*** Over all the sites of Revolutionary fortifications, near Brooklyn, the modern city is rapidly spreading. Streets and avenues reticulate the whole area, and it is difficult now to identify the consecrated places.
* I have before me a manuscript letter, written by a daughter of General John Morin Seott, from Elizabethtown, three days after the landing of the British on Long Island, whieh exhibits the alarms and privations to which wealthy families, who had left the city, were subjected. After mentioning their hourly expectation of the landing of the British at Elizabethtown Point, she says: "We have our coach standing before our door every night, and the horses harnessed ready to make our escape, if we have time. We have hardly any clothes to wear: only a second change." Warned by Governor Livingston to leave Elizabethtown, the family of General Scott fled at night to Springfield, in the midst of a terrible thunder-storm. The writer continues: "We were obliged to stop on the road and stay all night, and all the lodging we could get was a dirty bed on the floor. How hard it seems for us, that have always been used to living comfortable!... Papa, with his brigade, has gone over to Long Island, whieh makes us very uneasy. Poor New York! I long to have the hattle over, and yet I dread the consequences." This letter is in the possession of her grandson, Charles S. M'Knight, Esq., of New York.
* John Morin Scott was an early opponent of British oppression, the coadjutor of Sears, Lamb, Willett, and others. He was a descendant of the baronial family of Scott of Ancram, Teviotdale, Scotland, and was born in New York in 1730. He graduated at Yale College in 1746. He adopted the profession of the law, married Helena Rutgers, of New York, and made that city his field of active usefulness. With William Livingston, of New Jersey, his voice and pen boldly advocated extreme measures, and, because of his ultra Whig principles, the timid ones defeated his election to the General Congress in 1774. He was one of the most active and influential members of the General Committee of New York in 1775, and was a member of the Provincial Congress that year. On the ninth of June, 1776, he was commissioned a brigadier, which office he held until March, 1777. He was with his brigade in the battle of Long Island, and was one of the Council of War called by Washington to decide whether lo fight longer or retreat. He was afterward with General Heath in the lower part of West Chester, but left the service in March, 1777, when he was appointed secretary of the State of New York. He was a member of the General Congress in 1782 and 1783. In 1784 he was elected an honorary member of the Society of the Cincinnati. He died on the fourteenth of September of the same year, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. His remains lie in Trinity church-yard with those of his ancestors, close by the railing on Broadway, north of the great entrance-door to the church. I am indebted to John Morin Scott, Esq., of Philadelphia, a grandson of the general, for the materials of this brief sketch.
** This monument is erected to the memory of the Honorable Israel Putnam, Esq., major general in the armies of the United States of America; who was born at Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts, on the seventh day of January, 1718, and died at Brooklyn, in the State of Connecticut, on the twenty-ninth day of May, A.D. 1700. Passenger, if thou art a soldier, go not away till thou hast dropped a tear over the dust of a Hero, who, ever tenderly attentive to the lives and happiness of his men, dared to lead where any one dared to follow. If thou art a patriot, remember with gratitude how much thou and thy country owe to the disinterested and gallant exertions of the patriot who sleeps beneath this marble. If thou art an honest, generous and worthy man, render a sincere and cheerful tribute of respect to a man whose generosity was singular; whose honesty was proverbial; and who, with a slender education, with small advantages, and with powerful friends, raised himself to universal esteem, and to offices of eminent distinction by personal worth, and hy the diligent services of a useful life."
The "Passes."—Miles and Woodhull.—Fortifications near Brooklyn.
breast-works were cast up. These rows to the Jamaica road, at the present East New York, and in broken elevations further on. There were several roads traversing the flat country in the rear of these hills.