Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gravesend, Brooklyn
    Gravesend, Brooklyn
    Gravesend, Brooklyn
    Ebook135 pages20 minutes

    Gravesend, Brooklyn

    By Joseph Ditta

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Experience the old farming days of what was once the agricultural community of Gravesend, Brooklyn and how the town has transformed into the urban neighborhood it is today.


    Permanently settled in 1645, the farming town of Gravesend, Long Island, was annexed to the city (now borough) of Brooklyn, New York, in 1894. Few reminders from Gravesend's rural days survive around the urban landscape it has become. Even its more recent past is quickly disappearing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2009
    ISBN9781439622063
    Gravesend, Brooklyn
    Author

    Joseph Ditta

    In Gravesend, Brooklyn lifelong resident Joseph Ditta, reference librarian at the New-York Historical Society, traces the evolution of this historic neighborhood through a fascinating selection of rare and never-before-published views.

    Related to Gravesend, Brooklyn

    Related ebooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Before The Bell

      May 19, 2022

      Before The Bell
      6 min read

    • Article

      Hotseat: Dave Meltzer

      Aug 5, 2021

      Hotseat: Dave Meltzer
      12 min read

    • Article

      Hotseat: Billy Corgan

      May 19, 2022

      Hotseat: Billy Corgan
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Lockup

      Aug 5, 2021

      The Lockup
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Def New Sound

      Jul 1, 2022

      A Def New Sound
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Olympics Do Not Matter

      Feb 9, 2018

      The Olympics Do Not Matter
      4 min read

    • Article

      Before The Bell

      Aug 5, 2021

      Before The Bell
      8 min read

    • Article

      The 50 GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE 2000s

      Jul 20, 2023

      to the mighty Judas Priest would have been seriously big news even if they hadn’t produced an album worthy of their legacy, but Angel Of Retribution’s urgency and fury picked up right where Painkiller left off back in 1990. The dual guitar assault of

      15 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Feb 15, 2024

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ghostbusters: Afterlife Tbc

      Nov 11, 2021

      Ghostbusters: Afterlife Tbc
      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Slain Men Were Drug Traffickers

      Jan 10, 2021

      THE two men who were shot, beheaded and set alight had worked for alleged drug lord Yaganathan Pillay, also known as Teddy Mafia, until they switched loyalties. This was according to a witness to this week’s triple killing in Shallcross, Durban, whic

      2 min read

    • Article

      IBEJI Means Twins

      Nov 1, 2019

      IBEJI Means Twins
      2 min read

    • Article

      Painting A Story

      Mar 1, 2021

      Painting A Story
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Hammer Interview

      Jan 4, 2024

      The Hammer Interview
      9 min read

    • Article

      Fall Calendar

      Aug 31, 2023

      This season’s exciting new series and movies—all in one place! 4 Ancient Empires (History) D ffi e Race (Comedy Central) M On your marks… SNL’s Beck Bennett, as ffi e pushover Pat, faces ff against Spencer (Joel McHale), a coworker who challenges him

      3 min read

    • Article

      After Life

      Jan 5, 2023

      After Life
      14 min read

    • Article

      2021 PWI Readers' Poll

      Aug 5, 2021

      2021 PWI Readers' Poll
      24 min read

    • Article

      How Sharks Became so Scary

      Jun 3, 2017

      SUMMER HASN’T EVEN OFFICIALLY BEGUN and sightings of great white sharks in shallow waters have already forced beach closures on both U.S. coasts. In a post-Jaws world, it seems only natural that shark warnings should send swimmers running. But that h

      1 min read

    • Article

      Dual Purpose

      Oct 18, 2022

      Dual Purpose
      5 min read

    • Article

      Project Veritas Founder James O'Keefe Is Forced Out At The Right-wing Group

      Feb 21, 2023

      In a video, O'Keefe said he was leaving his group, known for hidden-camera efforts to embarrass journalists, after the board of directors removed his power. The board cited "financial malfeasance."

      2 min read

    • Article

      Inviting Us Into Their Spectacular St Tropez Villa Dame Joan Collins And Husband Percy On Love, Laughter, Who Rules The Kitchen And How She Predicted The Pandemic

      Sep 21, 2020

      Inviting Us Into Their Spectacular St Tropez Villa Dame Joan Collins And Husband Percy On Love, Laughter, Who Rules The Kitchen And How She Predicted The Pandemic
      7 min read

    • Article

      Rebels With A Cause

      Aug 10, 2022

      Rebels With A Cause
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gravesend, Brooklyn

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gravesend, Brooklyn - Joseph Ditta

      pages.

      INTRODUCTION

      Ultima Thule was a region the ancients believed lay at the end of the Earth. In Roz Chast’s New Yorker cartoon with that title (published on October 14, 2002), a mother warns her daughter of the dangers lurking in the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York, outside their own. Heedless, the girl sets out to explore and steps off the planet. I just wanted to see what was on the other side of McDonald Avenue! she wails.

      What Chast’s character probably did not know is that McDonald Avenue was once called Gravesend Avenue (see page 72). If she had followed it south to a point just below Avenue U, she would have come to the heart of Gravesend, one of the first planned communities in America. She would not have recognized it as such. There are no historic signs to read, just the names on auto body shops under the elevated train tracks. It might seem like the gritty edge of the world today, but to its founder, Lady Moody, Gravesend was Utopia.

      Deborah Moody (born about 1586 and died about 1659) was the wealthy, freethinking widow of a baronet who left England when the Court of the Star Chamber ordered that she limit her time in London and stay on her Wiltshire estate. By 1639, she was in Puritan Massachusetts, where her dissenting belief that scripture did not sanction infant baptism branded her a dangerous woman. Avoiding censure she moved in 1643 to New Netherland, where she petitioned the tolerant Dutch to grant her and some followers a spot on which to worship as they pleased.

      A war raging against the Native Americans foiled the group’s immediate plans. After the hostilities, on December 19, 1645, Director-General Willem Kieft issued a patent for land on southwestern Long Island, an area that by mid-century included five Dutch towns: Flatbush, Flatlands, New Utrecht, Bushwick, and Brooklyn. Kieft’s patent called this sixth, English town Gravesand, a combination of two similar sounding European places: ’s-Gravenzande, South Holland (which means count’s beach in Dutch), and Gravesend, England (which takes its name from words meaning at the end of the grove). Eventually spelled the English way, Gravesend’s seemingly morbid name had no connection to burials (despite the presence of New York City’s earliest cemetery within its borders; see page 12).

      Lady Moody’s fellow patentee, the surveyor James Hubbard, designed the town’s central plan: a 16-acre square bounded by present-day Village Road North, Village Road East, Village Road South, and Van Sicklen Street and cut into quadrants by the intersection of Gravesend Neck Road and McDonald Avenue (see the map on page 11). In each quadrant, 10 house lots bordered a common yard for holding livestock. A palisade enclosed the larger square and beyond it circled 40 long, wedge-shaped plantations. The pattern resembled a radiant cross and perhaps signified Lady Moody’s intent—that Gravesend shine like a beacon for seekers of religious freedom. Kieft’s patent ensured they could enjoy "liberty of Conscience . . . without molestation or disturbance from any magistrate or . . . ecclesiastical minister that may pretend jurisdiction over

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1