USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 15
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under adverse circumstances. After business hours the Nassau was frequently employed to carry pleasure parties up the North or East river, when bands of music played and young people tripped it on the light fantastic toe. Fulton's inventive genins soon added the system of piles and bridges for receiving the impact of the boat and counteracting the rising and falling tides. The rate charged for passengers at first was 4 cents. In 1845 that was yet the fare au- thorized by law, but somewhere about 1840 the company reduced the fare to 3 cents, and since 1844 it has been only 2 cents. But com- inutation was inaugurated at the very beginning, and such a ticket for a single person, not transferable, cost $10 per annum. The now somewhat antiquated historian Prime, in 1845, gives a list of the distances to be traversed by the boats at the various ferries: At South Ferry the passage was 1,300 yards long, " or 20 yards less than three- quarters of a mile "; at Fulton Ferry the distance was 731 yards; at Catharine Street Ferry 736 yards, and at Jackson Street (now no more), 707 yards. The people were so well satisfied with these mul- tiplied means of communication, and the rapidity of the transporta- tion across, that they sconted now the idea of communication by means of a bridge. That idea had actually been broached a little be- fore or about the beginning of the present century. The plan pro- posed then embraced a single lofty arch to span the channel, so that ships might pass underneath. This was well worth thinking about when it was as much as your life was worth to cross the channel by the primitive methods then at hand. But when steam ferryboats were the vogue the idea seemed ridiculous. Prime, in 1845. is espe- cially pronounced in his contempt for the scheme. He mentions how it had become a topic of discussion in the benighted days of the opening century. It was then " discussed with as much zeal by all classes of citizens as the poisonous properties of the poplar worm in 1803, or the building of paper cities on quagmires in 1835-6." Things had come to quite a different pass, however, in 1845, when Prime wrote. Brooklynites, in all the pride and glory of their now fully developed ferry facilities, had risen superior to the need of a bridge. " Now," continues the historian, " the idea of a bridge is as rare a conception as a fifth wheel to a coach, and is about as desirable. At any hour of the day and night you can pass from one city to the other with equal safety and greater rapidity, than you could walk the same distance on terra firma. Under these circumstances who would think of crossing on a bridge, if one stood in his way?" Just fifty years later about one hundred thousand people per diem were not only " thinking of crossing on a bridge," but doing it.
The clustering of population about the ferry induced the medical profession to settle here, and Brooklyn's earliest doctors appear in the columns of its early newspapers by way of advertisements. There was a Dr. Charles Ball, who resided at the junction of Main and Ful-
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ton streets. Doctors Clussman and Osborn were on hand to see to it that Mr. Vanderveen, an apothecary, who had been professionally trained to that art in Amsterdam, Holland, was correct in his dispens- ing of the prescribed drugs. Domine Peter Lowe, of the Dutch Church (who preached in English), had a brother who practiced medicine, and lived at his house, on the corner of Red Hook Lane and Fulton Avenue. In 1811 the town received quite an accession in the person of a " Rain Water Doctor," who disdained a cognomen such as resembled that of any other mundane practitioner, and called himself simply Sylvan, with the grandiloquent addition of " enemy of human diseases." In those days Father (or Pfarrer) Kneipp was either yet to be born or to be heard from; but he was anticipated in method or practice to a remarkable degree. The worthy Sylvan. the Enemy, etc., was the great administrator, not of dew on bare feet, but of rain water to the stomach. He affected the use of some herbs and things; but his main reliance for the cure of every imaginable bodily ailment was the drinking of rain water. He took up his quar- ters rather far out of town, a little beyond the " Black Horse Tavern," near where De Kalb and Fulton avenues now form a junction. But those days were not different from preceding or succeeding ones; any one with a pet remedy always finds plenty of people to try it, and can exert sufficient influence upon their imaginations to work some therapeutic effects. Thousands came over from New York and the Long Island towns, thronged his doors, and went away much relieved by his rain water. He charged but little for his medicines- and the clouds supplied the rain water. When patients realized re- markable cures and wished to show gratitude by large gifts of money, he declined them; and when one of his patients died, he reared a mar- ble slab over the remains, with an inscription which it would seem must have required several pages of slabs. Where the old Brooklyn Savings Bank now stands in lonely desolation, consigned to the uses of the Salvation Army, on the corner of Concord and Fulton streets, early in the century resided one of Brooklyn's notable physicians, Dr. Hunt. For several years before he settled there ( which was in 1820), he was surgeon in the Navy, attached to the Navy Yard.
Amusements, of course, have a sanitary influence, and certainly constitute a medicine more palatable and popular than drugs pre- scribed by physicians, even though served by the conscientious Van- derveen. These amusements were furnished at various " gardens" in and around Brooklyn. "Columbia Garden " was one of these. But a more famous resort was the " Military Garden," kept by a Mr. Green. Here refreshments in liquid and solid form were furnished, also recreations and sports of various kinds. These places were the nurseries of the later more ambitious theaters. More " home-made " recreation was sought around the " Tulip Tree." This was an un- usually large magnolia, crowning a hill on the line of Sands Street,
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east of Washington. Parties from New York on fine summer morn- ings would cross over in rowboats, land on the beach inside the line of the present Water Street, and bivouac in regular picnic style on the slope around the umbrageous and widespreading " Tulip." In those sociable days, if parties from Brooklyn itself would come that way. the tea and other good cheer and social chat would be made com- mon, and, as the sun was sinking over the distant Jersey hills, seen clearly from this elevation in the absence of skyscrapers, the New York people would pack up their belongings and row back to their city. In the year 1807 some of the green hills in this vicinity were robbed of their verdure, denuded of their soil, and lessened in height in order to furnish forth ground for the more material interests of the city. Shipping interests had grown to large proportions, and between Fulton Ferry and the Wallabout the mudflats were covered with the soil from these hills, causing one or two lines of streets to encroach on the river, as they had done on Manhattan Island. Here wharves were thrown out into the current, and warehouses built up- on the land now permanently above tidewater. Besides the numer- ous grist mills in Brooklyn, which utilized the flowing tides of the East River, the history of manufactures on this side of the water must note the establishment of important industries. A floor-cloth factory. and one for cotton goods, were erected here; while rope walks, em- ploying over a hundred hands, furnished the growing shipping trade and other lines of business calling for them with cables and ropes and rat-lines and the attenuated twine. Chairmaking had been begun early in the century.
Brooklyn was not yet a village in the period we are now treating; much less was it a city. Yet the spirit of real estate speculation was already abroad, and a considerable tract of land was laid out on pa- per which was intended to be made into a city, rejoicing in the clas- sie title of OLYMPIA. It is a curious fact that cities deliberately pur- posed to become so by human speculation, hardly ever follow up the good intentions of their designers. Somewhere else, in a most un- likely spot, where design would never have fixed upon them, nay, would have disdained the very thought of starting them-there they perversely grow to unreasonable magnitude and prosperity. It was so with " Olympia." It was laid out on our Tory friend Rapalje's land. now that of the Sands brothers. The prospects of city-grow- ing were finely argued out. New York was to be outrivaled. It could not spread southward, westward. or eastward. confined as it was by water. Northward there was a chance, but who would want to go in that direction, away so far from the center of business? Across the river that tendency to spread must needs proceed, and so. upon this territory, would alight the overflow of New York. The " Ferry." with its inconvenient heights, would repel such a movement of popu- lation. Down in the hollow back of Sands Streets, and toward the
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old Breuckelen Church, there the deposit of population would neces- sarily fall and remain. Most of these dreams have indeed been real- ized within the last forty or fifty years. But they did not quite follow the line of " Olympia," and the latter became the deposit for the overflow of the Ferry rather than of New York City direct. And, in- stead of the classic and romantic " Olympia," we have upon the list of our great cities, nothing but the plain, homely, bucolic title, then only designating the rustic town of Brooklyn, Brookland, Breuck- lyn, Brooklyne, or Breuckelen, as it was then variously spelled.
The War of 1812 came upon the land, and still the village of Brook- lyn was not yet. There was no battle of Long Island in this second war for independence, but the old line of defenses was revived in almost exactly the same shape as in 1776. For New York City and vicinity the war was only a " rumor," not an actual sound or experi- ence. Preparations for defense were made at its beginning, but not till 1814 were any vigorous measures taken to guard against the ap- proach of the enemy. Washington had then been taken, and at Balti- more occurred the bombardment which gave us the " Star Spangled Banner." It now began to look as if New York would have to sustain the brunt of actual warfare. Lines of trenches and redoubts and blockhouses stretched across Manhattan Island on the bold heights fronting on Harlem Plains, clear to the East River. On Long Island nature had so evidently marked out the defenses of 1776, that inge- nuity could devise no better plan than to restore the old lines. Hence they began again on the left at Wallabout Bay. Fort Putnam was reinstated, but now named Fort Greene. The " oblong " redoubt at Hudson and De Kalb avenues was now called Cummings. Again, at the old sycamore tree, long standing opposite "the Abbey" (both landmarks gone now, and the site marked by the Montauk Theater), the lines crossed the Flatbush and Jamaica Road, here not yet di- vided. Upon a hill located between what are now Bond and Nevins, and State and Schermerhorn streets, was placed a new fortification called Redoubt Masonic. The former Fort Greene became Fort Fire- man, and Cobble Hill, again fortified, was now named Fort Swift, in honor of the general under whose supervision the whole of these works were constructed. The head of Gowanus Creek again made the termination of the lines on the extreme right. Now, to construct these extensive lines of entrenchment, the citizens of New York turned out with great alacrity, under the impulse of Mayor De Witt Clinton's leadership, as related on page 265 of our previous volume. We learn the particulars of the appearance of the squads of workers at the varions localities in Brooklyn from the " Long Island Star " and " In- telligencer " in their weekly issues. On August 9, 1814, ground was broken at Fort Greene, amid salvos of artillery. One old man, who forty years before had helped to dig the trenches here, came over from New York, and, seizing a spade, declared that his hands should a
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second time do their share in defending his country. We mentioned in the other volume how squads of men by trades and professions from the different wards, were sent about to the various points to be for- tified by means of the ferryboats, which were now but three months old. On the first day at Fort Greene a number of workers from New York's Seventh Ward labored side by side with some compa- nies from the Regular Army. We read that on the next day the trenches at Fort Greene were thrown up by the tanners and curriers, the society of plumbers, and a large force of exempt firemen. Again the next day a body of medical students was there. Many hands made light work, and the full August moon made the trips to and from the strengthened posts per steamer decidedly enjoyable. But not only did New Yorkers lend enthusiastic aid. On September 3 eight hundred citizens of Newark rode out in wagons to Paulus Hook, crossed the North and then the East River, and seized spade and pickax at the Brooklyn lines; and on September 7 they were followed by nearly two hundred people from Morris County, N. J., who had made a sort of pious pilgrimage of the affair, under the leadership of their pastor. A similar religious cast was given to the movement by a squad composed of members of the Mulberry Street Baptist Church of New York, who came under the guidance of their pastor, the Rev. Archibald MeClay. Fort Masonic was so named be- cause here over seven hundred Freemasons, headed by their Grand Master, Mayor De Witt Clinton, sturdily labored with the prosaic shovel instead of the symbolic trowel. Bushwick Reformed Church sent a squad to dig at Cobble Hill and make Fort Swift, the Rev. Mr. Bassett cheering them on. From Flatlands, from Flatbush, from Gravesend, they came to make Brooklyn more secure; while seventy men from Paterson, N. J., under a Revolutionary officer, Colonel God- win, showed again the good will of distant fellow-citizens. At one time no less than twelve hundred Irishmen came over for a tussle with the shovel, their especial work, by request, being the sodding of the earthworks. New Utrecht was not behind her sister towns in zeal, and on the same date one thousand colored men from New
York put in a good day's work. Labor was lightened by the nn- bonnded enthusiasm which brought men hither in such large num- bers, and which was stimulated by stirring mottoes, inscribed upon banners as they marched. The Newark men rallied under the sentiment, " Don't give up the soil," its origin plainly to be traced to Captain Lawrence's then recent, and now immortal, dying command. The Masons passed among their ranks as a watchword Lord Nelson's famons signal, modified to their own circumstances: "The Grand Master expects every Mason to do his duty." And upon roads or streets or ferryboats as they marched or rode to the points assigned them, and in the trenches as they grew in strength from the Wall- about to Gowanus, the men sang or whistled the words or tune of a
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song called " The Patriotic Diggers," and which was composed by the author of the " Old Oaken Bucket," Sammel Woodworth. There is no doubt that this boundless enthusiasm would have found expres- sion also in tremendous fighting, had the enemy come. It may well be believed that the Jamaica Pass would not have been left unde- fended. But the war clond passed away without bursting in thunder or lightning upon this vicinity, and the sunshine of peace soon changed all the preparations of war into relies for the curious, then into faint traces for the antiquary, till to-day, not a vestige remains but the twin cannon on the plateau of Fort Greene, whose perfect harmlessness only emphasizes how little has been the necessity for providing against similar emergencies in all these eighty-three years.
On the night of St. Valentine's Day, February 14, 1815, residents on Brooklyn Heights saw multitudes of moving lights passing up and down the streets of New York nearly all night long. The news of " Peace " had arrived by packet, and the joy of it was keeping the people out of their beds and upon the streets, carrying torches, lan- terns, lamps, and candles. The rebound to prosperity was quickly felt in the city, and the thrill of it could not but pass across the East River. The time was now hastening on to the first round of the ladder of Brooklyn's municipal greatness. In December of that same year the dwellers about the ferry came together to consider the advisability of making an application to the Legislature of the State for a bill to incorporate a village. It being deemed advisable, publie notice was given by Andrew Mercein, the Chairman of the meeting, and Alden F. Spooner, Secretary (editor and publisher of the Long Island Star), that such application would be made. The next step was a meeting of the inhabitants on January 8, 1816, at which a committee was ap- pointed to draft the petition to the Legislature, and also the proper bill. The committee consisted of Messrs. Thomas Everitt, Alden F. Spooner, JJoshua Sands, the Rev. John Ireland, and JJohn Doughty. They met on January 9 at the residence of Mr. Hezekiah B. Pierre- pont, on the Heights. A few weeks were spent in getting the papers into proper shape, so that it was the beginning of February before they came up for action in the Legislature. The Senate passed the bill submitted on March 13, 1816, after which it was sent to the Assembly, where it was referred to a committee, of which B. F. Thompson, the historian of Long Island, was chairman. The regular routine having been gone through, the act that made Brooklyn a vil- lage was passed on April 12, 1816. The village was to have a gov- erning board of trustees consisting of five members. These and three assessors were to be elected by all the inhabitants, freeholders as well as others, qualified to vote at the town meetings, the election to be held on the first Monday of May each year. The Board of Trustees thus popularly elected chose its own President, Treasurer, Clerk, and Collector. The first trustees were named by the act, so that the in-
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corporation could go into effect at once, and these were to hold office until an election should be held regularly on the first Monday in May, 1817. These first appointed Trustees were Andrew Mercein, John Garrison, John Doughty, John Seaman, and John Dean, in which list we note a remarkable absence of Dutch names. On April 29, these village dignitaries took the oath of office, and holding their first meet- ting on May 4, that date may be regarded as marking the beginning of village life for Brooklyn. In June a seal was designed by Trustee Garrison and adopted by the Board, which did not display any very great ingenuity of invention, nor require great skill in draftmanship. It was nothing but a star encircled by the legend: " Corporation of Brooklyn," which must have gratified the editor of Brooklyn's leading journal. More material improvements did not fail to gain the atten- tion of the Board. A portion of the sides of the Old Ferry and New Ferry Roads (Fulton and Main streets) were set off from the rest of the roadway by means of curbs, made of plain boards, perhaps a half a foot or less high. The space thus separated was filled up to the top of the curbs with good dry gravel, thus furnishing Brooklyn's first sidewalks. In keeping with this measure for comfort and cleanliness, a decree was promulgated by the village powers putting an end to the indiscriminate promenade of hogs, creatures whose propensity to " root or die " paid small respect to the carefully prepared sidewalks. Another grateful action was the ordinance to decorate the new vil- lage with signboards on the corners of its budding streets, and thus the resident or visitor could learn (by an effort of memory always, not by any logical sequence) where Pearl Street was, and in which direction he was to proceed thence to get to Adams, or Hicks, or Sands, or Middagh streets, all of which names, and more also, were in that memorable year inscribed upon their appropriate boards. These provisions were all very praiseworthy and gratifying to the vil- lagers, although there had been much opposition to the incorporation scheme. A great many people too disliked the idea of having the Trustees thrust upon them by act of Legislature. It outraged the sense of home rule, and it does seem as if the town could have existed without a Board of Trustees from April 12 to May 4, until. on the latter date, the people could have elected the Trustees themselves. The postponement of the election for a whole year disgusted the vil- lagers; and when the incumbent Trustees attempted to restrict the suffrage by an amendment to the charter, indignation rose to the topmost point. Evidently the officers wished to remain in power, and they were aware of the prevailing sentiment against them. Their impolitic proposal brought the opposition to a head and increased its numbers, so that not only did the remonstrance against the amend- ment convince the Legislature, but the Trustees were entirely defeated at the first village charter election in May, 1817. Not one of the five was re-elected; those first holding places in the Village Board as
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the result of the suffrages of their fellow-towusmen, being William Fmanan, Henry Stanton, Tunis JJoralemon, Noah Waterbury, and Sammel S. Birdsall. Again we look in vain for names suggesting recollections of the fathers of the hamlet Brouckelen, for even then the influx of enterprising settlers from New England, indirectly as having first planted themselves in a former generation at the east end of the island, or directly by emigration thence now, had begun to swamp the ancient Dutch. And we must clearly bear in mind that Brooklyn as a village did not embrace that part of the township where Brenekelen began. That historie spot was reserved for vindi- ration as properly the heart and center of municipal being to a much later date, when the glory of the city had reached its zenith. The village bounds may be roughly described in modern terms by saying that they followed the line of Red Hook Lane, carried by the imagina- tion through the intervening blocks to Atlantic Avene; and of At- lantic Avenue down to South Ferry. Starting from Fulton Avenue in the other direction, the line went from Red Hook Lane to Wallabout Bay, cutting obliquely across the series of streets from Pearl to Hud- son or Navy, and so to the East River again.
By the exercise of a most commendable and astonishing industry and care, Dr. Stiles, the historian or annalist of Brooklyn, has pre- pared for those readers whose patience can in some measure approach his own, a series of five or six " walks " through various portions of Brooklyn village and township in the year 1816. As we take onr place by his side we see the old conditions rehabilitated. From street to street we go, and see again this house or that orchard; some old Brooklynite's residence; the headquarters of some Revolutionary worthy; some forgotten church building or public hall, wiped away by the march of improvement; a spot made memorable by the stay of a distinguished foreigner; with full accounts of the lives and acts of men prominent in the counsels of the village, the promoters of its early trades and industries, the founders of its churches, the origina- tors of its world-famous Sunday-school system. We have neither the scope nor the inclination to go into details so minute, for the present history is not for Brooklynites alone, but is intended to interest gou- eral readers in Brooklyn. We shall therefore find it profitable to glean a few of the more interesting items, and attempt in briefer ontline to gain an idea of the picture so elaborately set forth. There is no need to mention again the two ferries, now so familiar as Fulton and Catharine, the Jackson Street Ferry not having come into opera- tion till the year after the incorporation. From these two ferries roads, er streets, ran no toward the high ground now along Sands Street, meeting (as do now Fulton and Main streets ) just before the highest point was attained. On these two thoroughfares the houses clustered most thickly. Francis Gny's famous " Snow Scene," depict- ing the Brooklyn of a few years later, shows the rear of the dwellings
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