Revolutionary War – njcssjournal

A Self-Guided Walking Tour of the Battle of Brooklyn Sites

Marion Palm

Used by permission from the *Brooklyn Eagle* (Source: http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=35883)

Two scouts from the leading column of the Royal Marines and Tories and two companies of Long Island Tories were attracted to watermelons growing near the southwest corner of Green-Wood Cemetery. Riflemen fired on the would-be melon poachers.

The Old Stone House now at Fifth Avenue and Third Street in Park Slope, which has an interpretive center, was then named the Vechte Farmhouse, located south of Gowanus Creek. The event involving the retreat of the Americans says that Lord Stirling (he was on our side) gathered 2,000 men. These included troops from Delaware and Pennsylvania, along with an elite regiment from the First Maryland Regiment.

The Old Lyon Inn is now an American Legion Post near the IKEA on the point of Red Hook. The chance meeting at the watermelon patch became a major confrontation that stretched for a quarter of a mile and was responsible for convincing the Americans that the major attack would be on the Gowanus Road. With two sides confronting each other in regular battle formation, this was the first time the Americans, as an independent nation, faced the British in an open field. With no fortifications or stones to hide behind, only hedges and trees to face Grant, the commander of the British (not related to our former president General Grant) took on the fight.

The Brits, however, went east and linked up with the Hessians (paid German mercenaries) to seize high ground in what we now know as Battle-Hill in Green-Wood Cemetery.

The main body of the enemy came down through Flatbush to the intersection of Nostrand Avenue and Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy. (5). The British were very sneaky in this maneuver, as they swung around in a loop behind the Americans and attempted to capture them all. Howe, the British general ordered his men to cut off the American retreat to the Brooklyn forts on Brooklyn Heights. Most of the Americans survived, some were captured by the British, and others were bayoneted as they tried to surrender to the Hessians.

There is a monument to those who died in terrible conditions as prisoners of the British on ships in our harbor. An obelisk stands in Fort Greene Park that is a 150-foot tall Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument and crypt, which honors some 11,500 patriots who died aboard British prison ships during the American Revolution.

Washington’s headquarters, and he had many of them during the war, was at The Four Chimneys in a mansion overlooking the harbor from Brooklyn Heights. A small garden with a flagpole now marks this spot on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. There is also a small plaque with information about the house embedded into the stand that supports the flag. Washington held his war council there on August 29, 1776. The British, despite their clever advances, made a tactical error. They wasted time digging trenches. This decision took away the Brits’ opportunity to win the war in one stroke.

Lord Stirling managed to disengage from Grant and get around Cornwallis’s forces stationed around the Vechte farmhouse, blocking the Post Road, now First Street in Park Slope. Stirling ordered his troops to plunge into the marsh and go across Gowanus Creek on August 27, 1776.

On what can be seen now as a suicide mission, he staged a preemptive strike against Cornwallis in and around the Vechte farmhouse and its orchard. This sacrificial rearguard gave the bulk of the American wing a chance to escape across the marshes along Gowanus Creek.

A very dense fog drifted in and Washington and his men escaped from the Ferry Landing next to what is now the elegant River Cafe. Washington took the whole regiment by ferry to New York. The last man over received permission to go back for his horse and he and the volunteers were fired upon in what he said was a salute from the enemy with musketry that couldn’t reach them as they returned to safety.

General Howe was in Red Hook and his men were spread all the way to Hells Gate to keep the Americans guessing where he would attack, but he never crossed the East River to pursue them. Howe did succeed to take Brooklyn Heights and Governor’s Island, concealing his invasion flotilla in Newton’s Creek, the border between the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens at approximately 32nd Street.

General Howe is said to have dallied too long at the home of Robert Murray on a hot evening of September 15th when Mrs. Murray and her two daughters opened the wine cellar at the mansion and served cakes and Madeira to the British generals and Governor Tyron. Howe’s delay allowed the Americans to slip away again. There is a plaque to mark the mansion on Park Avenue and 37th Street in Manhattan.

Historic New Jersey: Long Pond Ironworks

Long Pond Ironworks in Hewitt takes its name from the nearby “Long Pond,” a translation of the Native American name for Greenwood Lake. Set alongside the swiftly flowing Wanaque, or “Long Pond,” River, the only natural drainage from Greenwood Lake, the site offered a perfect combination of natural resources for making iron. Long Pond Ironworks was founded by the German ironmaster Peter Hasenclever.

Reprinted with Permission from the Long Pond Ironworks Museum www.longpondironworks.org/pdf/brochure.pdf

With financial backing from English investors, Hasenclever purchased the existing Ringwood Ironworks in 1765, along with huge parcels of land, including the 55,000 acre Long Pond Tract. He then imported more than 500 European workers and their families to build iron-making plantations at Ringwood, Long Pond, and Charlottenburg in New Jersey, and at Cortland in New York.

From the wilderness they carved roads; built forges, furnaces, and homes; and created supporting farms. At Long Pond, they dammed the river to provide water power to operate the air blast for a furnace and a large forge. Robert Erskine, the ironmaster at Long Pond and Ringwood during the 1770s, took up the American cause during the Revolutionary War, supplying iron products to the Continental Army and serving as George Washington’s chief mapmaker until his death in 1780.

In 1807, Long Pond Ironworks was acquired by Martin J. Ryerson, owner of the Pompton Ironworks. The Ryerson family retained ownership until 1853, when they sold the properties to the industrialists Peter Cooper, Edward Cooper, and Abram S. Hewitt. The Cooper-Hewitt enterprise operated Long Pond Ironworks as part of the larger Trenton Iron Company. During the Civil War, two new blast furnaces, new waterwheels, and workers’ housing were built at Long Pond. The iron made here was found to be especially well suited to making guns for the Union Army.

Civil War era Water Wheel

The 1870s brought major changes in the American iron industry—notably, the rise of cheap steel manufacturing and the discovery of new coalfields in Pennsylvania and ore beds in the Midwest. Although Hewitt planned cost-saving improvements to keep his northern New Jersey ironworks in operation, on April 30, 1882, the last fires were blown out at Long Pond, ending more than 120 years of iron-making history at the site.

Although iron was no longer made at Long Pond after 1882, mining continued as a major industry. Through the turn of the twentieth century, residents of Hewitt, the village that had grown up around the ironworks, adapted to changing times. They built a new school and church between 1895 and 1905 and a new sawmill in 1913. Ice cutting on Greenwood Lake and recreation also became key industries. By the 1930s and the onset of the Great Depression, however, these industries were in decline. Residents of historic Hewitt began to move away, seeking opportunity elsewhere.

In 1957, the Ringwood Company donated the Long Pond Ironworks property to the State of New Jersey. In 1987, Long Pond Ironworks was dedicated as a State Park. Administered by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Parks and Forestry, and maintained by the Friends of Long Pond Ironworks, Inc., the Long Pond Ironworks Historic District stands as a testament to the vital role our region has played in our local, state, and national history.

Long Pond Today

Long Pond Ironworks is a microcosm of our industrial and cultural heritage. Its history tells a fascinating tale of the ironmasters who developed the iron industry in northern New Jersey. Their contributions to history in times of peace and times of war reach far beyond the local economy. These nearly forgotten chapters of history deserve to be retold and remembered.

Within the 175-acre Long Pond Ironworks Historic District lie the ruins of three iron blast furnaces, including the original Colonial-era furnace built in 1766 and two larger furnaces built for Civil War production. Also visible are remains of iron forges, waterpower systems, and a variety of workers’ homes and commercial buildings that were critical parts of the iron-working village.

Long Pond also illustrates the evolution of iron-making technology in the remains of the three successive blast furnaces, the ore roaster, and the hydropower systems. The continual search for more efficient operations and materials is a story of industrial ingenuity at its best.

The workers’ story at Long Pond Ironworks is a saga of immigration, hard work, and adaptation to changing times. The company town of Hewitt grew, thrived and declined along with the fortunes of the iron industry in the Northeast. The personal and community struggle to adapt to an evolving economy is a theme in our cultural heritage from which we can still learn.

The historical value of Long Pond Ironworks is paralleled only by its natural beauty. The forests that were once cut down to make charcoal for the furnaces have returned, and the river that was once diverted into the hydropower systems again cascades over ancient rock formations. The Friends of Long Pond Ironworks are working to ensure that the Historical District is preserved and remembered for its contributions to our past, present, and future.