Crisis Decade (1850 – 1860)

…er Henry Ward Beecher. ca. 1865. Civil War veterans portrait albums. V1981.6.7. Brooklyn Historical Society. In 1847, Henry Ward Beecher left Indianapolis for Brooklyn. For the next four decades the charismatic pastor dominated the city’s politics. He transformed Plymouth Church into a bastion of abolitionist activity during the antebellum decades. The Fulton Ferry was supposedly renamed “Beecher’s Boats” because of the number of people who trave…

Timeline

…ed people who fueled the prosperity of Kings County’s agricultural economy. Jea was born in southern Nigeria in 1773. He was kidnapped at the age of 2½ and sold into slavery. Jea worked on a large farm in Flatbush. His slaveholders, Albert and Anetje Terhune treated him “in a manner almost too shocking to relate.”* The Terhunes forced their enslaved laborers to work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, with a paucity of food and inadequate cl…

Abolitionist Biographies

…in Ohio, Beecher became the inaugural pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights. The church was founded in 1847 by a group of Brooklyn Heights residents who held anti-slavery views. By the 1850s, Beecher had gained a national reputation for his commitment to abolitionism, theatrical preaching style, and ability to fundraise for anti-slavery causes. He assisted in the emancipation of a number of young women and his congregation raised money f…

Games

…from his enslaver Mary Brown in Baltimore. Manhattan and Brooklyn abolitionists rallied together to raise the $800 needed for Hamlet’s release. The Freedman’s Bureau After the Civil War, Congress established the Freedman’s Bureau.The Brooklyn Branch, which opened in 1866, assists, educates, and aids free people living in Brooklyn. Peter Croger Peter Croger, one of the founders and trustees of the first African-American church in Brooklyn, establ…

A Gradual Emancipation (1783 – 1827)

…ons, anti-slavery societies and free black communities expanded across the North. The constitutions of Vermont (1777) and Massachusetts (1783) forbade slavery, and Pennsylvania (1780) Rhode Island (1784), and Connecticut (1784) all passed gradual emancipation laws. This was not the case in Brooklyn or Kings County, NY, a slaveholding capital. Following the American Revolution, slavery actually strengthened in Kings County, unlike neighboring Manh…

Exhibitions

Brooklyn Abolitionists Brooklyn Abolitionists This major, long-term exhibit opens on January 15, 2014 and explores the lesser-known heroes of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement — ordinary residents, black and white — who shaped their neighborhoods, city and nation with a revolutionary vision of freedom and equality. For opening times and directions please visit brooklynhistory.org Weeksville: Lived Experiences In Pursuit of Freedom…

Walking Tours

…rification and a changing waterfront that mix remnants of its industrial past with modern luxury condos. But in 1838, Williamsburg was merely a village or small independent town within Bushwick (one of six towns in Kings County). It quickly transformed from a village to a town to a city before it was finally absorbed by Brooklyn in 1855. During this growth, it was home to a number of German immigrants and the second largest African American commu…

Abolitionist Brooklyn (1828 – 1849)

…abolitionists were a radical minority who had established the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in 1833 with headquarters in Manhattan. It was the first movement in American history in which men and women, black and white, came together with mutual purpose – to end slavery immediately and demand political and legal equality for all Americans. In July 1834, anti-abolition riots flared across Manhattan. In response, a number of white a…

Civil War & Beyond (1861 – 1867)

On April 12, 1861, the attack on Fort Sumter marked the start of the Civil War. But conflict was not confined to the battlefields alone. By 1860, Brooklyn was the third largest city in the United States. It was home to a culturally diverse society including people of Dutch, English and African. There were also increasing numbers of German and Irish immigrants. The Irish and Black communities were among the most marginalized in American society….