Village of 
 Brooklyn Church as brokenland. 
 
52 Indian, Dutch and English Names 
 
 The villages or hamlets in Brooklyn were more numerous 
 than is usually apprehended. There are scoffers who would 
 have us believe that the signification was intended to be pro- 
 phetic, and an indication of the keen sagacity of the far- 
 sighted Dutch nomenclators, who foresaw the pecuniary con- 
 dition of many of the intrusive Yankee speculators, who 
 would buy their farms anticipatory of their being required 
 for city lots. These reckless scandal-mongers imagine that 
 the humorous Dutchmen, by a sort of paraphrasis, applied 
 the condition of the sanguine forestallers of value, to the 
 land in which they would so rashly invest their hoardings, 
 and that Brokenland is the title which the site would acquire 
 from the bankruptcy of the proprietors. 
 
 Goivanus, or Cujanes — Already named, was the first set- 
 tlement in Brooklyn, made in 1636. Edifices erected there 
 as early as 1643 are still standing. 
 
 JJ'uU-boghf, or Wallebout — Has long been considered to 
 mean The Bay of the Waals, or Walloon Bay, from the num- 
 ber of Walloons who settled there soon after 1637, in 
 which year the ancestor of General Johnson purchased his 
 farm at that place. This name is conjectured, however, by 
 Mr. Alofssen to have been derived from the Dutch words 
 Een Waal and Een Bogt, signifying The Bend of the Inner 
 Harbor. * 
 
 Hett Dorjj— The Town Plot was the Dutch name of the 
 little hamlet settled in 1664 at the junction of North Second 
 street and Bushwick avenue, where the Town House, Church 
 and School House of Bushwick were situated. 
 
 Boswyck — The land of woods, was the name conferred 
 by Peter Stuyvesant upon the town which he organized in 
 1664, afterwards known as Bushwick. 
 
 Hett Strandt — Was the name of a settlement made in 1643 
 near the foot of Grand street, along the strand or wide beach 
 bordering the East River. 
 
 * See Stiles' History of Brooklj'D. 
 
Of Localities in Brooklyn and its Vicinity. 53 
 
 Hett Kins Padt — The Cross Roads, a hamlet in Bushwick 
 at the junction of New Bushwick Lane and the i-oad from 
 Kreupple Bush to Maspeth. 
 
 Water Kant, IVafet: Side — A settlement of Normans, said 
 by General Johnson to have been made as early as 1C29 
 on the shore near North Fourteenth street, where Norman's 
 Kill emptied into the Bast River. 
 
 Kreupple Bush, or Sioampy Bush — The name of a settle- 
 ment, or of the farms on the road from Bedford to the Cross 
 Roads, in the vicinity of Nostrand and Flushing avenues. 
 
 Bedford — This village, or hamlet as it is styled in tlie 
 grant of the lands, was first settled in 1662. It was located 
 at the junction of the Clove Road and the Jamaica Turn- 
 pike. 
 
 Kyckoid, Lookout— Thh suggestive title was given by the 
 Dutch settlers of Bushwick to a point of rocks which jutted 
 into the East River at the foot of South Eighth street. Tra- 
 dition narrates that here the settlers established a watch to 
 guard against a surprise from the Indians of the mainland, 
 who sometimes made incursions upon the island by means of 
 their canoes. Kyckout Lane was the route from this point 
 to Bushwick Church, and crossed Grand street, near Tenth, 
 and may still be traced in several places by the position of 
 the old houses which once fronted upon it. 
 
 lioode-Hoelc or Bed-Hook — The name of a settlement on the 
 peninsula in Brooklyn opposite to Governor's Island. It was 
 so called from the color of its soil. 
 
 Glieel-Hoek — Yellow Hook was the point of land on the 
 southerly side of Gowanus Bay, which also derived its cogno- 
 men from the color of the earth of which it was formed. 
 
 Oreenpoint — Was the land cleared of wood by the Indians 
 for their corn-fields, and verdant with the green herbage 
 which overspread them, jutting into the East River at the 
 junction with Mispat Kill. Two Norman families settled 
 here as early as 1660, and it was soon after this period that 
 
54 Indian, Dutch and English Names 
 
 it acquired its name. Many years before this it had been 
 occupied by an Indian Village, as their burial places dis- 
 closed by the grading of streets fully attest. 
 
 Norman's Kill — This name was given to a little Colony of 
 Normans, who settled here very early in the occupation of 
 the Island, by the whites, and gave the title to the Kill, more 
 lately known as Bushwick Creek. The settlement was also 
 known as Water Kant. 
 
 MorriVs — Formerly Titus Point, was a projection of the 
 shore line into the East River, near the foot of North Second 
 street. 
 
 Midioout, or 3Iiddle Woods — Was the Hollandish name of 
 Flatbush, or, as it was subsequently termed, Flackbush. 
 
 Ostwout, or East Woods — Was the earliest name by which 
 Flatlands was known. The sponsors of East New York, a 
 Village within its limits, have unwittingly preserved a por- 
 tion of its title. 
 
 Amersfort — (Nieu)^Was the Dutch name by which Flat- 
 lands was also known. 
 
 West Riding of Yorkshire — Was the English provincial 
 term for the judicial district which Kings County formed. 
 
 Martyr's Hook — The southerly headland of Wallaboght 
 (Bay), so called from the remains of the prison-ship martyrs 
 buried there. The transition was made with easy facility 
 from Martyn's Hoek, so named from Jans Martyn, the first 
 Dutch proprietor. The little cape lias since been called 
 Jackson's Point and Eemsen's Point. 
 
 Sioede's Vly ? (The low ground near Norman's Kill which 
 was sometimes called Swede's Kill ?) 
 
 Memvee, or Gull Point, the small headland projecting into 
 New York Bay on the south side of Gowanus Bay. Named 
 from the Dutch word Meuwee or Gull. 
 
 Stvaaten Vly — Themarshy grounds at the junction of North 
 Second and Eighth streets. 
 
Of Localities in Brooklyn and its Vicinity. 55 
 
 SchutJier'st Pond — A salt water pond on tile Bushwick 
 meadows, near the head of Mispat Kill, 
 
 Hay Vly — A meadow at the head of Gowanus Creek. 
 
 Warpoes, or Werpos — Land near the head of Gowanus 
 Creek, supposed to be derived from Warbaseor Warpoos, the 
 HoUandish for hare, a species of animals which may have 
 abounded there. 
 
 Eoode Hoogties — Red Heights, Sand Hills on the peninsula 
 of Red Hook. 
 
 Blochjus Berg, or BlucJcies Barracks, a small hill on the 
 shore of New York Bay at the foot of Twenty-fourth street, 
 nearly isolated from the main land by a marsh and salt creek 
 — was the scene of an obstinate conflict between some Ameri- 
 can riflemen and the British during the battle of the 27th of 
 August, 1776. 
 
 Bompjees, or Boompties Hock — The projection forming the 
 westerly headland of Gowanus Bay. 
 
 . Binnen Water — A Pond or Marsh near the corner of Fifth 
 avenue and Thirty-ninth street. 
 
 Aander Vly, or to the Fly, corrupted to Hunter Fly — A 
 meadow in Flatlands, to which the Hunter Fly road led. 
 
 Seller's Neck — Meadows on .Jamaica Bay, owned by citizens 
 of Brooklyn. 
 
 Valley Grove — The valley through which the Flalbush 
 road passed, which was densely wooded to the tops of the 
 hills. 
 
 Clove Road — The road through the clove or cleft in the 
 hills. It was always spoken ofby the British as the Bedford 
 Pass. 
 
 King's Highway — All the old roads were designated in 
 legal documents as the King's Highways, but the name at- 
 tached itself to one of them, as a special cognomen which it 
 has retained until the present day. That portion of the 
 Brooklyn and Jamaica road which curved sinuously through 
 the hills near JIast New York, was only known to the 0I4 
 
56 Indian, Dutch and English Names 
 
 residents as King's Highway. It was termed by General 
 Howe " The Pa,ss through the Hills." 
 
 A. curious legal historic interest attaches to this and the 
 other old Dutch roads. By the tenure of the HoUandish laws, 
 the title of all the public highways was vested in the State ; 
 and thus the British Crown became the lawful proprietor of 
 the fee of the Old Dutch Colony roads. As the legal successor 
 of this right the Common Council of the City of Brooklyn has 
 come into possession of the title. By English law, the fee re- 
 mains in the adjacent proprietors ; and on disuse, or abandon- 
 ment of the right of public easement, t!ie land in the roads 
 of the English colony may be seized and occupied by them. 
 But the land in the roads opened before 1664 belongs to the 
 City of Brooklyn, and the adjacent owner occupies them on 
 their disuse at his peril. This is a secret known to but few, 
 and some future Common Council may find it a rich placer to 
 work for the benefit of tax-payers. 
 
 Norman's Kill, Bushwick Creek — The salt water inlet now 
 filled up which occupied nearly the present site of North 
 Thirteenth street. 
 
 31ispat Kill or Maspefh — Newtown Creek. 
 
 Gouxnius Kill, Great Kill, or Cnjimes Kill — Gowanus 
 Creek. 
 
 Whale Kill — A small branch of Mispat Kill, in which 
 popular tradition said a whale was once stranded. 
 
 Dutch Kills and EmjUsh Kills — Branches of Newtown 
 Creek on the Queens County side ; also the names of two 
 farming neighborhoods at the head of the tidal flow in the 
 creeks. 
 
 Kuyter's Kill or Koteer's Kill — Sometimes called Kolls 
 Kyers Kill, the creek on wliich A'an Dyke Lucjueer's Mill 
 was erected. 
 
 Gravier's Kilt — Another name for the same creek. So 
 called on account of its being used to grave or repair the 
 hulls of vessels by grounding them at high tide — from the 
 Patch word Graaven. 
 
Of Localities in Brooklyn and its Vicinity. 57 
 
 Bennett's Cove— The location is uncertain ; Gowanus Bay 
 is believed to be intended. 
 
 Schenck's Pone?— Probably the same as Scuther's Pond 
 The reservoir for Schenck's Mills, at the head of the east 
 branch of Mispat Kills, long since filled up by the natural 
 alluvial deposit. 
 
 Luqueer's, late Master's Pond—k tide pond, made by dam- 
 ming the west branch of Mispat Killsatthe junction of Grand 
 street and Metropolitan avenue. 
 
 TVallahout Bridge iloac^— This old highway led to the 
 Brooklyn Church, through the Sand's estate and the Navy 
 Yard to the bridge across Wallabout Creek, near the junc- 
 tion of Kent avenue and River street. It was until a very 
 recent date the only route from the City Hall to the Eastern 
 District. Small portions of it still remain, and have been in- 
 corporated with the Commissioner's plan of the city. 
 
 Water Street — The lane leading from the north end of the 
 Wallabout Bridge Road to the junction of Kyckout. Until 
 1826 no public road from Williamsburgh, except Cripple- 
 Bush Lane, communicated with Brooklyn. The person who 
 wished to drive from Flushing avenue to South Seventh street 
 ferry passed through a lane, across which seventeen gates and 
 bars obstructed his way. Each of these he must open and 
 close, or if he neglected the latter attention, it was at his 
 peril. A stout Dutch farmer, in a high state of irritation, 
 armed with a formidable black-snake whip, was an antagonist 
 that would be neither cajoled or bullied. No alternative 
 would be accepted by the irate proprietor, but to descend 
 from the vehicle, return to the bars, and put them all in 
 place. I have often heard the late Charles Debevoise 
 relate the details of the difficulties and abuse he encountered, 
 as one of the Commissioners to open the first highway across 
 these sixteen farms, from Wallabout Village to Bushwick 
 Creek. The old man spoke sadly and regretfully of the ser- 
 vice, as productive of neighborhood bitterness that almost a 
 third of a century had not allayed, 
 
 8 
 
58 Indian, Dutch and English Names 
 
 Bed Hook Lane — The route from Brooklyn Cliurcli to the 
 Hook. The first three hundred feet still remain. 
 
 Goioanus Road — This liighway began in the Bedford Road, 
 near the junction with the road to Flatbush. 
 
 Po^-te or Gate Road — A highway leading from Center's 
 Mill to Flatbush, so called from its passing through a gate 
 or opening in the hills. 
 
 MUl Lane — A narrow road leading from Luqucer's Mill 
 in Bushwick to Woodpoint Road. 
 
 Woodpoint Road — A lane leading from Boswyck Church 
 to a point of woods on the meadows near Van Cott and 
 Meeker avenues. Yan Cott avenue occupies a portion of its 
 •■oute. 
 
 Bedford Pass — The hollow in the hills through which the 
 Clove Road passes. 
 
 Jamaica Pass. — The sinuous route of the Bedford and 
 Jamaica Roads that wound through the valleys between the 
 hills crossing and recrossing Broadway, near East New 
 York. 
 
 3Lartense Lane — An old road from Flatbush to Gowanus 
 Lane, skirting the south side of the lands now occupied by 
 Greenwood Cemetery. It was along this route that a de- 
 tachment of the British troops, under General Grant, marched 
 on the night of the 26th of August, and tradition gives us 
 the details of a severe skirmish along the walls bounding 
 what is still known as the Stone Lot. 
 
 Rochaway Path, or Rockaway Pass — A bridle road which 
 led from the southerly termination. of New Bushwick Lane 
 across the hills in Evergreen Cemetery to the Jamaica 
 Road. 
 
 Fresh Ponds Road — A narrow lane leading from the 
 southerly end of New Bushwick Lane to the fresh water 
 ponds in Newtown, near the present Middlevillage. 
 
 Jocham's Hook — The point of land jutting into the East 
 River on the south side of Mispat Kill, opposite Hunter's 
 Point. 
 
Of Localities in Brooklyn and its Vicinity. 59 
 
 Smith Island— A salt meadow surrounded by Mispat Kill, 
 and included by patent in the Town of Bushwick. 
 
 Miv Lotts—A term applied in 1667 to the farms in the 
 Ninth "Ward, along Broadway and Bushwick. New Lotta was 
 the nameby which the farms along New Bushwick Lane, in the 
 Eighteenth Ward, were known in the old conveyances. 
 
 _ Fort Stirling— The largest of the Revolutionary fortifica- 
 tions, and mounting eight heavy guns, was erected on Brook- 
 lyn Heights, near the junction of Pierrepont and Henry 
 streets. 
 
 Fort Defiance —W as a redoubt with four eighteen pound 
 guns, mounted en barbette on Red Hook. 
 
 Fort Box — Was a Revolutionary redoubt on the hill com- 
 manding thebridge over Freek's Mill Pond. The site was 
 known as Fort Laurence in the War of 1812, and subse- 
 quently as Fort Boerum, and was so named in honor of Major 
 Box, an officer engaged in its erection. 
 
 Fort Ptttea;?i— This fortification wa3 erected in 1776 upon 
 the site of Washington Park. In 1812 another Fort was 
 erected there, and called Fort Greene. 
 
 Fort Greene — Was an earthwork constructed near Bond 
 street and Fulton avenue, to command the Bedford road. 
 
 Ponhiesberg — Or Pumpkin Hill, was the whimsical title 
 conferred by the Dutch upon a remarkable comical mound 
 which rose to the height of sixty or seventy feet, on the 
 ground now bounded by Atlantic, Pacific, Clinton and Court 
 streets. It was named Fort Swift in 1812, from Gen. Swift, 
 who designed and superintended the fortifications around 
 New York and Brooklyn. It was also called Cobble Hill 
 and Corkscrew Fort, from the winding road which led to the 
 earthwork on its summit. 
 
 Arbitration Roch — Is a rough boulder marking an angle in 
 the boundary line between the Towns of Bushwick and New- 
 town. This unchiselled stone is the storied monument of a 
 
60 Indian, Dutch and English Names, Sfc. 
 
 bitter contest between the Dutcli Cr.lonists of Bushwick and 
 the Puritan Settlers of Newtown. Here met the two tides of 
 population, and around this rude monument; itself an 
 emigrant on an iceberg from some inhospitable clime ; broke 
 the opposing waves with an angry vehemence that was like 
 to make it another Hell Gate. 
 
 The stout armed burghers on the borders of Boswyck had an 
 unconquerable aversion to being swallowed up in the vora- 
 cious maw of the aggressive Puritanic township. The Yankee 
 lines were ever elastic, and from the time when Gov. Penn 
 cheated the Delaware Indians of 1,200,000 acres of land by 
 hiring relays of fast walkers to surround in a day's travel ten 
 times the land intended by the simple Indian, to the present, 
 the irresistilde destiny of Yankee progress has made him deem 
 boundary lines as nothing more than convenient limits to 
 other people's aggressions, but never any obstacle to his own. 
 Arbitration Rock was, after half a century of litigation, 
 selected by Commissioners as the monument of compromise. 
 It still exists. But the day when some enterprising Hibernian 
 sets his covetous eyes upon it will prove fatal to this monu- 
 ment of Dutch resistance to Yankee aggression. 
 
 Steenbakkery or Slonebakery — Was the name of a pond on 
 the south side of the Clove Road near the City line.* 
 
 * Some errors of the orlhography and signification of names given in the fore- 
 going pages have been suggested too late for correction in the text. The term 
 Yellow Hook, although applied to the land along the shore from Gowanus Bay to 
 the Narrows, was properly only the title of the point of land on the property of 
 jlie Hon. Henry C. Murphy near Bayridge. Ostwout is thought by Mr. Tennis G. 
 Bergen to have meant the woods east of Flatbush or the present New Lots. The 
 site of East New York was originally in Flatbush instead of Platlands. Eoode 
 Hooghties or Red Heights were situated near the junction of Court street and Tirst 
 Place. Mr. J. Carson Brevoort suggests that the place on the Delaware river 
 called Ca-na-ri-see, was named by the Indians with the same significance as the 
 Long Island Canarsie. Hecknelder says the name signifies " The Landing Place," 
 or literally " The Steering for the Shore." 
 
THE RISmG SUI^ TAYERN 
 
 AND THE 
 
 ROCKAWA.Y PASS. 
 
 At the junction of the Bedford and Jamaica turnpikes, in 
 the modern village of East New York, stands a quaint, ramb- 
 ling farm house, debauched into a tavern, and known as the 
 Half-Way House. The sharp angle formed by the intersection 
 of the narrow Kings highways, is now bisected by a preten- 
 tious avenue with the high-sounding title of Broadway. 
 
 Philologists and antiquarians, with their proneness to litor- 
 alness, have decided that the significance of the name of the 
 famous street in the metropolis, in humble imitation of wliich 
 this ambitious avenue obtained its cognomen, is to be sought 
 in the analysis of the word Broad-way. A venerable annalist, 
 however, suggests that the name was bestowed with pro- 
 phetic anticipation ; that it was to be the visible representa- 
 tive on earth, in its vast throng of the devotees of fashion and 
 variety, of that broadway which leads down to death. There 
 were only nai'row lanes on Long Island in 1776, and the 
 present T3roadway covers the ground occupied by the well 
 and the out-houses represented in the plate. 
 
 On the night of the 26th of August, 1766, this quiet Cross- 
 roads Inn was the scene of one of the most significant meetings 
 ever held on the continent of America. One more ominous of 
 misfortune to the independence of this country had never 
 been held, until the rebellion of the Southern States. 
 
 On that night, five miles away, around the Brooklyn 
 Church at the junction of the modern highways. Bridge 
 street and Fulton avenue, lay the American army within 
 its entrenchments, utterly unconscious of its impending 
 doom. Along the hills from Valley Grove to Martense 
 Lane were camped the outposts, equally insensible. As 
 
62 The Rising Sun Tavern 
 
 soon as the long August twiliglit had deepened into 
 the denser gloom of night, the British army, which for 
 days had lain at the village of Flatbush in front of 
 the American outposts, was silently pushed out on the various 
 roads leading to the eastward ; and at two o'clock on the 
 morning of the 27th, halted on the plain at East New York, 
 so often in late years the scene of more peaceful military array. 
 
 The guides who had hitherto conducted the army of sixteen 
 thousand men, so secretly along the obscure roads and farm 
 lanes, were now at fault, and it became necessary to secure the 
 services of others. The person whom they indicated as the 
 best pilot over the route selected was William Howard, the 
 proprietor of the Rising Sim tavern. 
 
 So silent had been the approach of the British forces that 
 the innkeeper and his family were still insensible of the vicini- 
 ty of the invaders, and soundly sleeping. A guard burst open 
 the door of the barroom, and soon brought the alarmed inn- 
 keeper before the Commander-in-Chief and his Generals. In 
 the small low-ceiled apartment, not much changed to-day, 
 was gathered a company of men whose names were fateful 
 in the destines of America. 
 
 Gen. Sir William Howe stood there shrouded in his mili- 
 tary cloak, haughty Lord Percy, who commanded the jcaval- 
 ry. Marquis Cornwallis, the leader of the British grenadiers, 
 and Sir Henry Clinton, the General in command of the flank- 
 ing forces, were all present and looking with interest upon 
 the development of this interview with a single unarmed man, 
 who might by his perversity or craft utterly defeat the object 
 of this important movement. 
 
 The road from this point to the hamlet of Bedford, wound 
 through a defile in the wooded and swampy hills, with such 
 narrowness and intricacy as to be dignified by the name of a 
 Pass. Snugly lodged in these hills along the pass, it was be- 
 lieved by the British officers was a large force of the Ameri- 
 cans. To outflank this post and reach the plain beyond with- 
 out alarming the pickets was the important object of this 
 council. 
 
And the Rockaway Pass. 63 
 
 It was known that an obscure path led over the hills to the 
 right through the woods, and the prisoner was the only per- 
 son who could point it out. This path led from the junction 
 of the Fresh Ponds road with the New Bushwick Lane, near 
 the north entrance of Evergreen Cemetery through the forest 
 by the present chapel to the Jamaica road. This bridle path 
 figured in General Howe's report ^s the Pass, and is still 
 traceable in the Cemetery grounds. At that day it was 
 known as the Rockaway Path. The succeeding events of the 
 niglit in which the Howards participated were often narrated 
 by Major William Howard, then a lad of fourteen, and the 
 narrative is given as nearly as may be in his own words by 
 ote who intmiately knew him, and often listened |;o their re- 
 cital : 
 
 "It was about two o'clock on the morning of the 27th of 
 August that I was awakened by seeing a soldier at the side 
 of my bed. I got up and dressed, and went down into the 
 bar-room, where I saw my fall er standing in one corner, 
 with three British soldiers before iiim with muskets and 
 bayonets fixed. The army was then lying in the field in 
 front of the house. I remember that the market men had 
 nearly all gone by before the troops made their appearance. 
 
 " General Howe and another officer were standing in the 
 bar room. General Howe wore a camlet cloak over his 
 regimentals. After asking for a glass of liquor from the 
 bar, which was given him, he entered into familiar conversa- 
 tion with my father, and among other tilings said : 'I must 
 have some one of you to show me over the Rockaway Path 
 around the Pass.' 
 
 " My father replied : ' We belong to the other side, Gen- 
 eral, and can't serve you against our duty.' General Howe 
 replied : 'That is all right, stick to your country, or stick 
 to your principles, but, Howard, you are my prisoner, and 
 must guide my men over the hill.' My father made some 
 further objection, but was silenced by the General, who said : 
 ' You have no alternative. If you refuse, I shall have you 
 ^hot through the head.' 
 
64 The Rising Sun Tavern 
 
 "Lord Howe inquired minutely about tlio road through the 
 hills, and the position of the American guard, supposed by 
 him occupying that place. So assured was lie of the presence 
 there of a strong force, it appearing so incredible that so 
 favorable a position for resisting his passage should not be 
 occupied, that he did not take the precaution of sending out 
 his scouts to ascertain the fact. My fatlier, thus compelled 
 to serve the cause of the enemy, was marched out under a 
 guard, who had orders to shoot him if lie attempted to de- 
 sert, and I was taken along with hira. The Rockaway Path 
 was a wood road which led around to tiie east of the Kings 
 Highway, under the brow of the hill (now Evergreen Ceme- 
 tery), at the back of Mr. Furman's garden, to a place on the 
 Bushwick Lane, about a quarter of a mile from the turn in 
 the Kings Highway, where it runs straight to Brooklyn. 
 The place where the British came out into the cleared fields 
 is now near the north gate of the Evergreen Cemetery. 
 
 "The pioneers came just behind us, and sawed down the 
 trees which came in the way of the cannon, as the noise made 
 by felling them with axes, it was expected, would alarm the 
 American guard. This force was supposed to be stationed in 
 the hilb about a quarter of a mile from the tavern near 
 where the Toll House on the Brooklyn and Jamaica turnpike 
 stands. 
 
 "A strong guard had been stationed by the British around 
 our house, and every person compelled to remain in it. All 
 the houses in the neighborhood were similarly guarded, to 
 prevent the escape of any one to give information of their 
 approach. In their march from New Utrecht to the tavern, 
 the guns had been drawn by four horses, but here the leaders 
 were removed from one-half of them and six horses were 
 attached to the others, which then were drawn up the hill at 
 a full gallop. From the top of the hill on the Bushwick Lane 
 they dftscended through a valley on the farm of James 
 Pilling to the land now belonging to John Duryea, near the 
 place where Halsey street, in the Ninth Ward of Brooklyn, 
 ends, and then they wheeled to the west and marched through 
 
And the Rockaway Pass. 65 
 
 the fields to a big tree wliicli then stood at a turn in the 
 Brooklyn and Jamaica Road, two or three hundred yards 
 north of Simonson's new tavern, near the corner of Reid 
 avenue and Macdonough street. 
 
 " Everything in the march was conducted in the most silent 
 manner possible, and the movements were performed with 
 such caution against surprise, as showed that the enemy 
 expected momentarily to be attacked by the Americans. By 
 this manoeuvre they had completely flanked the position in the 
 hills, supposed to be guarded, coming upon the road which 
 passed through them more than a mile below the pass. 
 
 "All this pains was at the time entirely unnecessary, for the 
 pass had been left unguarded. The information which Lord 
 Howe had received by his guides from New Utrecht, regard- 
 ing the position of the pass and the various turns in tlie road, 
 was exceedingly accurate. 
 
 " On their reaching the turn in the Jamaica road, which I 
 have mentioned, my father and myself were released and sent 
 back to the tavern. which we found surrounded by the guard. 
 Many of these soldiers were exceedingly agile, young men 
 who were fond of athletic sports. One of them I have seen 
 repeatedly grasp a pcle in both hands, and after running a 
 few steps, place the end of the pole on the ground and vault 
 upon the roof of the house. 
 
 " The British guards were apparently without the slightest 
 feeling of hatred, or embittered feeling in their position as 
 enemies, and we experienced nothing disagreeable from them 
 during their stay. In fact most of the plundering during the 
 war was perpetrated by the inhabitants upon each other, the 
 Whig robbing the Tory, and the latter retaliating whenever 
 opportunity offered. The British soldiers expressed the most 
 unbounded astonishment on our return to the house at the un- 
 resisted progress of their army. They said that they expect- 
 ed to meet a serious resistance in crossing the bridge over 
 Goose Creek, half a mile south of the Jamaica road, and had 
 made preparations for an assault upon tlie defences supposed 
 to be thrown up there, The woods which their spies and 
 
66 The Rising Sun Tavern 
 
 guides informed themlined tlie route, it was believed, were oc- 
 cupied bj ttie American riflemen, and as these various strong 
 positions were passed without resistance, the British ofiicers 
 were apprehensive that the American forces had been with- 
 drawn only to be concentrated upon some other point where 
 their attack would be made under great advantages, and their 
 loss be very heavy." 
 
 Roclcaway Path was a pass across tlie hill now covered by 
 Evergreen Cemetery, leading from the Jamaica road through 
 a little hollow, about a quarter of a mile from the termina- 
 tion of Broadway, over the liill near where tlic chapel of the 
 Cemetery now stands, to the Bushwick Lane, which it entered 
 near the nortli gate. 
 
 Portions of this forest by-road which figured in such a pre- 
 tentious manner in Lord Howe's report of the battle, as the 
 Pass, are still traceable witiiin the limits of tlie Evergreen 
 Cemetery. 
 
 The Half-way House which was the flanking point of ITowe's 
 movement, and formed so important a position in his plan of 
 attack, still remains at the junction of Broadway and the 
 Jamaica turnpike in East New York. 
 
 This long, narrow Dutch tavern was distinguislied by 
 having the bar-rooms provided for the indulgence of the 
 Dutch bibulants in the luxury of getting drunk without 
 contamination with their slaves. For the serfs sometimes 
 emulated with honest ambition, the power of their masters to 
 swallow their mighty potations. 
 
 The negroes were permitted the privilege of getting sound- 
 ly tipsy at the east end of tlie house, while at another bar di- 
 rectly opposite, was dispensed the elements of intoxication 
 to the whites. Many a roystering country wight, who has 
 boosed away the hours of evening here, while his patient 
 team twitched their halters impatiently in the shed, and as he 
 thought of the lonely di'ive homeward over the bleak plains, 
 felt his blood chill with a dread that even the hot fumes of the 
 potent liquor lie was swallowing could not dissipate, 
 
TIDE MILLS OF BEOOKLTiN. 
 
 Ill the old towns of Bushwick and Brooklyn the tide-mills 
 and tlieir placid ponds formed the most striking and charac- 
 teristic features of the scenery. 
 
 The sluggish streams where the lazy tide crept in its 
 sinuous course among the reeds, were dammed at convenient 
 points, and when the ebb had lowered the surface below ihe 
 flume sufficiently, tlie clatter of the simple machinery an- 
 nounced that the run of ^^ix hours hid commenced. Ten of 
 these tide mills were in use within the present limits of the 
 city up to 1830, and several until within a few years. The 
 last to give way to the new order of things was Luqueer's, or 
 as it was more lately termed Master's Mill. It was built on 
 a brancli of Maspeth Creek, near the junction of Grand 
 street with Metropolitan avenue. A few years since there 
 was no more striking scene near the metropolis than the 
 view at this point. As the road to Jamaica struck the marsh, 
 a rude bridge, with the most fragile railing which ever de- 
 luded a tired passenger to lean agjinst it, crossed a narrow 
 strait in the millpond. 
 
 A few rods to the left .'to id an unpainted hovel dignified 
 with the name of " The Mill," against the side of which, 
 and dwarfing it by comparison, hung suspended the gigantic 
 wheel. Close to the bridge stood another tenement whose 
 meaner appearance made the mill-house respectable. This 
 was the toll-house, one of a class of structures which are 
 only less universally detested than the quarantine and the 
 pest-house. Across the broad level marsh, nearly a mile in 
 width, rose the hills of Kewtown, covered witli their tall 
 forests, amid which, here and there, open spaces of cultivated 
 lands, checkered the green expanse with squares of brown 
 earth or varied colored crops. 
 
 Through the green salt meadow the slumberous tide-water 
 
68 Tide Mills of Brooklyn. 
 
 currents wound their unseen courses, and ia the midst of the 
 verdure rose the broad sails of vessels, which appeared as 
 incongruous with the green meadow as would a western 
 prairie over which tall ships were sailing. A mile or more 
 to the right, on another branch of Maspeth Kill, stood 
 another structure known as Schenck's Mill. Near at hand 
 is still the little burying ground where sleep all of that name 
 who heard the clatter of the mill and the splash of the slug- 
 gishly turning wheel ; but the mill and the dam, and even the 
 creek which led the tidewater hither, have long since dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 LuqiKers Mill was first erected soon after 1(564. In that 
 year a grant of the mill site and privilege was made by 
 Peter Stuyvesant to Abraham Jansen, who was required " to 
 grind the town's grain in consideration of the customary 
 dues." This was the first grant of mill privileges in Brook- 
 lyn, except that made by Adam Brower of the site known as 
 Freeke's Millpond. Luqueer's Bush wick Mill was therefore, 
 although one of the first erected, the last to yield to the 
 eroding hand of improvement. 
 
 Schenck's Mill is known only by tradition, so completely 
 have its ruins been concealed by alluvial deposit swept by the 
 rains from the cultivated fields around its site. 
 
 The dcFcription of the other tide-mills of Brooklyn, which 
 is herewith given to complete the history of that subject, is 
 from the pen of the Hon. Tennis G. Bergen. 
 
 "A few years ago there were eight tide mills within the 
 boundaries of the then town of Brooklyn, used mainly for the 
 grinding of grain, all of which have been swept out of exist- 
 ence by the march of improvement. 
 
 The one known as Freekes' MiU, or the old Gowanus Mill, 
 was probably the oldest. Its mill-pond was formed by dam- 
 ming ofi" the head of Gowanus Kil. In 1661 this mill was 
 held conjointly by Isaac de Forest and Adam Brower, the 
 latter purchasing the interest of the former, as per " O'C.," 
 in the Historical Magazine of August last. These parties 
 
Tide Mills of Brootclyn. 69 
 
 probably held as tenants or lessees, for the land was within 
 the boundaries of the patent of Jan Evertse Bout, of July 6, 
 1645. According to the affidavits of Jan Gornelisse Buys 
 and Dirick Jansen, of September 1 2, 1698, (see Lib. 2 of Con., 
 p. 179, K. C. Reg. Off.,) in 1667 Bout gave " the Corn and 
 Meadows and place wherein the mill is grounded" to the 
 children of Adam Brower. By a recital in a deed, dated 
 April 30, 1707, of Sybrant Brower to Abram and Nicholas 
 Brower (see Lib. 3 of Con., p. 201, K. C. Reg. Off.,) it ap- 
 pears that a conveyance had been executed by the heirs of 
 Jan Evertse Bout and Tunis Nuyse to Adam Brower, their 
 ancestor, for the neck of land on which the mill was located. 
 
 Van Dyck^s Mill, at Redhook, on Wouter Van Twiller's 
 patent, was erected prior to 1689, his mill-dam being referred 
 to in an agreement in said year between Seabring and Cor 
 sen. The mill-pond was formed by damming off the creeks 
 and natural ponds in the adjoining marsh. The second mill 
 of Van Dyck's, on the same pond, was built after 1766, the 
 date of Ratzer's map of New York. 
 
 GorndVs Mill, in South Brooklyn, was built on the patent 
 of Frederick Lubbertse by John Marsh, for Cornelius Sea- 
 bring and Peter Corsen, (Vroom,) in I6S9, on the Graver's 
 Kil, which, being enclosed by a dam, formed Ihe mill-pond. 
 In 1698 Corsen sold his plantation of 100 acres to Seabring, 
 the mill being known for years after as Cornelius Seabring's 
 Mill. 
 
 Denton's Mill, in Gowanus, was built on Jan Evertse Bout's 
 patent by Abram and Nicolas Brower, sons of Adam Brower. 
 in 1 709. The mill-pond was formed by damming off a branch 
 of the Gowanus Kil. 
 
 Remsen's Mill, at the Wallabout, on lands at present occu- 
 pied by the U. S. Navy Yard, was built on the patent proba- 
 bly of John Haos, by Aert Aerson (Middagh) in 1710, who 
 at that period owned the premises. A natural pond in the 
 marsh, requiring a short dam, afforded the necessary facili- 
 ties. February 9, 1713, Aerson conveyed an undivided half 
 
70 Tide Mills of Brooklyn. 
 
 of the premises on wliicli the mill was located to Hanse 
 Jacobse Bergen, and the latter conveyed, January 28, 1721 
 his interest to Cornelius Evertse. 
 
 Luquiere's Mill was built by the Seabrings prior to 1776, 
 and was known on Ratzer's map as Isaac Seabrings'. The 
 mill-pond was formed by inclosing with a lengthy dam a small 
 cove and creek near tlie head of Gowanus Bay. 
 
 Coles' Mill was built by John Rapalje after 1766, the mill- 
 pond being mainly excavated out of the marsh, on tlie side of 
 Gowanus Kil. Both Luquiere's and Cole's mills were erected 
 on Frederick Lubbertse's patent." 
 
 Many historical associations cluster around some of these 
 mill sites, and redeem the rude structures which occupied them 
 from the common-place and vulgar. 
 
 Remsen's mill was situated on the dam which separated the 
 pond from Wallabout IJay, and from his door the kind-hearted 
 proprietor, during the Revolution, Mr. Rem Remsen, could 
 see the poor worn bodies of the victims of British cruelty 
 brought on shore to be buried. As the beach under tlie sandy 
 blufTs became crowded with graves, the burial parties en- 
 croached upon Remsens mill dam and his door yard with the 
 trenches in which they deposited the sad relics. 
 
 " The whole shore," says General Johnson, " was a place of 
 graves, from Rennie's point to Mr. Remsen's door yard, as was 
 also the slope of the hill near the house. The beach, from 
 Mr. Remsen's barn along the mill pond to Rappelyea's barn, 
 and the sandy island between the flood gates and the mill 
 dam, were entirely occupied, while a few were buried on the 
 cast side of the Wallabout. I am confident that more than 
 half the dead which were buried on the outer side of the mill 
 dam, were washed out of the shallow pits by the waves at 
 high tide during the northeasterly winds." 
 
 Mr. Rem Remsen, the proprietor of the mill, who was com- 
 pelled, from his proximity to the prison-ships, to witness many 
 of the horrors of their awful condition, bot!i in life and when 
 
Tide Mills of Brooklyn. 71 
 
 death had relieved them of their sufferings, often covered the 
 corpses which had been left exposed by tlie negligence of the 
 burial party or the washing of the tides. The? e pious labors for 
 the dead were not the only services performed by Mr. Kerasen : 
 he collected provisions and vegetables from the neighboring 
 farmers, and carried them on board the prison-ships, to be 
 distributed among the famished inmates. 
 
 I-Ie incurred the suspicion and dislike of his Tory neigh- 
 bors by tliese liumane acts, but he was not to be dissuaded by 
 such sentiments ; and tlie British officers on board the ships, 
 although they disapproved of the furnishing of these supplies 
 (0 their rebel prisoners, never proliibited it, and the latter, as 
 far as known, always received tlie donations, except when the 
 guard was composed of tiie ever-lmngry Hessians. On such 
 occasions, tlie food intended for the prisoners was appro- 
 priated by the Germans, who were, in many instances, almost 
 equally needy. Mr. Eemsen's patriotism was not exhausted 
 in such humane attentions to the living and dead prisoners of 
 the dreadful prison hulks before his door. 
 
 He aided in the collection of large sums of money to be 
 loaned to the Government in its hour of need. The collec- 
 tors of these funds, who, with every person entertaining them, 
 were doomed to be shot or hung as spies, if discovered, were 
 frequently secreted in Eemsen's mill and house. Often here, 
 in the very centre of the British camp, was lurking the wily 
 spy, who had crept through the thicket covering the Walla- 
 bout Swamp, peering from some crevice in the mill covering, 
 or counting the silver and gold on a woolen blanket to 
 deaden its suggestive clink. Once within Mr. Romsea's 
 doors, the spy or agent was comparatively safe, as his place 
 of concealment was so secure that none ever penetrated it. 
 The British officers were far from suspecting that any person 
 could have the hardihood to penetrate so far within their lines. 
 The old mill and the dwelling house near, effectually concealed 
 the spies, who constantly traversed the swamps and thickets 
 along the shore of the East River. Some times, when a more 
 important personage than a comoion §cout was to be provi4e4 
 
72 Tide Mills of Brooklyn. 
 
 with the means of escape, Mr. Remsen guided him through 
 the lanes and by-paths to Newtown Creek, where a concealed 
 boat enabled him to row his guest far up the East River 
 to the Connecticut shore, from which he returned on the next 
 night. City Park now covers the site of the mill and pond. 
 
 The ponds of Freeke's and Denton's mills were a baleful 
 source of misfortune to the routed American army on the 27th 
 of August, 1776. Not only did the deep waters obstruct the 
 flight of the routed soldiers, but the more treacherous mud 
 proved the grave of many of their number. 
 
 A Connecticut Colonel added to the horrors of the day by 
 burning Freeke's mill and the bridges over the race on his 
 retreat early in the battle, so that the only route for safe 
 passage across the pond and creek was broken. 
 
 The proprietors of the mills seem to have been geneially 
 highly patriotic. Mr. Van Dyck, the proprietor of the mill 
 on Red Hook, was an ardent Whig. He entertained the offi- 
 cers who constructed the redoubt on liis land, with great 
 hospitality, so as to win from one of them the record that he 
 was one of tha few honest patriots of the island. 
 
OF 
 
 HEli^ET Al^D ELIAS BEEYOOET 
 
 DURING THE 
 
 BRITISH OCCUPATION OF NEW YORK. 
 
 The national caution of our Dutch ancestors preserved 
 them in general from complicity with revolutionary meas- 
 ures, and ccnsequent embarrassment during the troubled 
 period of British military rule. 
 
 But there was too much of that Hollandish blood flowing 
 in their veins, which filled the stout hearts of Alva's antago- 
 nists, to be cold under British tyranny. Among those who 
 periled their fortunes and lives on the side of the revolution 
 few did more efficient service in the cause of humanity, as 
 well as liberty, than Elias and Henry Brevoort — the latter 
 grandfather of the present J. Carson Brevoort. At the 
 period of the invasion of Long Island, in August, 1776, 
 Henry was twenty years of age. He was engaged with some 
 part of the American forces in the skirmishes prior to the 
 27th, and escaped from the carnage that ensued, to New York. 
 
 The company to which Mr. Brevoort was attached occu- 
 pied ground on the Gowanus Eoad, afterwards held by the 
 Maryland Regiment in their terrible struggle with Cornwal- 
 lis' grenadiers, and on which so many of the brave young 
 fellows perished, and still lie unnoted by monumental record. 
 On the 26th of August his company was relieved, and sta- 
 tiencd within the line of fortifications, with the other local 
 militia. Prom the top of the entrenchments he watched the 
 progress of the conflict, and saw the fatal onset of the British 
 flanking detachment, and the dreadful rout which ensued. 
 
 Mr. Brevoort always expressed his firm belief, based upon 
 
 his own observation, that but few of the American fugitive 
 
 10 
 
74 Narrow Escape of 
 
 soldiers perished in the creek and millponds, as lie was very 
 familiar with thena, and had often waded across them in his 
 hunting expeditions. 
 
 It should be borne in mind, ho ,vever, that Mr. Brevoort 
 would doubtless, from his familiarity, choose the most favor- 
 able spots for crossing the creek, as well as the period of the 
 lowest tide. Our unfortunate countrymen had to contend with 
 difficulties which they could not control — the time and place 
 of crossing. The bog and creek were unknown obstacles, 
 and of the best points for crossing they were utterly igno- 
 rant ; beside which the tide was full, making a difference of 
 three to five feet more than at ebb. Exhausted with the 
 shock of battle, a hurried flight, and the horrors of the panic 
 of defeat, their broken and crowded ranks pushed forward 
 by a fierce assault, our poor countrymen plunged into the 
 treacherous mud of the salt meadow and the mill-ponds with 
 little strength remaining. It would be scarcely less than 
 miraculous if all escaped. 
 
 On the retreat of the American army from Long Island the 
 provincial militia to which Mr. Brevoort was attached were 
 generally disbanded. 
 
 Soon after arriving at his father's house, it was evident 
 that he must decide upon his course regarding the struggle, 
 as the Americans were already preparing for the retreat to 
 Harlem Heights. His filial duty to an aged and bed-ridden 
 father, and his sense of obligation to the new Republic, 
 almost equally divided his attachment, but the parental one 
 was nearest and most imperative. The strongest partisan 
 can find but little to condemn in the decision. The young 
 soldier doffed his military clothes, and, to escape molestation 
 by the British troops, he sank them in the mire of a neigh- 
 boring swamp. The Brevoort farm consisted of eighty acres, 
 extending from Ninth street and Fifth avenue to the Bowery, 
 and as far north as the present 18th street, lying almost in 
 the center of the island of Manhattan. 
 
 Along the southern border of the Brevoort estate ran the 
 little creek Minet'to," flowing through the site of the present 
 
Henry and Elias Brevoort. 75 
 
 McDougal and Minetto streets to the Hudson. The farm- 
 house occupied by the family in the Revolution was situated 
 on the Bowery road, directly opposite 11th street. Indeed, 
 it is well known that in later years the firm resistance of Mr. 
 Henry Brevoort to the destruction of this house by the open- 
 ing of llth street, from Bowery to Fourth avenue, caused the 
 . present break in the communication between the easterly and 
 westerly sections of the street. 
 
 At that time there resided in the lower part of the city a 
 grand-aunt of the young Brevoorts, who was one of the most 
 remarkable of the heroic women of the era so prolific of 
 noble mothers and female patriots. 
 
 The stories of the daring enterprise of this dauntless lady 
 'in the sacred cause of humanity would fill many pages. 
 Many of them have been already gathered by the author of 
 -" Memorials of the Todd Family." 
 
 " Miss Margaret Todd, afterwards Mrs. Whejten, made it 
 'her daily business to prepare food for the American sol- 
 diers, and sent it regularly to the prisons, as well as much 
 to the hospitals, using all the Indian meal she could ob- 
 tain in this way. She went sometimes with her daugh- 
 ters to see the prisoners, and encourage them by cheer- 
 ful conversation. Occasionally they visited the provost, 
 where the notorious Cunningham was marshal, and who 
 would now and then show his displeasure by kicking over 
 their baskets of provisions, and healing the unfortunate pris- 
 oners with his keys. Sometimes he would receive them with 
 a surly courtesy ; but Mrs. W. and her daughters continually 
 provided, not only provisions, but clothing, for the use of the 
 captives, not heeding the surliness of their jailors, or the risk 
 of indignity to themselves. Cunningham told a gentleman 
 once that " These ladies were the damnedest rebels in New 
 York, but so true to the prisoners that I cannot often refuse 
 to let them come." 
 
 Nor did she hesitate to risk her own safety by receiving 
 persons suspected of serving the American cause. Several 
 of her descendants remember a story of her having assisted 
 
76 Narrow Escape of 
 
 in the escape of a spy. When a party of soldiers came to the 
 house to arrest the suspected person, having notice of their 
 approach, she had merely time to slip a dressing-gown and 
 night-cap upon her guest, place him in a large easy chair, and 
 put a bowl of gruel in his hands. When the guard came she 
 showed them the seeming invalid, and they left him, intend- 
 ing to return and take him as soon as he was sufficiently re- 
 covered to accompany them. The officer was reprimanded 
 and immediately ordered back, but by that time the object of 
 suspicion had disappeared. 
 
 Captain Hunter, who often came with a flag to the city, 
 was in the habit of sending and receiving communications 
 through this family. On one occasion he was ordered to re- 
 main three or four days at her house, but finally permitted to 
 depart. It was not long before she became aware that she 
 was suspected of harboring spies, and feeling some uneasi- 
 ness, she was advised to address a letter to the British Com- 
 mander, soliciting his protection. She went herself to deliver 
 it at his quarters, and was absent until late in the afternoon, 
 which greatly alarmed her daughters, who knew the object 
 of her visit, and supposed that she had been arrested and 
 sent to the Provost. She had only been detained by waiting 
 for the aide-de-camp, who had promised to help her in gain- 
 ing an audience and presenting her letter. The dread of 
 being persecuted as obnoxious was no small part of their 
 trials, for they had seen too many instances of such persecu- 
 tions to be willing to subject themselves to similar troubles 
 if they could be avoided. The time approached which was 
 to end their dangers and sufferings. It was announced that 
 New York was speedily to be evacuated by the British. The 
 rejoicing of patriotic families, who had lived so long in the 
 midst of enemies, was great at the glorious prospect. 
 
 About this time the family were startled by the report of 
 a neighbor, who came running to inform them that Cunning- 
 ham, the Provost Marshal, at the head of a party of soldiers, 
 was marching towards the liouse ; but were soon relieved to 
 find their destination was the bouse of one of their neighbors, 
 
Henry and Elias Brevoort. 7*r 
 
 who had dared to insult his majesty, in the presence of his 
 own troops, by hoisting a flag bearing thirteen stars on the 
 top of her house. The woman, meanwhile, hearing of his ap- 
 proach, locked the doors, and when the soldiers came, berated 
 them so boldly that Cunningham thought it best to retire, 
 and did, yielding to a rebel perhaps for the first time. That 
 little flag was probably the first hoisted in the city ; the name 
 of the woman should have been preserved." 
 
 After the British occupation of New York Mr. Brevoort 
 found many opportunities of aiding his unfortunate country- 
 men, and of conveying information of affairs within the city 
 to the American Commander. 
 
 Being known as an eager sportsman he was not prevented 
 from the pursuit of his amusement, though often absent dur- 
 ing the day and far into the night. His boat was secreted in 
 a little creek called the Minetto, which emptied into the 
 Hudson near the foot of Canal street. 
 
 In the vicinity spread out a marshy tract of ground, cov- 
 ered with alder, swamp-willow, and other trees of similar 
 growth, through the center of which flowed the stream, thus 
 almost perfectly concealing the little craft which plied along 
 its surface. So accustomed had the British ofiBcers (many of . 
 whom were often the recipients of his father's hospitality) be- 
 come to his sporting propensities, that he was seldom 
 molested in their pursuit. His almost daily route was, with 
 fishing-rod and gun, to proceed to the creek where his boat 
 was secreted in the dense swamp thickets, covered with 
 reeds, and rowing quietly down the Minetto to the Hudson, 
 push out upon its broad waters to the Jersey shore. The 
 facilities which his daily habits afforded for communication 
 with the opposite shore, were often availed of by his aunt, 
 Mrs. Whetten, for the escape of those American prisoners 
 whose good fortune threw them in her way. This kind-hearted 
 and courageous woman was not to be deterred from such 
 acts of humanity by the dread of Cunningham's atrocities. 
 
 In a moment of temporary cessation of the scrutiny of the 
 British guards,, it was not unfrequent that an American pi'ia- 
 
;78 Narrow Escape of 
 
 oner was able to secrete himself until nightfall, when, if he 
 could make his way to Mr. Brcvoort's boat, his chances of 
 escape were greatly increased. Sometimes the rigidity of 
 British imprisonment was sufficiently relaxed to permit the 
 prisoners to visit the neighboring farm-houses to beg for 
 food, and on these occasions the noble woman secretly 
 informed them where the boat would be found hidden. Near 
 to its hiding place they were instructed to secrete themselves 
 during the day, and remain until her nephew arrived to row 
 them across the river. 
 
 In these hazardous expeditions Mr. Brcvoort was often en- 
 gaged during the Revolution, returning to his house on sev- 
 eral occasions in barely sufficient time to escape detection by 
 the British guards sent in pursuit of the fugitives ; but always 
 eager to renew the terrible hazard through which many a 
 despairing, starving prisoner obtained tlie precious boon of 
 liberty. The danger of detection was most imminent, and 
 death by the gibbet or starvation in prison was almost cer- 
 tain to follow. This his circumspection and good fortune 
 had hitherto avoided, until the occurrence which we are 
 about to relate. On this occasion nothing but his coolness 
 and adroitness saved our patriot from tlie most dreadful 
 fate. 
 
 Two of the wretched inmates of the pestilential sugar- 
 house, or not less dreaded Provost, had, by appointment, 
 secreted themselves in the swampy thicket near the boat. 
 
 The night proved so dark as to be favorable to the secrecy 
 of their movements, and in an hour or two after they had 
 been rowed across the Hudson and safely landed at Powles' 
 Hook. The escaped prisoners had little now to dread, but 
 their generous preserver had still the most arduous and dan- 
 gerous part of his task to fulfil. He approached the mouth 
 of the creek with his usual caution, and rowed silently up its 
 slimy channel to his usual landing place. Arriving at the 
 bank, his boat was fastened, and long after midnight he crept 
 cautiously through the bye-paths to the house. His first care 
 was carefully to clean the mud of the swamp from his boots 
 
Henry and Elias Brevoort. 79 
 
 and clothes, and dry them at the kitchen fire. After satisfy- 
 ing himself that every evidence of his night's adventure had 
 been removed from his person and clothes he retired, to bed.. 
 
 Whether the repeated escapes of prisoners who disappeared 
 near the sane spot had excited suspicion towards him, or his 
 steps had been traced during the night, is unknown, but the 
 attention of the British authorities was now directed towards 
 him. But a short time had elapsed after his retiring before 
 his ears, quickened in their sense, probably, by apprehension, 
 detected the sullen tramp of an approaching patrol. Tlie 
 full comprehension of the significance of their errand flashed 
 upon him at the first sound of their approach. A moment 
 after, the ominous clang of their musket butts falling on tie 
 floor of the piazza, as they came to a rest, paralyzed him for 
 a moment with alarm. Aware, however, in an instant, that 
 he had but a moment for preparation, he became immediately 
 after cool and collected enough to frame a plan^of defence. 
 Hastily awakening his brother, he arranged in few words a 
 narrative, in which they must agree, the details of which he 
 was reciting when the door of their sleeping room was burst 
 open, a British guard entered and arrested both of them be- 
 fore they had completed their dressing. Without many form- 
 alities they were hurried by the soldiers to the guard-house, 
 and separately confined. The position of the adventurous 
 and humane young patriot was one of the greatest danger, 
 for the least discrepancy in the respective accounts of the 
 two brothers would send one or both of them to the custody 
 of the murderous Cunningham, from whose prison cells they 
 would only be relieved for a brief military trial, quickly fol- 
 lowed by the disgraceful death of a spy. The guard had 
 been withdrawn from the room, and only a sentinel was 
 pacing his watch before the door. 
 
 An hour elapsed, during which his reflections had covered 
 the whole ground of conjecture regarding his fate, when a 
 low whisper from the ceiling attracted his attention. Ap- 
 proaching it as near as possible he found that his brother 
 was imprisoned in the room immediately above him, and 
 
80 Narrow Escape, §-c. 
 
 that communicatioE was possible through a crevice in the 
 floor. The details of a story each was to relate were quickly 
 agreed upon, and communicated to each other in such low 
 tones as to escape the ears of the guard. Their intelligence, 
 quickened by long familiarity with danger, informed them 
 that their chances of escape would be much enhanced by 
 making the incidents few and natural. In the morning they 
 were brought for examination before the commanding officer, 
 and strictly interrogated regarding their knowledge of the 
 escape of the prisoners. Each declared simply that they had 
 been engaged in one of their usual' sporting excursions, and 
 could thus know nothing of the fugitives. 
 
 Their good fortune and intrepidity i'avored them through- 
 out the preliminary examination, and all the subsequent 
 insiduous endeavors to entrap them. No evidence of their 
 communication with the prisoners could be obtained. This 
 part of the affair had been managed by the good aunt, so that 
 in no instance were the young patriots ever seen for a mo- 
 ment in conversation with the fugitive prisoners. She 
 arranged all the plans of escape ; the prisoners themselves 
 performed a part which entirely disconnected them with any 
 resident of the city, and it was only until darkness shut out 
 all observation that the Brevoorts ever communicated with 
 them. The trail was, therefore, so broken as almost to defy 
 discovery. On this occasion their stories were found so con- 
 sistent, and no corroborative testimony being obtainable, the 
 British officers were completely bewildered. The oozy 
 swamp, the sluggish creek, and the dark river on that gloomy 
 night offered no testimony to enlighten them. They were as 
 silent as the thirteen thousand skeletons of their victims, 
 which the sugar-house, the Provost, and the prison-ships had 
 poisoned to their death in those pestilential hells. 
 
 A few days of not very rigorous imprisonment, and a few 
 sharp, but inconclusive inquisitions, were terminated by the 
 release of our adventurous patriots. 
 
3Sr A. I?. E; j^ T I "V E 
 
 OF THE SEB7ICES OF THE 
 
 MARYLAND BATTALION 
 
 IN BEOOKLTN, 
 
 ON THE 37th OF AUGUST, 1776. 
 
 It is known to many of the citizens of Brooklyn that the 
 remains of a great number of American soldiers who fell in 
 battle on the 27th of August, 1776, are buried beneath her 
 soil, without any token to mark our gratitude for their ser- 
 vices. 
 
 Among those who have a peculiar claim to be remembered 
 with the highest tokens of honor are the soldiers of the Mary- 
 land Battalion, two hundred and fifty-six of whom fell upon 
 the ground near Prospect Park. The zeal with which Mary- 
 land gave her substance and her children to defend our soil, 
 and the heroic coiirage and self-devotion of her sons on the 
 day of battle, deserve some token of our gratitude. 
 
 Immediately upon receiving information of the danger 
 which threatened New York and Brooklyn, the citizens of 
 Maryland flew to arms with the greatest enthusiasm. Nearly 
 every able-bodied man in the State was enrolled, and in two 
 weeks eight regiments and battalions had pushed forward to 
 our defence. On the 16th of August the Maryland Council 
 of Safety announced to our delegates in Congress, " We shall 
 have with you in a few days four thousand men, which is all 
 that we can arm and equip, and the people of New York,/or 
 whom we have great affection, can have no more than our 
 ull." 
 
82 Narrative of the Services of the 
 
 A portion of these troops were known as Smallwood's 
 Battalion, and consisted of six hundred and eighty young men 
 and lads of the best families of the State. The Battalion was 
 one of the few uniformed and well-disciplined organizations 
 in the American army, and was at once relied upon by Gen- 
 eral Washington for performing the most hazardous and im- 
 portant duties. 
 
 On the 27th of August the Battalion had become reduced 
 by the severity of its service, and the prevalent diseases of 
 the camp, to four hundred and fifty men, the number with 
 which it went into battle. On that day the Delaware Bat- 
 talion of one hundred and twenty men, commanded by Col- 
 onel Haslet, was united with Smallwood's, making a joint 
 force of five hundred and seventy. During the fight these 
 young soldiers suffered under the great disadvantage of being 
 for the first time in the presence of an enemy, and almost 
 without commanding officers, their Colonel and LieutenanL- 
 Colonel having been detained in New York too late to reach 
 their Battalion before it went into action. Yet, so noble 
 was their ardor, and so perfect their discipline, that when the 
 great rout of the American army began, the Maryland Bat- 
 talion was the only organization which preserved its order, 
 and was in a condition to prove effective in guarding the 
 retreat. Gowanus Creek, the mill-ponds, and the boggy salt 
 meadows which bordered them, were at this time crowded 
 with the broken masses of the American army. General 
 Stirling saw that nothing but a diversion of the enemy could 
 save the entire detachment from destruction, and to effect 
 this purpose he turned to the Maryland Battalion as a forlorn 
 hope. The young men composing it answered his appeal 
 with the noblest self-devotion and enthusiasm. The enterprise 
 was a voluntary exposure to almost certain death. Less 
 than five hundred young men and boys were about to 
 assault a position supported by the wliole British 
 army. Yet even dreadful perils did not appal them. 
 With General Stirling at the head of their column they 
 charged upon the enemy's batteries, whose grape and canister 
 
Maryland Battalion in Brooklyn. 83 
 
 poured upon the fugitives at short range, were covering the 
 marsh and water with dead and wounded at every discharge. 
 
 So fierce and persistent was the onset of the Battalion that 
 the British were driven in confusion from their battery at 
 the stone house on the Gowanus Road. The guns would 
 have been spiked or turned upon the enemy but for the heavy 
 fire of the grenadiers, who had flung themselves into the 
 house, the strong walls of which made it a formidable re- 
 doubt. On the adjacent hills more than eight thousand of 
 the British army were moving into position to oppose this 
 little band of not more than five hundred men. 
 
 After a protracted and bloody struggle around the Cor- 
 telyou house, the Marylanders were driven back by the over- 
 powering numbers of the enemy. Two or three hundred 
 yards to the south the Gowanus Road turned sharply to the 
 west, and, favored by the stone walls and thickets which 
 bordered it, the Battalion formed again, and once more 
 pressed forward into the wide semi-circle of fire which was 
 concentrated upon them. 
 
 Every moment increased the number of their enemies, and 
 every moment lessened their own. The storm of grape and 
 musket shot from the dense lines of the enemy in front, and 
 the rifle balls of the Hessian Yagers on every knoll, again 
 drove them back to their cover. Again forming there for 
 assault, and again driven back, with numbers lessening at 
 every step, these brave Maryland lads at last effected the 
 purpose for which so many of them had freely given their 
 lives. The great mass of their fugitive countrymen had 
 crossed the creek and marsh, and were beyond pursuit by the 
 enemy. For n:ore than an hour the Battalion had sustained 
 the terrible fire concentrating upon them, and five times as- 
 saulted an enemy more than twenty times their strength. 
 Shattered at every charge upon his impregnable lines, their 
 discipline, their ardor, and their heroism restored their regi- 
 mental order at every repulse ; and it was only when their 
 General was a prisoner, and more than half their number, 
 with nearly all their ofi&cers, had fallen, that any portion of 
 
84 Narrative of the Sei vices of the 
 
 the Battalion made an effort for self-preservation. On the 
 ground now bounded by Third and Sixth avenues, and Third 
 and Seventh streets, two hundred and fifty-six of the youth of 
 Maryland and Delaware had fallen.* The fate of many of 
 the wounded was more melancholy than that of their com- 
 rades who had been instantly killed, for the Hessian and 
 Highland troops, exasperated by their resistance, bayonetted 
 to death most of those who fell into their hands. Beneath 
 the streets and vacant lots near the western border of Pros- 
 pect Park lie the remains of these brave sons of Maryland. 
 
 The proprietors of the adjacent farms were compelled to 
 assist in their burial, and tradition has preserved the site of 
 the spot in which many of the dead were interred. The evi- 
 dence of the truth of these statements is indubitable. General 
 Stirling, in his letter of August 29th to General Wash- 
 ington, narrates the principal incidents of the assaults. Col- 
 onel Smallwood, in his official report to the Maryland Coun- 
 cil of Safety, immediately after the battle, enumerates the 
 losses which his Battalion suffered, and the numerous private 
 letters of that period are filled with accounts of the heroism 
 and sad fortunes of its members. 
 
 Two British, and three Hessian officers naiTate the story 
 of the massacre of wounded Americans, with such circum- 
 stantiality and minuteness as to leave no room for doubt. 
 No historian of cotemporaneous events has failed to record 
 the valor, and the fate of these young heroes, and none have 
 ever cast a doubt upon the truth of the details of their 
 achievements. 
 
 • Lord Stirling says, in his letter of Angnst 29, to WasUngton : "In order to render 
 the escape of the main body across the creek more practicable, I fonnd It absolntely 
 necessary to attack a body of troops commanded by Lord Comwollls, posted at the 
 honse near the Upper Hills, which I instantly did, with abont half of^Smallwood's 
 regiment, first ordering all the other troops to make the best of their way across the 
 creek." 
 
 Col. Smallwood has been understood to say, in his letter of October 12, that the Hary- 
 landers lost two handred and fifty-six men ; but in his snbseqnent commnnicationB he 
 makes no mentiori of the number, except to remind the Convention that he had already 
 sent a list of the killed, wounded and missing. 
 
 In a letter written September 1st, 1T76, the writer says ; " The Maryland battalion lost 
 two hundred and fifty nine men. amongst whom twelve were officers : Capts. Veasy and 
 Bowey; Lients. Butler, Sterrit, Dent, Coursey, Morse, Prawl, Ensigns Oorts and 
 Fernandas. Who are killed, and who prisoners, is yet uncertain ." 
 
Maryland Battalion in Brooklyn. 85 
 
 All the letters of the period extol the courage and devotion 
 of the Maryland battalion, and rate its loss at nearly the 
 same number. 
 
 One of these writers, after naming the same missing officers, 
 says: "about one hundred and fifty men of Smallwood's 
 battalion are missing." The officers give Lord Stirling the 
 character of as brave a man as ever lived. Stedman, the 
 British historian, says : " The Maryland Regiment suffered 
 most severely, having lost upwards of two hundred and sixty 
 men ; which was much regretted, as that regiment was com- 
 posed of young men of the best families in the country. 
 
 The memory of noble deeds should not be permitted to 
 perish ; nor should a great city suffer under the stigma of 
 ingratitude. The generous and patriotic Maryland should 
 be made to feel that " her great affection " for us has not 
 been forgotten ; and an enduring monument of the heroism 
 of her martyr sons should be erected to commemorate alike 
 her patriotism and their self-devotion. 
 
 Colonel Smallwood, the commander of this forlorn hops, 
 was unfortunately not present in the battle, but the circum- 
 stances attending his absence do not seem to have affected 
 his reputation unfavorably. He had been directed on the 
 previous day to sit in the court martial which tried an Amer- 
 ican officer for treason, and arrived at the ferry too late on 
 the night of the 26th for crossing to Long Island. The 
 morning had dawned before Colonel Smallwood arrived at the 
 camp within the lines, but his Battalion had marched some 
 hours before, and was already engaged with the enemy miles 
 away at the Red Lion Inn. In all the narratives of the en- 
 gagement scant justice has been done to the Delaware Bat- 
 talion, which formed part of the detachment that marched 
 under Stirling on the morning of the 27th, and is in several 
 of the current accounts of the battle spoken of as having 
 behaved well. Both Colonels Smallwood aud Haslet were 
 unfortunate in being compelled to aid at such an important 
 crisis in the trial of the wretched Colonel Zedwitz. 
 
86 Narrative of the Services of the 
 
 A private enterprise, in which this officer had engaged, 
 rendered it necessary for him to assume the role of sharper,- 
 in order to escape conviction for treason. 
 
 Gen. Washington says in a letter to Gen. Ward.* " In 
 regard to the attack and retreat from Long Island, the public 
 papers will furnish you with accounts nearly true. I shall 
 only add that in the former we lost eight hundred men, more 
 than three-fourths of which were taken prisoners. 
 
 This misfortune happened in a great measure by two de- 
 tachments of our people who were posted in two roads 
 leading through woods to intercept the enemy in their 
 marching, suffering a surprise, and making a precipitate re- 
 treat, which enabled the enemy to lead a great part of their 
 force against the troops commanded by Lord Stirling, which 
 formed a third detachment, and who behaved with great 
 bravery and resolution, charging the enemy and maintaining 
 their posts from about seven or eight o'clock in the morning 
 till two in the afternoon, when they were obliged to attempt 
 a retreat, being surrounded and overpowered by numbers on 
 all sides, and in which many of them were taken. One 
 Battalion, Smallwood's Battalion of Maryland, lost two 
 hundred and fifty-nine men, and the general damage fell upon 
 the Eegiments from Pennsylvania, Deleware and Maryland, 
 and Col. Huntington's of Connecticut." 
 
 The services of the Maryland Battalion were not termina- 
 ted by the dreadful struggle of the 27th. It is exacting much 
 from our belief in human endurance and courage to find it 
 narrated that two days subsequently the survivors, unappal- 
 led by the awful perils of that day, closed their thin ranks 
 around their regimental colors, and again took the post of 
 danger in the final retreat from Brooklyn. Yet such was 
 the fact. 
 
 As soon as Washington had decided upon the plan of that 
 wonderful movement, the remnant of Smallwood's Battalion 
 
 •Extract from a mannBCript letter of Gen. WaBhineton to Oen. Ward, dated "Head- 
 Quarters at Col. Robert Morris' hoDse, 10 miles from New York, September 19th, 17T6." 
 This important letter Is believed to have never before been printed. 
 
Maryland Battalion in Brooklyn. 87 
 
 was selected to form part of the rear guard. The masking 
 of the British guns upon the Heights, near the present cross- 
 ing of Clinton and De Kalb avenues, indicated the point of 
 assault to be that part of the American lines covered by their 
 fire. Those regiments alone were selected for this perilous 
 service whose discipline and courage had been tested, and 
 foremost on the order is the name of Smallwood's Battalion. 
 
 For twelve hours in momentary expectation of the signal 
 for assault, which few expected to survive, the Battalion 
 rested upon its arms. The long night of the 29th was spent 
 in mutual charges to each other of affectionate remembrance 
 to the loved ones at home, in making bequests, and directing 
 such labors as are suggested to the reflections of men during 
 the last moiety of life. 
 
 It was not until the fog lightened with the first streaks of 
 dawn that the ofScers and soldiers of the rear guard were 
 informed officially that their comrades had effected their re- 
 treat across the East Eiver. Although the anticipated de- 
 sign of assaulting the British lines was not to be realized, it 
 was evident that the danger of the position of the rear guard 
 was but little lessened. In the event of an advance of the 
 enemy the few hundred of exhausted men which comprised 
 the detachment would be compelled to endure the onset of 
 the whole British army. In even this desperate condition of 
 fortune the survivors of the Maryland Battalion did not 
 quail. The shock of battle in which so many of their number 
 had fallen, the bivouac on the boggy shores of Wallabout 
 Bay, through two days and nights of constant rain, witliout 
 food or shelter, had not weakened their courage nor lessened 
 their zeal. More than once the tramp of some of the aban- 
 doned horses, or the rush of the herds of cattle gathered 
 within the lines suggested an attack from the enemy, which 
 they were instantly called upon to repulse. 
 
 There is a current tradition among the families whose 
 farms covered the site where the Marylanders were engaged 
 that their dead were buried by the residents on a mound 
 
88 Narrative of the Services, ^c. 
 
 that rose from a salt meadow in the vicinity of Third avenue 
 and Seventh streets. 
 
 After frequent examination of the ground I am of the opin- 
 ion that few of the bodies were interred at that place origi- 
 nally, as it was too distant. It is probable, however, that 
 after the war, when the farms were again cultivated, that the 
 skeletons were collected and buried on the island mound, to 
 secure them from violation by the plough. The Van Brunt 
 and Bennet families retain the tradition with suflScient details 
 to authorize the belief that the burial of most of the brave 
 and generous youth of Maryland who fell in the battle still 
 lie under the soil of the Third avenue. 
 
 Adrian Van Brunt, who lived until within a few years, 
 was often heard to say that the ground was sacred, and that 
 he and his father had protected it from violation because it 
 held the remains of the Maryland Regiment. 
 
TEADITIOlsTS AMB Al^EODOTES. 
 
 SKIRMISH OP THE STONE LOT. 
 
 There is a tradition estaut among some of the Dutch 
 families of Gowanus that Colonel Atlees' skirmish on the 
 night of the 26th of August took place in a piece of broken 
 stony ground now enclosed in Greenwood Cemetery. At its 
 southwest angle Martense lane wound through a deep cut in 
 the hills, bordered by heavy stone walls. On either side the 
 ground was covered with a thicket, interlaced with cat-briers, 
 which rendered a passage through it a labor of extreme diflS- 
 culty. A cleared space in one of the curves of the roadway, 
 is so nearly covered with heavy boulders as to be termed the 
 Stone Lot. A body of riflemen, probably that commanded 
 by Colonel Atlee, is said to have cnsconsed itself here at the 
 time of the passage of the British troops, in almost perfect 
 security from assault. 
 
 Here tradition says the British met with a fierce resistance. 
 Fired upon from the rocks and thickets by an unseen "foe, 
 whose shots seldom failed to lodge in the body of a British 
 soldier, the narrow pass seemed to realize all that had been 
 told of savage warfare in these American wilds. To scale 
 the steep sides of the road, only to find nothing but a dense 
 thicket or an impassable morass, was a labor whose results 
 did not compensate the British soldier for the additional haz- 
 ard and exposure to the deadly rifle shots. Kecent excava- 
 tions of these hills afford evidence of a severe struggle there 
 — in the brass ornaments of the equipment of British sol- 
 diers, buried where they fell. It was this point which was 
 held by Colonel Atlee and his brave Pennsylvanians. The 
 story of that day is told by himself. 
 
90 Traditions and Amcdotes. 
 
 ANECDOTES OF WASHINGTON'S TOUE ON LONG ISLAND. 
 
 A WEALTHY resident of Brooklyn, named Sage, some time 
 after the Revolution, had been largely engaged in furnishing 
 supplieis to the American army, and was well known to 
 Washington. 
 
 In the course of his tour through the Island the General 
 rode up to the door of Mr. Sage's residence, but finding, upon 
 enquiry, that he was absent, remained in the saddle while 
 the messenger was absent in search of him. 
 
 The young daughter of the latter attracted the notice of 
 the General, who persuaded her to be lifted upon his saddle, 
 and holding her in his arms, rode once or twice around the 
 lawn, to her great delight. 
 
 So strong was the impression of his features made upon 
 her mind while, with childish curiosity, she sat gazing up into 
 his face during her ride, that she always preserved a vivid 
 recollection of them. Stuart's portrait, she declared a few 
 years since to Mr. Alden J. Spooner, was an accurate resem- 
 blance of him as he appeared on that morning. 
 
 An aged gentleman of Patchogue, named Hart, who died 
 suddenly in the cars, and was buried as a stranger a few 
 years since, was accustomed to relate an incident of Wash- 
 ington's tour through Long Island. 
 
 On arriving at the village of Patchogue, Washington con- 
 versed affably with such of the residents as approached him 
 while sitting upon his horse. Mr. Hart, then a lad, was 
 engaged with a number of his companions in roasting sweet 
 potatoes at a fire by the roadside. 
 
 Emboldened by the kindly manners and pleasant voice of 
 his Excellency, Hart pushed up to the side of his horse, and 
 respectfully offered him one of the baked sweet potatoes, hot 
 from the ashes. 
 
Traditions and Anecdotes. 91 
 
 It was no unfamiliar diet to the old soldier, elevated as 
 ■was his position, and, with an appearance of the most genu- 
 ine enjoyment, he received and ate the humble gift, while sit- 
 ting in his saddle. After thanking the lad he rewarded" his 
 politeness with the present of an English shilling, which was 
 long preserved as a souvenir of General Washingtou. 
 
 ANECDOTE OF ANDRE'S TISIT TO LONG ISLAND. 
 
 Although the Island was in the possession of the British 
 troops, and occupied by them at many points in strong force, 
 yet it was necessary for their officers, when travelling alone, 
 or lodging at a distance from military posts, to be exceed- 
 ingly circumspect in their conduct, and often to preserve 
 their incognito. The whale-boatmen, and other marauding 
 parties from the mainland, often stole far within the British 
 lines, and carried away not only the property but the per- 
 sons of those who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the 
 Whigs. 
 
 The adventurous Captain Hyler, and the not less daring 
 Marriner, had, by the success of their secret and adroit enter- 
 prises, rendered themselves objects of dread to the British 
 and Tory officers occupying outlying stations. It is therefore 
 not surprising that the latter, when in the course of military 
 operations in which they were unprotected by troops, should 
 be somewhat reticent regarding their rank and the nature of 
 their employment. Sometime in the year 17 — a stranger 
 appeared at the inn of Mr. Conklin, in Babylon, and ex- 
 pressed the design of lodging there for the night. The bear- 
 ing of the person was gentlemanly, and his manner most 
 agreeable and attractive. There was a simple kindness in 
 his language and conduct that won the regards of the whole 
 family, but more especially of the younger members. His 
 interesting stories, narrated with a genuine enjoyment of 
 their childish interest, and his hearty participation in their 
 frolics, made him at once a favorite. The kind regard thus 
 elicited was not unnaturally reciprocated by the stranger, 
 and just before his departure he confided to Mr. Conklin the 
 secret of his name and rank. 
 
92 Traditions and Anecdotes. 
 
 Major Andre, as he announced himself, was then engaged 
 in some military capacity, which his adventures in Charles- 
 ton the year previous, and the unfortunate enterprise at 
 West Point the year after, leads us to suppose was a secret 
 mission of the nature of that in which he lost his life. 
 
 Washington's position during the eeteeat. 
 
 On the occasion of the last visit of Lafayette to America 
 he was the guest of Mr. Edward Pierrepont, at the old 
 Pierrepont mansion house, on Brooklyn Heights. A number 
 of eminent persons were present to pay their respects to the 
 honored General, among whom were Colonel Pish and Judge 
 Daggett, a lawyer of great reputation, resident at New 
 Haven. Both of these gentlemen had occupied positions of 
 the most intimate relations to Washington, having been either 
 his secretaries or aids during some portion of the Eevolu- 
 tion. The incident narrated on this occasion was often re- 
 peated by Judge Daggett, who was a frequent visitor at the 
 Pierrepont house, as well known to himself and Colonel Con- 
 stable,, whose widow was then residing with Mr. Pierrepont. 
 During the conversation which occurred after dinner, while 
 the guests were standing upon the piazza. Colonel Fish re- 
 marked, " By the bye, General, are you aware that this house 
 has a great historical interest. That is the room in which 
 the council was held which decided npon the retreat from 
 Long Island." 
 
 The remark excited many reminiscences of the great epoch, 
 and among others who joined in the interesting narratives 
 which followed. Judge Daggett said that it was strange that 
 the popular impression of Washington's character never 
 allowed him any of the common weaknesses of human pas- 
 sion. That he was present on the little pier on the river, 
 near the foot of Fulton street, where Washington was super- 
 intending the retreat. The confusion and panic into which 
 the army had fallen was frightful. 
 
Traditions and Anecdotes. 93 
 
 From other sources we learn that the soldiers were crowded 
 into an undistinguishable mass of officers and privates, all 
 infected with such ungovernable alarm, that numbers were actu- 
 ally climbing upon the heads and shoulders of the wedged and 
 immovable crowd of fugitives in front of them, from which 
 elevation they improved their opportunity of clambering over 
 them to the front. In spite of the threats and entreaties of 
 their officers, the panic-stricken fugitives had crowded into 
 the boats until they were incapable of being moved. When 
 driven from some of the flotilla at the point of the bayonet, 
 the frightened crowd poured instantly and resistlessly into 
 others, from which neither threats nor blows could at 
 length dislodge them. 
 
 "Washington's anxiety for the safe retreat of his troops, en- 
 dangered so greatly by this panic, was fast exhausting his 
 patience, and his language grew as vehement as his labors 
 had been gigantic. 
 
 At last his wrath at the insubordination and perversity of 
 the men leaped beyond the bounds of his habitual prudence, 
 and, seizing a huge stone, which, probably few other men in 
 the army could even have lifted from the ground, he raised 
 it aloft in both hands, and shouted, "If every man in that 
 boat does not instantly leave it, I will sink it to ." 
 
 Judge Daggett concluded by saying that the action of the 
 General was so impressive and threatening that the boats 
 were instantly vacated, and the embarkation was not after- 
 wards embarrassed by the insubordination of the retreating 
 soldiers. 
 
 The incident was related to me by Mr. Edwards Pierre- 
 pont, who not only heard it on this occasion, but on several 
 others. 
 
 The Pierrepont house might properly be considered the 
 headquarters of the American army during the battle and 
 siege of Brooklyn. A telegraph was established upon the 
 
94 Traditions and Anecdotes. 
 
 roof, to communicate with another at the grand battery in 
 New York. From the tall liberty pole at the latter place 
 information of the movements of troops in the city were con- 
 stantly being sent to headquarters in Brooklyn. Orders 
 from the commanding General at the latter place were also 
 transmitted from the station on the roof. Near Fort Stirling 
 was a tall. tree, from the top of which a view of the battle- 
 ground on the hills east of Gowanus Creek could be obtained. 
 Mr. Debevoise, the proprietor of the farm on which Fort 
 Stirling was constructed, climbed to the top of the tree while 
 the engagement of Stirling's Corps was in progress, and wit- 
 nessed such portions of it as were not hidden by the woods. 
 From this elevated station he communicated his observations 
 of the terrible tragedy to the groups collected at the foot of 
 the tree. 
 
 ESCAPE OF MB. PRIME's FAMILY FROM HUNTINGTON. 
 
 An eminent clergyman of Huntington, the Eev. Ebenezer 
 Prime, became the especial object of hatred to the British, 
 and suffered many annoyances from the malicious ingenuity 
 of the soldiers. A large quantity of silver-plate was 
 known to be in the possession of the family, and excited the 
 keenest apprehensions of the family, not alone for the safety 
 of the property, but from consideration of the reckless 
 character of the marauders, by whom it was believed that the 
 lives of the family would be sacrificed in the attempt to 
 plunder it. Many schemes were contrived for securing the 
 plate from the searching eyes of the anticipated robbers, but 
 as few of the neighboring whigs had been able to secrete 
 their valuables, so adroitly but that the deposit was dis- 
 covered, the plans intended were far from satisfactory. 
 
 In some cases the proprietors of secreted effects were taken 
 from their beds at midnight, and frightfully abused and tor- 
 tured until the secret was wrung from their reluctant lips. 
 Every step was fraught with danger, and every scheme for 
 security of their persons and property could only be accom- 
 plished through great peril. 
 
Traditions and Anecdotes. 95 
 
 At last intimations of their danger in remaining became bo 
 impressive, that the clergyman felt he would not be justified 
 in a longer delay. 
 
 Preparations were accordingly made with the greatest 
 secj^esy for departure, and the plate was hurriedly taken from 
 its place of concealment, and put into a grain sack, wrapped 
 so as to prevent the peculiar metallic ring of the metal, which 
 would have so certainly betrayed their secret. 
 
 It was a hazardous enterprise to pass the guards without 
 encumbrance, but the knowledge of the valuable freight they 
 bore, added greatly to the anxiety of both, Mr. Prime and 
 his wife. 
 
 At last the hour arrived for them to depart, and the minis- 
 ter bade a sorrowful adieu to the scene of his labors, the 
 church so soon to be desecrated by sacrilegious hands, the 
 splendid library wantonly destroyed, and all the tokens of 
 generosity or affection of his people scattered and plundered. 
 The obscurity of the night enabled them to reach their little 
 row boat in the harbor undiscovered, and they pushed out 
 towards the broad waters of the sound with feelings of 
 satisfaction mingling with their regret. Only a short time 
 however had elapsed when omnious sounds directly in their 
 wake, aroused apprehensions of a new danger. Occasional 
 gleams of moonlight displayed to them a boat filled with 
 soldiers, only a few yards distant in eager pursuit. From the 
 known desperation of many of many of the British soldiers 
 who where not only capable, but actually guilty of the most 
 appalling crimes, it was probable that if overtaken not one 
 of them would be left alive to tell the story of their murder. 
 
 As these marauding expeditions were not generally under- 
 taken pursuant to orders from superior officers, the Biitish 
 soldiers engaged in them, often displayed the most shocking 
 cruelty, and murder was a step in crime they seldom hesitated 
 to take when it added to their security from detection. 
 
 From the moment of the discovery of their pursuit, Mr. 
 Prime and his companions knew that their lives depended 
 upon their skill in boat managment, and the strength and 
 
96 Traditions and Anecdotes. 
 
 endurance of the rowers. Every nerve grew tense under the 
 impending peril, and every muscle strained to its utmost in 
 the struggle. The departure of the family had been dis- 
 covered by accident or treachery, and the fact that it was 
 accompanied by the rich prize of massive silver pitchers, great 
 tankards, and other family plate, had doubtless aroused the 
 cupidity of the most reckless and unscrupulous of the wretches 
 which Col. Benjamin Thompson had collected in his regiment 
 of refugees. 
 
 Few situations could be more appalling than to be out on 
 the dark waters of the broad Sound, pursued by a vindictive 
 and piratical crew, whose passions were not only fired by 
 partizan hatred, and personal sufferings, but were further 
 inflamed by a cupidity that stiffled mercy in bosoms, which 
 scarcely knew it slept within them. 
 
 If fear did not lend them wings, it gave vigor to the fugi- 
 tives' arms, and the good minister and his family landed 
 safely at Norwalk, far enough ahead of the marauders to be 
 secure from their attack. 
 
 They had however only escaped one danger, to feel that as 
 long as they were in possession of the fatal silver plate, they 
 would be exposed to others on its account. The ingenuity of 
 Mrs. Prime devised a scheme which she at once put in prac- 
 tice. Soon after landing at Norwalk, they had domiciled in 
 a tavern, and the sense of insecurity while accompanied by a 
 treasure so tempting to every unscrupulous traveler, de- 
 termined them to part with it. 
 
 Accordingly Mrs. Prime seized an opportunity during the 
 evening with the aid of a confidential servant to carry the 
 sack to the well in the inn yard, into which she threw the 
 treasure. It was not until the close of the war, six years 
 after, that the place was again visited, and in the meanwhile 
 Mrs. Prime's silver plate rested securely at the bottom of the 
 tavern-well, from whence it was withdrawn by some of her 
 family uninjured. 
 
i\ ' r 
 
 r 1 
 i 
 
 f 
 
 I' ^0 
 
 ^w^ 
 
 w 
 
 j/ 
 
 ^-/^ 
 

..A?! 
 
 '•■', <-l' 4'-* 
 
 
 
 '...' ''!,■''¥) '.'. 
 
 ".)1' 
 
 ■ -;i>-«'«\. 
 
 ■••» 
 
 .'X, - '" ' ^'o''- ■ ' • ■ J .'! - 
 
 :^Wf ^fntV' '-m. iv-^m V . im , 
 
 *•»■ 
 
 
 '", 
 
 ' ■'■' ■"# ^ 
 
 ^'■jiy.gt' 
 
 .' 
 
 ,1*1 ' 
 
 :-''^-^*"r'c 
 
 
 ,'.!•■. A'^^VftiS-. "viivvvUwl ' 
 
 
 ..:'}- 
 
 
 ;,^ >.\>fvy^' 
 
 
 
 
 *fIii;:'**'^ 
 
 
 :.j.^03,j^?s^-- 
 
 *■» S. '¥(l,«*--'.-.-ij«-".\ 
 
 •,i 
 
 ■ y .'■ 
 
 >;;'\x^>Miv5W%..' 
 
 
 -i#«%M«,. -A,.- ■./<*, 
 
 
 '»:^.''"«.;Ji 
 
 s r1 
 
 
 "s. 
 
F 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 olin 
 
 Date Due 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 •* 
 
 
 fm 
 
 '^Wi^iit.^ 
 
 
 
 ^1 1 M 
 
 
 
 ?fW 
 
 *^^W^*Niiifc^ 
 
 
 
 .-M 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 in 
 
 
 
 
 'B 
 
 J^ 
 
 
 
 
 ■mn^L 
 
 
 
 HlHT^ 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 JHf 
 
 ■*«-«98. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
■:m^:!p''^ 
 
 
 
 iViv 
 
 
 ^^msM^ 
 
 
 
 
 irs'W^r 
 
 w^m. 
 
 f^m-m- 
 
 
 3a 
 
 :k:j 'A^/ii '■«\::j* 
 
 
 ,mQ^-l\y^^ 
 
 !6\7j"!1 niW^ 
 
 
 *tl^ 
 
 
 t''*i»' «^ 
 
 «v5<.^ / 
 
 is 
 
 'wrpA n