A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 60

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188

USA > New York > A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 60

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In many respects 1875 might be regarded as the opening year of the modern Coney Island. The old divisions of the island by that time had begun to be known by their modern names thus: West End (Norton's Point), West Brighton, Brighton Beach, and Manhat- tan Beach.

It is almost useless to attempt to describe modern Coney Island in a historical work, for the yearly changes are so many and so kaleido- scopic as to make any outline seem out of date a few months after it has been penned.

It is the great democratic outpouring place of the Greater New York, and although all around the great city new resorts appear to spring up every year, the island seems not only to retain, but to extend its popularity with each recurring season. Somehow it has adapted itself to the wants of the great multitude of visitors. Those who want quiet and exclusive- ness can find it in the Oriental Hotel, which is the outpost of the modern Coney Island. At Manhattan Beach, with its theater, mu- sic, fireworks and other amusements, there is exclusiveness and pleasure combined. Brighton Beach claims to be a family resort primarily, and to a great extent retains that characteris- tic. It attracts larger crowds than the places already named, being a center for transit fa- cilities; and, having superb bathing accom- modations, it attracts visitors of all classes. It really forms the dividing line between aris- tocratic and democratic Coney Island. The regular visitors to the Oriental Hotel, or Man- hattan Beach, or Brighton Beach, however, would hardly care to admit that they had any connection with Coney Island. That good old name has become somewhat demoralized, too much associated with "the great unwashed," with cheap shows, bawling photographers, Sunday beer and vulgar frankfurters to be con- genial to ears polite. So at all three the name of Coney Island is tabooed, and when in these modern days the island is referred to we are supposed to speak of the long stretch of sand lying still further to the westward: Here, how- ever, the island retains all the many peculiari- ties and types which won for it its first popu- larity. Its manners are free and easy, its crowds have assembled to have a good time according to their individual ideas, and they have it. One account tells us: "At the West End. or Norton's, the island has been but little improved. Accommodations are provided here for parties with lunch-baskets, and there are numerous unattractive-looking bathing-houses. This part of the island is now being redeemed from neglect by the building of good houses.

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The Atlantic Yacht Club has now established its quarters there. West Brighton was former- ly known as Cable's, and is the central part of the island. Travelers arrive at the beach by railroad as a rule, and alight in a spacious depot, facing the finest iron pier on the island. To the stranger the scene is suggestive of a great fair-ground. In the center is a broad plaza with green grass and flowers, traversed by wide wooden pavements, and numerous hotels and places of amusement are clustered around. Bands play every afternoon and evening in pavilions, and the beach is brilliant- ly illuminated at night by the somewhat ghast- ly white rays of the electric light. A camera obscura here gives charming views of the beach, sharply outlined, delicately toned, and well worth seeing. An observatory 300 feet high occupies a prominent place, and from the top, reached by large elevators, a fine view of the island, the bay and the adjacent cities may be had. Two piers, each about 1,300 feet long, constructed of tubular iron piles, run out from West Brighton. On them are various buildings, used as saloons, restaurants, concert halls, etc., and hundreds of bath- houses. Steamboats from New York land at the piers hourly. Near the piers is the Sea Beach Hotel (this structure was the United States Government building at the Centennial Exhibition). The Concourse, which leads to- ward Brighton Beach on the east (or left), is a wide drive and promenade about a third of a mile long. Park wagons are continually traversing its length, and there are two rustic pavilions in which pedestrians may rest them- selves. It is maintained by the Park Depart- ment, and no buildings are allowed between it and the ocean. It has been seriously damaged by storms in recent winters, and has lost much of its former glory, the eastern end of it, nearest to Brighton Beach, having been en- tirely destroyed." The winter of 1901-2 proved particularly destructive, not only to this sec- tion of Coney Island, but to all the others. Several miles of roadway were destroyed by

a storm early in the season and a large num- ber of buildings unroofed or blown down. Even Manhattan Beach suffered severely and miles of beautiful lawns were ruined. But all that seems to be a regular winter story in spite of mere human ingenuity, and protective arrangements of all sorts.

But by whatever name its sections may be designated for advertising and business purposes, the historical designation can never be wiped out. Coney Island, in fact, is itself, but the end of the great sand bar, broken here and there by inlets, hurled, twisted and changed by every winter's storm, which ex- tends along almost the entire south coast of the island and bears many names. The bar is the great feature of the south shore and gives to it most of its charms of scenery and climate. It has has developed on its course many charni- ing resorts; the surface of the sand has been in places so beautified by turf and flower bed, mammoth hotel and charming cottages as fair- ly to claim a title to being a summer paradise ; but no part has been so beneficial to the toilers in New York or Brooklyn as that which still flourishes under the old name of Coney Island, -the name first given to it by the Dutch pio- neers

From the earliest times of its European history vague stories of smuggling and piracy have been rife concerning Coney Island. A good proportion of such stories was either en- tirely fabulous or was founded on such slim foundation of fact that the foundation itself has disappeared. In its early ante-resort days Coney Island must have been a wild and de- serted place, its storms even more terrible than now, and the imaginations of the few visitors were quickened by the wind and deso- lation, the solemn stillness that prevailed ex- cept for the low moaning of the sea in times of placidity, or its terrible howling when the Atlantic, roused to fury, seemed to break in all its anger on the sandy bar. Little wonder that popular imagination and innate human super- stition associated the dunes and creeks and

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bays and points with tales of strange, weird doings, and that such stories gathered in im- portance and weirdness and tragedy as they sped on from mouth to mouth. Such stories have become too vague to be regarded as his- tory, but it is a pity that some of them had not been preserved. Many of the exploits of Heyler and Marriner, the patriot freebooters, were performed in what may be called Coney Island waters, and one of these was related by General Jeremiah Johnson from the recollec- tions of some of its participants. While here in command of two whaleboats, Captain Heyler saw a British sloop of war lying off the island and determined to secure it. By quietly ap- proaching the vessel in one of the boats Heyler found that no watch was on deck and that the officers were playing cards in their cabin. Sig- nalling for his other boat it quickly came up, and the sloop was at once boarded from eachı side, and so astonished were those on board at the sudden and unexpected attack that they surrendered without even a show of resistance. The crew were removed as prisoners and the ship set on fire. . It was said that $40,000 in cash and many valuables went up in smoke when the sloop was destroyed; but this we may well doubt. Captain Heyler had a warm heart for plunder as well as for his country.

One well-authenticated story of piracy has come down to us, and we give the narrative in the words of Mr. William H. Stillwell, the patient and painstaking historian of Coney Island, who has devoted many years to unravel- ing the many vexed questions of its boundaries, its early settlers and their descendants, as well as telling the story of its wonderful modern growth.

Coney Island is connected with a tragedy of the sea, well-nigh forgotten by even the older residents of the vicinity, but which was the cause of intense excitement at the time. On the 9th of November, 1830, the brig "Vine- yard" cleared from New Orleans for Philadel- phia with a cargo of cotton, sugar and mo- lasses, and $54,000 in specie (all Mexican dollars), consigned to Stephen Girard, Esq.,

of the latter city. The officers and crew of the brig were William Thornby, captain; Mr. Roberts, mate; Charles Gibbs (alias Thos. D. Jeffers), Aaron Church, James Talbot, John Brownrigg and Henry Atwell, seamen ; Rob- ert Dawes (age eighteen or nineteen), cabin- boy; and Wansley, a young Delaware negro, steward and cook. When the brig had been five days out at sea, and was off Cape Hat- teras, the negro steward informed some of the others of the money on board ; and, with Gibbs, Church, Atwell and Dawes, planned to kill the captain and mate, and possess themselves of the specie. On the night of March 23rd, be- tween 12 and I o'clock, as the captain was on the quarter-deck, and the boy Dawes was steering, the negro Wansley came up on deck, and, obeying a prearranged call from Dawes to come and trim the binnacle light, as he passed behind the captain felled him with a pump-brake, and killed him by repeated blows. Gibbs then coming up, he and Wansley flung the captain's body overboard. Roberts, the mate, who was below, came up the compan- ion way to ascertain the cause of the commo- tion, and was attacked by Church and Atwell, who failed, however (through nervousness), to accomplish their design upon him. He re- treated to the cabin, where he was followed by Gibbs, who, not being able to find him in the dark, returned to the deck for the binna- cle lamp, with which he re-entered the cabin, accompanied by Church, Atwell and the boy Dawes ; and Roberts, being speedily overcome by their blows, was dragged upon deck and hurled into the sea-still alive, and able for a while to swim after the ship, begging for mer- cy. Talbot, who, in his terror at what was going on, had sought refuge in the forecastle, and Brownrigg, who had fled aloft, were now called by the conspirators and offered their lives and equal share in the booty if they kept silent. It is needless to say that they joyfully accepted the terms thus unexpectedly offered them. The conspirators then rifled the vessel, divided the specie; and, under direction of Gibbs, who, from his being the only one under- standing navigation, assumed command of the vessel, their course was laid for Long Island. When within fifteen or twenty miles off South- ampton light the vessel was scuttled and fired, and they took to their boats; Gibbs, Wansley, Brownrigg and Dawes, with about $31,000 of the money, in the long boat, and Church, Talbot and Atwell, with about $23,000, in the

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jolly-boat. The wind was blowing a gale, and in attempting to cross Duck (or Rockaway) Bar, the jolly-boat upset, and its occupants, with their share of the booty, were lost. The occupants of the other boat were compelled, by fear of a similar fate, to lighten their boat by throwing overboard all but $5,000 of their stealings ; but finally succeeded in reaching the shore of Pelican Beach, then part of Bar- ren, now Coney Island. Their first care was to dispose temporarily of the specie by bury- ing it in a hole (dug with an oar) in the sand at a considerable distance from the shore, each taking out sufficient for his immediate wants. Food and lodging were their next most press- ing wants, and meeting, on Pelican Beach, with Nicholas S. Williamson, of Gravesend, they told him a pitiable tale of shipwreck, and, getting from him the needed directions, they passed on to Dooley's Bay, on the northwest shore of Barren Island. Here resided John Johnson and wife, and his brother William, who kindly received and cared for the ship- wrecked mariners, and gave up to them for the night their own room and heds. Brown- rigg and the Johnson brothers thus happened to occupy chairs in the living-room; and as soon as the other inmates of the house were asleep Brownrigg revealed the whole matter to the two Johnsons. In the morning, after getting such breakfast as the place afforded, the pirates desired the Johnsons to take them over to the hotel at Sheepshead Bay, whence they might get a conveyance to Fulton Ferry and New York. This the Johnsons did, and returned to Barren Island without unnecessary delay; and, proceeding to the spot described by Brownrigg (and to which they had gone in the early morning with Wansley to get some clothes left there), they dug up the specie, removed it to another hiding place remote from its first location : and, by walking in the water, effaced all traces of the direction they had taken.

Meanwhile Gibbs and his party were bar- gaining with Samuel Leonard, the hotel- keeper at Sheepshead Bay, when suddenly, in the presence of all, Brownrigg, declaring that he would go no further with them, denounced his companions as pirates and murderers, and unfolded the whole story of the "Vineyard's" fate. Wansley incontinently took to his heels to the woods, and Gibbs and Dawes were seized and bound by the inn-keeper and his people ; and Justice John Van Dyke was sum-

moned, who promptly issued warrants for the arrest of the pirates. The one constable of the village found his hands full in guarding Gibbs and Dawes; and so Robert Greenwood, of Sheepshead Bay, volunteered to go into the woods and look up Wansley. After an hour's search he found the negro, and presenting a huge pistol, ordered him to fall on his face and cross his hands behind his back. Wansley submitted, and Greenwood, sitting astride of him, tied his hands securely, ordered him to arise, and marched him back to Leonard's hotel. After the negro had been thoroughly secured his captor showed him the pistol (ut- terly destitute of either lock or load), with the remark that it "was just as good's any other if you knowed how to use it." Gibbs, Wans- ley and Dawes were then lodged in the county jail at Flatbush.

The Johnsons had been none too quick in securing the $5,000; for, scarcely had they regained their home when Squire Van Dyke, with Brownrigg as guide, appeared on the scene, and going right to the spot where the money had been deposited the day before, found it gone! Brownrigg was then sent to join the others at Flatbush; and from thence they were remanded to New York Bridewell. Indictments being found against Gibbs and Wansley, they were tried and convicted on the testimony of Brownrigg and Dawes; and on the IIth of March, 1831, were sentenced to be hung; sentence being carried into effect on the 22d of April following.

John and William Johnson, apprehensive of further search being made for the money, made no haste to get it home. In a day or two they were visited by agents of the insur- ance companies and an officer, who not only searched for the money on the beach, but thoroughly ransacked the Johnson abode from garret to cellar, without success. Having, finally, as they thought, eluded the vigilance of the law, John Johnson and wife planned to get possession of it without the assistance of William. Accordingly, one night, while the latter was asleep, they stole out and unearthed the treasure, and reinterred it in two parcels, one of $3,400, the other of about $1,600. Knowing how closely William would scan the beach when he discovered his loss, they made only the slightest mark to designate the new place of deposit on Pelican Beach, by tying knots on the long sedge-grass, which could be seen only by the closest scrutiny. William's

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indignation, when he discovered the loss, was intense : his suspicions fell upon his brother, and going to New York he informed the in- surance companies, who entered suit against John for the recovery of the money. The trial, which was held before Judge Dean, in the Apprentices' Library, in Brooklyn, ended in John's acquittal, for want of sufficient evidence. He then removed to Brooklyn, and William to Canarsie. But when John went to look for his deposit, he found only the larger sum. A high tide had swept over the site of the other; the action of the waves had loosened the knots in the sedge-grass, and the $1,600 was lost to him forever.

In 1842 the Skidmore family, living on "Ruffle Bar," concluded to remove their house, in sections, to a new site on the shore of Doo- ley's Bay, Barren Island. The house was ac- cordingly taken down piecemeal, and most of it carried across the bay and piled up near its future site. The moving was not quite com- pleted on the day appointed. On the founda- tion of their old home had been left the wooden ceiling of an upper chamber, in one piece or section. During the night a violent storm drove the tide up to an unprecedented height ; and, in the morning, when Jacob Skidmore arose, he was surprised to find that his cham- ber ceiling had been brought over by the tide from Ruffle Bar to Dooley's Bay, without in- jury. Anxious to learn whether any other of his property had gone farther west, he pro-

ceeded along the northerly, or inside, shore of Pelican Beach, which then had become sep- arated by a small inlet, shallow enough to be forded at low tide, but at high tide floating skiffs through it from the ocean to Dooley's Bay. The eastern part of Pelican Beach then had a ridge of sand hills, while the western was as flat and level as the whole of it is now. Arrived at these sand hills, from whence to get a view of the surrounding country, he saw none of his lumber; and, acceding to the suggestion of his companion, Mr. Loring, hur- ried back so as to cross the inlet before the tide got too high. Taking a last look, as they did so, they noticed the shore or ocean side of Pelican Beach much washed away, and also saw his neighbors, Willett Smith and Henry Brewer, approaching. Smith and Brewer came on easterly until they reached the spot where John Johnson and wife had last buried the $1,600; and here, by the storm over night, the silver dollars had been uncovered, and lay scattered along the beach. The two men lost no time in filling pockets and boots, and car- ried away all they could; but they could not keep their good luck to themselves, and in a day or two business was almost entirely sus- pended in Gravesend, and every man who could got to Pelican Beach. The intense ex- citement only gradually subsided when a suc- ceeding storm placed the location of the "find" so far to sea as to be absolutely beyond fur- ther search.

BROOKLYN

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE STORY OF BROOKLYN VILLAGE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT.

TANDING at the junction of Fulton street and Flatbush avenue, and look- ing in the direction of the City Hall, the modern_Brooklynite can cast his eye over the site of the first settlement out of which grew the present magnificent metro- politan borough. Standing there, looking at the throngs of all classes of society passing and repassing on the streets, the crowded cars, the loaded teams, and the elevated railroad crash- ing overhead, one can hardly realize the little village of the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury with its few scattered houses nestling as closely together as possible so as to afford mu- tual protection from bands of predatory or murderous Indians, with fields of growing grain . giving a golden tinge to a landscape whose prevailing color was green, the color of luxuriant nature. Even in its early stages the red man found much in Breukelen to in- cite his cupidity, and a twentieth century marauder, standing on the spot here indicated, might well exclaim, as Blucher is said to have exclaimed on visiting London, "What a place for loot !"

If we were asked to describe in a word the progress and end of Brooklyn, we would answer, Annexation. That has been its erown- ing feature all through. The place we now des- ignate as the borough of Brooklyn was no less the result of annexation than was the city of Brooklyn prior to 1855, the date of its first most noted extension, when Williamsburgh

and Bushwick joined their fortunes with it, Old Breuckelen really waxed in strength and dominated the other towns with which it started, and which started under more auspi- cious conditions than it, by absorption of outly- ing villages from time to time. The Wallabout, for instance, was one distriet, Gowanus an- other, the Ferry another, Bedford another,-all of which, one after the other, fell in with the group of houses which found the central vil- lage on the rich agricultural plateau. The first purchase within the old limits of Brooklyn City-the pre-1856 limit-was at Gowanus, where in 1636 William Adriaense Bennet, an Englishman by birth and a cooper by trade, and Jacques Bentyne, another Englishman,- an important man in the colony, for in 1636 he was Schout Fiscal of New Amsterdam, and for several years a member of Governor Kieft's Council,-bought 936 aeres from the Indian proprietors. Three years later Bentyne sold out his interest in the property to Bennet, who resided on it until his death, about 1644, when it passed to his widow. This purchase is regarded by Dr. Stiles as "the first step in the settlement of the city of Brooklyn;" but there are indications of earlier ·settlement.

In 1637 Joris Jansen (Rapalye) obtained a patent for some 334 acres of land at the Walla- bout, and so began that historic settlement. About 1640 a ferry was established which plied between the present Fulton street and Peck Slip, and around the Fulton street end

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arose a small settlement to which the name of "the Ferry" was given.

By reference to the map on page 97 of this volume, where the context gives an ac- count of this ferry and vicinity, one will notice that at the time the map was drawn the name of the village was spelled Brookland, at least by some parties; that Rapailie was one of the many ways in which that name was spelled, that being before the days of spelling-books and dictionaries, and even before the era when correct orthography was thought a very im- portant matter ; and that the road to Jamaica, running southeastwardly, was the main busi- ncss street or thoroughfare of the village.

The prospects of greater things led the mind's eye of the resident to a vague and dis- tant future, with scarcely any correct idea of what the place would be at the end of a hun- dred or two hundred years, and life was com- paratively monotonous. The initial improve- ments or any new country are necessarily very slow, as the first settlers are not wealthy and are obliged to work laboriously up from small beginnings, with many losses by experimenta- tion, accident, etc. For the time being there does not seem to be any definite promise of great things soon to come. The capitalists ar- rive after a long time, the small capitalists first and gradually the larger ones afterward, and improvements are correspondingly more and more rapidly effected.

The essential features of those pioneer times have in many important respects been duplicated in all the Western States. Not un- til recently have capitalists felt like pushing railroads out into unsettled districts in order to develop their resources and invite settle- ment ; and this movement has indeed been a great blessing to the public, notwithstanding the general dissatisfaction with railroad grants of lands. Of course, both in the enterprise of extending railroads into unsettled portions of the country and in the legislative grants of lands in aid of railroad construction, there would be, in keeping with the characteristic

weaknesses of human nature, many mistakes, -- in excessive grants by one party and exces- sive railroad building by the other.

Bit by bit, as recorded in another chapter, the shore front was occupied by farms right down to Red Hook, where in 1643 Wouter Van Twiller assumed proprietorship by virtue of a patent afterward forfeited. At Gowanus and Wallabout as well as at the Ferry small settlements quickly sprang up. Between Gowanus and the Wallabout lay a level stretch of territory which the aborigines, as it was ex- ceedingly fertile and easy of cultivation, used for.growing their maize. To this tract they gave the name of Mareckawieck. Through it lay the road or trail that led from the Ferry to Flatlands, and it was on this trail, and on this fertile tract right between the present Court House and Flatbush avenue, that the village of Breuckelen had its beginning.

To the early settlers reference has al- ready been made, and we may here take up the story by saying that the pioneer white dwellers on the trail located their homes in proximity to each other, quickly availed themselves of the policy outlined by the West India Company that the settlers should "estab- ·lish themselves on some of the most suitable places, with a certain number of inhabitants, in the manner of towns, villages and hamlets," and held a meeting at which it was determined to form a town. Governor Kieft was at once notified that they had organized a municipality at their own expense, to which they had given the name of Breuckelen, after the village of that name on the Vecht, in the home province of Utrecht. The proceedings which led up to this seem to have been promptly indorsed by Kieft and publicly ratified in the following proclamation, issued in June, 1646:

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 60

Author: Ross, Peter. cn Publication date: 1902 Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1188

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188