A history of the city of Brooklyn : including the old town and village of Brooklyn, the town of Bushwick, and the village and city of Williamsburgh, Part 33

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909. cn
Publication date: 1867
Publisher: Brooklyn : Pub. by subscription
Number of Pages: 536

USA > New York > Kings County > Williamsburgh > A history of the city of Brooklyn : including the old town and village of Brooklyn, the town of Bushwick, and the village and city of Williamsburgh > Part 33
USA > New York > Kings County > Bushwick > A history of the city of Brooklyn : including the old town and village of Brooklyn, the town of Bushwick, and the village and city of Williamsburgh > Part 33
USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > A history of the city of Brooklyn : including the old town and village of Brooklyn, the town of Bushwick, and the village and city of Williamsburgh > Part 33

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

" Baron de Walzogen, Capt. Commandant of the combined detach- ment of Brunswick and Hessian Hanau troops, now at Brooklyn camp, received an address from the inhabitants of New Utrecht, thanking him for the vigilant care, good order, and discipline pre- vailing among the officers and soldiers under his command at the Narrows, etc."-Gaine, Aug. 6, '82.

The crops, at this time, were indifferent in many parts of the country. It was a very dry summer on Long Island.

In December of this year there were stationed at Brooklyn, Hackenbergh's regiment of Hessians, in the large fort back of the Ferry, and in the redoubts a number. At Bedford, also, the garri- son battalion of invalids, about one hundred in number, of whom a half were officers, was quartered at the houses of the different inhabitants.3

1 Onderdonk, Kings Co., 191.

2 See Appendix, No. 9.

3 Onderdonk, Rev. Rem. Kings Co., 261.

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HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

1783. In January of this year General Carlton appointed Mr. Ernest de Diemar major of the fort at Brooklyn.

"Subscription assembly at Loosely's, Brooklyn Hall, every other Thursday, during the season, for the gentlemen of the army and navy, public departments, and citizens. Half a guinea each night, to provide music, tea, coffee, chocolate, negus, sangaree, lemonade, etc."-Gaine, Feb. 24, '83.

"Race at Ascot Heath. A purse of 100 guineas, on April 9, between Calfskin and Fearnought, the best of 3 one-mile heats."- Rivington, April 5, '83.

But the state of things had changed. No longer did the news- papers teem with festive advertisements and loyalist literature. The war was virtually ended by the provisional treaty of peace, signed November 30, 1782, and the British were about to leave the land where, for nearly seven years, their presence had rested like a hideous nightmare upon the people whom they sought to subdue. The " King's Head Tavern" blazed no more with festive illumina- tions, nor echoed to the sound of revelry. The raps of the auc- tioneer's hammer resounded through the halls where once the gay officers of the British army and their "toady" loyalist friends of Kings County had feasted, and sung, in harmonious revelry, loyal ballads to their sovereign. The sound of preparation for departure was everywhere heard, and the papers (significant indices of every pass- ing breeze of popular events) were now occupied with advertisements such as the following :

" At auction at the King's Naval Brewery, L. I., 60 or 70 tons of iron-hoops, and 70,000 dry and provision-casks, staves, and heading, in lots of 10,000."-Rivington, May 26, '83.

" Auction at Flatbush .- The WALDECK STORES, viz. : soldiers' shirts ; blue, white, and yellow cloth; thread-stockings, shoe-soles, heel-taps, etc., etc."-Rivington, July 2, '83.

" Saddle-horses, wagons, carts, harness, etc., at auction every Wed- nesday, at the wagon-yard, Brooklyn."-Gaine, Sept. 8, '83.

" King's draft and saddle horses, wagons, carts, and harness for sale at the wagon-yard, Brooklyn."-Rivington, August 27, '83.

Desertions also became frequent among the Hessians, who pre- ferred to remain in this country. Tunis Bennet of Brooklyn was

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imprisoned in the Provost for carrying Hessian deserters over to the Jersey shore.1

At length, after protracted negotiations, a definitive treaty of peace was signed at Paris, between the American and British commission- ers, on the 3d of September, 1783. And on the 25th of November following, Brooklyn and the city of New York were formally evac- uated by the British troops and refugees, whose requiem was sung by ballad-singers in strains like these :

" When Lord Cornwallis first came o'er The cannon roared like thunder ; If he should return once more, It will surely be a wonder. The refugees and Tories all, Asking mercy at our hands,

Upon their bending knees do fall, To let them stay and enjoy their lands," etc.

As soon as the armies of Britain had left these shores, and Lib- erty dawned again upon the land, so long deprived of hope and peace, numerous exiles returned to look after their property and interests. Brooklyn, which, during the war, had been wholly mili- tary ground, presented a sadder scene of desolation than any other town in Kings County. In 1776, after its occupation by the Brit- ish, free range had been given to the pillaging propensities of the soldiery. Farms had been laid waste, and those belonging to exiled Whigs given to the Tory favorites of Governor Tryon. Woodlands were ruthlessly cut down for fuel, buildings were injured, fences removed, and boundaries effaced. Farmers were despoiled of their cattle, horses, swine, poultry, vegetables, and of almost every neces- sary article of subsistence, except their grain, which fortunately had been housed before the invasion. Their houses were also plundered of every article which the cupidity of a lawless soldiery deemed worthy of possession, and much furniture was wantonly destroyed.8 At the

1 Rivington, Aug. 1, '83.

2 On this memorable occasion the American flag was displayed from the same flag- staff, on the Pierrepont mansion, from which signals had been made during the battle of Long Island, in 1776.

8 More serious outrages by the British soldiery were not infrequent, but redress was not easily obtained by the sufferers. " A Mrs. Lott, of Flatlands, was wantonly shot by

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close of this year's campaign, De Heister, the Hessian general, re- turned to Europe with a ship-load of plundered property. During the next year (1777), the farmers had cultivated but little more than a bare sufficiency for their own subsistence, and even that was fre- quently stolen or destroyed. Stock became very scarce and dear, and the farmer of Brooklyn who owned a pair of horses and two or three cows, was " well off." The scarcity prevailing in the markets, how- ever, soon rendered it necessary for the British commanders to restrain this system of indiscriminate marauding, and to encourage agriculture. After the capture of General Burgoyne's army, rebel prisoners were treated with more lenity; and in 1778, the towns of Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend, and New Utrecht were set apart as a parole-ground, for the purpose of quartering American officers whom the fortunes of war had thrown upon their hands. In these towns, therefore, a greater degree of peace and order prevailed, and the farmers had the twofold advantage of receiving high prices for their produce and pay for boarding the prisoners. Brooklyn, how- ever, remained a garrison town until the peace, and many farms were not inclosed until after the evacuation, in 1783.

When, therefore, the inhabitants returned to their desolated and long-deserted homes, their first efforts were directed to the cultivation of their lands, the re-establishment of their farm boundaries, and the restoration of their private affairs. This being accomplished, their attention was next turned to the reorganization of the town-whose records had been removed, and whose functions and privileges had been totally suspended during the seven years' military occupation by the British. On the first Tuesday of April, 1784, was held the first town-meeting since April, 1776. Jacob Sharpe, Esq., was chosen Town Clerk, and applied to Leffert Lefferts, Esq., the previous clerk, for the town records. Lefferts deposed, on oath, that they had been removed from his custody, during the war, by a person or persons to him unknown ; and although that person has since been identified,

a soldier while sitting in her window ; three men of the 33d Regiment (under Colonel Webster, quartered at Lambert Suydam's) had killed one of his cattle and were skin- ning it, when he shot the three with one discharge of buckshot; two were killed in Bushwick ; three in Newtown ; one killed at a shanty, by a man named Cypher, near the Half-way House."-Jeremiah Johnson.

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the subsequent fate of the records themselves is, to this day, un- known.1

Gradually, under the benign influences of Liberty and Law, order emerged from chaos. The few lawless miscreants who remained were speedily restrained from their mischievous propensities by the whipping-post and imprisonment, angry passions subsided, and those citizens who had hitherto viewed each other as enemies, became united.

INCIDENTS.

From the MSS. of the late General Jeremiah Johnson, we have selected the following incidents illustrative of the British occupation of Brooklyn :

A REBEL-SHOT .- " In the summer of the year 1780, four British officers, who were in quarters in the Wallabout, were engaged in target-shooting in my father's orchard. They were provided with a chair to sit on, and a rest for their guns; their target was placed against a large chestnut-tree, on the margin of a hill, some eighty yards off, and a servant was stationed below the ridge, with a staff, to designate the place on the target where their balls struck. They

1 " This was John Rapalje, mentioned (on pp. 78, 79, and 312) as a prominent citizen and Tory, who had been employed by Mr. Lefferts as a clerk, and therefore knew which of the records were most valuable. He came to the house one day, and telling Mrs. Lefferts that he intended removing the papers to a safe place, went into the room used as an office, and there busied himself for some time, selecting what he pleased, packing the whole in a sack, and taking them away .- (J. C. Brevoort, Esq., on authority of Leffert Lefferts, son of Leffert Lefferts, the clerk in question.) These records and papers were taken to England by Rapalje, in October, 1776 ; and his lands were con- fiscated, and afterwards became the property of J. & C. Sands. After his death, the papers fell into the possession of his grand-daughter, who married William Weldon, of Norwich, County of Norfolk, England. William Weldon and his wife came to New York about the year 1810, to recover the estates of John Rapalje, and employed D. B. Ogden and Aaron Burr as counsel, who advised them that the Act of Attainder, passed by the Legislature against Rapalje and others, barred their claim. Weldon and his wife brought over with them the lost records of the town of Brooklyn, and offered them to the town for a large sum (according to some, $10,000), but would not even allow them to be examined before delivery. Although a writ of replevin might easily have secured them to the town again, the apathetic Dutchmen of that day were too indifferent to the value of these records, and they were allowed to return to England."- (MS. Note of Jeremiah Johnson.)

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shot poorly. The writer was looking on, when one of the officers, after loading his gun, asked me whether I would try a shot. I replied in the affirmative, and, presenting the piece at arms' length, fired. The servant signalled the ball as having struck the bull's-eye. The party looked at me with surprise and indignation, and ex- claimed : ''Tis no wonder the d-d rebels kill our men as they do- here is a boy who beats us!' I told them I could do it again, and left them to cogitate on the subject."

HORSE RACING .- A jockey or racing club was formed in the year 1780, within the British lines. Bryant Connor, of New York, was Chief Jockey. Flatland Plain, then called " Ascot Heath," was the race-course ; it was then a beautiful open plain, well adapted for racing or parades. Public races were held here until October, 1783. The British officers, with the refugees and Tories, ruled the course. The American officers, then prisoners in Kings County, attended these races, and were frequently insulted by the loyalists, which gave rise to frequent fracases. Wherever a fine horse was known to be owned by any American farmer in the county, the refugee horse- thieves would soon put him into the hands of the jockeys, and the course was thus kept well supplied. General Johnson saw a New Jersey farmer claim a horse on Ascot Heath, in October, 1783, which had been purchased by Mr. John Cornell, of Brooklyn, from a refugee, and entered for the race. The owner permitted the horse to run the race ; after which, Mr. Cornell surrendered the animal to the owner in a gentlemanly manner. Whether he ever found the thief afterwards is uncertain.1

A MILITARY EXECUTION AT BROOKLYN .- In the summer of 1782, three men, named Porter, Tench, and Parrot, members of the 54th Regiment, then encamped on the farm of Martin Schenck, at the Wallabout, were arrested and tried for their complicity in a foul murder committed on Bennet's Point, in Newtown, three years be- fore. They were sentenced to be hung, but Parrot was pardoned

1 In 1784, public races were run at New York, on the level of Division street. In the same year, Governor George Clinton (who assumed, though erroneously, that "it be- longed to him as an official franchise") leased Governor's Island to a Dr. Price, who built a hotel there and graded a handsome course on the same, on which races were run in 1785 and '86. Afterwards they were held at Harlem, Newmarket, Beaver Pond, New Utrecht, and on the Union Course.

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HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

and sent on board a man-of-war. The execution of Porter and Tench, notable as the only case of capital punishment for injuries done to citizens, was witnessed by the late General Jeremiah John- son, who thus describes the scene : " The gallows was the limb of a large chestnut-tree, on the farm of Martin Schenck. About 10 A. M., a brigade formed a hollow square around the tree; the culprits, dressed in white jackets and pantaloons, and firmly pinioned, were brought into the square, and halters, about eight feet long, were fas- tened to the limb about four feet apart. Tench ascended the ladder first, followed by Cunningham's yellow hangman, who adjusted the halter, drew a cap over the culprit's face, and then descending, turned him off the ladder. The like was done to Porter, who ascended the ladder by the side of his hanging companion, in an undaunted man- ner, and was turned towards him and struck against him. They boxed together thus several times, hanging in mid-air about ten feet from the ground, until they were dead. The field and staff officers were inside the square, and after the execution Cunningham reported to the commanding officer (said to be General Gray), who also ap- peared to treat him with contempt. The troops then left the ground, and the bodies were buried under the tree."

MILITARY PUNISHMENTS .- The British soldiers were punished by whipping or flogging with the " cat-o'-nine-tails," executed by the drummers. The regimental surgeons were obliged to attend the punishments, which were usually very severe-sometimes as many as five hundred lashes being given. Citizens were allowed to be pres- ent at these floggings, except at punishments of the 42d Highland Regiment, when only the other regiments were allowed to be wit- nesses. Punishments in this regiment were, however, infrequent. The dragoons were punished by picketing ; the Germans by being made to run the gauntlet. On these occasions the regiment formed in two parallel lines, facing inwards; the culprit passed down be- tween these lines, having an officer before and behind him, and was struck by each soldier with rods. An officer also passed down on the outside of each line, administering a heavy blow to any soldier who did not give the culprit a fair and good stroke. Hessians were also punished by the gauntlet, while the band played a tune set to the following words :

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" Father and mother, do not mourn Over your only son ; He never did you any good, And now he gets his doom-doom-doom-doom."

The officers often treated their men cruelly. General Johnson remembered to have seen Captain Westerhauge and Lieutenant Con- rady beat a corporal with their swords on his back, over his waist- coat, so that he died the next day. They beat the man about two in the afternoon. He was standing : the captain first gave him a number of blows, and then the lieutenant commenced; but before he had finished, the man was too feeble to stand, and the captain stood before him and held him up. The man then laid down on the grass, while the surgeon's mate examined his body, which was a mass of bruised and blistered flesh. His back was roughly scarified by the surgeon's mate, and he was then removed to a barn, where he died the next day-never having uttered a word from the moment of the first blow.1

Among the patriotic deeds of the adherents of the American cause in Kings County, we must not fail to record the loans of money fur- nished to the State Government by them. It was effected in the following manner. Lieutenant Samuel Dodge and Captains Gille- land and Mott, of the American army, had been captured at Fort Montgomery, and were confined as prisoners, under a British guard, at the residence of Barent Johnson, in the Wallabout. Dodge was exchanged in the course of a month, and reported the practicability of borrowing specie from Whigs in Kings County, mentioning John- son as one who would risk all in the undertaking. It was therefore agreed that confidential officers should be exchanged, who were to act as agents in these transactions. Colonel William Ellison was fixed upon to receive the loan. He was exchanged in November, 1777,

1 It may be worthy of note that Mrs. Peter Wyckoff, mother of Mr. Nicholas Wyckoff, President of the City Bank of Brooklyn, and a daughter of Lambert Suydam, a brave officer in the Continental Army, informed the author, in 1861, that she distinctly remembers, when a school-girl at Bedford, having seen British soldiers tied up to a tree, in front of the house of Judge Lefferts, and flogged. She also remembers to have seen the troops encamped in shanties and tents, between Rem Lefferts' and Peter Vandervoort's, now the house of James Debevoise, on Bedford, near Gates avenue. The officers were billeted on those families.

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and conveyed $2,000 in gold to Governor Clinton, a simple receipt being given. In this manner, before 1782, large sums had been loaned to the State. In 1780, Major H. Wyckoff was hid for two days in the upper room of Rem A. Remsen's house, in the Walla- bout, while the lieutenant of the guard of the " Old Jersey" British prison-ship was quartered in the house. Remsen loaned him as much as he could carry, and conveyed him in a sleigh, at night, to Cow Neck, from whence he crossed to Poughkeepsie.1

The patriotism of many of New York's bravest soldiers was poorly rewarded by the passage of a legislative act, May 6th, 1784, levying a tax of £100,000 upon the Southern District of the State. This odious and well-named "partial" tax, or a moiety of it, could be paid in State scrip, which the soldier had received for his ser- vices, and had sold to speculators for from two to six pence per pound. The scrip, it is almost needless to say, immediately rose to the value of ten shillings on the pound, leaving a very handsome profit to the speculators, who had invested it largely in the purchase of confiscated estates.

PART III. THE BRITISH PRISON-SHIPS .*

THE Battle of Brooklyn, in August, and the capture of Fort Wash- ington, in November, 1776, placed in possession of the British nearly four thousand prisoners ; and this number was increased, by the

1 See General Johnson's MSS., and Onderdonk's Queens County, p. 316.

* In the preparation of this chapter, we have drawn freely upon the narratives of Captain THOMAS DRING (of which two editions were published, in 1829 and '31, and a privately printed edition, with annotations, by H. B. Dawson, in 1865); of the Rev. THOMAS ANDROS, published in 1833; of Captain ALEXANDER COFFIN, jr., in his letter to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, in Hist. Account of Am. Martyrs, published in 1808; The Ad- ventures of CHRISTOPHER HAWKINS, privately printed, with copious notes, by Charles I. Bushnell, Esq., in 1864 ; the Reminiscences, in print and MS., of General JEREMIAH JOHNSON, of Brooklyn ; and the incidental descriptions in Memoirs of Rev. ANDREW SHERBURNE, of EBENEZER Fox, Com. SILAS TALBOT, etc., all of which have become scarce books, and, to some extent, inaccessible to the general reader.

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arrest of private citizens suspected of complicity with the rebellion, to over five thousand, before the end of the year. The only prisons then existing in the city of New York were : the "New Jail," which still remains, in an entirely altered form, as the " Hall of Records," and the "Bridewell," which was located between the present City Hall and Broadway. These edifices proving entirely inadequate for the accommodation of this large number of captives-to whom they were unwilling to extend the privileges of parole-the British were compelled to turn three large sugar-houses, several of the Dissenting churches, the Hospital, and Columbia' College, into prisons for their reception.1 These buildings, also, were soon crowded to overflow- ing by daily accessions of captive patriots, who, in many instances, found not even space to lie down and rest upon the hard and filthy floors. Here, in these loathsome dungeons, denied the light and air of heaven; scantily fed on poor, putrid, and sometimes even un- cooked food; obliged to endure the companionship of the most abandoned criminals, and those sick with small-pox and other infec- tious diseases ; worn out by the groans and complaints of their suffering fellows, and subjected to every conceivable insult and indignity by their inhuman keepers, thousands of Americans sick- ened and died. Almost preferable, by comparison, was the fate of those who, without a moment's warning, and at midnight, were hur- ried by the Provost? to the gallows and an unknown grave.

1 These sugar-houses were Van Cortlandt's, which stood on the corner of Thames and Lumber streets, at the northwest corner of Trinity churchyard ; Rhinelander's, on the corner of William and Duane streets; and one on Liberty street (Nos. 34 and 36) a little east of the Middle Dutch church, now occupied as the United States Post-office. The churches were the Middle Dutch church, above referred to, which was used as a prison for about two months, and afterwards converted into a riding- school for the British cavalry ; the North Dutch church, yet standing on William street, between Fulton and Ann; and the " Brick Church," which, until within a few years, stood in the triangle between Park Row, Beekman, and Nassau streets. Subse- quently, this last-mentioned, together with the Presbyterian church in Wall street, the Scotch church in Cedar street, and the Friends' Meeting House in Liberty street, were converted into hospitals. The French church, in Pine street, was used as a magazine for ordnance and stores.

2 Captain William Cunningham, an Irishman by birth, and a brute by nature, who, during the occupation of New York by the British, held the post of Provost- Marshal of the city. He subsequently suffered the same fate to which he had consigned so many victims-being hung for forgery in London, England, in 1791. In his dying confession, which appeared in the English papers in 1794, and which has always been

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HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

arrest of private citizens suspected of complicity with the rebellion, to over five thousand, before the end of the year. The only prisons then existing in the city of New York were : the "New Jail," which still remains, in an entirely altered form, as the "Hall of Records," and the "Bridewell," which was located between the present City Hall and Broadway. These edifices proving entirely inadequate for the accommodation of this large number of captives-to whom they were unwilling to extend the privileges of parole-the British were compelled to turn three large sugar-houses, several of the Dissenting churches, the Hospital, and Columbia College, into prisons for their reception.1 These buildings, also, were soon crowded to overflow- ing by daily accessions of captive patriots, who, in many instances, found not even space to lie down and rest upon the hard and filthy floors. Here, in these loathsome dungeons, denied the light and air of heaven; scantily fed on poor, putrid, and sometimes even un- cooked food; obliged to endure the companionship of the most abandoned criminals, and those sick with small-pox and other infec- tious diseases ; worn out by the groans and complaints of their suffering fellows, and subjected to every conceivable insult and indignity by their inhuman keepers, thousands of Americans sick- ened and died. Almost preferable, by comparison, was the fate of those who, without a moment's warning, and at midnight, were hur- ried by the Provost2 to the gallows and an unknown grave.

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A history of the city of Brooklyn : including the old town and village of Brooklyn, the town of Bushwick, and the village and city of Williamsburgh, Part 33

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909. cn Publication date: 1867 Publisher: Brooklyn : Pub. by subscription Number of Pages: 536

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909. cn
Publication date: 1867
Publisher: Brooklyn : Pub. by subscription
Number of Pages: 536