FERRY PASSAGE CERTIFICATE, 1816
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."
Notwithstanding the development of New York on the East River side, there were two miles of travel between Woodhull's ferry and the business part of the city. Woodhull bought and "boomed" property in the vicinity of the ferry road on the Long Island side, then known as Bushwick Street, and to the settlement in this region he gave the name of Williamsburgh, "in compliment to his friend, Colonel Williams, U. S. engineer, by whom it was surveyed." A ferry-house, a tavern, a hay-press, appeared on the scene.
"An auction was held," writes John M. Stearns,[16] "at which a few building lots were disposed of. But the amount realized came far short of restoring to Woodhull the money he had thus prematurely invested. His project was fully a quarter of a century too soon. It required half a million of people in the city of New York, before settlers could be induced to move across the East River away from the attractions of a commercial city. Woodhull found that notes matured long before he could realize from the property; and barely six years had passed before he was a bankrupt, and the site of his new city became subject to sale by the sheriff. By divers shifts the calamity was deferred until September 11, 1811, when the right, title, and interest of Richard M. Woodhull in the original purchase, and in five acres of the Francis J. Titus estate, purchased by him in 1805, near Fifth Street, was sold by the sheriff in favor of one Roosevelt. James H. Maxwell, the son-in-law of Woodhull, became the purchaser of Williamsburgh; but not having the means to continue his title thereto, it again passed under the sheriff's hammer, although a sufficient number of lots had by this time been sold to prevent its re-appropriation to farm and garden purposes."