USA > New York > Kings County > Williamsburgh > A history of the town of Bushwick, Kings county, N.Y. and of the town, village and city of Williamsburgh, Kings county, N.Y > Part 4
USA > New York > Kings County > Bushwick > A history of the town of Bushwick, Kings county, N.Y. and of the town, village and city of Williamsburgh, Kings county, N.Y > Part 4
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GRAHAM
AVE.
LEE
: HUMBOLDT
61
S
DEVOE
7
AVC.
AVE.
15
HIET DORP, BUSHWICK GREEN.
The ceiling of this room is particularly worthy of notice. It is supported by five ponderons beams that measure 14}x7} inches in thickness, and are twenty feet long. They are painted brown, and give the room rather a gloomy appear- ance. The flooring is of boards that are 17 inches in width, and these broad boards always mark a house as very ancient. The old cupboard of 150 years ago was removed to Jamaica, and is now preserved in the house of John Conselyea, of that township; it was and is yet an ornamental piece of furni- ture.""
The old Bushwick church was an octagonal edifice, standing on the site of, and facing the same way as the present one. Its portrait will be found in the Ecclesi- asticul History of Kings County. The wrinkled and homely old one-story town-house, and the school-house on the opposite side of the Wood-point road, which leads from the church to a point of woods on the meadows, near Van Cott and Mecker avenues; the group of one-story Dutch cottages, with their long curved sloping roofs, marking the entrance of K'yekout lune, which connected Bushwick church with Kyckout or Lookout point, on the East river, crossing Grand street near Tenth; all these formed a scene of primitive Dutch life, exceedingly at- tractive from its simplicity and almost grotesque quaint- ness. And, so it remained until 1835. In 1840, the old church (Map D, Fig. 1), was replaced by the present edifice. In 1846, Maspeth avenue was opened to Newtown, and several houses erected upon it, this side of the creek. The old town-house yet stands (Map D, Fig. 2), and around it centre the memories of the ancient, civil, ecclesiastical and educational glories of Bushwick. In front of it (or more probably of its predecessor), contuma- cious John of Leyden was exposed to the publie gaze, ignominiously tied to a stake, with a horse-bridle in his mouth, a bundle of rods under his arm and a label on his breast, stating that he was a writer of lampoons, etc. Here, too, a thief was once punished by being made to stand under a gallows, with a rope around his neck and an empty sword scabbard in his hand ; and here, also, saddest sight of all, a venerable clergyman of the town, who had incautiously married a couple without observing the formalities demanded by the law, was condemned to flogging and banishment ; a sent- enee, however, which, in consideration of his gray hairs, was commuted to that of exile from the town.
" Long after the Revolution, the old town-house con- tinued to be the high seat of justice, and to resound with the republican roar of vociferous electors on town meetings days. The first Tuesday in April, and the fourth of July, in each succeeding year, found het-dorp (now Anglieized to Bushwick Church), suddenly meta- morphosed from a sleepy little Dutch hamlet into a brawling, swaggering country town, with very de-
bauched habits. Our Dutch youth had a most enthusi- astic 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 Bushwiek devised a plan for easing the publie 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 them 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. At last the electors of Bushwick grew tired of keeping a hotel, and sold the venerable struc- ture to an infidel Yankee, at whose bar the good do- minie could no longer feel free to take an inspiriting eup before entering the pulpit; and the glory of the town- house of Bushwick departed." (FIELD).
The school-house which stood near (Map D, Fig. 3), was occupied by a district school until within a few years past-latterly under the charge of the Board of Education.
In sight of the church, and covering the present
V.PDAVIE - STEER.
OLD BUSHWICK GRAVEYARD.
junction of Parker street and Kingsland avenue, was the ancient graveyard of the original Dutch settlement, for many years unused and its few remaining monu- ments neglected, broken and almost undecipherable. In 1879, Isaac De Bevoise, grandson of Isaac, who was here buried, undertook the pions duty of removing such remains as were left. He collected seven large casket-boxes of bones, whose identification was impos- sible ; besides a few remains which were identified by neither coffin-plates or headstone. Ile estimated them at 250 skeletons, and he remarked that all had sound teeth-save the one tooth which used to hold the Dutch pipe. The work of removal was done at the ex- pense of the old families, under the direction of the Consistory of the Church ; and the boxes are deposited under Bushwick Church. The few inscriptions in this
16
HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF BUSHWICK.
old burial-place have been preserved by STILES, in Hist. of Brooklyn, ii. 374 ; and by Town-Clerk WM. O'GORMAN, in the L. I. City Weekly Star, Dec. 31, 1880.
From the old burying-ground, and looking along the old Woodpoint road, the two venerable De Voe houses might be seen (Map D, 4 and 5), standing (on either side the old road) between Parker and Bennett streets, near De Bevoise avenue. They are well de- picted in the accompanying sketch taken in the fall of 1867.
Hagan !
THE DE VOE HOUSES, AS SEEN FROM THE OLD GRAVEYARD.
On De Bevoise avenue was the old De Bevoise house, later known as the residence of Charles I. De Bevoise. Here, again, we must let our Newtown friend, Town-Clerk WM. O'GORMAN describe :
"The ' Manor House' on Meeker Avenue is a good point to stroll from, when historically inclined, towards old Bushwick township. Here wound its way the Woodpoint road to the old town dock ; and here, within sight of each other on oppo- site sides of Meeker Avenue, are the Wyckoff and DeBevoise homesteads. Each of them has its history, antedating the Declaration of Independence by many years. But each house has hkewise a middle history, connecting the past gen- eration with the present by two living and hearty links. * * In the Manor house we see the birth-place of Nicholas * Wyckoff, President of the First National Bank. He was Supervisor of Bushwick town. Step across Meeker Avenue, and on the edge of the open lots stands the old DeBevoise house. Charles 1. DeBevoise was born in that house, and he too became a Supervisor of Bushwick township. We believe they are the only representatives of Bushwick now remaining. " Bushwick, from its birth under the old Dutch Governor Stuyvesant, was a lively little township, and much prone to irritate her neighbors. In fact she was a thin wedge driven from Greenpoint to the ocean, right through the extremities of several sleepy towns ; and, as her humor was, she con- stantly kept one or other of them awake. The Supervisor of
little Bushwick of that date must be active, of an aggressive turn of mind, but withal good-humored, and endowed with the vitality of perfect health. These were the sine-qua-nons demanded of all candidates in her elections; which were a species of Olympic games once a year to her.
"The competitors were many, and to be successful was esteemed of great honor. Charles I. DeBevoise and Nicholas Wyckoff bore off these honors in their day. In their stock of health they out-distanced all competitors. It is doubtful if either of them has lost a tooth-they are neither of them venerable-they are merely men containing some eighty years of accurate recollections and of the best health. This represents their physical condition, the only province of the tourist. Their reputation as citizens is known of all." [Mr. Wyckoff died while these pages were passing through the press .- Editor.]
"The "Wyckoff House" was erected by Theodorus Polhemus, of Flatbush, who married Anna Brinckerhoff here, and here settled. He afterwards became the chosen representative of Bushwick in the Con- gress and Conventions, from 1775 to 1777. He died in 1781, and after Independence his children sold out to Peter Wyckoff, the father of the President of the First Na- tional Bank. But the Wyckoffs still held, and still do hold, their ancestral farm on the boundary-line between Brooklyn and Newtown, beyond Metropolitan Avenue. The ex-Supervisor resided there; while the Polhemus-Wyckoff estate, with its old house, has passed to the stranger."
Of the genealogies and romances of the Polhemus and connected families of Schencks, Rikers, Remsens and Lar- ramores, the TOWN-CLERK discourses most genially and instructively.
"Thirty years since and the Manor House grounds on Meeker avenue presented a Baronial appearance ; the Wyckoff woods and the Wycoff-Polhemus house had retained all its companion trees, barns and out-houses. Two immense poplars stood sentries at the gate on the Woodpoint road ; they have yielded to time, and are no more. In the last stages of their decay, our thoughts often reverted to the times when the Bushwick farmers carried their produce to the old town-dock past the same trees and watched the growth of the young saplings newly planted.
Thirty years ago, and nothing was disturbed along the Woodpoint road, on its way to the town-dock of Bushwick ; but, in 1880, all is uprooted, and the town-dock itself and its tide-water are traversed over by the horse-cars. The specta- tors of the old poplars never dreamt of such changes ; hut the Wyckoff house is now, as ever, a farm-house.
The DeBevoise house is also on the old Woodpoint road ; and, for generations, was the homestead of the DeBevoise family, of Bushwick, descended from Carel DeBevois, the Huguenot, who became the first school-teacher and town- clerk of Brooklyn. It still belongs to Charles I. DeBevoise, and in that house he was born, and there, too, he was mar- ried-once, if not twice; and we believe history records that his father, Isaac DeBevoise, did also endure similar experi- ence of these changes in life. The ex-Supervisor resides in the large mansion adjoining the old house, nor have his eyes ever failed, for upwards of eighty years, to rest on the place
17
OLD BUSHWICK MILLS.
of his nativity-which circumstance is rather a unique ex- perience of constancy in this our land of change. The Schenck family, of Brooklyn, are closely entwined with these DeBevoises, of Bushwick ; in proof of which, on a window of the old house, remains the name of a bride from that family, cut on her wedding-day, immediately be- fore she had assumed her new name of DeBevoise. The fifth generation are now represented in continuous residence from Carel DeBevoise, of 1736, who was a farmer, and the first of the name in Bushwick, to Charles I., and his son, Isaac DeBevoise ; and, still later, to a six-year old boy, the son of this last Isaac.
The barn of the DeBevoise house is precisely as the Hes- sians of General Rahl had left it-warm and comfortable in a plentiful neighborhood, which these warriors of so much per head soon learned to appreciate and fully to enjoy. To the sound of the drum they trampled down, in 1776, a new clay floor ; and, this accomplished, they eat, drank and smoked out their long occupation. Of the English tongue, they learned but little from the natives of Bushwick, who, indeed, knew little of it themselves ; all spoke in Dutch, and in secret they cleaved together until the war was over. Few of them returned to Europe; many remained in Bush- wick ; Louis Warner, who lived near Cooper's glue factory, Hendrick Plaus, and Christopher Zimmerman, who, for many years, was miller at Luquere's mill, were of this number, and are yet well remembered. The Prince of Hesse made money by their absence ; a Hessian lost to him was a clear gain-such being the terms of bargain and sale of that Princely Potentate with Royal George III., of England. It was a glorious bargain for all parties, save to King George, who had to pay expenses."
On Bushwick avenue, near the north-east corner of that avenue and North Second street, was the old L'oadel house, now used as a grocery-store ; and several other old houses long remained in the immediate neigh- borhood of the church. North-west of the church and close to Bushwick creek was the residence of Abram Van Ranst, a lieutenant of the Kings County Militia, who fled, with his family, to Harlem, at the time of the battle of Brooklyn. His house became the head-quar- ters of Mr. Pherson's corps of refugees and tories.
Het Kivis Pudt, or the Cross-roads, on Bushwick avenue, between Johnson and Adams streets, long re- tained several of the old houses which clustered there in the olden time.
The inhabitants residing along the water-side (Het Strand of the olden day) at the close of the Revolution, were Martin Kershow, David Miller, Charles Titus, Andrew Conselyea, Thomas Skillman, Francis Titus, William Bennett and John Titus. Speaking of the Titus family, JOHN M. STEARNS, Esq., says :
"But as we passed northerly along the shore, we came to an ancient tavern, since fronting on First street, just south of Grand, on land conveyed to Francis Titus by Isaac Meserole, prior to 1758. By whom this celebrated public house, known for generations as the 'Fountain Inn,' was built, I do not know. Its site was devised by Francis Titus to his son, Charles, who was known as old ' Charlum Titus,' and who kept this place for many years. Of a Saturday night, the settlers usually gathered around its bar, and con- tributed to a weekly carousal, and bacchanal songs, such as should have startled the sensibilities of a Christian people.
As a general result, in less than half a century, three-fourths of the farms in town had changed hands through the ruin wrought by the influence of the Fountain Inn. Passing this noted inn, our pathway leads past the old Titus Homestead, where the Francis Tituses, for three generations, lived and died. Here we pause to relate an incident illustrative of human gratitude and human selfishness. Teunis Mauritz Covert died at Monmouth, N. J., seized of the land since known as the old Titus Homestead, many years previous to 1719. Francis Titus had married his widow, and brought up his children. The eldest son, Teunis Covert, under the laws then prevailing, was the sole heir of this farm, to the exclu- sion of all his father's younger children. On the 16th of May, 1719, this Teunis Covert makes a deed of this farm to Francis Titus, his 'loving father-in-law,' for his care and expense in bringing up the grantor and his father's other children ; and then described the home and farm as occupied by the grantee, containing fifty-eight acres, &c. This land continued in the possession of Titus for over thirty years, but the generous step-son was not remembered in the step- father's will, made some thirty years afterwards. Devising a large estate to the testator's own children, to wit: Francis, Charles, Jan, Johannes and Titus Titus, and charging there- on legacies to his daughters, Antie, Hellena, Elizabeth, Janetje, Hyeotte and Christina, reserving an estate for life or during widowhood, to his wife, Elizabeth-yet, his step- children are all forgotten ; and this Elizabeth he turns out to poverty if she marries again. The step-son, who gen- erously gave up his estate, an inheritance from his ancestors, received not even an honorable mention when the recipient of his benefaction made his last earthly preparation for his death-bed.
Pursuing our way along the East River shore, we come to the old homestead of the Wortmans, who, for nearly a hundred years, had an honorable name among the denizens of Bushwick, and only ceased to be mentioned as leading citizens about 1780. This old homestead is now represented by a more modern domicile near Bushwick creek and Second street, on property now of General Samuel I. Hunt. The farm originally had ninety-six acres, some forty acres of the western part having passed to one William Laytin, and by him was sold to Francis Titus, mentioned above. The remainder was owned by one William Bennett, and was devised by him to his son William, as to the northwestern part, and to Jacob Bennett, as to the southeasterly part. The former passed to William Vail, and through him to the wife of Samuel I. Hunt ; the latter was afterward known as the farm of Frost, O'Handy, Butler and Sinclair."
Subsequently, but prior to 1798, were erected the houses of Peter Miller and Frederic Devoe. In 1798, also, William Van Cotts resided at the Sweede's Fly. One by one, however, these old farm-houses have dis- appeared before long rows of modern brick dwellings.
The Boerum House, on Division avenue, between Broadway and Kent avenue (see cut on next page), and the Remsen house, on Clymer street, near Kent avenue, long remained as mementoes of the past.
Old Bushwick Mills-both tide mills .- Luqueer's (later known as Master's), erected in the year 1664, by Abraham Jansen, who received a grant of the mill-site and privileges, was, with the exception of Brower's mill, on Gowanus creek, the first established in the present city of Brooklyn. It stood on a branch of Maspeth (Newtown) creek, near the junction of
18
HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF BUSHWICK.
Grand street and Metropolitan avenue. "A few years since," says Mr. T. W. Field, " 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. deluded a tired passenger to lean against it, crossed a narrow strait in the mill-pond. A few rods to the left stood 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 Newtown, covered with their tall forests, amid which,here and there, open spaces of cultivated lands checkered the green expanse with squares of brown earth or crops of various colors. Through the green salt - meadow, the slumbrous tide-wa- ter currents wound their unseen cours- es; and, in the midst of the verdure, rose the broad sails of vessels, which ap- peared as incongru- ous with the green meadow as would a western prairie over which tall ships were sailing. A mile or more to the right, on an- SFEER.SO other branch of Maspeth kill, stood THE BOERUM HOUSE. another structure, known as Schenck's mill, the site ! of which is only known by tradition, so completely have its ruins been concealed by alluvial deposits, swept by the rains from the cultivated fields around." Near at hand, behind the house of Mr. Nicholas Wyckoff, was still the little burying-ground where slept all of that name who heard the clatter of the On the shore of Newtown creek, on present Clay street, between Union and Franklin avenues, resided JACOB BENNETT, whose father, then quite an old man, owned and lived upon a farm on the opposite side of the creek, which he subsequently gave to his son-in- law, Mr. Hunter, from whom it derived its present name of Hunter's Point. mill and the splash of the sluggishly turning wheel. " The Schencks were of old Bushwick, from its settle- ment in the primitive times, when the Newtown tide- water ebbed and flowed to the boundary of the little plot ; but now the rail-track bounds the cemetery on the one side, and the gas-lamps of Brooklyn illuminate it by night ; evidences of modern habits quite incon- Some years after the war, another Bennett house was erected near the present bridge, and was subsequently sold to a Yankee by the name of Griffin; but this, like- sistent with the notions of those who spent their quiet lives to the sound of the old Schenck mill-the site of which is hardly in the traditions of the venerable Nich- | wise, has disappeared before the march of improvement.
olas Wyckoff himself. The old road from John Eden's store on Metropolitan avenue around its junction with Newtown and Brooklyn retains its Knickerbocker aspect with singular tenacity ; the more wonderful because the road is a frequented thoroughfare, but traffic glides past in silence and respects the repose of houses formerly much disturbed by the military tramp of the Revolution." Sixteen head-stones occupy the Schenck Cemetery ; the remaining inscriptions are pre- served in STILES' History of Brooklyn, ii, 378, but more particularly in a valuable article, by WM. O'GOR- MAN, Esq., Town Clerk of Newtown, in L. I. Weekly Star for January 14, 1881.
The physician of old Bushwick was Dr. Cornelius Lowe, who enjoyed the practice of Bushwick, New Lotts and a part of Newtown. He was an ardent patriot, unmarried, boarded with Alexander Whalley and died about 1830. He was succeeded by Dr. George Cox, who boarded in the Rev. Dr. Basset's family, removed to Wil- liamsburgh after it became a village, and became con- nected by marriage with the Miller family.
Greenpoint since the Revo- lution. - Isolated by its peculiar posi- tion between New- town and Bushwick creeks, and occu- pied only by a few large farms, GREENPOINT, or "Cherry-Point," as it was formerly called, may be said to have enjoyed an almost sepa- rate existence from the rest of the old township of Bushwick. It contained, during the Revolutionary period, and for years after, only five (Dutch) families, each having its own dwelling-house, its own farm, and its own retinue of jolly negroes in field and kitchen.
19
GREENPOINT SINCE THE REVOLUTION.
On the edge of the meadows near the north-east corner of the present Oakland and Freeman streets, on premises since owned by James W. Valentine, stood the old PROVOOST dwelling, which was the original Capt. Peter Praa house.
On the river bank, between India and Java streets, was the old ABRAHAM MESEROLE honse; which was originally built more than one hundred and sixty years since, although the western part of it was added about 1775. John A. Meserole, a descendant of the original proprietor and a Revolutionary patriot, had possession of the place at the time of the Revolution. A troop of Hessians were quartered in the house, and made free with all the live stock on the farm, except one cow, which the family hid in the woods, in a nook since occupied by S. D. Clark's grocery store. A building known as the Baisley house was afterward erected on this estate, on the present Huron street, near Franklin.
On Colyer street, near and east from Washington, stood the house of old JACOBUS COLYER, the worthy ancestor of all of that name in this vicinity.
The last of the series of these originals was the resi- dence of JACOB MESEROLE, near Bushwick creek, on Lorimer street, near Norman avenne.
These five buildings, with their barns and barracks, and the old slate-enclosed powder-house, below the hill (on the spot since covered by Simonson's ship-yard, and which was afterwards removed as an undesirable neighbor), constituted the whole of Greenpoint settle- ment.
Cherry Point was almost isolated because of a peen- liar lack of facilities for communication with the outer world. The only road, from there to any place, began at old Abraham Meserole's barn, ran diagonally across, north-east to the east end of Freeman street, then past the Provoost premises, then south to Willow Pond, thence along the meadow to the Cross-roads, and from that point to Wyckoff's woods, so to old Bushwick church " round Robin Hood's barn " to Fulton Ferry, where the wearied traveler embarked in a ferry-scow for Coenties slip, at the city, and was thankful if he arrived there in safety, it being a little more than he had reason to expect. As for going to Astoria, it has been described as being something like taking a journey to the Moon ; there being no road thither, until the erection of the Penny-bridge, in 1796, which let the people out into the mysteries of the island, and left them to feel their way around in the woods to Astoria. Each farmer, however, owned his boat with which he conveyed pro- duce to the New York market; and, for all practical purposes of intercommunication with each other or with their friends in Newtown, Bushwiek or Brooklyn, they used the boat much more frequently, perhaps, than the road.
The modern history of Greenpoint dates from the year 1832, when Neziah Bliss, in connection with Dr. Eliphalet Nott, purchased some thirty acres of the
John G. and Peter Meserole farm. In 1833, he bought the Griffin farm; and in 1834 he caused the whole of Greenpoint to be laid out in streets. In 1838 be built a foot-bridge aeross Bushwick creek. At about the same time the Point was re-surveyed, and the Ravens- wood, Greenpoint, and Hallet's Cove turnpike was in- corporated. This road, which was opened in 1839, ran along Franklin street, and was subsequently continued to Williamsburgh. Although, even as late as 1853, this road was not graded, it proved to be the opening door to the growth of Greenpoint.
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