A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II. — John Shaqi
A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II.Ostrander, Stephen M.
History
A History of the City of Brooklyn and Kings County, Volume II.
Ostrander, Stephen M.
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- History; Kings County (N.Y.) -- History
The graveyard of the original Dutch settlement lay in sight of the
church, and the last remains within its borders were not disturbed
until 1879, when the bones were removed in boxes and placed under
the Bushwick Church. Not far distant were the De Voe, De Bevoise,
and Wyckoff houses, the last named built by Theodorus Polhemus, of
Flatbush.[15]
On the river front was the famous tavern of "Charlum" Titus. Toward
Bushwick Creek was the Wartman homestead. On Division Avenue was the
Boerum house; the Remsen house was on Clymer Street. Peter Miller,
Frederic De Voe, and William Van Cott were prominent residents.
On Newtown Creek stood Luqueer's mill, built in 1664, by Abraham
Jansen, and the second to be erected within the limits of the present
city of Brooklyn. Freekes' mill at Gowanus was the oldest, a pond being
formed by damming the head of Gowanus Kill. Remsen's mill was at the
Wallabout. It was built in 1710, and it was from the vantage ground of
his residence here that Rem Remsen witnessed so many of the prison-ship
horrors. Remsen performed many humane acts toward the unfortunates of
the floating dungeons.
The boundary dispute between Newtown and Bushwick--a wrangle beginning
in Stuyvesant's day and lasting until 1769--forms one of the most
picturesque features of political life in the history of the two
towns. "Arbitration Rock," as a famous landmark in the survey was
called, having been destroyed, a new rock was placed in position by
Nicholas Wyckoff, with the permission of the Commissioners appointed to
resurvey the line in 1880, and still remains.
We have seen that one section of the town of Bushwick, or rather an
outlying group of farms and houses, lay on the river front. Traffic to
and from New York naturally passed through this river section of the
settlement. At the beginning of the century Richard M. Woodhull, a New
York merchant, established a horse-ferry from Corlaer's Hook, close to
the foot of the present Grand Street, New York, to the foot of the Long
Island road, now bearing the name of North Second Street.
The New York landing-place of the ferry was then considerably above the
settled part of the town. In New York at this period the tendency of
development still was along the eastern side of the island. "The seat
of the foreign trade," says Mr. Janvier, "was the East River front; of
the wholesale domestic trade, in Pearl and Broad streets, and about
Hanover Square; of the retail trade, in William, between Fulton and
Wall. Nassau Street and upper Pearl Street were places of fashionable
residence; as were also lower Broadway and the Battery. Upper Broadway,
paved as far as Warren Street, no longer was looked upon as remote and
inaccessible; and people with exceptionally long heads were beginning,
even, to talk of it as a street with a future; being thereto moved,
no doubt, by consideration of its magnificent appearance as the great
central thoroughfare of the city upon Mangin's prophetic map."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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