In 1808 the town appropriated $1500 for the erection of a new "poor house." The county court house of this period was at Flatbush, then the county seat. The old court house had been burned in 1758. The money required to build the new court house was raised by an assessment upon the inhabitants of the county. This building continued in use thirty-four years, when, by reason of its dilapidated condition, a new court house and jail were built in 1792. The court house cost $2944.71. The contractor was Thomas Fardon, and the plans for the building were furnished by Messrs. Stanton, Newton, and James Robertson. In referring to the court house, Furman says that "in 1800 the court house was let to James Simson for one year at £3 in money." In this agreement "the justices reserved for themselves the chamber in the said house called the court chamber, at the time of their publique sessions, courts of common pleas, and private meetings; as also the room called the prison, for the use of the sheriff if he had occasion for it." The building stood for forty years, when it was destroyed by fire. Meanwhile the hamlet of Brooklyn took on many of the characteristics of a maturing village. Joseph B. Pierson removed from New York to Brooklyn in 1809, and opened a circulating library on Main Street, two doors from Sands Street. In the "Long Island Star" of June, 1809, George Hamilton advertised a select school where "students were taught to make their own pens." Hamilton was succeeded by John Gibbons, who in September announced the opening of an academy for both sexes, where the various educational branches are "taught on unerring principles." Mrs. Gibbons was to "instruct little girls in Spelling, Reading, Sewing, and Marking." To the notice of an evening school for young men is appended: "N. B. Good pronunciation." Two years later there was a private school opposite the post office; John Mabon taught the Brooklyn Select Academy; and at the inn of Benjamin Smith, on Christmas-eve, an exhibition was given by the pupils of Platt Kennedy. At this time the town had a floor-cloth factory, eight or ten looms were at work in Crichton's cotton goods manufactory, and over one hundred people worked in rope-walks. Abraham Remsen kept the one dry goods store at Fulton and Front streets. Over the Black Horse tavern lived for a time the "Rain-water Doctor," who was consulted by people coming great distances. This strange man dealt mostly in herbs and simples, but his specialty was rain water, which he praised as containing power to cure all manner of ills. He often signed himself, "Sylvan, Enemy of Human Diseases." Sylvan was evidently the first of a long list of "rain-water" quacks, against whom the regular practitioners of this and later periods had occasion to contend.[6]